While I pre-ordered this last year as I was so desperate to read it, for some very strange reason it then became buried within my To Be Read pile and has only just surfaced. After now reading it, I am absolutely kicking myself for letting it go unread for so long – do not make…
I always get a little bit excited when the postie delivers my new Lisa Thompson book every January – there’s something about her stories that makes me want to drop what I’m doing and just dive straight in. Unfortunately, this year the kids went back to school later than usual so I had to bide…
Billed as a mystery for 10 – 14 year olds, I spotted this as I browsed through Kindle Unlimited and it peaked my interest. Mallow has a secret: she suffers from alopecia. Unfortunately, it looks as though someone has found out and is sending her creepy messages using a chat app. With her Dad working…
Happy New Year! I’ve had to take a break from blogging and social media as life got completely in the way for a while. However, my reading mojo is back with a bang (or is that a bump in the night?) with this fabulously spooky middle grade debut novel by Nick Tomlinson. Young historian Molly…
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t often read fantasy stories because I’m one of those strange people who struggles to suspend belief. However, Kieran Larwood’s Five Realms series has been recommended to me so many times that I decided to give the first in the series a shot, and I have to say that I…
Wow, Saviour Pirotta has really knocked it out of the park with his new, historical junior fiction series. The Stolen Spear – the first of 4 stories – is set in late Neolithic times in what we now know as the Orkneys in Scotland. At the end of the Stone Age, people are meant to…
I hope you’re all enjoying the Summer holidays! I’ve not had much time for reading recently, but I came across this on my reading list which I’d completely forgotten about, and thus I decided that I really needed to turn my attention to it… Rosalind, the lead character of Being Miss Nobody, has selective mutism. …
Patina, the second in Jason Reynolds’ middle grade Track/Run series, has just been published in the UK by the brilliant Knights Of and it’s so good I read it in one sitting. Patina is the fastest runner on the team: she is fiercely independent, sets herself high standards and she’s all about the win. Her…
I’ve unexpectedly found myself with a spare 5 mins and so I thought that I’d quickly tell you about a new sci-fi mystery novella published earlier this month. The Starlight Watchmaker tells the story of an android, Hugo, who was abandoned at an elite academy, but who luckily managed to establish himself as a watchmaker…
Catherine Doyle’s first middle grade book, the award-winning The Storm Keeper’s Island, was one of last year’s stand out reads for me, and so I couldn’t wait to read the sequel – The Lost Tide Warriors – which came out earlier this month. While I’m always a tad apprehensive about reading a sequel to a…