Book Chick City: June 2010

'YA-10' Guest Author & Giveaway with Lauren Kate

Wednesday, June 30, 2010 | Posted by Book Chick City |

Today I have the pleasure in welcoming Lauren Kate. Lauren grew up in Dallas, went to school in Atlanta, and started writing in New York. She is the author of Fallen and The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove. She lives in Laurel Canyon with her husband and hopes to work in a restaurant kitchen, get a dog, and learn how to surf.

I loved Fallen - you can read my review here. If you haven't managed to get your hands on a copy yet, then it's your lucky day as there's a giveaway at the end of Lauren's post, so make sure you enter!

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The Dead

When I was in college, one of my favorite authors Amy Bloom came to speak at my university. As an aspiring writer, I was glad to listen to her read a passage from her new book—but what I was really excited about was the Q&A.

It was the first time I’d been in the same room with an author I really admired, and I was dying to hear the secrets of Living A Writers Life. I thought she could just tell us. It seems a little funny to me now, but back then I must have thought that if she explained how she did it, we could do what she said—work at the same time of day that she did, drink the same type of tea, listen to the same songs, or whatever—and everything would fall into place.

At one point, I raised my hand and asked her: “What do you read when you’re in the middle of writing a book?” Because all my professors were telling me that to be a writer you had to be a reader, and if I could just read what Amy Bloom read, well, then…see above.

Her face darkened a little. (She’s has a wry and sarcastic sense of humor.) She said, “When I’m writing, I only read dead people. That way, if I get too jealous of how much better they are than me, I can’t go out and kill anyone.”

What she meant, I think (I hope!), is not that any of her contemporaries’ lives would be endangered if she cracked open their books, merely that when she was in the midst of writing, she liked to limit her reading to the classics. Nabokov. Fitzgerald. Dickens. Woolf. Can’t kill ‘em. They’re already dead.

Only recently have I begun to understand Amy Bloom’s point. Now that I’m working on books of my own—especially in the ever-exciting, ever-expanding field of YA fiction—I feel a pull towards all the other amazing teen books being published right around mine. Our books sit next to each other on bookshelves all the time! Shouldn’t I get a feel for what they’re all about? It feels kind of like meeting your boyfriend’s friends to make sure they get your approval…

So I really really want to read all these amazing paranormal teen romances that everyone around me keeps talking about—but when I’m writing, it’s hard. I don’t know why. Maybe I should blame it all on Amy Bloom (nah), but I can’t read other YA books when I’m writing. I get so caught up with the plights of my characters, that keeping all of them in my head at once is almost too much.

At the end of a day of writing (if my brain isn’t totally fried), I like to read something entirely different. Non-fiction. Fashion and cooking magazines. Or, as Amy put it, the dead guys. (Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Dickens, and Woolf are my personal favorites, by the way.)

Next week, I’ll start working on PASSION, the third book in the FALLEN series. I’ve been not-writing for three months (which means: not working on a first draft, but doing little things like editing and interviews and lovely bits of FALLEN bonus material that will be available online later this fall), and during that glorious not-writing time, I’ve devoured as many YA books as I could. And it was wonderful.

So before I head into my writing isolation cave, I thought I’d leave you with a few of my recent favorites:

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly (this one comes out in the fall of 2010)

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff (sorry, this one doesn’t come out in the UK in Jan 2011, but then, you must read it!)

As I embark on PASSION, if any of you have non-fiction or “dead-guy” lit suggestions, I’m all ears!

Thanks Lauren!

You can find out more about Lauren here:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

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GIVEAWAY!

[NOW CLOSED]

I have 5 (FIVE) copies of Fallen to giveaway away thanks to Random House Children's Books. All you have to do is fill out this form! - super easy!

There will be FOUR winners: 4 (FOUR) from the UK and 1 (ONE) International. Ends Saturday 3rd July 8am BST. Only one entry per person please - duplicate/multiple entries will be disqualified.

GOOD LUCK!

Labels: Giveaways, Guest Author, Lauren Kate |

18 comments |

'YA-10' Guest Author & Giveaway with Kelly Link

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 | Posted by Book Chick City |

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Please give a warm welcome to Kelly Link, author of Pretty Monsters, thank you so much for being here today. There's also a giveaway of Pretty Monsters at the end of Kelly's post so make sure you enter!

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I'm the author of three short story collections. All three collections include ghost stories, stories of the uncanny and the fantastic, but this one, Pretty Monsters, is a first in two ways. It's my first young adult collection, and it's also the first collection that I didn't publish myself. What I want to write about here is my publishing career, which is somewhat atypical. Tomorrow, to provide some perspective, I'm hoping to put up an interview with debut novelist N. K. Jemisin. Her book The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is just out, and I recommend it highly to anyone who enjoys epic fantasy, romance, or character-driven fiction.

I'm the product of various writing workshops: undergraduate, an M.F.A. program, the Clarion Writer's workshop, and various peer workshops since then. Workshops are short story friendly, so they were a good place to figure out what worked and didn't work -- in other people's stories as well as in my own. But I think I would have ended up a short-story writer in any case: I like novels -- I love novels, in fact -- but I love short stories more. Ghost stories, especially, get under my skin. So do fairy tales -- and the various reinterpretations of fairy tales by Angela Carter, Shelley Jackson, and many, many of the writers included in the Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling fairy-tale anthologies.

So do I recommend workshops and M.F.A. programs if you're a writer? I do, although I've met other writers who felt otherwise. Later this week I'm going to write about how to go about finding the right kinds of workshops and M.F.A. programs at www.gwendabond.typepad.com.

By 2000, I had published a number of short stories. Some of them had won awards. I'd started to get emails and letters from agents and editors, who said that they loved my short stories, and they wondered if I was working on a novel. I wasn't. What I was doing was writing more short stories (and most traditional publishing houses get antsy at the thought of publishing collections. Conventional wisdom is that nobody likes to read short stories.) I was also putting out a zine, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, with my future husband Gavin J. Grant. We were living in New York and had a number of friends who worked in publishing. Some of them had started their own small presses, lost a lot of money doing so, and eventually picked up other kinds of work. For some reason this sounded attractive to us: our friends had explained all the ways that they'd lost money in publishing, and so surely we could avoid this. We wouldn't get rich, but at least we could aim for breaking even. (The joke everyone knows: How do you make a little money in publishing? Start with a lot.)

I had enough short stories to make up a collection, and I loved the idea of producing my own book -- overseeing every aspect from the selection of fonts to cover art to trim size. But it wasn't quite that we were going into publishing because I wanted to see my stories published. Instead, we ended up intrigued by the fact that there wasn't a publisher in New York who felt that they could successfully publish a collection of the kind of surreal short stories that I not only liked to write, but that both Gavin and I wanted to read -- this suggested that there was a niche that we could successfully occupy as a small press, that we would be able to find work that we wanted to publish and see find an audience.

I was the fan of the writer, Ray Vukcevich, and so we asked if he had enough short stories for a collection, and if so, could we publish it. He said yes. Our contract was one page long. Gavin and I spent a couple of months getting a crash course in publishing from friends in the business, reading books on publishing and design, and hanging out in bookstores, taking notes on which covers made us want to pick up a book and which covers were a turn off. Spines: especially tricky to design.

After my first collection came out in paperback, it sold well, as did Ray's collection Meet Me in the Moon Room. We continued to publish two books a year, and I wrote more short stories and sold them. I got an agent, Renee Zuckerbrot, in part so that she could tell editors that I wasn't working on a novel. When I had a collection's worth of new stories, Renee sent them out, and we got an offer. It wasn't a very large offer, and after we sat down and did the math, we realized that the advance the editor was proposing suggested that they thought they would be able to sell about as many copies of the new book as we'd sold of my first collection, Stranger Things Happen. So why not publish Magic For Beginner ourselves? We turned down the offer and published my second collection in hardcover. Harcourt bought the rights to publish the paperback.

The revolution in desktop publishing, and the growing presence of an online media that began in the late 1990s has a lot to do with why I have a career as a short-story writer. It's quite possible that in the next decade, writers will have even more control over their own work, and the shape of their careers. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my experience with Penguin and Pretty Monsters. Being published by a major publisher has obvious advantages: it's terrific to be paid up front; I don't have to warehouse the books, deal with distribution, come up with a marketing plan, etc. Do I recommend that other writers self-publish? Not unless you are going to take publishing as seriously as you do your writing. If you think you might be interested in some aspect of publishing, try putting out a zine. See if you have fun. If you decide you want to investigate book publishing, there are some pretty good small press e-mail lists. Gavin has an article up on www.strangehorizons.com about starting up. (The hardest thing will always be distribution, and making sure that the readers who will enjoy your book know that it's available and that they want to read it.)

Thanks Kelly!

You can find out more about the author here:

Website | Goodreads | Facebook

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GIVEAWAY!

[NOW CLOSED]

Thanks to Penguin US, I have a copy of Pretty Monsters to giveaway - all you have to do to enter is leave a comment for my guest and then fill out this form!

This giveaway is only open to the UK, USA & Canada (publishers request). Ends 3rd July 8am BST!

GOOD LUCK!

Labels: 10 Fun Days of Young Adult Fiction, Giveaways, Guest Author |

32 comments |

'YA-10' BOOK REVIEW: 'Crawlers' by Sam Enthoven

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 | Posted by Book Chick City |

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Title: Crawlers

Author: Sam Enhoven

Publisher: Corgi (RHCB)

Publication Date: April 2010

ARC: 263 pages

Genre: Horror

Young Adult

Source: Review Copy

Reviewed by: Carolyn

RATING: 6/10 - good

SUMMARY BACK COVER:

Four boys and four girls are on a trip to the theatre. Little do they know that they will never see the play. They're about to be plunged into a nightmare. Beneath the theatre lies a secret. And now she has been released...

REVIEW:

'Crawlers' is a fun, entertaining YA horror that reads like a teenage horror flick but without the blood and gore. There's nothing really original here but it's fast-paced and moves along nicely making it a fairly quick read.

A group of school kids and their teachers are making their way to the Barbican to watch a play. But before they can settle down, strange things begin to happen. Weird looking spider-like creatures are dropping from the ceiling onto people's necks and then the people change.

Ben, Jasmine and the rest of the group fight for their lives as their teachers succumb to the creatures like all the other adults. They manage to find a room which they barricade, hoping help will come soon. Unfortunately, it doesn't and they have to find their own way out.

The characters have very distinct voices, but unfortunately have stereo-typical personalities: There's Samantha the bitchy one, Lauren the crying and hysterical one you just want to slap to shut her up, Ben the hero, Jasmine the beautiful and brave, Robert the victim, Lisa the lame, Hugo the brawn and Josh, the guy who thinks he's better than everyone else...

There is a certain amount of character development but only in a predictable way, whereby the weaker personalities begin to stand up for themselves and the bullies turn out to be cowards.

The second half of the book has a lot more pace than the first and I enjoyed it the most. It's quite exciting following the characters as they figure out what the creatures are and how to kill them. There are a few twists in the story and the ending to 'Crawlers' is satisfying but anticipated, just as most horror movies are - when you think they're dead and turn your back to walk away, they come back to life for that one, last surprise...

VERDICT:

I was hoping for a few more thrills and a good dollop of scary, gruesome moments that had my skin crawling *pun intended* as that's what the cover promises, with it's image of an alien looking creature. Unfortunately, it didn't really deliver on the horror front, but even with all its faults I did enjoy 'Crawlers', it's a great diversion from life for a couple of hours, and I'm sure a book 12-14 years olds will devour!

You can find out more about the author here:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Labels: 10 Fun Days of Young Adult Fiction, 6/10 Rating, Book Reviews, Corgi YA, Horror, Reviews by Carolyn, Young Adult |

5 comments |

'YA-10' Giveaway: Keys to the Repository by Melissa de la Cruz

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 | Posted by Book Chick City |

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GIVEAWAY!

[NOW CLOSED]

I have 3 (THREE) copies of Keys to the Repository to giveaway thanks to the lovely peeps at Atom. All you have to do to enter is fill out this form! - easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

This giveaway is for UK residents only (publishers request) Ends Saturday 3rd July. Only one entry per person please - duplicate/multiple entries will be disqualified.

Lavish parties. Passionate meetings in the night. Bone-chilling murders. Exams. The day-to-day life of Schuyler Van Alen and her Blue Bloods friends (and enemies) is never boring. But there's oh-so-much more to know about the beautiful and powerful Blue Bloods. Below the streets of Manhattan, within the walls of the Repository, lies a wealth of revealing short stories, journal entries, and never-before-seen letters about the vampire elite dating back through time. Won't you come inside?

GOOD LUCK!

Labels: 10 Fun Days of Young Adult Fiction, Giveaways |

10 comments |

'YA-10' Guest Author: Jackson Pearce

Monday, June 28, 2010 | Posted by Book Chick City |

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Please give a warm welcome to Jackson Pearce, author of Sister Red, which I've read, reviewed and really enjoyed. Thank you so much for being here, Jackson, it's a pleasure to have you!

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This story is about…

I’ve never been really good at those elevator pitches. You know, the quick “This story is about a boy wizard going to school!” or “This story is about a girl’s fight for her life in a dystopian setting.” The little one-liners that tell the reader/friend/parent/fellow elevator passenger the core of the story in one quick, succinct phrase.

I think it’s because I have trouble paring my books down to one single sentence—hell, I have trouble paring any book down to a single sentence. After all, how can you possibly understand how clever Harry Potter is if you leave out Quidditch? Or how romantic Hunger Games can be if you don’t mention Peeta or Gale?

I think this is because my goal as a writer is to write books that are about more than just one thing. I don’t want to write just a love story, or just an adventure, or just a story about personal development. I want everything I write to be something more, to be something greater than the sum of its parts.

In SISTERS RED, it was important to me that I tell a story about two girls on opposite sides of a battle to define themselves. I think at its deepest core, SISTERS RED is a story about figuring out who you are independent of others. Scarlett is a warrior, she’s tough, she’s cunning, yet she feels like she can’t define herself without her sister by her side. She doesn’t know who she is without Rosie, and is afraid to find out. Rosie, on the other hand, desperately wants to be “normal”—she’s a warrior too, but it isn’t the life she wants for herself. She knows exactly how she’d define herself without Scarlett, but loves her sister too much to do so.

SISTERS RED is also a love story. Rosie falls for Silas, hard, but I wanted their love to be more than “you’re really pretty!” “you’re really sexy!” “we’re madly in love!”. Their love is based on a long friendship, on a history together, on mutual interests and the ability to have a long conversation. They inhabit the same world; one isn’t a mystery or a secret to the other. It was incredibly important to me to show a relationship like this, since a slow, meandering romance is much closer to the kind of love I’ve experienced in my own life—I’ve never fallen in love at first sight.

And, of course, I wanted SISTERS RED to be an action. A mystery. Something that kept you flipping the page nervously, something that made readers worry for the lives of the main characters. It was important to me that the book be a page turner and something that even a reluctant reader could enjoy.

So, sure, I’ve got my one sentence pitch for SISTERS RED—but I don’t like using it. I hope my book is among those that can’t be crammed into one sentence; I hope it’s among those awesome books that takes more than a single sentence to define. Otherwise I’m going to have to find a new way to quickly summarize my book to strangers on elevators…what do you guys think about interpretive dance?

Just a thought.

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Thanks Jackson!

You can find out more about the author here:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Don't forget, you can enter to win a copy of Sisters Red HERE!

Labels: 10 Fun Days of Young Adult Fiction, Guest Author |

5 comments |

'YA-10' BOOK REVIEW: Radiant Shadows by Melissa Marr

Monday, June 28, 2010 | Posted by Book Chick City |

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Title: Radiant Shadows

Author: Melissa Marr

Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books (US)

Publication Date: 29 April 2010

Hardback: 352 pages

Genre: Fantasy/Faery

Young Adult

REVIEWED BY LAURA

RATING: 8/10

BACK COVER SUMMARY:

Melissa Marr’s New York Times bestselling Wicked Lovely series continues with the fourth – and penultimate – instalment in the darkly seductive story about the collision of the mortal and faery worlds…The events of FRAGILE ETERNITY have left the faery world off-balance, its key players fighting to maintain control over their world – and its secrets…

Devlin lives in a world where everything is beautiful, ordered… and cruel. As a prominent member of the High Court and half-brother to Sorcha, the High Queen, he’s one of the most powerful faeries of the old guard. Ani lives in a world where every line is blurred. Half human, half faery, half in the dedadence of the Dark Court and half out of it, her life of dive bars, tattoos and street fights couldn’t be farther from the clean lines of the High Court.

But you can’t choose where your heart will take you, and when Devlin and Ani meet, two extremes of the faery world collide – with passion, violence and heat; for better – and for worse…

REVIEW:

Radiant Shadows is the fourth book in Melissa Marr's 'Wicked Lovely' series. It begins where 'Fragile Eternity' left off. However, while Seth features as quite a main character, the story is no longer about Aishlin and the summer court.

The book is about Ani and Devlin, we've met them in previous books but as relatively minor characters.

Ani is Rabbit the tattooist's half sister, and daughter of Gabriel, leader of the hunt. She is a member of the dark court and halfling: half human and half hound.

By contrast, Devlin is half brother-son to the High Queen Sorcha and Queen of War Bananach, created jointly by them and not born. He is a powerful member of the High Court. Known as the Queen's Bloodied Hands. He is ordered, disciplined and importantly, Sorcha's obedient servant.

Devlin first met Ani when she was just a child. When he was ordered to kill her. And for the first time in centuries of obedience he disobeyed a direct order and spared Ani's life. Hiding her survival from his Queen.

Since the events of the last book Sorcha is no longer herself and her imbalance begins to seriously impact the world of faery. Reason appears to have departed from the Queen of Reason and Bananach glorifies in this advantage and her dark malevolence spreads. This book has some important developments for the faery world as all courts struggle to avoid the sinister plottings of the Queen of War, which has some far reaching affects. But primarily it is a love story between Ani and Devlin.

As the book begins, Devlin has not seen Ani in the years since he spared her life. But, sent on a mission to protect Seth by his unbalanced Queen he encounters her in a club. The chemistry between them is tangible, and while Ani has no idea who Devlin is, he's never really understood why he saved Ani and is inexplicably drawn to her.

In my opinion, this is by far the best book in the series. I sat down one evening to make a start and before I knew it I'd read 175 pages. Melissa Marr has a beautiful and captivating writing style. She draws the vision of her characters and worlds which sucks you in brilliantly.

On the surface of things the love story between Ani and Devlin could easily have not worked. It's not largely mentioned, but Ani is very much a young adult at 16, while Devlin's significantly older than her. Yet as the story progresses they both go on what I would class as a 'young adult' journey.

Being a halfling, Ani is frustrated with being pushed to the outskirts of the faery. Yet having the power to feed on the emotions & touch of both mortals and faery, her power is unheard of and it becomes quite clear she is no mere halfling. Because of this Ani is confined and protected by her father and the dark court and she chafes at the restrictions. She is desperate to prove to them all that she is a woman and no longer a child and can look after herself. While Devlin is struggling to escape the controlling influence of his sisters. Learning that he can have his own sense of identity and his own relationships while remaining true to himself.

I really like Ani and Devlin as a couple as they were so different. Fate obviously plays an important part in their lives, it is clear as all the threads begin to close that from the very beginning they were meant to be together.

As the book reaches its climax there is a big twist. However, for me it wasn't entirely unexpected, and I wondered from about a third of a way in if something similar would happen. But it didn't take away from my enjoyment of it at all.

This book really was superb and I could barely put it down, but I do have a couple of criticisms.

I would of liked to have seen a flashback to the time that Devlin spared Ani's life to fully understand the reason for that decision and what he was feeling at the time, it felt to me liked it lacked some explanation.

Additionally, having read the previous three books, I found it a touch frustrating that while Seth was an important character in the book, and some events happen that will change his life at least for the moment, irrevocably, there was virtually no mention of the love triangle that had me so hooked in previously.

VERDICT:

This is a fantastic fourth instalment to the 'Wicked Lovey' series, and the best so far. Marr has cleverly interwoven the plots of the each of the books as the series builds to its sinister conclusion.

Technically if you haven't read the first three books in this series you could read this as a stand alone novel, but my recommendation would be to read them first in order to fully enjoy the depth of the story.

I am very much looking forward to discovering what happens next, but I do hope that Seth and Aislin take the helm once more.

SOURCE: Thank you to Harper Collins US & MM Publicity for sending this book for review.

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You can find out more about the author here:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Labels: 10 Fun Days of Young Adult Fiction, 8/10 Rating, Book Reviews, Fantasy, Melissa Marr, Young Adult |

7 comments |

'YA-10' BOOK REVIEW: The Radleys by Matt Haig

Sunday, June 27, 2010 | Posted by Book Chick City |

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Title: The Radleys

Author: Matt Haig

Publisher: Walker Canongate

Publication Date: July 2010

Paperback: 337 pages

Genre: Supernatural

Young Adult (14+)

RATING: 8/10 - brilliant, couldn't put it down!

GOODREADS SUMMARY:

Meet the Radleys: Peter, Helen and their teenage children, Clara and Rowan, live in an English town. They are an everyday family, averagely dysfunctional, averagely content. But as their children have yet to find out, the Radleys have a devastating secret

From one of Britain’s finest young novelists comes a razor-sharp unpicking of adulthood and family life. In this moving, thrilling and extraordinary portrait of one unusual family, The Radleys asks what we grow into when we grow up, and explores what we gain – and lose – when we deny our appetites.

REVIEW:

Helen and Peter Radley have a huge secret they really don't want to tell their children, as they want them to live a normal life as possible - but things aren't gong to plan.

Rowan can't sleep at night and thinks it's a bad case of insomnia, he then wants to sleep all day. He's also allergic to the sun and has to apply factor 60 otherwise his skin gets covered in a sore itchy rash. He constantly gets bullied at school and is totally in love with a girl at school who's friends with his sister and is totally out of his league. Basically, Rowan hates his life.

Clara doesn't have the same problems as her brother, but she does have her own. Clara is sick all the time, literally, and her parents keep telling her that she really should eat meat and stop this nonsense of becoming a vegan, but they just don't understand, although she doesn't get why she's so nauseous all the time, but her father, who's a doctor, keeps telling her it's probably just a virus. Animals also hate her, even though she's really nice to them, so she's become an advocate of several 'against animal cruelty' societies and covers her bedroom walls with their posters.

But one fateful night, Clara is feeling worse and worse and then does something that changes her life and those of her family forever. Because of this, Helen and Peter are pressured into telling Clara and Rowan their secret; they are abstaining vampires and haven't tasted blood for seventeen years. In a fit of panic, Peter calls his brother for help, but for some reason calling Will fills Helen with dread, as she has even more secrets of her own, which she doesn't want even Peter to know about.

Helen and Peter's relationship is full of tension and the strain of trying to be normal all the time is taking it's toll. Individually they reminisce about the days they drank human blood and how much they miss it. And when Will flies in to help, things just go from bad to worse.

Over the course of the book, secrets are revealed, lives are turned upside down and The Radleys has an ending that had me completely enthralled.

After reading the first few pages, I was expecting a more humorous story about a family of vampires but instead it's quite a dark tale. There is a slight tongue-in-cheek humour but it's not enough to lighten the book into a comedy. I suppose I assumed it would be something more along the lines of The Addams Family. I wasn't disappointed, it just wasn't what I expected.

The point of view changes throughout the book to all the different characters, which worked really well. It was great to hear what they were all thinking and feeling, it gave the book depth. All the characters were three-dimentional and I loved them all and had sympathy for them and their predicaments, even Will's (which I won't go into as it's Helen's secret to tell!).

On a bit of a side note: The Radleys is being repackaged by Canongate Walker and is marketed as a young adult novel. However, I feel that this is definitely a YA/Adult crossover, with the emphasis on 'Adult'. This book has a very mature tone, more so than other young adult books I've read and although the press release states it's a "story about growing up, first and foremost", I believe that this is a bit misleading.

The book does tell the story of Clara and Rowan, but it also tells the story of the adult characters, Helen, Peter and Will in equal measure. To me it is about the family as a whole and deals with the fallout of secrets revealed. There's also a significant amount of high-end swearing as well as scenes of a sexual nature that are written, in my opinion, with adults in mind, rather than children, and therefore I would only recommend this book 16+.

VERDICT:

The Radleys is a wonderfully written book. It's a fun, original concept I haven't seen anywhere else. The ending wraps things up nicely, but for me I would love a sequel - now the secret is out and all the family are "in-the-know", I can just see the Radleys getting into all sorts of trouble! I really enjoyed this book and I loved the authors writing style, I will definitely be checking out Haig's backlist.

SOURCE: Thank you to Walker Canongate for sending me this book for review.

You can find out more about the author here:

Website | Goodreads | Facebook

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Next up on '10 Fun Days of YA Fiction': Change of schedule: Laura will be reviewing Radiant Shadows tomorrow!

Labels: 10 Fun Days of Young Adult Fiction, 8/10 Rating, Authors E-H, Supernatural, Young Adult |

10 comments |