#WWW Wednesday – July 04, 2018

It’s time for WWW Wednesday! This blog hop is hosted by Sam over at A World Of Words. Link up with us by commenting on Sam’s post for this week, and just answer the three questions.

What have you recently finished reading?

As predicted, I finished Unearthed by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner last Wednesday night after my post. It was fun, and I have to admit the cliffhanger has me intrigued enough to consider reading the sequel, but it was not quite what I had hoped. My review is scheduled for this Friday.

Still, that was better than I Had Such Friends by Meg Gatland-Veness, which is being pimped as the #LoveOzYA debut of 2018 and I just… did not like it at all. Well, I didn’t like the main character, but in a contemporary novel written in first person, that pretty much equates to not liking the book, too. Still,  it was a quick read and I received it an as ARC so I can’t complain too much.  Here’s my full review.

I also posted my review of Zombie Playlist by K. J. Chapman. Click here to read it.

What are you currently reading

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel is on hold while I listen to A Mask of Shadows, the third Frey and McGray novel by Oscar de Muriel. The format is a bit different to the first two books and that took a bit of getting used to. My favourite thing about this series is the banter between the two main characters and so far, they’ve been separated a lot in this one, so that’s a bit disappointing.

I am also reading Blackwing by Ed McDonald which was recommended to me by a friend. He’s quite picky about his fantasy, so I have pretty high hopes. It’s an industrialised fantasy world, not a straight medieval fantasy, which I am glad about, as I’m not in the mood for the latter. But this is intriguing so far.

No movement on All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque this week.

What do you think you will read next?

I’m still leaning towards The Olmec Obituary by L. J. M. Owens. Also, if you’re interested, I posted my planned July/August TBR here.  Let me know if you’ve read any on there!

What are you reading this week?P.S. If you’re  interested, head over to my writing blog, Letting the Voices Out, to read a snippet of my current WIP here.

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“There is a spectrum to assholery. I’m pretty low on scale.” // Review of “Zombie Playlist” by K. J. Chapman

Title: Zombie Playlist
Author: K. J. Chapman
Genre: Dystopia (zombie apocalypse)/humour
Target age group: YA/NA
Date Read: 23/06/18
Rating: ★★★

Review:

I will say out the outset of this review that most of my feelings towards this book are on me. This was a fun story and most of my reasons for not liking it more are  a matter of preference. Zombies aren’t usually my thing but I had been following Chapman on Instagram for a while and wanted to support a fellow indie author, so knowing this was quite short, I took a chance.

The two main characters, Dagger and King, were on opposite ends of the badass spectrum, and on reflection, I think I like my characters somewhere in the middle. While they did both grow over the course of the story, and thus come a little way off the end and into the middle, it took until then for them to really grow on me, so I wasn’t feeling too connected to them to start  off with, and we therefore all got off on the wrong foot.

I also didn’t even realise until a few chapters in that the book wasn’t set in America, rather than England. There were turns of phrase as well as the use of “asshole” rather than “arsehole”, which is how I would expect it to be spelled in a British or Australian book. So I kept forgetting where they were and it was odd whenever they mentioned going to Cornwall, it pulled me up a bit, too.

I did really like the last couple of chapters; I thought it lead to a good conclusion for the story. I did feel that there was probably enough material in the book that it could have been fleshed out into a full-length novel, but I got to the end and felt satisfied with the journey i had taken with the characters. Most of the character development for Dagger particularly happened towards the end so that was when she was most able to grow on me.

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#WWW Wednesday – June 27, 2018

It’s time for WWW Wednesday! This blog hop is hosted by Sam over at A World Of Words. Link up with us by commenting on Sam’s post for this week, and just answer the three questions.

What have you recently finished reading?

A good reading week this week! I finished Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen. This was a good story but the writing style let it down a bit, I felt. I reviewed it here.

Then I finished A Fever in the  Blood by Oscar de Muriel, which I enjoyed a lot (review here). I recommend these to everyone who enjoys historical fiction and murder mysteries, but if on top of that you are also an audio book listener, definitely get the audio books! They are wonderful. I also read The Hunt, which is a short story set just before this book, but it is basically a slightly expanded account of an event which is described in A Fever of the Blood, so it felt a bit pointless. I’m glad it was a freebie on Kindle.

On Saturday I read Zombie  Playlist by  K. J. Chapman in one sitting, as it was a novella and easy to get through. I’m not the biggest fan of zombie fiction in general, but I enjoyed this one well enough, despite a few niggles. I’ll have a review up on Friday.

What are you currently reading?

I finally decided on Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel for this month’s Audible choice. I actually started at the top of my GoodReads TBR and kept going until I found one available on Audible. I’m about a quarter of the way through but haven’t really formed an opinion yet. There are different things going on and I can see how they all intersect but I assume things will fall into place as the story goes on.

I am still going with Unearthed by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner. This is one of those occasions where the book is simply something different to what I was expecting, and that’s not the book’s fault, but it’s still disappointing, because I was pretty excited for what I was expecting. I’ll probably finish this tonight or tomorrow.

I made sure to read a few more chapters of  All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque on the weekend.  I’m actually surprised how readable it is, given both its age and the subject matter.

What do you think you will read next?

I’ll post a full July-August TBR on Sunday, but I think first up off that list my be The Olmec Obituary by L. J. M. Owens. I am way behind on this series, I think there are at least three books out now. And given some of the book takes place in a fictional versino of my workplace, I feel it’s really time I get on that.

What are you reading this week?P.S. If you’re  interested, head over to my writing blog, Letting the Voices Out, to read a snippet of my current WIP here.