BOOK REC: Aurora’s End (The Aurora Cycle #3) – Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufmann

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Something that really blows my mind a little about this trilogy is that I got the first instalment as a Christmas present in 2019. I think I finally started reading it in... I want to say May 2020? So even though this series does predate the pandemic, it also has basically been something which has carried me through it. To start and finish a new trilogy during something like that feels somewhat surreal. It's been just the escapist, easy-reading treat I needed and sparked the right parts of my brain to make be just sit back and enjoy the ride.

BOOK REC: The Keeper of Lost Things – Ruth Hogan

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This book was a Christmas present from several years ago that I had been carrying around on holidays because it seemed like it would be a good holiday read but I had never actually got around to reading. The picture at the top here? Greece, 2018. And it was ridiculous, because it was a book that held a lot of appeal, it sounded genuinely lovely and uplifting, but perhaps the issue was that it didn't seem urgent - there was nothing pushing it up my reading list.

BOOK REC: Wicked Things – John Allison

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From my previous review of John Allison's work, you'd be 100% correct in thinking I was a bit of a fan. I adored Giant Days as a spinoff from Scary-Go-Round, but Bad Machinery also presented me with an unexpected cast of characters to love, sticking to the slightly spooky-whimsical direction of its parent comic. I loved the team of child detectives, but perhaps my favourite shining star and hero was Lottie Grote - chaos with big hair, a mad genius and the human incarnation of the phrase "hold my beer."

BOOK REC: Children of Virtue and Vengeance (The Legacy of Orïsha #2) – Tomi Adeyemi

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One of the things I enjoyed about book 1 in this series was how there were no easy answers to the questions. Prejudice and hatred was embedded bone-deep in the two factions of the nation, based on allegedly justifable causes - events in history where both maji and non-maji have brutalised each other as each held power in their own way. While the easy, fairy-tale ending would be right there, with the magic back that justice could prevail as clearly the oppressed were peaceful, Adeyemi isn't going to give us the easy, tidy ending. People aren't easy and tidy, and neither are her characters.