By Julie Berry, published by Templar books.

Goodreads synopsis: Four years ago, Judith and her best friend disappeared from their small town of Roswell Station. Two years ago, only Judith returned, permanently mutilated, reviled and ignored by those who were once her friends and family. Unable to speak, Judith lives like a ghost in her own home, silently pouring out her thoughts to the boy who’s owned her heart as long as she can remember—even if he doesn’t know it—her childhood friend, Lucas. But when Roswell Station is attacked, long-buried secrets come to light, and Judith is forced to choose: continue to live in silence, or recover her voice, even if it means changing her world, and the lives around her, forever. This startlingly original novel will shock and disturb you; it will fill you with Judith’s passion and longing; and its mysteries will keep you feverishly turning the pages until the very last.

My review: All The Truth That’s in Me was unlike anything that I’ve ever read before, but in a really good way. The writing style was incredibly unique and has made this book stand out from other titles in the YA genre. It took me a few chapters (that isn’t really very long, each chapter on average is about a page) to get used to the different concept, but I found it a really clever writing technique. The narrator, Judith, say’s ‘you’ a lot- as in, you looked at me then… It addresses the reader as the boy that she loves. It was such a peculiar way of writing the story- it both startled me and drew me in; made me feel really connected to the story.

The plot was really, really amazing and was pulled off very well with the individual style of writing. I wasn’t expecting a lot of the events. The setting was great; a war-torn town, and it went perfectly with the plot. The events played out really well. It wasn’t so clear where the story was going at the beginning, but just past the halfway-mark shocking and terrifying events began to take place, involving the murder of Judith’s best friend and reasons as to why she’d had her tongue cut out coming to light… not to mention the incidents with the schoolmaster. The author’s beautiful descriptions from Judith’s point of view really brought the story to life.

While writing down some reviews in a notebook a couple of days ago, I had a little Eureka! moment. I was reviewing THE RIG by Joe Ducie (Review will be up tomorrow, by the way!) and was about to say that it was great for fans of a few other similar-ish books. Then I thought, why don’t I do that in my reviews, as a little feature? Playing around on Picmonkey, I made this:

Voila!! I know, not very fancy. I’m editing it, though!

So, hopefully, I’ll have this from now on in most of my reviews, as a way of recommending particular books to fans of a similar book. Do you like the idea? Feedback would be awesome, if you’d like to drop a comment here! 🙂

Hello, blogosphere! I’ve missed you!!! I’m back from holiday now and so there’ll be a lot more reviewing and general active-ness on this blog now. Here’s my book haul of the books that I bought on holiday. Also, a couple of brilliant looking titles that were waiting for me when I got home yesterday!

Bought:

The Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (#1-5) Set by Douglas Adams: A HUUUGE fan of the film (And I think I read the first book ages ago!), I just had to pick this box set up! I found this brilliant little store that sold lots of books for really small prices. This was five pounds! Whoa!

The Perks OF Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: I’ve been meaning to buy a copy of this for a while! I’ve read so many great reviews, and although I haven’t seen the film yet either, I’ve seen a lot of hype around that.

Geekhood: Mission Improbable by Andy Robb: I bought this because, again, there have been so many great reviews! Though I feel really stupid because I thought I had the first one on my to read shelf… and I don’t. So, I’ll have to look out for the first one now, so that I can read this one!

Skin Deep by Laura Jarratt: I’m seeing Laura Jarratt at the celebrating difference themed book event at Waterstones Piccadilly on Wednesday! Unfortunately, I haven’t read this yet and it’s the one she’ll be talking about. I spotted it in Waterstones today and I’m going to try to read it before Wednesday!

Received in Post:

Are We There Yet? By David Levithan: Thanks so much, HarperCollins! Aside from Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which is only half-written by Levithan, I’ve never read any of his books before. His titles are being recovered and the amazing Lizz sent me a copy of this new one! Isn’t it pretty?! It’s very interesting so far. Review soon!

Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper: Thanks, also, to Harriet from Random House, for sending me an ARC of this! This also has such a beautiful cover! The synopsis has made it sound really, really intriguing and I’m planning on reading this next week. I can’t wait to begin it!

Thanks again to the publishers for the copies of these books! Feel free to leave a comment giving/linking back to your own book haul- and happy reading!

Hi! This is my blog post as part of the #MurderOnTheBeach event, which is celebrating the releases of Jame’s Dawson’s CRUEL SUMMER and Kate Harrison’s SOUL STORM this summer! #MurderOnTheBeach is taking place all over Twitter and various blogs on an epic Blog Tour! The theme for this post is Top Five Detectives, as chosen by Kate Harrison. This blog post is twinned with Jack’s (thebookstop.biz) post, which contains James Dawson’s top five. Hope you enjoy both of these, and stick around for the rest of the Blog Tour!

Kate Harrison on her Top Five Detectives

Watching the Detectives – Kate’s view!

Kate Harrison, author of the Soul Beach trilogy

Soul Storm- the epic finale to the brilliant thriller trilogy!

I love a mystery… so how come my list of TV detectives is a mile long, but my list of literary sleuths is almost non-existent? Could it be the lack of feisty female detectives in books? TV has more than its share of memorable women investigators – from Cagney and Lacey back in the 70s (surprisingly gritty if you can catch a re-run) through to their modern-day equivalents, Scott and Bailey or even the female lawyers in Damages. The characterisation of those women keeps me hooked, whatever the storyline.

Whereas in books, the gumshoes are mostly men, and caricatures at that – boozy, unwashed yet somehow still irresistible to women.

There’s another explanation though – in books like The Talented Mr Ripley, the appeal is in spending time with the villains, in inhabiting their heads.

In the Soul Beach trilogy I got to do both – write the character of Alice, who investigates her sister’s murder and the afterlife… and write from the point of view of my serial killer. Not to mention bring them face to face in Soul Storm. It was the best fun I’ve had in years…

 Alice certainly has the grit of my top 5 Fictional Investigators. Some are – how shall I put it – retro, but you can find them on digital channels and they’re well worth checking out.

TOP FIVE:

Velma, from Scooby Doo!

5. Velma Dinkley from Scooby Do: Poor Velma didn’t get the fancy wardrobe, but she got the brains to go with her orange jumper – in many ways, a forerunner of the legendary snowflake sweaters worn by Sarah Lund. She’s smart, science-minded and kind to animals. And she’s a hell of a lot less likely to get tied up than her more glamorous counterpart, Daphne.

4. Sarah Lund from The Killing. Let’s hear it for the jumpers! There’s a lot more to mopey Sarah than her knitwear. She’s smart and passionate and her instincts are generally very good. Which is more than can be said for her choice of men. The female ‘tec with a disastrous love life is a cliché in itself, but Lund does it so well. See also her sexier French cousin, Captain Laure Berthaud, from Spiral/Engrenages.

3. Fitz from Cracker. This guy is overweight, slobbish, abusive and absolutely brilliant. The storylines were seriously unsettling – and the series made a huge impact over very few episodes. I recently watched it again and there were some parts that really alarmed me, but that character is incredibly memorable, and the forerunner of so many other psychological ‘detectives’ that have followed.

Jane Tennison, from Prime Suspect

2. Horace Rumpole – at last, a character that works equally well in John Mortimer’s excellent books, and in the long-running TV series (interestingly, it started as a TV play and the books followed). It is impossible to read the books without picturing Leo McKern as the clever, disrespectful barrister who gets to the truth and also gets his (often dodgy) clients off.

1. Jane Tennison from Prime Suspect. She made such an impact when she first appeared – the first in the ‘female detectives with issues’ list, but so well done by Helen Mirren, and always grittily realistic.

So, there’s my crack team. With these guys and gals on the case, the streets would be an awful lot less mean. Though the bars and sweater shops might be running low on stock…

Great answers, Kate! I myself don’t have many other fave TV detectives apart from Velma- though I love Poirot and Sherlock Holmes literary wise. Readers! Who are your favourite crime busters?

Be sure to check out the rest of the #MurderOnTheBeach blog tour! Here’s the dates:

(click on the image for a close up)

By Kate Harrison, published by Indigo (Orion).

Goodreads synopsis: Someone is stalking Alice Forster. She’s sure it’s her sister’s murderer, but her parents think she’s cracking under the stress of Meggie’s death. Only in the virtual world of Soul Beach – an online paradise for the young, the beautiful and the dead – can Alice feel truly free. But there’s trouble in paradise . . .

Clouds are gathering.
A storm is brewing.
The killer is about to strike.

The final gripping thriller in this paranormal romance trilogy.

My review: *This review will contain one spoilerish paragraph for the book. I’ve put a warning for that one, so don’t worry!*

I need to calm down and breathe for a second. After three years of absolutely loving this trilogy as it’s progressed, I finally know who killed Alice Forster. Wow. I was most definitely not expecting that! And the reveal of the killer was so clever. flawless. And genius. This book has got to be the best crime based thriller that I’ve ever read, honestly!

I’ll rant on about the sheer unpredictableness of the plot, and get that out of the way first…

After two amazing books full of unexpected twists previously, I was really looking forward to seeing what this one had in store! This final story of the trilogy was absolutely amazing. It blew me away. I began it, thinking I’ll just read a chapter now, then finish some other things and come back to it later but I got absolutely hooked on it! I honestly found it hard to put the book down, and when I had to I did so very reluctantly.

The story was so real, as the book began with events like Meggie attempting to drive. Then, she made a return to the virtual hangout for the dead beautiful (oh. The pun.) and strange things begin to happen on the virtual heaven. Really strange things! So used to reading about the sunny paradise, I gasped when a Storm tore through it, and was left on the edge of my seat eager for answers. Totally engrossed, I sped through the book, eager to find out who the killer really was! Right up until the page on which they’re revealed, I was guessing. Guessing wrong, I’ll put. Kate kept me totally in the dark as to who the murderer was throughout the whole trilogy- and even in the scene where they’re revealed. The plot was very misleading thanks to some investigations by Meggie: It threw me right off of the trail!

the writing for Soul Storm was amazing. There was a lot of brilliant imagery, of Soul Beach and the country that Meggie winds up in for the last part of the book (Great link to Soul Beach and this country, by the way!). I really felt like I was there, by Meggie; investigating into her sister’s murder, following misleading trails, and I even got a shiver up my spine when the killer was revealed. So real. Also, not only was the normal writing fantastic, but there’s also the short paragraphs after every few chapters! Over the trilogy there have been short passages from the POV of the serial killer, and wow, were they chilling. Somehow, Kate’s managed to keep these terrifying, while also keeping them so vague that I had no way to track it back to the guilty character. Kate Harrison is a crime writing genius. ‘Nuff said.

Meggie, as before, delivered as a protagonist. She was easily likeable, and I loved following her investigations immensely. She was determined, eager to bring justice over the murder of her innocent Sister. Even when banned from the internet after her mum gets concerned, she finds a way to contact her dead sister, who’s always waiting on Soul Beach; to update her on her leads. She was just so caring, and I loved that! I also really enjoyed seeing Meggie and Lewis become closer, and how Lewis revealed a past linking Alice (Meggie’s sister) to himself. Very clever, because it made him a suspect, as well as Sahara, who was top of the list for Meggie. All of the suspects, on that note, had left trails that could have been linked to Alice’s death, which made it really hard for me to decide on who did it!

The paranormal twist to this book made it oh so emotional, especially right at the end, where Meggie has to part with Alice as she is laid to rest. I admit it: I let a few tears fall. But who couldn’t? That scene was so beautifully written… so emotional! I think that that was one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever read, and I’m pretty sure it’ll be hard to forget the powerful imagery that evoked.

Overall, Soul Storm was a really powerful ending to one of my favourite trilogies. It had lots of edge-of-your-seat action, which kept me completely gripped to the layered and complex plot. Meggie was such a brilliant leading character, and dealt with everything brilliantly, even when her own life was in mortal danger at close to the ending. This book was so misleading, and as I’ve already said, had me guessing right up until the very exposure of the killer! It made for a breathtaking conclusion to an epic, thrilling trilogy…                                                        Highly gripping. Highly shocking. Highly recommended! 🙂

My Rating:

I received a copy of Soul Storm from the publisher in exchange for a review. In no way at all did this affect my thoughts.

Read In July:

I was aiming for twenty books this month, trying to beat my own record. But, then, Exams *groans*. Which meant Revision *groans again*. But that only took up the first week of July. So, yeah, I read a little slower than usual this month, but I did read twelve, and they were all great! I’ve hyper-linked each book jacket below to my review of that book- though some have not yet been reviewed, and won’t work!

To-Read in August:

Lucy (Queen of Contemporary) is probably going to virtually murder me for still having not read this first one. Sorry, Lucy! Forgive mee!!

• Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
• Cruel Summer by James Dawson
• Saving Daisy by Phil Earle
• Are We There Yet? by David Levithan

NETGALLEY STUFF:

• All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terill
• Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman
• The Boy With Two Heads by Andy Mulligan

What did you read last month and what are you looking forward to reading in August? Leave a comment! 🙂

Here’s a list of some monthly round-ups I’ve already read from various awesome people in the bloggysphere:

Feed Me Books Now!!!

Queen of Contemporary 

Amy BookWorm

Happy reading for August!

I’m really pleased with the four books I got this week! A massive thank you to the lovely people at Orion, and to my dad for letting me borrow steal some stuff from his bookshelves.

Received in Post:

Cruel Summer by James Dawson and Soul Storm by Kate Harrison: I absolutely love crime books, so I was really excited for James Dawson’s new book! Also, I’m a big fan of Kate Harrison’s Soul trilogy, which is a murder plot too. I’m reading that at the moment and… wow.

Bought:

Rivers of London by Ben Aaranovitch- I’ve had my eyes on this series for a while. It looks brilliant! I saw this in a bookstore yesterday and had to buy a copy, as I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t :).

Borrowed from Dad’s library:

Moon over Soho by Ben Aaranovitch:  the second book in the Peter Grant series! Because I’d seen it on Dad’s bookshelves before. And so I borrowed it for when I’ve finished the first book!

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury: I’ll admit that I can’t remember ever reading a book by Bradbury before! This caught my eye and I put it straight in my (overflowing) TBR box. I also really want to read Fahrenheit 451. I’ll be looking out for that if I enjoy this!

What was in your book haul this week, or have you read any of these titles?

Drop a comment, and happy Reading! 🙂