Review: City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab

Publication Date: August 28th 2018
Publisher: Scholastic
Pages: 285 pages

Cassidy Blake's parents are The Inspectres, a (somewhat inept) ghost-hunting team. But Cass herself can REALLY see ghosts. In fact, her best friend, Jacob, just happens to be one.
When The Inspectres head to ultra-haunted Edinburgh, Scotland, for their new TV show, Cass—and Jacob—come along. In Scotland, Cass is surrounded by ghosts, not all of them friendly. Then she meets Lara, a girl who can also see the dead. But Lara tells Cassidy that as an In-betweener, their job is to send ghosts permanently beyond the Veil. Cass isn't sure about her new mission, but she does know the sinister Red Raven haunting the city doesn't belong in her world. Cassidy's powers will draw her into an epic fight that stretches through the worlds of the living and the dead, in order to save herself. 

I was really excited about this book, in part because I adore Edinburgh and I was fascinated to see how Schwab portrayed one of my favourite cities, and in part to see what a middle grade novel from Schwab would look like, having read her young adult and adult offerings.

The answer? A little bit mixed. It's a brilliant concept, and I think younger readers will enjoy this spooky tale a lot more as the intended audience, but something felt like it was missing for me.
Perhaps it's just been a while since I read a middle grade book, but Cassidy is a really passive protagonist, she just allows things to happen to her and doesn't show a huge amount of interest in anything, which I found really baffling given what an exciting (also scary) situation she has found herself in.
She shows no interest in her powers, in what's really going on or actually finding answers (apart from a couple of brief moments in the story) and just is buffeted from one scene to the next.

With so little input from Cassidy is hard to really engage fully with the story, which was disappointing, but otherwise it's a perfectly good little tale. It's got just the right amount of scare factor, it shows parts of a really gorgeous city that you don't often see in younger fiction, and it looks like it could be the start of a nice series. However I don't think it's got quite enough to push me to pick up the next book when it's released.

Review: Ink by Alice Broadway

Publication Date: February 2nd 2017
Publisher: Scholastic
Pages: 366 pages

Every action, every deed, every significant moment is tattooed on your skin for ever. When Leora's father dies, she is determined to see her father remembered forever. She knows he deserves to have all his tattoos removed and made into a Skin Book to stand as a record of his good life. But when she discovers that his ink has been edited and his book is incomplete, she wonders whether she ever knew him at all. 

Oh this book. It's a prime example of a beautiful cover and blurb not truly reflecting the pages within, which was gutting, because I had been so excited about this one only to feel horribly let down.

Instead of the unique and fascinating story I was expecting, I was left with a blandly flat main character who was not only 'the chosen one' (for no particularly good reason, just because, which only made her more unbearable) but Leora had absolutely no character to speak of. This was a problem with the writing style, because even though the ideas were there they just didn't translate well onto the page. The characters were all indistinguishable from each other because there was no variation in speech, everyone spoke the same, and as a result everything just felt flat and underdeveloped and honestly, incredibly boring.

It also suffered from poor editing, where it felt like key scenes or moments had been cut out and the story and character development suffered as a result. I was left feeling confused by thoughts and decisions that should have been clearer, and as though I'd been left in the dark for pivotal moments with Leora's realisations.

All in all this was a disappointment. I wanted to love it, I was all set to, with such a vibrantly fresh concept I didn't think I could not. Yet I was left feeling disappointed, frustrated, and like I'd wasted my time.

Review: The Game of Love & Death by Martha Brockenbrough

Publication Date: 2^nd April 2015
Publisher: Scholastic
Length: 352 pages

Antony and Cleopatra. Helen of Troy and Paris. Romeo and Juliet. And now . . . Henry and Flora.
For centuries Love and Death have chosen their players. They have set the rules, rolled the dice, and kept close, ready to influence, angling for supremacy. And Death has always won. Always.
Could there ever be one time, one place, one pair whose love would truly tip the balance?
Meet Flora Saudade, an African-American girl who dreams of becoming the next Amelia Earhart by day and sings in the smoky jazz clubs of Seattle by night. Meet Henry Bishop, born a few blocks and a million worlds away, a white boy with his future assured — a wealthy adoptive family in the midst of the Great Depression, a college scholarship, and all the opportunities in the world seemingly available to him.
The players have been chosen. The dice have been rolled. But when human beings make moves of their own, what happens next is anyone’s guess.
Achingly romantic and brilliantly imagined, The Game of Love and Death is a love story you will never forget.

The hardest reviews for me to write are for books that I absolutely loved, because in some cases I find myself reduced to near incoherency out of sheer love and there is only so much READ THIS BOOK NOW, SO GOOD that I can put in a review…

So this review has been incredibly hard. I’ve sat down to write it several times and am only now beginning to be able to string sentences together. 

This book is stunning. It is a work of art. It forces you to feel in a way that I have not encountered in a book in a very long time. I was completely immersed in this story within the first few pages and once I had begun, I found it very difficult (near impossible) to separate myself from the story for longer than simple things like having a sandwich. It is all consuming.

I loved Henry and Flora fiercely. I found myself wanting to protect Flora from the horrible things she had to face, being a young black girl in 1930s America. I have never had such a visceral sense of anger and injustice reading as I did during some of the scenes where the colour of her skin denotes how people respond and communicate with her.
She and Henry are such a wonderful pair. Their sense of selves with each other, the ease and banter, the magnetic attraction and feeling that the world was sliding away and falling out from under them. I don’t think I’ve ever rooted so fully for a pair to have a slice of happiness as I did with them.

The book is desperately sad, full of joy, passion, heartbreak and anger. It is a novel teeming with life and emotion, courage and the possibilities of life.
It’s hauntingly beautiful and woven together with the genius of Martha’s writing. Lyrical, almost poetical in places it captures the essence of young love in a dangerous and fraught time. The emotions and tensions bubbling beneath the surface until the incredible and climactic final chapters.

Fans of ‘The Night Circus’ by Erin Morgenstern will love this game between Love and Death, who are such wonderful complex characters and who really drive the novel to new depths – ones you wouldn’t normally expect with a book about two people falling in love. They add a sense of urgency, of the unknown and make the events feel as though they are poised on the brink of a knife, ready to tumble either way. It is rare for me to genuinely have no idea how a novel will end, but ‘The Game of Love & Death’ not only kept me on my toes, but surprised me again and again, and I was crying by the final page.

This is a stunningly beautiful book. I cannot really find the words to express how much I loved it and how much it meant to me. All I can say is read it. If you read only one book this year, let it be this one. It is a masterpiece of writing and one that I will return to again and again.

Want to know a bit more about Martha? Check out my interview with her here!

And follow her on twitter! @mbrockenbrough