Hello Beautiful – anyone else ever just look at a book and talk to it like this?

House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas –

PLEASE NOTE THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!

If the rest of the books that I read so far this year were the warm up act, this is the main event! At 799 number of pages long this is a big meaty book which I wished I purchased on kindle as well as carrying this in my bag and reading in public was not easy to do. After concluding her Throne of Glass series over a year ago this is Maas next trilogy, and her first adult one at that, Crescent City House of Earth and Blood. Now I am a HUGE Maas fan, and if Corona hadn’t happened, would have been in Birmingham to see her on tour a few weeks back, so it pains me a little to say that so far – this book didn’t quite do it for me.

For starters, it was too long. I love big books – but this was overly long for the amount of story that happened in it. I get that Maas is building a new world here and she’s trying to get back story, personal history and political alliances in but oh lordy sometimes I was reading it and felt as though the story hadn’t actually developed.

Spoiler alert – did she needs to kill off both best friends!?!?! Urgh, I get killing Danika at the beginning, we need a catalyst and a motive but killing Lehabah later on – that was just cruel.

Lastly, um… this was supposed to be an adult book, where on earth was the adult content? The A court of series is a lot more ‘adult’ than this and that’s stocked in the YA section. Was the adult in reference to the swearing? Sorry, the swearing was so inconsequential I missed it?? It sure isn’t in reference to anything as (spoiler alert) they make out Once! Talk about anti-climatic

Also Hunt, nope just nope, I mean can you scream baggage!!! The boy keeps getting involved in failed rebellions and (spoiler) weird drug deals. I honestly didn’t get why she forgave him – maybe I was so confused by this point that I missed something? Either way, I am not getting attached to him, if Maas sticks with her formula than we know that the first boytoy is not THE boytoy as after all look what happened to Tamlin (the tool) and Chaol!

My one part that I did really love – other than thingy because she killed her was Ethan. I hope he gets more of a role in the second book as I think that could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Lastly – the name, again confused by even the name of the book.

I already can’t wait to read it again as I am thinking that now I have the basic principle of the book in my head it will be a lot better on the re-read.

The Flat share by Beth O’Leary

This one surprised me, it’s been on my bookcase as to be read book for the best part of a year but I never got around to it as I thought it would be a simple rom-com style book, but this is a modern updated rom-com that I thoroughly enjoyed and would happily recommend to everyone – even Becca! Tiffy and Leon share a bed, but have never met. Leon needs extra money and Tiffy needs somewhere to live after breaking up with her partner. So as its London, Leon decides to rent out his place as he works nights and as the title suggests, they share the flat and the bed, but have yet to meet. For the beginning of the book they communicate via post it notes left around the flat for each other as the POV switches between the two of them as they form a friendship ( I particularly liked Leon’s POV as it made me think of Bridget Jones for some reason?) Eventually they accidentally meet in the shower one morning with much hilarity. Eventually they start meeting face to face and I won’t spoil the ending ( I am sure you can guess it) but this kept me hooked right to the end.

The All Souls Real-Time Reading Companion (All Souls Trilogy) by Deborah Harkness

This was a bit of an oddity – despite being an eBook it seemed as though it wasn’t formatted correctly which made it quite disjointed.

If you are a fan of Deborah Harkness’ All Souls series then this is a small run down of some of the people/places/music inspiration that Deb Harkness used for the series, I didn’t find it that enlightening but I think that’s because it’s an eBook real time reading companion, if a copy of Discovery of witches was published with these notes inserted in the book I think that would be a lot more insightful as this way I was wondering how you would know when you are reading the book to check against the eBook companion?

Diary of a Grace (Diary of a Crush) by Sarra Manning

The follow up (kind of) to Sarra Manning’s Diary of a Crush trilogy is Diary of a Grace. Diary of a crush started as a monthly column in Just17 magazine and Diary of a Grace is the continuation of that, just now published as an eBook. Grace will be familiar to readers of Diary of crush fans as Edie’s best friend, Poppy, younger sister who has an unfortunate run in with toxic Carter in the second book. Grace is now a few years older and I am sorry, but she comes across as a bit of a brat. Edie, is away at University in London and Grace has taken her place in the band. Not an awful lot happens, and what does happen reads very much like a monthly column, which it was. A quick and enjoyable read but Manning doesn’t get the time to develop Poppy into a more rounded character.

Kindred Spirits – Rainbow Rowell

A short tale of friendship and camaraderie in the line for the latest Star Wars movie, I read this while on a break from the next book and it was a welcome palette cleanser.

Who’s That Girl by Mhairi McFarlane,

Um this one falls back into my ‘I don’t want to be mean’ category. Again, this has been on my bookcase for ages and I finally pulled it out and finished it in a day or so, that not because it was an amazing book that I couldn’t put down, It was because nothing seemed to happen very quickly, Sure there are lots of pages but nothing much was going on. I thought it rather dull, predictable and each character was so flat that I was able to watch TV and read this at the same time???

Christmas with Billy and Me by Giovanna Fletcher

A heart-warming tale that had me dreaming of Christmas in March, if you have not read Billy and Me by Giovanna Fletcher then I highly recommend reading that and then this short e-book.

Chain of Gold (The Last Hours #1) by Cassandra Clare

Just finished, as in I finished it on the same day as writing this post; I was having a race to see which I would finish first, this book or this blog post. Looks like the book just won. I have so many thoughts on it that I already have a bunch of notes and a rough blog post so will save my thoughts for that. What I will say is that the day before Chain of Gold and Crescent City were released into the world ( why oh why were they released on the same day) I read a review that said while both books were excellent Crescent City was the better of the two, I have to disagree, this, for me, was far superior (sorry Sarah J)

Phew, so there we have it. All the books that I have read so far this year, I am currently back on target for 100 books in 2020. Let’s see how I do!

How are you doing with your 2020 reading challenge?

Till next time

Kate

xoxo