booksare42's reviews
592 reviews

Thank you to Neem Tree Press for providing me with a digital copy of Scareground. Thank you to The Write Reads for organizing this blog tour and providing me with the material for it. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

If you’re looking for a fantastic spooky read, Scareground is definitely for you! Set in Victorian London, Scareground is full of fantastic characters and spooky fun.

My favourite thing about Scareground was the writing. The author did a fantastic job bringing the Scareground to life. The descriptions were creepy and eerie and it made thing book incredibly enjoyable. The word macabre comes up a lot in this book and I think it’s a great word to describe this book.

I loved the mystery aspect of this book. The main character, Nancy, was adopted by the Crumpets and she doesn’t know anything about her past. She does know that the Crumpets do not want her to go near any fairs and that the town is apprehensive about fairs in general. I enjoyed Nancy’s investigation into her past and why the town doesn’t like fairs. There were a lot of moments during her investigation that left me on the edge of my seat wondering what she was going to find.

I also loved the characters in this book. Nancy was a fantastic main character and I was rooting for her the entire book. I loved how creative and determined she was. I also loved how much she wanted to belong. I also loved Arthur and his sense of adventure. I thought he and Nancy balanced each other out well and that they made a fantastic team. I also liked Skelter Tombola. I thought he was an interesting character and I love learning about his backstory.

The super natural aspect of this book was also fun. There were mentions of ghosts, which added to the spooky atmosphere. There was also mentions of Nancy’s Sky Reader ability and how she was able to communicate with the sky. I thought this added an interesting layer to the book and I hope Nancy’s ability is explored more in the rest of the series.

Overall, I thought this was a very solid start to a series. I loved how spooky the book was and I can’t wait to see what Nancy and Arthur get up to in the future. 

 As some of you may know, I’ve been slowly reading my way through all of the Poirot book. This was my most recent read in that series and it’s the fourth book from the end. After reading a string of Poirot books that left me feeling disappointed, I’m happy to say that I quite enjoyed this one. 

What I liked most about Third Girl is that Poirot was at the center of the story. In the last few Poirot books I’ve read, Poirot was more of a secondary character who only popped up near the end of the book. As a fan of Hercule Poirot and his quirks and his use of his little grey cells, it was nice to see him front and center in the story. 

I also enjoyed that this mystery had quite a few moving parts. I enjoyed reading about Poirot trying to put all of the pieces together and trying to figure out how it would all come together at the end. There were a few clues that stood out to me as important, so I enjoyed seeing how Poirot used them to solve the entire case. 

I thought the premise of Third Girl was kind of unique. Usually these books have a clear crime that has been committed and Poirot is trying to solve it. In this book, a girl shows up at Poirot’s home and tells him she thinks she committed a murder and then disappears. This led to a lot of questions that made this mystery fun and unique. 

I also loved that Ariadne Oliver is a character in Third Girl. While I prefer Poirot books that feature Arthur Hastings, Ariadne Oliver is always a fun addition to the story. I was especially amused by the descriptions of her hair in this book. 

There were a few things that felt a bit too convenient, but they didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the mystery. 

Overall, I don’t think Third Girl will end up in my list of Top 10 Poirot books, but it was more of the more enjoyable Poirot books I’ve read recently. 

Thank you to Neem Tree Press for providing me with a digital copy of this book. Thank you to The Write Reads for organizing this blog tour and providing me with the material for it. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon is different from what I’d normally read, but I’m glad I picked up this book because it was beautifully written and I ended up really enjoying it. Told from various perspectives, The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon tells a story of characters who are haunted by their past and facing an uncertain future.

Throughout The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon there is a tragedy that is being hinted at. The main characters are haunted by an event that happened in their past that forever changed their lives. This tragedy isn’t immediately revealed, but hints are left throughout the first part of the book. While the tragedy is revealed at the end of part one, the reader is left to wonder what the specific details are while they read part two.

I enjoyed the use of the changing perspectives in The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon. I liked that each chapter was only a few pages and then it would switch to a different character and a different location. I think this also did an excellent job of showing how different the lives of the main characters are.

The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon deals with some heavy topics. It deals with things like grief, anxiety, mental health, death, sexual harassment, poverty, and class divide. I thought this book did an excellent job portraying anxiety and the struggles that someone dealing with anxiety face. I also think this book did a good job showcasing the class divides, and I thought that the switching between Misha or Zohaib’s perspective to Nadia’s perspective did a great job of showing these divides.

As far as the characters go, I loved Nadia and Zohaib. I thought these two characters were well written and they were characters that I could root for. It was clear that they were haunted by their past and I was invested in finding out what happened. I also enjoyed Misha and some of her interactions with the other characters. I also liked that there were a few chapters told from the perspectives of secondary characters like Zohaib’s roommate or Nadia’s cousin.

One thing I didn’t love about this book was the ending. I thought that the ending was very open and I would have likes just a little bit more closure.

Overall, I thought The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon was a great book full of memorable characters and a story that I will be left thinking about for a while.

Thank you to Neem Tree Press for providing me with a digital copy of this book. Thank you to The Write Reads for organizing this blog tour and providing me with the material for it. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Terra Electrica: The Guardians of the North is a unique middle-grade dystopian adventure. It takes place after climate change has melted all of the ice. There is a mysterious disease that is destroying human kind and an unlikely group of people who might be able to save the world.

I want to start out by saying that I didn’t love this book. While I’m a fan of middle-grade books, I am not a fan of dystopian stories. I think this book did a great job creating a dystopian, post-ice melt world. I appreciated the descriptions of the rising water and the washed out forests; I thought these descriptions did a great job painting a picture of what a post-ice melt world would look like. That being said, the dystopian aspect was not really my thing.

What I did really enjoy about Terra Electrica this book was the adventure aspect. Mani and Leo (who I’ll talk about more in a bit) are travelling to the Ark, which is the main science research centre. They’re also looking for Mani’s father. They have to travel through changing landscapes, struggle to find food, and face various dangers along the way. I loved how resourceful and quick thinking Mani was on this journey. I was definitely rooting for them along the way and I was curious to see what obstacle they’d run into next and how they’d overcome it.

Mani is a fantastic main character. She’s just a child, but she’s been through so much. She knows there’s a mysterious disease that killed everyone in her town, including her mother, and that the only survivors were her and her father. She also knows that her father has been gone for 29 days when he was supposed to be back in 8 days. Desperation brings her to the science lab where she meets Leo and an unlikely friendship is formed. Mani is scared to join Leo on his journey, but she knows she has to be brave to survive. Along the way they meet Tilde, who I’m hoping we get to learn more about later on in the series.

One interesting aspect of this book is the mask that Mani’s mother gave her. When she puts on the mask, she’s transported to another world where the ice and snow still exist and there’s a polar bear named Ooshaka and a crow. I liked how there were scenes where Mani would visit this alternate world and the bits of wisdom that Ooshaka and the crow would try to pass along to Mani. I liked that this added a bit of a folklore aspect to the book and I’m curious about what folklore the author was drawing upon.

One thing that I want to note is that there were a quite a few scenes in Terra Electrica that were fairly dark. While the scenes fit in a dystopian world, I think they push this book to the upper end of the middle-grade scale.

If you’re interested in dystopian world and are a fan of middle-grade books, Terra Electrica is definitely worth checking out