Review: The Next Together by Lauren James

Publication Date: September 3^rd 2015
Publisher: Walker Books
Length: 356 pages

Huge thanks to Walker Books for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

How many times can you lose the person you love? 
Katherine and Matthew are destined to be born again and again, century after century. Each time, their presence changes history for the better, and each time, they fall hopelessly in love, only to be tragically separated. 
Spanning the Crimean War, the Siege of Carlisle and the near-future of 2019 and 2039 they find themselves sacrificing their lives to save the world. But why do they keep coming back? What else must they achieve before they can be left to live and love in peace? 
Maybe the next together will be different...
A powerful and epic debut novel for teenagers about time-travel, fate and the timelessness of first love. The Next Together is told through a mixture of regular prose, diary entries, letters, "original" historical documents, news reports and internet articles.

This book has been one of my most anticipated reads of the year. That cover first caught my eye way back in the spring, and then the blurb followed and I was absolutely desperate to get my little mitts on it.

And it definitely lived up to expectations. It’s a wonderful story with (despite being about the same people) remarkably varied characters. You could immediately tell which time frame and which versions of Kate and Matt you were with, without any prodding from the time line headings, simply because of how unique they were. Lauren does a fantastic job of bringing different character facets to the fore for each so that they are in essence the same characters, but you see so many different sides to them. I loved seeing the different challenges each variant couple faced, and seeing how the time period played into that.

Whilst I loved all of them, my favourites were definitely 2019 Matt and Kate, simply because you got to know them so much better than any of the others. You really saw the bulk of their relationship, the quirks, the humour and how much they loved each other shining through in that time line above all the others.

It’s an engrossing story, and one that I couldn’t put down once I’d started. I loved the different periods, the different elements of the relationships, the slow unveiling of the twists. It’s a beautiful slow burn of a book and it was wonderful to see how the different threads played into each other and interlinked. It’s a fascinating, well written and original book. It’s a wonderful mix of historical, contemporary and dystopian fiction all rolled up into one story and really does have a bit of something for everyone.

I did however have a couple of niggles which stopped this being a full five star read for me. The first may well be resolved in the finished copy, something I am very eager to nab a copy once it hits the shelves so I can see. Towards the end of the book both Kate and Matt start to reference another time thread at Bletchley Park. Obviously it’s clear that there are numerous more time threads than the four depicted in the novel, but it seemed strange that Bletchley Park is referenced numerous times with no reference to any other time lines that we haven’t seen. It made it feel almost as though in a previous draft Bletchley Park was one of the threads, so it was quite a strange jolt to suddenly start having these references to it out of the blue.

My second niggle was with the end, and in the interest of spoilers I’m not going to mention it here. However if you’ve read the book and want to talk about it feel free to message me! I’m hoping that since there is a second book titled ‘The Last Beginning’ listed on Goodreads, that my ending related niggles will all be resolved, but until that point that end just left me feeling a bit strange. It was a bit abrupt and I needed a little bit more of a resolution.

My third niggle (regular readers will have guessed this one already…) was that some of the language and dialogue in the historical time lines felt very modern. It wasn’t too jarring, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as some other historical books I’ve read, but it was still there, and it still bothered me.

However, those points aside, I really loved this book. It’s a beautiful love story, incredibly tense and with wonderful variants of the same people so that each thread genuinely felt like it housed its own people, which I loved. It’s a very engrossing read, and a truly wonderful debut, and has left me desperate for Lauren’s next novel which is FAR TOO FAR AWAY RIGHT NOW.

Review: Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine

Publication Date: July 7^th 2015
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Length: 410 pages

Huge thanks to Allison & Busby for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

Knowledge is power. Power corrupts.
In a world where the ancient Great Library of Alexandria was never destroyed, knowledge now rules the world: freely available, but strictly controlled. Owning private books is a crime.
Jess Brightwell is the son of a black market smuggler, sent to the Library to compete for a position as a scholar... but even as he forms friendships and finds his true gifts, he begins to unearth the dark secrets of the greatest, most revered institution in the world.
Those who control the Great Library believe that knowledge is more valuable than any human life - and soon both heretics and books will burn...

This book was terrifyingly brilliant. In an alternate world where the Great Library of Alexandria still stands, the library rules all. It controls knowledge in ways that were both outlandish and magical, but also not that far removed from what we experience today. The book offered a seamless blend of that – things magical and extreme and things that struck remarkably close to home and made reading this even more alarming in places.

I took my time reading this because I loved being immersed in this world, I loved letting the story unfold in small pieces rather than storming through it all in one go. However my restraint broke around two thirds of the way through and I ended up not moving between then and the final page. It was addictive, it was brutal, it was incredibly well written and utterly compelling. It grabs you right from the first page with one of the most intense and adrenaline filled openings I've read in a while, and whilst the tension eases off at points it never fully releases you from its grip. The story grabs you by the hand and demands you pay attention to it.

I loved that the story was led by a male protagonist. I adore my female protagonists like you wouldn’t believe, but it’s refreshing to read a book with a male lead every now and again and this was a truly fantastic one. The characters were complex, varied and so diverse. I loved that the characters unfurled piece by piece as we got to know them. No one was black and white, everyone was complex with shades of grey, and you never fully understood or knew the characters. Like people they were always shifting, changing and had backstory and secrets that crept in to tease and tantalise.

There are echoes of Harry Potter – accepted to an elite school, sent off by train, almost magic like moments – so if you’re a Potter fan you are going to love this one. Plus if you like books in general you’re going to be utterly smitten, they are treated with the love and reverence they deserve.

It’s a truly fantastic book. Alarming and twisty, I loved this alternate view on the world and how everything changed as a result. It’s a brilliantly crafted story filled with complex and wonderful characters, heart breaking moments, brutal and terrifying moments, books, love, fights. It is stuffed with magic and wonder, and marks the start of a truly addictive series.