Book review: My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going with your Gut by Hannah Hart.

One day, lonely cubicle dweller and otherwise bored New York City transplant Hannah Hart decided to make a fake cooking show for a friend back home in California. She opened her laptop, pulled out some bread and cheese, and then, as one does, started drinking. The video was called "Butter Yo Sh*t" and online sensation My Drunk Kitchen was born.

My Drunk Kitchen (the book!) includes recipes, stories, colour photographs, and tips and tricks to inspire your own adventures in tipsy cooking.
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I feel like I should start this off by saying straight out that this is not really a cookbook. I understand why it's being marketed that way but I do worry that some people who aren't familiar with Hannah and her youtube series also titled My Drunk Kitchen might buy this book expecting some actual recipes they could replicate at home and come away a little disappointed.

This is not to say that I don't think this is a good book (or that there aren't at least a couple of recipes in here that I see myself trying to recreate in the future. Saltine nachos, anyone?). I think this is a great book. Hannah Hart's typical humour is present in abundance and fans of her youtube videos will not be disappointed. My Drunk Kitchen is like a big sister giving you advice not just on cooking but more importantly on life in general. Hart is, as usual, incredibly funny, infectiously optimistic, and unfailingly honest, in the best way possible. The book does take the form of a cookbook, which I think is very clever, with each pun-tastically named recipe containing a life lesson or piece of advice, much like the standard format of the My Drunk Kitchen videos themselves.

My Drunk Kitchen is full of advice from the Hart (I had to) and honestly, I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that it might just be impossible to read this book and not feel more positive about life afterwards.

Fans of Hannah will definitely enjoy this book but if you've never seen her videos then it might leave you a little confused. Luckily, you can fix that right now.

4/5 stars.

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Book review: The Isobel Journal by Isobel Harrop.

The Isobel Journal is no ordinary snapshot of a contemporary teenage life. A charming and vivid narrative scrapbook of the eighteen-year-old author's sketches, mini-graphic novels, photography and captions, it captures her wit, her observations and her creative talent as she takes us through the three central themes in her life: 'Love', 'Friends, Art and Otters' and 'Me'.
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The Isobel Journal is sort of a graphic novel, except not really. There are illustrations and photographs, beautiful drawings and funny captions, and there is no story line or anything that really resembles a plot.

What The Isobel Journal is, really, is exactly that. It is a journal. It is Isobel Harrop's journal, to be precise. This means that there is no solid narrative and very little structure but what is here in abundance is Harrop's wonderful drawing style and wit. Her drawings are charming and a little quirky and very much the style of a teenage girl drawing in her sketchbook. They remind me a lot of the drawings my artist friends would make in their sketchbooks when we were teenagers, in fact. Some of the illustrations are very personal and others less so but they are all lovely and they all give the reader a view into the life of this teenage girl.

I love stripes!

Above is an example of a spread from The Isobel Journal. Harrop also uses photographs and snippets of text in some of her illustrations (and one of those snippets of text won me a nice stack of books from Hot Key last month. More on that in another post!) and these techniques work together to create a real scrapbook feeling. The book is split into three sections. The first section 'Me' is Harrop introducing herself to the reader, the second 'Friends, Art and Otters' delves a little deeper into Harrop's life and interests, and the third section 'Love' almost has a narrative and is certainly the most emotionally personal of the three sections.

There may not be a clear plot to this book but Harrop's illustrations do tell a story. They tell the story of Harrop's teenage years and they do so in a way that makes this book both beautiful and relatable. I read the whole thing in less than an hour but I know that I will go back to it again and again.

4/5 stars.

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Book review: Fearsome Dreamer by Laure Eve.

In the remote country of Angle Tar, apprentice hedgewitch Vela Rue has had strange dreams all her life: mysterious and incredibly real. Then she learns that her dreams mean something more - and that her government will do anything to nurture her talent. Embarking on her clandestine training, she meets the enigmatic White, who has been forced to flee his own unforgiving country to the safer realm of Angle Tar. White is seen as a prodigy - perhaps even the ultimate weapon the government have been waiting for. But the electric attraction between Rue and White may spell disaster... or change everything.
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From the very beginning of Fearsome Dreamer Laure Eve brings the reader into a rich and intriguing fantasy world. Angle Tar, where most of this book takes place, is an alternate universe version of the UK with little to no technology, where people who live in the countryside are treated not by doctors but by hedgewitches. On the other side of the ocean is World, a conglomeration of countries that is so technologically advanced that people there have become dependant on a virtual reality system called Life.

Laure Eve's world building is fantastic and as I was reading I found myself fully immersed in the world that Rue and White inhabit and intrigued by the special Talent that they possess. There isn't a lot of action in Fearsome Dreamer and the story line isn't quite as defined as it might have been, but Eve's writing style more than made up for that. The reader is dropped straight into White and Rue's respective lives at the start of the novel and those characters and the world they inhabit are the driving force of the story.

There were many great aspects of Fearsome Dreamer, including the mysterious Talent, the fantastic world building, and the interesting characters, but I don't think I quite believed Rue and White's love story. There are moments where we see Rue and White falling for each other, yes, but on the whole I felt more as though I was being told that they were falling in love, rather than shown it. And the whole thing seemed to escalate very quickly toward the end of the book. An ending that left such a cliff hanger I ordered the sequel immediately after finishing the last chapter.

Despite it's faults I would still recommend Fearsome Dreamer for the fascinating world that Eve has created and because Rue is such a great character and I will definitely be reviewing its sequel, The Illusionists, soon.

3/5 stars.

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Book review: Is It Just Me? by Miranda Hart.

Well hello to you dear book browser. So, here's the thing: is it just me or does anyone else find that adulthood offers no refuge from the unexpected horrors, peculiar lack of physical coordination and sometimes unexplained nudity that accompanied childhood and adolescence? I am proud to say I have a wealth of awkward experiences and here I offer my 18-year-old self (and you too dear reader) some much needed caution and guidance. Let's call it, because it's fun, a Miran-ual. I thank you.
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I'm a big fan of Miranda Hart's sitcom Miranda and I may have been told by one or two people that there are some similarities between myself and her onscreen persona (I'm not sure if I'm supposed to take that as a compliment but I will anyway) so I was, of course, anticipating that I would love this book.

Hart's 'Miran-ual' covers the basics of adulthood from jobs to pets to love and everything in between. The book is written in typical Miranda style and so it feels almost as though the reader is in conversation with the author, as though she is telling you all of these anecdotes face to face. If you enjoy the humour of Miranda then I'm sure you'll enjoy Is It Just Me? because it has that same jokey, personal style and plenty of stories from Hart's life that wouldn't be out of place in her sitcom.

Throughout the book Hart has conversations about her past and future with her 18 year old self, which at times I felt worked wonderfully but at other times felt a little bit like too much of a deviation from the more interesting stuff. When they did work though these conversations were endearing and funny, just like the rest of the book.

Although I perhaps didn't laugh out loud as often as I had been led to believe I might, I did thoroughly enjoy Is It Just Me? and I would highly recommend it to fans of Miranda Hart or Miranda. Is It Just Me? may not have the tell-all quality that people sometimes expect from celebrity memoirs but it is funny, honest, and everything you would expect from Miranda Hart.

4/5 stars.

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Book review: Starter For Ten by David Nicholls.

The Year is 1985. Brian Jackson, a working-class kid on full scholarship, has started his first term at university. He has a dark secret - a long-held, burning ambition to appear on the wildly popular British TV quiz show University Challenge - and now, finally, it seems the dream is about to become reality. He's made the school team, and they've completed the qualifying rounds and are limbering up for their first televised match. (And, what's more, he's fallen head over heels for one of his teammates, the beautiful, brainy, and intimidatingly posh Alice Harbinson.) Life seems perfect and triumph inevitable but as his world opens up, Brian learns that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
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I first saw the film version of Starter for Ten, starring James McAvoy, on TV at least a year before I went to university. I got the book shortly after but it sat on my TBR pile at home, at university, and then at home again until now, and though I enjoyed it as much as I knew I would, I'm actually glad I waited until now to read it.

Brian does not have the most amazing time during his first year at university. In fact he's a bit of a loser, but endearingly so. He may have a wealth of advanced general knowledge, but he knows nothing about people, especially how to conduct himself around girls. He's a very believable teenage boy. One of the triumphs of Nicholls's writing is that even when Brian is at his most awkward, his most weird, his most teenage boy-ish, he is still so optimistic and full of hope and self-deprecation in equal measure, that you can't help but like him. Even when he's making an absolute tit of himself in front of Alice's parents or being kind of a git to his old school mates Spence and Tone, Brian is never really mean. Which is really his big saving grace because he can certainly be a bit of an ass.

Although my university experience bared very little resemblance to Brian's (I'm not sure my uni even has a University Challenge team) Starter for Ten made me weirdly nostalgic for that time. Even though it was only a little over a year and a half ago that I was there. Nicholls perfectly captures Brian's feeling of expectation and hope that university will be different and better than school - that he will be different and better. He also perfectly captures Brian's disappointments. And always with humour.

4/5 stars.

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Book review: Paper Aeroplanes and Goose by Dawn O'Porter.

Paper Aeroplanes

It's the mid-1990s, and fifteen year-old Guernsey schoolgirls, Renée and Flo, are not really meant to be friends. Thoughtful, introspective and studious Flo couldn't more different to ambitious, extroverted and sexually curious Renée. But Renée and Flo are united by loneliness and their dysfunctional families, and an intense bond is formed. Although there are obstacles to their friendship (namely Flo's jealous ex-best friend and Renée's growing infatuation with Flo's brother), fifteen is an age where anything can happen, where life stretches out before you, and when every betrayal feels like the end of the world. For Renée and Flo it is the time of their lives.
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I downloaded Paper Aeroplanes last year when reviews of it where all over the place on blogs and booktube and I can see now why it generated so much hype. Paper Aeroplanes displays a refreshingly authentic look at the experiences of growing up as a teenage girl, losing friends, and making new ones.

The narrative does not shy away from subjects like periods and sex, things that real teenage girls experience and discuss, and that is certainly something that I think there should be more of in YA novels. However, the writing style did at times strike me as a little too young for the novel's content.

The novel is written in a style that I would expect from a book for younger readers, maybe from 11-13, and for me this jarred with the themes and subjects portrayed. The dialogue in particular at times did not feel like it fit with the ages of the girls. Renée and Flo are both fifteen in this novel and their stories feel authentic to fifteen year olds, but their voices don't. Their voices are also very similar, which caused some confusion at first because the narrative switches between the two girls. The name of each girl always comes before a section in her narrative but their voices are so similar that it took a while before I stopped getting confused about which girl was which.

I don't mean to suggest that this is a bad book, it certainly isn't, and I enjoyed the stories of the two girls and their friendship a lot, but I'm just a little unclear about who the intended audience actually is.

3/5 stars.

The review for the next novel in the series, Goose, is under the cut. I read the two one after the other so it makes sense for me to put the reviews in one post, but there are spoilers for Paper Aeroplanes in the review for Goose. So, you've been warned!

Book review: Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life by Nina Stibbe.

In 1982 Nina Stibbe, a twenty-year-old from Leicester, moved to London to work as a nanny for a very particular family. It was a perfect match: Nina had no idea how to cook, look after children, or who the weirdos who called round were. And the family, busy discussing how to swear in German or the merits (or otherwise) of turkey mince, were delighted by her lack of skills.

Love, Nina is the collection of letters she wrote home gloriously describing her 'domestic' life, the unpredictable houseguests and the cat everyone loved to hate.
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I want to read more non-fiction this year and after everything I'd read about Love, Nina I knew it would be the perfect book to start with. And I was right.

Nina Stibbe's letters from her time as a nanny are full of amusing stories about her life as part of the literary-minded household where she cared for two wildly funny young boys. The boys are responsible for most of my favourite stories and conversations, closely followed by the playwright Alan Bennet, who features rather frequently as he lived in the same street and used to pop round for tea most nights.

I've read online that Bennet is not too pleased with the way he's remembered in Stibbe's book but honestly, I think there are far worse ways to be remembered. There is a layer of fondness over every memory mentioned in the book and the people even more so. Stibbe's letters are so funny and endearing it almost makes me want to become a nanny myself. But only if the family were as funny and as lenient with the cleaning as the one Stibbe worked for. It's clear from these letters that Stibbe loved her job and the people she worked for, and that they loved her too.

I honestly don't think there's anything I can say about this book that hasn't already been said dozens of times, but it's an extremely enjoyable read and even if it doesn't make you laugh out loud it's sure to make you smile.

5/5 stars.

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Book review: Vivian Versus the Apocalypse by Katie Coyle.

Vivian Apple never believed in the Church of America - unlike her fanatical parents. And as for the so-called impending 'Rapture', she knew she'd believe that when she saw it. But then Vivian wakes one day to a New World, and all that's left of her parents are two empty spaces. The Believers have been taken, it seems. And for those left behind, the world is a desolate and eerie place. All Vivian has now are her memories and her volatile friend Harp.

Faced with society on the brink of collapse, Vivian and Harp embark on a journey across America, in search of any family they have left, and determined to expose the truth about the Rapture. Three thousand miles through floods, fog and heat waves, Harp and Vivian and a boy with the bluest eyes and the kindest heart are driving on to their future.

But will this be a coming-of-age road trip with no return?
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The premise of Vivian Versus the Apocalypse had me from the start. How many times over the past few years has the apocalypse been predicted in America? And every time we all take it the same way that Vivian and her friend Harp do at the start of the novel, like it's all a big joke that'll never happen. But in Vivian Versus the Apocalypse it actually does happen. Maybe.

I think this is the first book I've ever read that can be classified as both contemporary and post-apocalyptic and in my opinion the combination worked fantastically. Coyle makes it so easy to imagine this possibly post-apocalyptic America as her descriptions of the country post-rapture mix easily with scenes that are far more familiar to modern-day.

Another great strength of this novel is its main character, Vivian Apple. It's so refreshing to see a teenaged heroine thrown into a situation like this and to react like a real teenager. Vivian does not immediately leap into her role as heroine. She is reluctant and scared, just like most teenagers probably would be in her situation. Watching Vivian gradually discover her own strength and bravery is definitely part of what makes this novel so great. And don't even get me started on how much I love her best friend, Harp.

The sequel to this book, Vivian Versus America, is out already and I can't wait to get my hands on it and find out what happens next (especially after that heart stopping twist at the end of the first book!) If you're into contemporary, post-apocalyptic, or just really interesting YA with badass female heroines, then I highly recommend Vivian Versus the Apocalypse.

4/5 stars.

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Book review: Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater.

There is danger in dreaming. But there is even more danger in waking up.

Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.

The trick with found things though, is how easily they can be lost.

Friends can betray.
Mothers can disappear.
Visions can mislead.
Certainties can unravel.
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Blue Lily, Lily Blue is the third in Maggie Stiefvater's Raven Boys trilogy, which follows the story of Blue Sargent and the Raven Boys on their search for the ancient Welsh king Glendower.

I loved the first two books in the series, The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves, and I can't recommend the series enough. Maggie Stiefvater's writing style is so immersive I always feel like I can't read her books quick enough and she writes teenagers who really act and sound like teenagers, which is always a plus in YA. I enjoyed Blue Lily, Lily Blue because of Stiefvater's style, because of the characters, because of the world, but honestly I felt like not much really happened. I mean, of course things happened, but I spent pretty much the whole book waiting for something big to happen. Waiting for the story to really start.

There are new characters who don't really do anything and a plan that never actually takes place and even the things that did happen didn't really make as much of an impact as the events of the first two books. But this is a Raven Boys book so I did really enjoy it and I would still absolutely recommend the series, even if you aren't normally a fan of fantasy.

One thing Blue Lily, Lily Blue did do fantastically well was to set up the story for the next book in the series and I can't wait to read that one.

3/5 stars

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Book review: Love in the Gilded Age by Saruuh Kelsey.

Once in a hidden queendom...

There is an ocean: In the infinite distance, between one hidden world and the next, is an unmeasurable expanse of twenty seas. One sprawling edge of the world to another is filled with waters as beautiful as they are deadly, as miraculous as they are fraught. Treasure and treachery litter their ocean beds, sleeping side by side with adventurers whose travels ended abruptly, lives caught and held under a wave until all breaths fled.

There is a land: Tucked into a corner where four oceans fold together, land rises up illustrious in a jagged slash of mountains and forests, with secrets and wonders as plentiful as any water.

There are chronicles: Not of the twenty savage seas but of the fissure of land and the people who sigh life into it.
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Love in the Gilded Age is the first collection of stories in a series called The Fissure Chronicles, of stories which all take place in the same universe. The stories are all based on classic fairy tales and in this first collection we have; 'Love in the Gilded Age', based on 'Rumpelstiltskin'; 'Xanna', based on 'Little Red Cap'; and 'A Fortress of Thorns', based on 'Brier Rose'.

Each of the three stories takes the source material and turns it on its head. The stories all stray from their original fairy tales but they also all contain enough of those fairy tales to be recognisable. 'Love in the Gilded Age', for example, tells the story of a girl who must spin straw into gold for a king who keeps her locked in a tower, however this is pretty much where the similarities to 'Rumpelstiltskin' end. She does promise her first born child to someone but there's a very clever twist to that promise that I won't spoil for you.

All three of these stories are about young heroines who must save themselves, someone, or something else and although they all need help from time to time that is never portrayed as a weakness. They all remain the heroes of their own stories. The stories also feature characters with disabilities, characters of colour, and LGBTQ characters, which is a lot more diversity than you'll find in most YA books right now.

These stories are all really interesting and unique takes on some of the most famous fairy tales. They're all entertaining and full of adventure and I can't wait to read the next collection!

5/5 stars

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Book review: The Cornish Coast Murder by John Bude.

The Reverend Dodd, vicar of the quiet Cornish village of Boscawen, spends his evenings reading detective stories by the fireside - but heaven forbid that the shadow of any real crime should ever fall across his seaside parish. But the vicar's peace is shattered one stormy night when Julius Tregarthan, a secretive and ill-tempered magistrate, is found at his house in Boscawen with a bullet through his head.

The local police inspector is baffled by the complete absence of clues. Luckily for Inspector Bigswell, the Reverend Dodd is on hand, and ready to put his keen understanding of the criminal mind to the test.
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The Cornish Coast Murder was everything I wanted The Norfolk Mystery to be with the added bonus of it being set in my home region (I'll read pretty much anything set in Cornwall.) There's a murder (obvs), a clandestine romance, baffled policemen, a vicar with a keen interest in Agatha Christie novels (why is there always a vicar?), and plenty of suspects. I don't know about you, but that's pretty much everything I would think to ask for from a murder mystery novel.

The Cornish Coast Murder is a little dated in some aspects but I found that kind of endearing in a charming, old fashioned, sort of a way.  The story takes its time as the inspector and the vicar move from theory to theory and dead end to dead end so I wouldn't recommend it if you like your novels fast paced as it's definitely a slow one. It's a very atmospheric read though, perfect for this time of year when the nights are getting longer.

If you're the kind of person who really likes to figure out the murderer for yourself before the detectives do then you might get a little frustrated at just how many red herrings Bude throws into the mix before the murderer is finally discovered but I personally really liked this. I like to be surprised and the nature of the murder in this story lends itself to all sorts of theories.

I've said before that I'm pretty new to the murder mystery genre but The Cornish Coast Murder is pretty much exactly what I expected from it and I wasn't disappointed at all. If you're a fan of early 20th century crime novels then it's a safe bet that you'll enjoy this one.

4/5 stars.

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Book review: The Norfolk Mystery by Ian Sansom

Spanish Civil War veteran Stephen Sefton is flat broke. So when he sees a mysterious advertisement for a job where 'intelligence is essential', he applies.

Thus begins Sefton's association with Professor Swanton Morley, autodidact. Morley intends to write a history of England, county by county. His assistant must be able to tolerate his every eccentricity - and withstand the attentions of his beguiling daughter, Miriam.

The trio begin the project in Norfolk, but when the vicar of Blakeney is found hanging from his church's bell rope, they find themselves drawn into a fiendish plot. Did the reverend really take his own life, or was it - murder?
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I picked up The Norfolk Mystery on a whim a few weeks ago. It's an enjoyable read. It's sort of cosy and something about it feels very English. However, I did expect more mystery.

The vicar is found hanged and Morley and Sefton do take an interest in the possibility that it might not be the suicide it appears to be. However, there is really very little actual investigation and Morley's deduction as presented near the end of the novel seems to come completely from nowhere. I understand that this could be a little bit of a parody of the early 20th century mystery novels - and maybe I'm just not well versed enough in the tropes of those novels to fully appreciate it - but the rest of the novel just doesn't seem to be so obviously a parody of anything.

There is some interesting social commentary throughout the novel, which is as relevant today as it was during the time between the two world wars, when this story is set. Morley's views about the goings on in the world sort of balance out how bloody annoying he is the rest of the time. There are also photographs throughout the book, which I had expected to be a fan of (I wrote my dissertation on illustrated novels so I have a specific interest) however in this case I just didn't think the photographs did anything for the narrative.

Despite these complaints, The Norfolk Mystery was an enjoyable read but I'm not sure I'll be picking up the sequel when it's released.

I mean, Morley spends half the book speaking Latin. What's that about? Is that parody???

3/5 stars.

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Book review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart.

A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends - the Liars - whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True Love.
The Truth.
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We Were Liars is my first E. Lockhart book but I'm sure it won't be my last (I've been eyeing up The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks for years, truth be told.) I wasn't too sure what to expect but I'd seen a lot of reviews, all of which seemed to follow the same pattern - this book is amazing but I can't tell you what happens - and now that I've read it I can totally understand why.

We Were Liars is powerful and surprising, both in the story itself and in the way in which the story is told. I've never read anything else like it and I'm sure I never will. But. I'm still not totally convinced about the writing style. While it's definitely interesting, I found it at times to be a little annoying, almost until the end. Towards the end I found myself appreciating the style and it started to make sense retrospectively, but I can't deny that I spent a lot of the book unsure about it. Also I still don't understand why the group are called 'The Liars' but I don't think I'm the only one.

Nevertheless this is definitely a unique novel, deserving of the praise it has gotten. The story unfolds in ever more clever and surprising ways and the final reveal comes like a punch in the gut. But, like, in a good way. I'd recommend it.

4/5 stars.

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