Literary Lane

  Rating: Four out of Five Stars Such a nice and heartwarming little story. Lily has a bad stutter, and this story, although only really aimed at a middle-grade audience, does a good job at diving deep into the challenges and problems that children with disabilities like speech impediments , especially stutters , can face. This includes stigma from even their own parents, with Lily's mother getting impatient with Lily's stutter and wanting to hide it from the world by not telling anyone about it, and her dad who also avoids addressing the problem with Lily, only talking about how awful it is behind her back. Fortunately though they both redeem themselves and have an increased understanding by the end of the book, which is good as I hated Lily's mum at first stigmatising Lily's stutter the way she did and getting impatient with her, but she does genuinely redeem herself. To be honest I felt more annoyed at the dad and the way he was portrayed as being a good parent an...

 WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars Oh my god. Wow, what a read. The ever-increasing suspense, bombshells, twists and turns and dark, thrilling fear is what kept me so incredibly gripped by this book. Much like its predecessor, "You Can Trust Me", this was a very intense, thrilling, dark, tense, enthralling and suspenseful story, with a looming mystery being that of the identity of a ruthless criminal who has harmed or is harming one of the main characters. This was perhaps even more spine-tingling and unsettling than that book though I'd have said, as you have to watch the poor protagonist getting relentlessly and seriously stalked for pretty much the entire book, and that was really scary to read and follow. Obviously the identity reveal of the stalker doesn't come until towards the very end, just before the climax, but since it was the part that of course left me the most shocked (and probably did a lot of people) I will get it off my chest now: WOW...

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD Wow. There was not a moment when I was not completely gripped and absorbed in this book, having ended up spending nearly all of yesterday reading it, for about 6-7 hours (though with the odd breaks) because I was just that determined to keep reading on, as with all the suspense and drama and 'wham' moments that were unfolding I could not simply leave it for tomorrow, I needed closure and that is only a sign of an amazing book, when you are able to get hooked like this. My brain hurt a bit as a result but god it was so worth it. YA thrillers are one of my very favourite book genres-not all of them I love, as of course they have to be done really well and strongly, that keep me really hooked with their unfolding suspense and drama, twists and turns while also highlighting issues that are very real such as toxic friendships , relationships and sexual abuse. This book did all that and was perhaps the best I have read out of all thes...

Such a lovely, sweet, heartwarming and also bittersweet little read! I love JW Victorian novels and it was good to see another one come out. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Honestly, my only real problem was the ending, with there having been such a lack of closure I just felt pretty frustrated and mad. I mean I was actually ready to read more only to found the book came to an end. I mean there was so much unresolved, like what had happened with the situation with Cedric and his family wanting to adopt Ada, with it seeming like they had fallen out, which was a pity due to the friendship Tess had developed with Cedric, like was she never going to be friends with them again?! Also it's true that nothing was really resolved in terms of Tess and her siblings in the long-term, like Cedric's dad pointed out, like where they just going to live like that forever in financial instability?! Honestly it just annoyed me so much, there were so many loose ends that were not tied, so I am really hop...

2 out of 5 stars I was really interested when I heard JW was writing sequel to the Girls books taking place 22 years after the last book was released and 27 years after the release of the first Girls book. Having read the original Girls books when I was 12, I was particularly interested and excited to see what the girls were up to now all these years later, looking forward to a trip down memory lane. However, I definitely have to agree with a lot of reviewers here who have critiqued the book for its lack of development, depth and closure, among other things. My main problem to be honest was that there was far too much of Ellie's relationship and sex with Gary (Mr Windsor from the previous books), which just got really repetitive, as I felt myself getting more and more frustrated with their sex scenes which just kept getting more and more repetitive which was insanely annoying, like how many frigging times did they have to be shown having sex, like okay we get it they have a great s...

  2 out of 5 stars (and that's being generous)  WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT AHEAD.  I will say that it did keep me hooked with the suspense and mystery which is always good, although sometimes only in the short-term if it is anti-climatic, which was the case here of course. However other than that I just found it all really annoying, especially with the way Maddy ends up with Adrian not long after her sister's death which just bloody infuriated me, like they could have at least gave it time and then shown them together months later if they had too, but this was just inappropriate given the circumstances. But what really annoyed me most about it was the way that a love interest just HAD to be shoehorned into the story, that she just HAD to end up in a romantic relationship, not even a nice, new true friendship to make things nicer and happier for her after having been friendless for so long (or at least without any true friends) but of course it had to be a frigging g...

  Honestly, I did enjoy this book, despite also having many criticisms about it, of things that annoyed and grated me to no end. I found it kept me really absorbed and I could simply not put it down, much like with the previous Rosie Goodwin novel I read, The Lost Girl .                                                                                                                                                              Rating: 3 out of 5 stars   It was quite an emotional rollerco aster to be honest, and quite eventful too which I quite liked. The suspense was not quite as great as ...