Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

Two reviews in one day? Who is this person?!

Well, I just could not help myself but binge through the whole series as soon as it got here!

I am always going to be biased when it comes to graphic novels, but we all already know that by now, so it should be no surprise really that I completely fell in love with the series, right? But in all honesty, Heartstopper went above and beyond and exceeded my expectations!

First of all, the development of relationship between the boys is so sweet and authentic. It took me back to school and reminded me of what it felt like to have a huge crush on someone

The character development throughout the series is done with great sensitivity, not just of the main characters, but of those around them as well. Oseman clearly has a good understanding of teenage relationships, not just romantic ones, but platonic/ friendships as well as the relationships between families.

Book 4 does delve deeper into some of the more serious and darker topics regarding mental health, but these are important conversations that we need to have, and Oseman does a good job of explaining and educating us about these issues, without it been preachy.

I would give this whole series 5 stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

‘May men fall to me as this offering falls to you, Greatest Aphrodite. May I know love’s power, if never it’s sweetness’

I have been wanting to read this book for a long time now, and I am happy to say that it did not disappoint!

The Wolf Den, set in Pompeii’s Lunpar, is the first in a trilogy of novels reimagining the lives of women who have been overlooked in history.

Here, we follow Amara through her journey as slave, sold into prostitution after the death of her father plunged her family into poverty, we get to know a woman who is smart, resourceful and willing to do whatever it takes to earn her freedom. Through Amara, we also get to meet the other women at the brothel with her. Each of these women are as well written as Amara, with compelling and complicated histories, and it is not a hardship to fall in love with them in this story.

Harper has managed to navigate the stories of these women, and the brutal lives they have to live quite brilliantly, and with great sensitivity. While the story is set around a brothel, and is about the lives of women who are ‘working’ as prostitutes, the sex scenes are not over the top or grotesque. It is very much a novel where it’s a woman writing for women, with an awareness of exactly what stories need to be told.

I would say it’s a ‘medium paced’ story, but hard to put down once you start reading it! It only took me two days, that that too because I had to stop reading while I was at work, and to sleep

If you enjoyed Circe, Silence of the Girls and Penelopiad, basically if you enjoy classical retellings with a focus on the voices of women, this is the book for you!

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Look what just got here! Women In The Picture by Catherine McCormack!

As some who has done a bit of research, with the intention to do a lot more, on how women’s bodies are seen and presented in, be that on Shakespeare’s stage or in the pages of the contemporary graphic novel, this book immediately caught my eye! I am really looking forward to reading this book!!

A perfect pin-up, a damsel in distress, a saintly mother, a femme fatale …

Women’s identity has long been stifled by a limited set of archetypes, found everywhere in pictures from art history’s classics to advertising, while women artists have been overlooked and held back from shaping more empowering roles.

In this impassioned book, art historian Catherine McCormack asks us to look again at what these images have told us to value, opening up our most loved images – from those of Titian and Botticelli to Picasso and the Pre-Raphaelites. She also shows us how women artists – from Berthe Morisot to Beyoncé, Judy Chicago to Kara Walker – have offered us new ways of thinking about women’s identity, sexuality, race and power.

Women in the Picture gives us new ways of seeing the art of the past and the familiar images of today so that we might free women from these restrictive roles and embrace the breadth of women’s vision.

Blurb via @iconbooks

I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them

Currently reading; Her Body and Other Parties, a collection of short stories by Carmen Maria Machado.

I am three stories in, and so far I am loving it. There is something so enchanting about the way Machado writes these stories…they almost wrap around you as you read them, and nothing else matters during that time…

At this stage, I would highly recommend this book

Some exciting bookMail from Piccadilly Press!

Gianna Pollero’s Monster Doughnuts will be publishing on the 15th of April! Illustrated by Sarah Horne, this fun-tastic book is filled with adventure, sweets and monsters. You get to follow Grace on a-glaze-ing adventure, as she faces her biggest challenge yet, Mr. Harris, a people-eating, doughnut-loving cyclops!

Monster Doughnuts is the first book of the series, and is perfect for anyone from 5-12 years old!

I have been in a bit of a reading slump lately, and have not been able to get through more than a few pages of a book before giving up and worrying about all the work I need to get done…

So I decided to revisit this old favourite of mine. Diana Wynne Jones Enchanted Glass. A Children’s Fantasy novel, I remember reading it in year 9 and being in love with it. It was interesting, mysterious and easy to follow, so I decided to go back to it. Reading it helped me get back in sync with the Meher who adored books and would absolutely devour them, reading multiple stories in a day. Reading them in the loo, under the tables at school, and reading them under the duvet when I was supposed to be sleeping.

It’s not a book trending on bookstgram. But it’s a book which is quite special to me. And sometimes that’s all that matters.

‘Do you believe in the human heart? I don’t mean simply the organ, obviously. I’m speaking in the poetic sense. The human heart. Do you think there is such a thing? Something that makes each of us special and individual?’

Klara and the Sun was a beautiful read from start to finish. My first Ishiguro novel, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It’s a slow paced book, but one which takes you on a wonderful journey.

Klara’s innocent optimism, her love for Josie, and her her dedication to do everything I’m her power to help her and her family was what made this book what it is. Sure, one can argue that this book looks at Al, at technology, and how far we can go with it, but at its heart, Klara and the Sun is a book about the power of a beautiful friendship and of the love one has for another.

It is a book that one has to savour, and I would recommend that you don’t read it all in one sitting, even though that is totally possible. I will definitely be revising it again!

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Canterbury, Connecticut, 1832: a charming female boarding school has found success among the locals, with two dozen girls enrolled. Some in town question the purpose of educating young girls—but surely there’s no harm in trying? At least not until the Prudence Crandall School announces its plans to start accepting black students. Thirty years before the abolition of slavery in the United States, in the so-called “free” North, these students will be met by a wave of hostility that puts the future of the school in question, and their very lives in peril. Even in the land of the free, not all of America’s children are welcome.

White All Around is a story based on true events, where one woman, Prudence Crandall decides to accept black women into her boarding school, at a time when although they were considered to be ‘free’, black people faced a great deal of hostility. This is a story about the resilience of these women, in the face of great adversity, to get the education they deserve.

Fert’s artwork brought Lupano’s script to life in a beautiful and mesmerising way. I found the story to be incredibly moving and heartbreaking. It can be hard to look back at history and revisit the atrocities committed against black people, but it is incredibly important for us to do so.

White All Around does a great job of showing the importance of standing up for what is right, as well as showing the importance of sisterhood, and supporting and being there for each other when the whole world might be against you.

I do wish that the story had been longer, and we had the chance to spend more time with the characters. They were all stunning and fascinating in their own way, but did not spend enough time on the pages, and interactions with some of the most interesting women were fleeting.

White All Around, although bittersweet, was a beautiful read, and I will give it 3.5 stars.

Book Review: Million-Story City: The Undiscovered Writings of Marcus Preece

Book Review: Million-Story City: The Undiscovered Writings of Marcus Preece

Edited by Malu Halasa and Aura Saxén

When the filmmaker, teacher and editor Marcus Preece died in 2017 he left behind incomplete notes and drafts for dozens of short stories, screenplays, comic strips, poems and music journalism. He was also in the process of writing an inter-connective short story collection Adventures in Million-Story City from which this collected works, edited by his friend,…

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I am really enjoying reading the Scarlet Witch storyline at the moment. I received some fantastic recommendations from people on Twitter about which comics I should explore, and I have been left speechless!

Reading them now does make me wish I grew up reading comics, but I just didn’t have access to them, but now that I do, I am going to read as much as I can!

• Tom King’s The Vision •

If you have been watching @wandavision on @disneyplus then you may have already seen this comic being mentioned by people when discussing theories about what’s happening next, or one which has been recommended to you if you are interested in exploring the source material. Well, I have to say, I can definitely see why this comic came so highly recommended by so many people on Twitter! It is absolutely brilliant, visceral, dark, and heartbreaking. I absolutely devoured this comic and would definitely recommend it to any WANDAVISION fans out there!

The Rajah Quilt

Dangerous Women by Hope Adams

Publishing 04 March 2021

Based on a real life voyage, Dangerous Woman is a tale about confinement, hope and the terrible things we do to survive.

I am not a usually a big fan of historical fiction, but Dangerous Women had be hooked for the beginning!

I found the structure of the narrative, switching between timelines, and well as the narrators, easy to follow, and allowed for a great insight into the lives of some really compelling, well-rounded characters. The women were allowed to take center stage, and we got to experience their friendships, their hopes, and their fears through Adams’ masterful storytelling.

If you are a fan of historical fiction/ mystery then you definitely don’t want to miss this release, and if you are not a fan of the genre, or haven’t explored it yet, but always wanted to give it a go, this would be a great book to do that with!

Thank you to Michael Joseph for providing me with the proof! I will definitely be purchasing copies for my friends!

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Snow, Glass, Apples • Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran

This chilling re-telling of Snow White hits you in ways you were not expecting! Instead of a monstrous step-mother, we are faced with an entirely different villain, one who will challenge your ideas about good and evil.

Only 88 pages long, it’s a great read for when the weather is particularly stormy, and you want to be transported into a a familiar but not so familiar world. Doran’s artwork compliments the story enormously and takes me back to the old school fairy tale books I used to have as a kid, with their beautiful and intricate line illustrations.

“If there is an essence of witchcraft, it is relationship with other bodies which whom one shares space, with the bodies who-with/in us- constitute “space”. Even if you have no interest in magical practice or spirituality or religion there is something to be learnt from this perspective, from acknowledging other beings as beings rather that simply chaff to be used and discarded by us”

Currently reading Witchbody by @sabrinamscott

This book is magical. It makes you look inwards into how you live your life, how you interact with the life around around you and how you take up space in this world.

I am not a part of they witch community, but what I read has resonated with me deeply. It has made me think about how happiness and joy can be found all around me, that the world has so much to offer. There is no secret hiding place, no locked doors, nothing new that we need to build to get there, we just need to ‘see the potential in what is’.

Might write a full on blog point about it at some point maybe after a re-read?

Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

I have not been reading a lot of YA this year but spotted this in Waterstones yesterday and I just had to get it! Cinderella is one of my favourite fairy tales, and this book offers such an interesting and original twist on the classic tale. So far I have been enjoying it, and think it would have a great Christmas gift for any fans of fairytale retellings!

As a WoC, it is also great to see another WoC as a central character in a YA novel where her colour is not a plot point. She’s already got the patriarchy to deal with, and she’s rocking that!

I am only an Ally myself, but I can imagine how great young adults from the LGBTQ+ community must feel to see themselves in here as well!