#FAIRYTALEATHON pre-announcement post

Thanks Google for the image, can be found here

Hello world! Today I come at you with an exciting post about a readthon.

Myself and Madeline, from Mad Novels (who's Youtube channel can be found here) are hosting our very own readathon! It takes place from midnight in your own time of 14th September, running right through to the 20th September. Exciting stuff hmm?

So, what is the focus of our readathon, I hear you all pretending to ask?

Well, we are focusing this readathon around fairytale retellings! So that means books such as The Lunar Chronicle, ACOTAR etc. We will be doing challenges (which we are releasing at a later date ;) ), and using the '#' #fairytaleathon across the social media platforms we use, including Twitter and Instagram, in order to promote our readathon idea in the hopes that people would like to join in! 

Why are you doing a readathon? And why a fairytale retelling focus?

Basically, Madeline contacted me via YouTube (apparently thats a a thing!), and asked if I had a certain series of books, as she was interested in doing a readathon. Sadly, I lacked those books in my possession, so we settled for a different option in fairytale retellings, as we both have those on our TBRs!

Personally, I like that it's a fairytale retelling focused readathon, as it allows for the more unfamiliar books on our TBRs to be recognised, not just the popular ones I've mentioned before. We are able to discuss a generic theme of a book, but give eachother different options and ideas of where to head next within the theme, as it's such a diverse one. 


If anyone has any questions regarding the readathon, or would like to participate, let me know in the comments down below!  I was going to post a video for this, but my camera currently hates me! :(


See you all soon with hopefully another blog post, if not a video!


Rebecca x

BOOK REVIEW: Stolen by Lucy Christopher

***please note, this review may not be completely spoiler free. If you wish to remain unspoiled about this book, please avoid the blue areas. Some areas may contain spoilers without realising due to my frustration with this book. My apologies in advance***

Okay, so maybe calling this a 'sad excuse of a book' on my Instagram was a little bit harsh.

I was frustrated, okay?

Stolen follows a girl named Gemma, who is writing a letter to her former captor. Within this letter, there are details regarding her disappearance, how it was carried out, and how she managed to survive a month in the middle of the desert. And that's it. 

Yup.,

So, this book had me frustrated. It's 300 pages of poorly thought out storylines and scenarios, in which we are meant to sympathise with both Gemma and her captor, Ty, simultaneously, whilst also hating Ty for taking her in the first place. And just how are we meant to do that? I found myself hating Gemma moreso than Ty, even though I really didn't want too. 

The ending. Well, that just made everything worse! The fact that she openly admitted there were two options available, explained both of them, and then decided on a third, which merged the two, just angered me more. If it wasnt for the snake bite, I actually dont think she would have went back at all!

Overall, I gave this book a two star rating on Goodreads, where I have also left a mini review summing up my thoughts.

Have you read this book? Let me know in the comments if you have, and how you feel about it, as I seem to be on a lonely train of distaste for this book!

Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll be back with another review soon!

BOOK REVIEW: The Girl with All The Gifts by M. R. Carey

Click here to see my thoughts via video

Book: The Girl With All the Gifts
Author: M. R. Carey
Released: 2014

This book is a one that I picked up and read quite quickly, it took me about a week overall, which I am really impressed with. Whilst the book is classed as a Thriller, I found the writing to be slightly juvenile, and would categorize this as a YA/NA Thriller, rather than an adult thriller.

This book follows Melanie, who has a strain of the Hungries gene. But she is not alone. Each and every day she is kept in a prison cell, and goes to class, gets fed, and showers, all whilst tied to her chair and she doesn't know why she is restrained. People approach her with caution, and she has no idea why. When she gets strapped into her chair each day, guns are pointed at her, and she jokingly states 'no need for guns, I wont bite' - to which nobody laughs. 

The book follows Melanie's journey to finding out what she really is, and how she copes with this information. When the army base where she is kept imprisoned gets invaded by a mix of Hungires and Junkers (the 'normal' people who chose to live in the wild when the Hungries took over), Melanie must flee with the surviving humans, including her teacher, a scientist who wants to kill her, and the Seargant who points a gun to her head everyday.

I absolutely loved this book, and filmed a video review, which you will be taken to by clicking the image of the book cover at the top of this post.

The characters are really easy to love, or hate, and I found myself sympathising more and more with Melanie, who reminds me a little bit of Nick Frost's character in Shaun of the Dead at the end, which for me made her more relatable. The story is also set in the UK, not to far from London, so it also made a pleasant change to read a book set in my home country.