Friday Favourites #29

I know, I’ve been a little MIA on these posts for the past few weeks, but I’ve been lacking in inspiration and have had a lot happening in my life at the moment! But anyway, enough of my pathetic excuses, the point is I’m back with a new Friday Favourites post for you all! I’m pretty excited about this week’s topic as I’m doing something different to anything that I’ve done before in these posts. This week I’ve decided to talk about my favourite bookish tattoos. Now personally I don’t have any tattoos, my dad would probably kill me if I ever got one, but if I ever did decide to get one (highly unlikely as I don’t think I could stand the pain), I would definitely get a book related one. These are ten of my favourites:

1. This is one of my favourite book related quotes ever, so it would be a cool tattoo to have.
2. One of my absolute favourite Harry Potter quotes, I would definitely consider having that as a tattoo.
3. I found this and oh my god, how cool is it? Not only does it have the deathly hallows but also one of my favourite Dumbledore quotes!
4. You’ve got to admit, a Mockingjay tattoo would be a pretty cool one to have!
5. As a big Throne of Glass fan, of course I had to include a Throne of Glass inspired tattoo on here.
6. You got me, I’m cheating, this is a movie inspired tattoo not a book inspired tattoo, but I had to include it because The Lion King is one of my favourite movies.
7. You got me again, this is another movie related tattoo rather than a book related one, but Moulin Rouge is my favourite movie ever and Come What May is my favourite song from that movie, so I wanted to include a tattoo relating to that.
8. It’s a Raven Boys tattoo, need I say more? Who wouldn’t want one of these?
9. The Book Thief is one of my favourite books, so obviously I loved this Book Thief inspired tattoo.
10. Since I thought it was so gorgeous, I had to share this Beauty and The Beast inspired tattoo!

So that’s all for me this week, I hope you enjoyed my mainly bookish (but some not) bookish inspired tattoos! Any book inspired tattoos that you particularly love? Let me know!

I will hopefully be back next week with another Friday Favourites post (time and inspiration dependent), but in the meantime, I should have a new Sidekick Showcase Saturday post for you all tomorrow.

Friday Favourites #28

I know, I know, this post is late again! What can I say, I’ve been busy with Uni, but I’m back home for reading week this week, so hopefully I should be able to get all of my posts done on time! I actually intended to have this done on Friday but what with packing for home and going out with my flatmate and some friends, I didn’t have the time! For this week’s Friday Favourites, I decided I wanted to talk about a series that was one of my childhood favourites, A Series of Unfortunate Events. I’m going to do this a little differently to what I’ve done when I’ve talked about series’ before in this feature, usually I talk a little about each book in turn and do kind of a mini review of each of them, but it’s been such a long time since I read these books that I can’t really remember exactly what I thought of them when I first read them, plus there are so many books in the series, that it would take too long to talk about them all, so I’m just going to talk generally about what I remember liking/not liking about the series, rather than focusing on each individual book in turn.

One of the things I remember liking about these books were the characters. Of course I loved Klaus because he’s the bookworm of the group and as a bookworm, I love it when I see characters that like reading in my books because you feel like you have an instant connection with these characters (it’s like “oh, they get me”). Does anyone else get this feeling? Anyway, so obviously I liked Klaus but I also liked Violet, because she was really smart and she made all this cool stuff and I love reading about smart girls in books. Sunny is so young that she doesn’t really play much of a role, but I liked that even though she’s just a baby, she still has her own distinct personality. I liked (well as in liked to hate) Count Olaf, because he was a scary villain, but he was also funny and eccentric and weird, which kind of offset the dark tone of the books a little.

I liked the quirky style of the books, the setting is never explicitly stated which really allows you to use your imagination when picturing the world in which the books are set. I also liked that the time period wasn’t explicitly stated either, instead different aspects from different periods are used, for example there are some aspects from the 19th Century, some aspects from the 1930’s but also some futuristic, modern aspects to the book as well and I thought this mish-mash of different time periods was really cool. I also liked the way that the “author” (Daniel Handler’s pseudonym, Lemony Snicket) was incorporated as a character in the book, I remember thinking that was really cool. As far as I can remember, his writing style was really witty and engaging and I liked that it was somewhat humorous, to provide some comic relief from the events happening in the book. I also remember liking how each book ended with a kind of preview to the next book, it would always just be a picture with some kind of hint to the next book and it was fun trying to figure out what the next book might be about.

The first seven books are kind of repetitive, the Baudelaire orphans are moved about from guardian to guardian and Count Olaf tracks them down and using various disguises tries to steal their fortune. Don’t get me wrong, the books are good but they do kind of follow the same formula whereas the last five books focus more on the mystery of VFD. Still, I remember the stories were always fun and engaging. I also don’t think I read them in order, which whilst you probably should, since each book follows on from the next, it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the series not reading the books in order. I actually think I may enjoy the books more if I read them now as I might be able to pick up on some of the deeper themes that I probably missed when I first read the books. With so many books in the series, I definitely had my favourites and some that I didn’t like so much, in fact I remember liking the first half of the series more than the second half as once the stuff about VFD is introduced, it’s kind of confusing!

Overall, I remember this quirky, original series, as one of my favourites of my childhood and to this day, I’ve never read anything quite like it, so for that alone, it’s definitely a series that is worth reading, even if it is a little long (but the books are pretty short and I remember flying through them!).

I will be back next week with a new Friday Favourites post, but in the meantime, I’ve got a lot of posts to catch up on, so stay tuned!

Friday Favourites #27

I have to apologise so badly for the lateness of this post! It really wasn’t my intention to make you guys wait this long for another post, but I’ve been so busy over the past few days, have my first big assignments due at Uni, so naturally have been stressing quite a lot and haven’t had as much time for this blog as I’ve wanted to. I’ve finished one assignment, but have another one due in two days, so I may have to squeeze blog posts into my schedule between visits to the Library! I may have to start scheduling posts at this rate! Anyway, to be honest, I hadn’t really thought much about what I wanted to write about for this post (I know, I know, I’ve had so much time and you I haven’t really thought about what I wanted to post? What kind of blogger am I?). Anyway, because I’m so far behind on posts, I didn’t want to do too long of a post this time, so I thought I would do another favourite covers post (I will try and do a longer one next week to make up for the poor show for the end of this week guys I promise!). These won’t necessarily all be books that I’ve read, just books that I like the covers for, but you never know, I may read some of these in the future! As with last time, I’m going to feature ten covers.

1. Magnus Chase and The Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer-Rick Riordan-I am still on the fence as to whether or not I want to read this book, but the cover really makes me want to! I love the mix of colours, I think it’s a really striking effect. Anyone read this? Is it worth me reading? Let me know!
2. Red Queen-Victoria Aveyard-I have this one, it’s on my TBR, hopefully I will get to it soon (however I’ve been saying that since July and it still hasn’t happened! Next year, for sure!). I love the simplicity of this, the white cover, with the crown and the blood dripping down, it’s simple but very effective.
3. Shatter Me-Tahereh Mafi-I don’t know what it is about this cover, I think it’s the starkness of it, just that simple eye, that draws me to it. I haven’t read this book, but it is on my TBR, so let’s hope the book is as good as the cover.
4. Everything about this cover is amazing, I love the way the stairs combine with the red cape (at least I think it’s a cape) to form a rose and I love the red colour, I think it really makes the cover stand out. I haven’t read this book either, but it is on my TBR, so fingers crossed that it’s good!
5. The white background, the splash of colour at the bottom, the way the title fades into that, everything about this cover is awesome. I’ve heard the book is good too but it doesn’t really sound like my kind of thing.
6. The One Thing-Marci Lyn Curtis-Again, I love the simplicity of this cover, the eye shape with all the lines pointing outwards and the music note heart in the middle, sometimes simple is better! I also think all the colours contrast really well. This book is also on my TBR!
7. Defy-Sara B Larson-Again, the simplicity is what does it for me with this cover, I love the plain green background with the just the sword and the big red lettering in the centre. I think everything complements each other well. This is another one on my TBR!
8. The Assassin’s Blade-Sarah J Maas-Sarah J Maas’ always seems to have the most striking book covers and this one is no exception! I’m currently reading this, about to start the second story of the book and am enjoying it so far.
9. Snow Like Ashes-Sarah Raasch-Everything about this cover is just so perfect, all the colours are amazing, the symbol in the middle, the way the sun just seems to be gleaming off the top of it, it’s awesome!
10. Challenger Deep-Neal Shusterman-Again, it’s the simplicity of this one that does it for me.

I will be back next week with another Friday Favourites, hopefully this one will be more prepared and less last minute (and less late!). I will try to catch up on my posts as much as possible throughout the week, I probably won’t do them all in a big batch now as it’s quite late here! I may do them all in a big batch tomorrow morning, so I’m caught up before I do my Tuesday post!

Friday Favourites #26

For this week’s Friday Favourites, I’ve decided to focus on one of my favourite fictional characters, although I have not actually read the original fairytale that she is featured in, only the Disney movie! The character I have chosen to focus on is my favourite Disney princess Belle.

It’s probably pretty obvious why I love Belle, given what a huge bookworm she is, she was the one Disney princess that I could really relate to as a kid because I could see myself in her, she loves to read, she longs for adventure, she isn’t specifically looking for a guy to make her happy and she falls for the Beast and sees the kind hearted prince beneath the ugly exterior, rather than the vain, narcissistic Gaston. She has a kind, caring heart, shown by the fact that she loves her father enough to switch places with him and become the Beast’s captive. I loved that she was independent and feisty and brave, all things I love to see in female heroines and traits that I myself aspire to have. She’s refreshingly different from the other Disney princesses, not longing to find her true love, merely longing for knowledge and adventure. Added to that, she’s definitely the most feminist of Disney’s princesses, which as a fellow feminist, I love to see. She knows who she is and she’s not ashamed of it, she knows what she wants and she doesn’t need a man to save her, she’s not the typical damsel in distress type of princess. As far as fictional role models go, Belle is definitely one of mine and I think she’s a great example to young girls.

I will be back with another Friday Favourites post next week (hopefully actually on Friday this time!) but in the meantime, I will have my latest Sidekick Showcase Saturday post for you all as soon as possible!

Friday Favourites #25

I really didn’t mean for this post to be so late, but I was struggling to come up with a topic for this week! I decided that this week I would focus on a favourite series, as I haven’t done that in a while and I like to try and vary my topics for this as much as possible. The series that I’m going to be focusing on is The Hunger Games.

I first read the Hunger Games about 3 years ago, actually, the year that the first movie came out (although I didn’t read them just because the movie was coming out!), my sister had read the first book and she thought I would like it, so she lent it to me. I can’t remember exactly how long it took me to read it, but I remember that I completely devoured it, I could not put it down. It was my first real foray into dystopia like this, I had read the Noughts and Crosses series before, which was also dystopia but it was a completely different type, it’s more contemporary, as opposed to action-adventure like The Hunger Games. I think what I liked most about it was that it felt really different to me (I know a million things like it had popped up after the first book was released), but before I read it, I’d never really read anything like it. My addiction to dystopian novels really stems from these books, as soon as I had finished this series, I had to find anything that came under the dystopia genre and it’s quickly become one of my favourite genres to read books from. I loved Katniss, yes she’s prickly and cold and her social skills definitely leave something to be desired, but she’s also incredibly strong and resourceful and deeply cares about her family, Rue, Peeta and Gale. I liked her fiery personality and independent spirit. I also loved the diversity of the cast of characters, there are so many great and different characters in the series. I loved that the books were from Katniss’ POV, experiencing everything through her eyes meant that you understood her thought processes so much better and it felt like I was experiencing everything along with her. I kind of felt like The Hunger Games could have been a standalone book, right up until the ending where I knew there had to be a sequel because there was no way Suzanne Collins was going to leave it like that.

I enjoyed Catching Fire, but I will admit, not as much as the first book. I felt the first half kind of lagged a little and it wasn’t until the games portion of the book began that I really started to enjoy the book. I feel it’s because the love triangle was a much bigger aspect of the second book than it was in the first book and after a while, Katniss dithering over Peeta and Gale and which one to choose gets a little irritating. Still I found that the end of the book, as with the first book, left me wanting more and in general I did enjoy the book, even if there were aspects I didn’t like so much. I liked the introduction of the new tributes in this book though and the way the rebellion was shown to be building momentum in this book.

Mockingjay, I felt was kind of a let down for the series. I found that I didn’t really get into it at all, at least not until the very end when the real action of the rebellion started. The love triangle once again annoyed me, Katniss just could not make up her mind and kept flitting back and forth between Gale and Peeta (which she also did during Catching Fire) and in the context of the rebellion, it just seemed so unimportant. Plus, Katniss was such a mess for most of this book, which was understandable given all that she’d gone through but I missed the qualities that had made me like her in the first book. I also didn’t like the way she was used as a puppet in the last book, aside from when she bargained with Coin to be the Mockingjay, she just seemed to be doing exactly what she was told, she was simply a pawn being used by the rebels to further their cause and the Katniss in this book seemed like a shadow of the girl in the first Hunger Games book. It felt like in an attempt to be realistic, Suzanne Collins went too far the other way and this book was very pessimistic and depressing, Katniss didn’t even feel like the hero really, she just felt like a lifeless, soulless puppet and it felt like the hope that was present in the first two books was completely gone in this one. You never really got closure for any of the characters and because of a certain death everything that happens in all of the books, kind of seems futile. I just felt like this book felt too much time focusing on the wrong things and not enough time focusing on the right things and the ending (whilst Katniss ended up with who I wanted her to) was just not satisfying at all. There was no closure for anyone and basically, it just felt like the book was pretty pointless. We don’t even get to see much of the rebellion, it’s all just related back later, Collins definitely employs a tell not show policy in this book. It’s a shame that the last book of the series wasn’t as good as the first two, because they had so much promise. On the up side, I liked the first movie of Mockingjay a whole lot better than the book, so I have hope for the last movie!

I didn’t mean for the last bit to turn into a rant about Mockingjay, this is still one of my favourite series, I enjoyed the first two books, the last one was just a bit of a let down, that’s all! This series is definitely worth reading, just be prepared to be disappointed in the last book!

I will have another Friday Favourites for you all next week, but in the meantime, I have a lot of other posts to catch up on, so I will try and get those done for you as soon as possible.

Friday Favourites #24

For this week’s Friday Favourites post, I decided to focus on another one of my favourite authors, I started reading his books five years ago and he is the creator of one of my favourite fictional characters ever, Percy Jackson. The author I’m going to be talking about this week is Rick Riordan.

Rick Riordan is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of many books, including Percy Jackson, the Kane Chronicles, Heroes of Olympus and Magnus Chase.

I love both the Percy Jackson series and the Heroes of Olympus series, the original series maybe slightly more than the Heroes of Olympus series, but like the Skulduggery Pleasant books, I’ve spent most of my teenage years reading these series, so they really mean a lot to me. I’ve always loved Greek mythology and reading the Percy Jackson series has only strengthened that love. I love the way he skillfully combines mythology with the modern world and the wonderful sense of humour that runs through all of his books, plus he created Percy who is my favourite male fictional character ever. His stories are so much fun and I’ve found that his writing style has a really addictive quality, once I start reading one of his books, I find it really hard to put the book down! He created characters in both the Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus series that I became very connected to and I’m sure that this is a series that will always mean a lot to me. I’m torn as to whether I want to read his new series or not, because whilst I love his writing, I don’t have the same connection to Norse mythology as I do to Greek mythology (I’ve always loved Greek mythology and visiting Greece has been a dream of mine for a very long time) and I won’t have the same connection to the characters as with the Percy Jackson series characters and I’m kind of nervous that this new series won’t live up to the Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus books. I suppose I will decide once I’ve read some reviews of the first book in his new Norse series! He will definitely always be one of my favourite authors though!

I will be back with another Friday Favourites post next week, but in the meantime, I will have a new Sidekick Showcase Saturday post for you soon.

Friday Favourites #23

For this week’s Friday Favourites, I’ve decided to focus on a favourite character of mine, as I haven’t done a favourite character post for a couple of months (I hadn’t even realized how long it had been until I looked back through old Friday Favourites posts!) and so I figured it would be fun to do a character based post this week. The character I’m going to talk about is the lead character in one of my favourite series and that character is Skulduggery Pleasant.

I started reading the Skulduggery Pleasant series when I was around 12 or 13 and it quickly became one of my favourite series, mostly due to the character of Skulduggery Pleasant himself, because he’s all kinds of awesome. I mean, he’s a walking, talking, magical skeleton detective, I’m not sure how much cooler you can get! He’s incredibly funny too, I love his sarcastic sense of humour and his overinflated ego, which on a human character would be annoying, but on a magical skeleton detective, makes him even more lovable. He’s really clever too, an excellent detective and good at formulating plans (that is when he and Valkyrie actually have one, which isn’t often!). I like the complexity of his character, that he’s this sophisticated gentleman (yes it is possible for a skeleton to be a sophisticated gentleman!) and yet this hides the darker side to him, the rage beneath the surface, which I think is great, because it’s boring when the good guy is completely good, with Skulduggery, he’s a good guy so we root for him, but he has a dark past which makes his character even more interesting. He’s sweet too, you can tell that he really cares about the people around him and he tries his best to protect Valkyrie and his other friends. Also he has awesome powers, he’s an elemental so he can do all sorts of cool stuff with fire and air and water (and earth, but that’s a last resort power), plus he learns to fly in the later books which is so cool! He also has pretty mean combat skills, which added to his magic and his intelligence, make him a pretty formidable adversary. Skulduggery is a character that you would love to have by your side, because he’s a pretty awesome dude (and you would get to travel in the Bentley, how cool is that?) but probably not someone you’d want to have as an enemy, given his considerable power and intelligence.

Any other Skulduggery lovers out there? What do you love most about him? Let me know in the comments!

I will have a new Friday Favourites post for you all next week, but tomorrow I will be back with another Sidekick Showcase Saturday post, so make sure to check that out!

Friday Favourites #22

I really did mean to have this week’s Friday Favourites for you actually on Friday, I had even written the entire post on Friday, but then me and my sister were leaving for our cousin’s house, the first step in my journey to University (which I now write this post from!!!) and she turned off the internet before I had a chance to save my post! Typical! Luckily, I can remember what it was I wanted to write about, for this week’s post, I decided I wanted to do something a little different, so instead of choosing a favourite book, author or character to talk about, I’ve chosen to talk about my favourite fictional settings this week, places that I’ve read about in books (or seen on TV) and thought, yeah, I’d love to go there. These are my top seven favourite fictional places:

1. Hogwarts-Of course! What else would be my number one favourite fictional place? I think all of us Harry Potter fans harbour a not-so-secret dream to go there, I’m still waiting for my letter!
2. Camp Half-Blood-Does it not sound like the coolest summer camp ever? Plus if you went there, you would be a demigod, which is even more awesome!
3. Narnia-I never actually finished The Chronicles of Narnia, I only read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, but from that, Narnia sounds like it would be a pretty awesome place to be (once The White Witch was defeated anyway!) and I would love to meet Aslan and Mr Tumnus.
4. Stars Hollow-Not from a book, but going to Stars Hollow would be so much fun, getting to go to all the festivals, hanging out with Lorelai and Rory…..yeah you would definitely have a blast there.
5. Wonderland-Such an odd place, it’s bound to be a lot of fun there and I would love to meet the Mad Hatter, I reckon he would be a blast.
6. Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory-Chocolate, all the chocolate you can eat? Need I say more? It sounds like heaven!
7. Belle’s Library-Okay, confession time, I forgot what my original seventh one was going to be, but never mind I thought of an even better one. I would love to go (well live in really), the library that the Beast got for Belle. All those books? Just for me? Now that really would be heaven!

What are some of your favourite fictional places? Do you agree with any of mine? Let me know in the comments!

I will have my Sidekick Showcase Saturday and Swoonworthy Sunday posts for you as soon as possible, I couldn’t do my Saturday post yesterday because a) it was my birthday! and b) I was moving to University, so didn’t really get a chance to type!

Friday Favourites #21

I was again, slightly unsure of what I wanted to do for this feature this week as I wanted to try something that I hadn’t done before, so I thought that this week I would talk about some of my favourite blogs, as I don’t really talk much about my favourite blogs on here and I’d like to share some of them with all of you today, I’m just going to pick five of my favourite and most visited blogs and tell you all why I like them so much and then hopefully, you guys may want to check them out as well!

1. The Feministas-This is a relatively new blog, but one I’ve been reading a lot of this summer. They write posts about feminism, yes, but also other important topics and they write such lovely, well thought out posts that it’s definitely worth giving this blog a read.
2. Anjie @ Love Thy Shelf-We have quite similar taste in books, so of course I love her blog, but she also does some really great discussion posts as well.
3. Musings From Neville’s Navel-This is a blog that I visit quite a lot, she writes some really interesting posts and she’s so enthusiastic that you cannot help but smile whilst reading her posts as well. She writes some great posts both on LGBTQ+ topics and other topics as well, definitely a blog worth checking out.
4. Alicia @ A Kernel of Nonsense-Her Kernels of Nonsense feature is my favourite part of her blog, she always chooses a really interesting topic to discuss and those posts are always a lot of fun to read (plus we have some favourite authors in common so of course I like her blog because of that!).
5. Jamie @ Perpetual Page Turner-This is a blog I read a lot when I first started blogging and still read a lot of now, she has some really interesting posts and I always enjoy seeing what’s new on her blog.

I know this was a short one this week, but like I said I was kind of stuck on ideas and this seemed liked a good one and I figured short was better than nothing! I’ll leave the links to the blogs that I’ve mentioned in my post today so that you can all go and check them out, if you haven’t already.

The Feministas: https://thefeministas.wordpress.com/

Love Thy Shelf: http://lovethyshelfblog.wordpress.com/

Musings From Neville’s Navel: http://musingsfromnevillesnavel.wordpress.com/

Kernels of Nonsense: https://akernelofnonsense.wordpress.com/

Perpetual Page Turner: http://www.perpetualpageturner.com/

What are your favourite blogs? Any recommendations for me? Let me know in the comments!

I will have my Sidekick Showcase Saturday post for you soon (hopefully!) and hopefully my newest Swoonworthy Sunday post as well. I’m sorry my Friday and Saturday posts were late this week, I was struggling with what to write on Friday and then on Saturday, I went to see Wicked in London (it was awesome!) and didn’t get back till late, so I had no time to write! Hopefully, I will be able to catch up on everything tonight though!

Friday Favourites #20

I know it’s not Friday and I did actually intend to have this post done on time, but I had a hard time coming up with a topic for this week! After thinking it over, I decided that I would focus on a favourite author of mine this week. This author is actually relatively new to me, I only started reading his books last year and I’ve only read one series of his so far, but I enjoyed it so much, it’s one of my favourite series and I cannot wait to read more of his books. This author is of course, Neal Shusterman, author of the Unwind dystology.

Award-winning author Neal Shusterman grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he began writing at an early age. After spending his junior and senior years of high school at the American School of Mexico City, Neal went on to UC Irvine, where he made his mark on the UCI swim team, and wrote a successful humor column. Within a year of graduating, he had his first book deal, and was hired to write a movie script.

In the years since, Neal has made his mark as a successful novelist, screenwriter, and television writer. As a full-time writer, he claims to be his own hardest task-master, always at work creating new stories to tell. His books have received many awards from organizations such as the International Reading Association, and the American Library Association, as well as garnering a myriad of state and local awards across the country. Neal’s talents range from film directing (two short films he directed won him the coveted CINE Golden Eagle Awards) to writing music and stage plays – including book and lyrical contributions to “American Twistory,” which is currently playing in Boston. He has even tried his hand at creating Games, having developed three successful “How to Host a Mystery” game for teens, as well as seven “How to Host a Murder” games.

As a screen and TV writer, Neal has written for the “Goosebumps” and “Animorphs” TV series, and wrote the Disney Channel Original Movie “Pixel Perfect”. Currently Neal is adapting his novel Everlost as a feature film for Universal Studios.

Wherever Neal goes, he quickly earns a reputation as a storyteller and dynamic speaker. Much of his fiction is traceable back to stories he tells to large audiences of children and teenagers — such as his novel The Eyes of Kid Midas. As a speaker, Neal is in constant demand at schools and conferences. Degrees in both psychology and drama give Neal a unique approach to writing. Neal’s novels always deal with topics that appeal to adults as well as teens, weaving true-to-life characters into sensitive and riveting issues, and binding it all together with a unique and entertaining sense of humor.

Of Everlost, School Library Journal wrote: “Shusterman has reimagined what happens after death and questions power and the meaning of charity. While all this is going on, he has also managed to write a rip-roaring adventure…”

Of What Daddy Did, Voice of Youth Advocates wrote; “This is a compelling, spell-binding story… A stunning novel, impossible to put down once begun.

Of The Schwa Was Here, School Library Journal wrote: “Shusterman’s characters–reminiscent of those crafted by E. L. Konigsburg and Jerry Spinelli–are infused with the kind of controlled, precocious improbability that magically vivifies the finest children’s classics.

Of Scorpion Shards, Publisher’s Weekly wrote: “Shusterman takes an outlandish comic-book concept, and, through the sheer audacity and breadth of his imagination makes it stunningly believable. A spellbinder.”

And of The Eyes of Kid Midas, The Midwest Book Review wrote “This wins our vote as one of the best young-adult titles of the year” and was called “Inspired and hypnotically readable” by School Library Journal.

Neal Shusterman lives in Southern California with his children Brendan, Jarrod, Joelle, and Erin, who are a constant source of inspiration!

I actually discovered the Unwind books completely by chance, I’d never heard of the series or the author before, I didn’t come across the series on a blog or anything like that, I was randomly scrolling through Amazon and it was on my recommended for you list. I was initially attracted to it because of the name and the interesting cover and when I read the synopsis, I knew I had to read it because it sounded so interesting. I had high hopes for the first book, so naturally I was expecting to be disappointed, because that usually happens when I have high expectations for a book, but luckily in this case, it was not. I devoured the whole series relatively quickly and enjoyed all of the books, they’re one of my biggest recommendations on this blog now and definitely my favourite dystopian series, which is enough to make Neal Shusterman one of my favourite authors. I really want to read more of his books, as I liked his writing style and the way he handled the character and world development in Unwind, plus when I like one series by an author, I usually binge read all their other books! I’ve already added all of his other books to my Goodreads TBR, so hopefully, he won’t be a one hit wonder for me and I’ll like his other books just as much as the Unwind dystology.

I will be back with another Friday Favourites next week, but in the meantime, I’m going to try and post my Sidekick Showcase Saturday and Swoonworthy Sunday posts either tonight or tomorrow.