IT'S NOT ME IT'S YOU: MHAIRI MCFARLANE

How delightful are the characters in Mhairi McFarlane's books? I can't even tell you. Three books now and I have been delighted by all of her characters. Her writing style in this book is the same as in her previous two. She writes a TON of little asides that go way over my head. However, her characters shine and make me want to read and read and read and then cry when there is no more to read. 

BOOK BLURB:

Delia Moss isn’t quite sure where she went wrong.

When she proposed and discovered her boyfriend was sleeping with someone else – she thought it was her fault.

When she realised life would never be the same again – she thought it was her fault.

And when he wanted her back life nothing had changed – Delia started to wonder if perhaps she was not to blame…

From Newcastle to London and back again, with dodgy jobs, eccentric bosses and annoyingly handsome journalists thrown in, Delia must find out where her old self went – and if she can ever get her back.

You can read more about it HERE. Thank you Edelweiss for the review copy.

I'LL GIVE YOU THE SUN: JANDY NELSON

When you love a book like I loved Jandy Nelson's The Sky is Everywhere, you can get a nervous fluttery feeling in your tummy when you finally have your hands on her second book a whole 4 and a half years later after you feel in love with her writing.

In I'll Give you the Sun, she clearly proves that she is lives in kind of an author land of beautiful writing that is not easily visited by anyone else who writes books. This book is so beautifully written, and that you cannot argue with. It is well thought out and smart. You can see in the first few pages why it took Nelson years to write another book. But did I love it? Maybe.

I had a few issues with it, the main one being I wish she had made the characters at least one or even two years older. Sometimes it just felt too mature to believe the characters were as young as they were supposed to be. Then, even though it was pretty much done perfectly, I didn't like the past/present time switch. I rarely do like any type of voice change or time change because I just like to keep reading the story I'm reading. In this, each time I had to switch to the brother or sister I was annoyed. Lastly,  I thought maybe the writing was too pretty and perfect. I know, hard to imagine having a problem with something being too pretty or perfect, but there were so many beautifully writen lines and descriptions I sometimes couldn't digest them because it was like I said...just TOO much.

So if I had to pick, I would still go with preferring The Sky is Everywhere. But I can't imagine anyone not feeling something wonderful by reading this. And I wish and hope and pray that I don't have to wait another 5 years for her next book, but if I do I know it will be worth the wait.

BOOK BLURB:
Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.

This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

Read more about it HERE.

LOVE AND OTHER UNKNOWN VARIABLES: SHANNON LEE ALEXANDER

Read this book if you have ever wondered what it would be like to be loved, adored, worshiped, and have your spirited lifted by a geeky boy. Our hero in this male POV novel is so stinking loveable and likeable and funny and charming that absolutely nothing could have happened in this book and I would have still enjoyed it. One of my favorite heads to be in as a reader ever.

BOOK BLURB:
Charlie Hanson has a clear vision of his future. A senior at Brighton School of Mathematics and Science, he knows he’ll graduate, go to MIT, and inevitably discover solutions to the universe’s greatest unanswered questions. He’s that smart. But Charlie’s future blurs the moment he reaches out to touch the tattoo on a beautiful girl’s neck.

The future has never seemed very kind to Charlotte Finch, so she’s counting on the present. She’s not impressed by the strange boy at the donut shop—until she learns he’s a student at Brighton where her sister has just taken a job as the English teacher. With her encouragement, Charlie orchestrates the most effective prank campaign in Brighton history. But, in doing so, he puts his own future in jeopardy.

By the time he learns she's ill—and that the pranks were a way to distract Ms. Finch from Charlotte’s illness—Charlotte’s gravitational pull is too great to overcome. Soon he must choose between the familiar formulas he’s always relied on or the girl he’s falling for (at far more than 32 feet per second squared).

You can read more about it HERE.