Sunday Post 7th May 2017

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted at Caffeinated Book Reviewer, it's a chance to post a recap on the past week, show the books we have received and share what we plan for the coming week. Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews and the aim is to show our newest books and to see what everyone else received for review, borrowed from libraries, bought in bookshops or downloaded on to their e-reader. As always you can click on any of the pictures to be taken to the Goodreads page for that book if you're interested in finding out more about it or click the title to go to the review.

Bout of Books:

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 8th and runs through Sunday, May 14th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 19 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

Bout of Books totally snuck up on us this time! We've both been so busy with exams and essay writing that we forgot to do a sign up post! So this is us officially saying we will be taking part again! Bout of Books is always a good time!

Films of the Week:

I've been mostly reading and studying this week (final assignment is DONE) so haven't had a lot of film-watching time. I have been keeping up with Pretty Little Liars. I like where it's going so far but I'm not totally enthusiastic. Obviously I have my own "AD" theories and if I'm not correct I'll be super disappointed but at this point I'm just excited for it to reach a conclusion.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine has also returned to E4 so I've been watching that! I love this show so much and the episodes are short enough that I can just call them a "study break" and it's totally excusable! 

Last Week on the Blog:

• Monday Highlights #4
• Clare's April Wrap Up and May TBR
• Wednesday Catch-Up
• Guest Post: Ordinary People - Extraordinary Deeds by Kfir Luzzatto
• Friday Reads: Ararat by Christopher Golden
• Ann's April Wrap Up and May TBR

Books We Got This Week:

The Book of Whispers by Kimberley Starr: Kinda sorta total cover lust? Received via Netgalley. This isn't actually being released until 2018 I believe? So may be putting this on hold for a bit but it does look really intriguing.

Shadow Fall by Audrey Grey: Received via Netgalley. This is one I almost pre-ordered and I can't remember why I didn't? Probably just sheer expensiveness of my pre-ordering habit I think! It still sounds like a great read and I hope I get to it soon!

Mad by Chloe Esposito: Received via Netgalley. This just sounds like such a wild ride. It's about a woman whose twin sister dies and she basically steals her dead sister's life (mostly the money). It sounds ridiculous and exciting and its the start of a trilogy called "Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know" which just makes me more intrigued!
Keep Me Safe by Daniela Sacerdoti: Many thanks to the publisher for sending me a finished copy. This sounds incredibly moving and beautiful and I am really, really looking forward to it!

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas: WHICH I HAVEN'T READ YET BECAUSE OF UNIVERSITY! It's taunting me. Sat there on the shelf taunting me. I don't want to start this until I am completely free of assessments and exams so that I can really focus on it but I want to read it so bad! 

The Dark Prophecy by Rick Riordan: This book is so unexpectedly shiny. I'm a total magpie so got completely distracted by that for a while! Basically I loved The Hidden Oracle and have been impatiently waiting for this ever since!
The Night Falling by Katherine Webb: I seem to be buying each Katherine Webb book but never reading any of them? I'm not sure what that's about but I really need to read them soon because they sound great!

My (Not So) Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella: I have been nearly buying this for weeks now. It's on the bestsellers shelf at my local supermarket and everytime I walk past it calls to me. So obviously I eventually gave in. Kinsella is one of my all time favourite authors and I can't wait to read this!

Reading Update:

Ann:

Perfect by Cecelia Ahern: 5 stars, I have been looking forward to reading this for a while now and it was amazing. I love the main character and I wish that there were more books about her.
Geekerella by Ashley Poston: 4 stars, this was a good book and I liked the characters but I think that I have read so many books like it that most of what happened it seemed a bit cliché to me. Overall though I did enjoy the book!

Clare:

Wilde/Chase by Andy McDermott: 3.5 stars, Giving you my thoughts on each book individually would get super repetitive. Because here's the thing. These books are kinda repetitive. There seems to be a pretty constant formula of who not-to-trust and pretty much everyone is expendable except the two leads (spent the first two books constantly getting attached to dead people but now I'm like "oh cool you're a new character you're probably gonna die soon, sorry"). BUT I love archaeology and mythology and this covers both of those. Nina and Eddie were occasionally frustrating characters to follow. In the first few books I was getting really fed up of their constant relationship problems but now that's settled down I can enjoy their banter a bit more. At the end of the day if you're looking for realistic action/adventure then this probably isn't entirely for you. These are fun, and relatively exciting and got me through a really stressful week during which I was preparing my final assignment. The series isn't over yet and I definitely want to continue on which should tell you something about how involved I am with these characters now!!

Ararat by Christopher Golden: 4.5 stars, Just so, so good. Atmospheric and well written with strongly crafted characters and a really, really exciting plot! My full review will be up on Thursday!

All the Good Things by Clare Fisher: 4 stars, This was such a unique and interesting book. It wasn't at all like I was expecting, although the twist was one I felt was easy-ish to predict although that didn't change the intensity of the whole book! My review for this will be up next Saturday!

Next Week on the Blog:

• Monday Highlights #5
• Books That Changed My Life #1
• Wednesday Catch-Up
• Clare Reviews: Ararat by Christopher Golden
• Friday Reads
• Clare Reviews: All the Good Things by Clare Fisher

You can also find us on Goodreads (Ann and Clare), Facebook and Instagram to keep up with what we are reading.

Ann's April Wrap Up and May TBR

April Wrap Up:

I actually managed to finish 5 books this month, which I am pleased with because I didn't think that I would be able to read as much due to revision and my exams which are starting in about 2 weeks!

5. Iron King by Julie Kagawa: I reread this book this month because I was in a bit of a reading slump and it was as good as the first time I read it. It also worked brilliantly at bringing me out of my reading slump.

4. Trust Me I'm Lying by Mary Elizabeth Summer: I wasn't sure about this book and overall I loved it, the ending was however a little frustrating but it was a more realistic ending.

3. Faking Perfect by Rebecca Phillips: I loved this book it was amazing, the characters were different and realistic.

2. Promises I Made by Michelle Zink: I was really looking forward to reading this after Clare brought it for me and I loved it, it was incredible.

1. Stalking Jack The Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco: My friend brought this for me for my birthday and it was amazing the main character was brilliant I love how different she was.

May TBR:

I am not really going to set a TBR this month but two books I definitely want to read are Geekerella and Perfect, I have been waiting to read Perfect ever since I found out that it existed and then Clare kindly brought it for me this week. I will definitely be reading them at least!

You can also find us on Goodreads (Ann and Clare), Facebook and Instagram to keep up with what we are reading. 

Friday Reads 5th May 2017

Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice and Book Beginnings is hosted by Rose City Reader. The idea is to share a sentence or so from the first page and the 56th page of the book you are currently reading!

Book Beginning:

"Just past eight o'clock on the last morning of November, the mountain began to shake."

Friday 56:

"For so long he had believed himself next to fearless, but this fear bit as deeply into him as the mountain chill."

I'm only about 50 pages into this so far but I'm already so hooked! The characters are already real to me and I am so intrigued by the mountain and the ark. At the moment I'm not sure how much will be supernatural and how much is explainable without the supernatural but it's super intense and engaging and just one of those books you can easily picture in your mind! This would make an incredible movie.  

You can also find us on Goodreads (Ann and Clare), Facebook and Instagram to keep up with what we are reading. 

Guest Post: Ordinary People - Extraordinary Deeds by Kfir Luzzatto

Action novels often feature characters who do phenomenal things – they jump from airplanes without a parachute, dive for long minutes without oxygen, and chase malefactors on rickety rooftops, leaping from one building to the next without even panting a little. Think James Bond, think Jason Bourne. Then you have the less extreme characters, who win the day simply by being tough, intelligent and intuitive (as well as inscrutable.) Take Jack Reacher, for example. Stories about those characters make for great escapist reads, but the people in those books are not real. They don’t feel real.

In contrast, take an ordinary person, someone who could be your next-door neighbor, and put him or her in a pickle. Take their familiar, normal day and turn it upside-down, and then watch them deal with it. If the character is someone with whom you can identify, you become invested in what happens to him or her. You no longer say to yourself “Yeah, sure,” like you do when the unrealistic hero kills a bear with a toothpick. Instead, you are at the edge of your seat because you know that if your favorite character takes a false step, he’s done for.

When I start dreaming up characters for a novel, I spend time with them. I study their approach to things and the way they react, because once a character has taken shape in my head there is little I can do to change his or her mental makeup. Sometimes I need to replace a character, as you do with actors if they don’t fit the part. I run an “intimate audition” by putting myself in their shoes, to see how they will deal with the bad things that I’m planning to do to them. A character who is in mortal danger and takes it in his stride will not be able to make the reader feel anything. His emotions must be those that the regular (not superhuman) reader would have in the same situation. Only then will the reader care about the character and form an unconscious rapport with him. You can’t feel for characters who are going to come out of every situation unscathed, no matter how much effort the bad guys put into destroying them.

But don’t be confused – ordinary characters don’t have to live in an ordinary world. They can live in a fantastic one and still be ordinary in their human makeup, in the way they behave, think and react to their very out-of-the-ordinary environment. Perhaps the best example is Katniss in The Hunger Games (in the first book of the trilogy, not applicable to the others.) Although she is special, has skills and does some pretty extreme things, she is a regular girl with desires and hopes to which the reader can relate. She finds herself in an impossible situation and reacts in a very human way that is not devoid of weakness. Thus, the readers can wonder what they would do if they were in her shoes. They can feel her emotions and through much of the book they will worry, not knowing how it will all come out in the end.

To my mind, using a supernatural character in a thriller amounts to lazy writing, because you don’t have to worry about keeping him alive. You can always make him cut the right wire of the atomic bomb and save the world. That’s why five minutes after reading a James Bond book I couldn’t tell you what it really was about. But who says that this is a bad thing? Escapist literature is here to help us clean our heads and forget heavy stuff, and thank God for it!

About the Book:

Claire, a young graphic designer, learns a secret that her dying New York neighbor has kept for twenty years: the whereabouts of Moses’ Biblical staff.

Claire needs the help of an Israeli engineer and the money of a Russian oligarch to recover the staff before her body betrays her. But first she needs to stay alive in a race with fanatics, who will do anything to keep the staff from coming to light.

Then the LORD said to Moses: Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. 

About the Author:

Kfir Luzzatto is the author of seven novels, several short stories and two non-fiction books. Kfir was born and raised in Italy, and moved to Israel as a teenager. He acquired the love for the English language from his father, a former U.S. soldier, a voracious reader, and a prolific writer. Kfir has a PhD in chemical engineering and works as a patent attorney. He lives in Omer, Israel, with his full-time partner, Esther, their four children, Michal, Lilach, Tamar, and Yonatan, and the dog Elvis.

Kfir has published extensively in the professional and general press over the years. For almost four years he wrote a weekly “Patents” column in Globes (Israel’s financial newspaper). His most recent nonfiction book, FUN WITH PATENTS—The Irreverent Guide for the Investor, the Entrepreneur and the Inventor, was published in 2016. He is an HWA (Horror Writers Association) and ITW (International Thriller Writers) member.

You can visit Kfir’s web site and read his blog at www.kfirluzzatto.com. Follow him on Twitter (@KfirLuzzatto) and friend him on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/KfirLuzzattoAuthor/).

You can also find us on Goodreads (Ann and Clare), Facebook and Instagram to keep up with what we are reading.

Wednesday Catch-Up 3rd May 2017

Every Wednesday we are linking up with WWW Wednesday. WWW Wednesday is hosted at Taking on a World of Words and asks 3 questions: What are you currently reading?, What did you recently finish reading? What do you think you'll read next? You can click any of the images to go to the Goodreads page for that book!

Currently Reading:

The Sacred Vault is the 6th book in the Wilde/Chase series by Andy McDermott and I have just started it. These books follow Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase as they uncover a dizzying amount of "world changing archealogical finds". You have to wonder when they are going to run out of previously-thought-to-be-mythical-but-hey-look-there-it-is discoveries? Hopefully not too soon because I have the first 11 books on my shelf. Anyway, I am enjoying these although I think if I were in a more intense reading mood I'd be bored of them by now. But because I am in a super lazy mood at the moment and just wanted something fun - they're working. 

Recently Finished:

The Lost Sisterhood was an excellent read. I loved the way Anne Fortier combined good research with an original spin on the mythology and the characters were as wonderful as I expected from her. If you haven't read this (or Juliet by Anne Fortier) then I definitely recommend them. The White Road was just too much for me and I had to quit half way through. I'm only mentioning it because I think it deserves it - this was entirely me being too much of a wimp to continue and the book itself was good! Geekerella felt slightly mediocre? It was cute and fun but also fairly forgettable. If it appeals to you then definitely read it but it's not an instant favourite for me. And then I read the first five books in the Wilde/Chase series by Andy McDermott which I am currently marathoning. These are fairly predictable and formulaic sure, but also quite a lot of fun and with school work at the moment I needed something I didn't have to focus on too hard. 

Planning to Read Next:

And yeah, continuing this series. I have 5 more books to read in this series but I'm reading at least 1-2 a day because they're so quick (although also like 500 pages long) so I think by this time next week I will definitely be caught up! I had expected to be reading A Court of Wings and Ruin right about now but my final paper for Uni is due in this week so I want to get it done and out of the way before I start that. 

You can also find us on Goodreads (Ann and Clare), Facebook and Instagram to keep up with what we are reading.

Clare's April Wrap Up and May TBR

April Wrap Up:

This month I actually read 16 and a half books! Which I think is pretty good, I had a whole portion of the month where I just didn't feel like reading at all so I'm actually kind of impressed I made it to this many! The two books I haven't mentioned here are Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher which was actually a re-read and The White Road by Sarah Lotz (the half a book) which I ended up DNF-ing not because it was bad - but because it was apparently just too terrifying for me to continue!

15. Bad Blood by Demitria Lunetta: I wasn't thrilled with how mental illness was dealt with in this book. It was quite insensitive? Or at least it felt that way to me and some of the elements ended up triggering me a little (I discussed triggers in this post if you're interested in my thoughts!). Also I got weirdly fixated on the historical inaccuracies which is something I tend to do if I can't deal with what I'm really upset by. 

14. Blood Rose Rebellion by Rosalyn Eves: I buddy-read this with Vera @ Regal Critiques and I believe she will have a review going up for it soon! But essentially we both found the main character incredibly frustrating and there were so, so many inaccuracies in the depictions of Europe. 

13. Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray: There was nothing really wrong with this book it just didn't click for me. I do have a review up for it but it was a hard one to write because I don't really understand why I didn't enjoy it? I just really struggled to connect with the characters and story.

12. Geekerella by Ashley Poston: This was cute. That's my main takeaway. It wasn't the most memorable book ever and I did have some issues with it, the writing style didn't fit me but I liked that it was diverse. And like I said, super cute. 

11. Wild Chamber by Christopher Fowler: This was just super entertaining. I think I'm going to pick up this series from the beginning because whilst this can be read on its own I want more backstory - the characters were so interesting I need to know more about them!

10. My Sister by Michelle Adams: This is a really good example of when unlikable characters really work! I strongly disliked many of the characters and even found myself very angry at the main character for some of the things she had done - but it was so compelling and real that I couldn't stop reading!

9. Running Hot by Jayne Ann Krentz: I find with Krentz's books that they're really good at getting me out of a slump (which is what I needed when I read this) and just being a quick, fun read. Which is what this was. Nothing mind-blowing or overly intricate but it took me less than a day to read which was great.

8/7/6. The Hunt for Atlantis/The Tomb of Hercules/The Secret of Excalibur by Andy McDermott: You'll probably see the rest of this series in my wrap up for May because I'm currently a little hooked. I'm really into adventure/archaelogy type series'. Like Lara Croft in book form and these are really fun. I do get frustrated with the characters frequently but they also feel like people I've known for a really long time and I am so invested in their lives. These books are fairly predictable - especially as there seems to be a formula that stays the same for each book. But I'm in a really lazy reading mood at the moment so that suits me fine.

5. Gone Without a Trace by Mary Torjussen: Really good. I got super sucked into the main characters mind so when things started to go mad near the end it became uncomfortable and compelling. I can't wait to see what Mary Torjussen writes next.

4. The Beast of London by L.D. Goffigan: The best Dracula retelling I've ever read. And yes I've only read maybe 2 others but this was still super good. Really good atmosphere and characters.

3. He Said/She Said by Erin Kelly: God this was just such an intense book. I don't know how else to describe it. I was locked in this weird thing where I wanted to keep reading without stopping but I also had to take breaks occasionally just to breathe!

2. Proof of Lies by Diana Rodriguez Wallach: I loved this so much more than I expected to. From the blurb I expected something fairly typical but the characters and plot ended up feeling real and immersive and I was so hooked on the mystery. I liked how complete the ending was whilst also leading into the next book - so whilst I'm not frustrated by a cliff-hanger I am still excited for the next one!

1. The Lost Sisterhood by Anne Fortier: Juliet, Anne Fortier's first book, was also the first book I ever got for review. Before even starting Dual Reads. Way back I got sent it from Waterstones and loved it and realised I also loved writing reviews. I was obviously expecting great things from this one and it definitely delivered. She does research so well. Combining accuracy with originality. I studied Classics at college so this is something I know fairly well and I loved the nods to history and mythology but also how she put her own twists on events and people so that, whilst recognisable, they were also intriguing and felt new. 

Reviews This Month:

• Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray
• The Beast of London by L.D. Goffigan
• My Sister by Michelle Adams

Challenge Progress:

• 73/200 Goodreads Reading Challenge: 37%
• When Are You Reading Challenge: No progress this month unfortunately! But I only have 5 more categories to read from and 8 months to do it in so I'm feeling pretty confident! 

May TBR:

I firstly want to finish Andy McDermott's Wilde/Chase series (or catch-up, I don't think the series is complete yet) and that should take me a little while. But I am definitely wanting to read A Court of Wings and Ruin the second it arrives! I've been waiting so long for it! Other than that I'm not planning too much but these are some recent acquisitions I'd love to get to soon!

You can also find us on Goodreads (Ann and Clare), Facebook and Instagram to keep up with what we are reading.

Monday Highlights #4

The idea is to just link your favourite blog post from the past week (for example a post you're very proud of or just had a lot of fun making) and then I, and hopefully others, can discover new blogs to follow and interact with!

You can also find us on Goodreads (Ann and Clare), Facebook and Instagram to keep up with what we are reading.