SMILE - Run, Sleeping Dog, Run!

We've all probably seen this. BUT STILL!!!

Dauntless Tour - Bravery

When I found out I was Team Dauntless as part of the #InsurgentUK, I was a mix of thrilled and laughing madly to myself and for the UK publisher for seeing me as Dauntless. Thrilled as Dauntless is, of course, the best Faction in the Divergent trilogy (I mean, Tris and Four were part of it! I mean, come on!), but laughable as I don't see myself as brave or fearless. I see myself as someone who has fears but, somehow, manages to copes with them.

So, when my fellow Dauntless were chatting about our tour and suggested I write about bravery and ask the question what is the bravest thing I have ever done, I wasn't sure if I could answer them with the rightness that it deserves (I, secretly, wanted to write a short story about bravery). But the more I thought this question over, the more I realise that I could answer it with the rightness it deserve as it question my views on what bravery means to me.

So, to answer the question of "what is the bravest thing I have ever done?". Well, two things have happened in my life that you could consider brave.

The first was coming out. I know that doesn't seem like a true act of bravery, but it was terrfying. I had to trying to find a way to tell my family for a while and, one day, my mother decide to join facebook. This, for a reason I'm not 100% certain I understand, made me tell her. I was scared of what this news would mean. I was scared of her reaction. But Mum, calm as anything, went "Well, I have suspect for a while now." And with that, during the BBC 10 O'Clock news bullet, Mum and I talked. I can't remember about what, exactly, but we talked and it was nice that we talked about what this meant and how she was happy for me to be true to myself. The next day, she told my sister and got the response of "Well, about bloody time."

If you have come out to your family, then you understand how terrifiying and unnerving it is, and how to its all of your courage to just say it, even though you.

The second bravest thing I've done to survive my father's death. It was very sudden and it felt like my world had ended. Not just my world, but the world of my family. The man I looked up to, the man who who had been there my whole life, was gone. There's a line in Lemony's Snicket's "The Bad Beginning", which sums this up: "If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possible imagine it."

And, somehow, we were meant to carry on living our lives, even though our world had ended. But we did. Somehow, we did. Even though this was hard and painful and frightening. We would burst into tears for no reason (I remember one time suddenly carrying in a temp job's toilet as I heard the song "Remain" by Kubb on my iPod. My dad had never heard of the band, so no idea why that happened). Even though I would find going to sleep terrifiying as I feared I would never wake up again. Even though the world outside the window kept going, while it felt like our world had stopped. But with all of these, we all supported each other and, with our private and collected bravery, we carried on into the unknown future.

I know that this isn't coming across the way I want it to. But, if you ask who I consider to be the bravest people in the world, I would instantly answer by saying "My Mum and my Sister". There are two of the strongest, fearless and utterly remarkable women I have ever know. I owe them so much in the past few years.

And now we get to the point of this blog post: bravery. Or rather, my view on bravery. We all have the power to be brave and fearless. We can be brave like Tris, Four and the rest of Dauntless were in Divgerent, by going things for the adrenaline rush. We can be brave like huge acts of bravery, such as solders and aid-workers who go to warn torn countries, or standing up for people who have no voice such as Aung San Suu Kyi or Martin Luther King. Or we can be quietly brave, by being there for someone who needs someone to hold their hand in a time which frightens you both.

I valve bravery in a person, as I feel most of us do. And while I value the huge acts of selfless bravery, I also value the smaller, often unnoticed acts of bravery, and that, to me, is what being a Dauntless is about. Being brave and fearless no matter the situation: whether that bravery is life-changing or not.

GoodRead - A Confusion Of Princes

I loved Garth Nix from the moment I read Sabriel (I still want a film version of this book and I still want Tim Curry to be the voice of my fave character, Moggit!). I feel this is very important to state before I continue with my review of his latest book, A Confusion of Princes (or, if you have read my twitter when I was reading it, A Confession of Princes). When Rosi from Harper Collins emailed, asking if there any books coming out in the months ahead (this was in early February), I asked for Garth Nix without thinking (along with Fever by Lauren DeStefano and Insurgent by Veronica Roth - but then, who wouldn't?). And, a week later, I received a copy of A Confusion of Princes, even though the book isn't out till middle of May, making it over 3 months early! As I love Garth Nix, I dropped everything and started to read it. Hence, even though you're reading this now (late April/early May), I actually am writing this on the 1st March. So 2 months ahead of myself.

A Confusion of Princes (Garth Nix's first book for "older readers" [publisher's words, not mine] since he wrote the third book in the Old Kingdom series, Abhorsen) follows the three deaths of Prince Khemri, enhanced human being and connected to the Imperial Mind. All he wanted was to be the next Emperor. But no sooner as Prince Khemri graduate to full Princehood that learns that there are millions of Prince, each willing to kill the other, and only one of them will be Emperor… And it's not long before Khemri begins to question everything about the Empire, the Imperial Mind, the Emperor, even himself…

Not sure how to start this but say it's a standalone! This makes me a little happy because, as much as I like series and trilogies, sometimes I want one book where you close the book and know that it's ended, rather than wait for, usually, a year to find out what happens next!

And it's sci-fi! A Space Opera, according to the Press Release (not sure what that means but it wasn't, as first thought, a soap opera set in space where, halfway through, a character would turn round and say "It's not your baby"). And it's actually sci-fi! You have alien technology, alien cultures, alien weaponry, actually aliens. It was full on sci-fi! And, as me and Rhys from Thirst for Fiction chatted on Facebook, there isn't many real sci-fi books in YA at the moment.

Because it is very sci-fi (and that is a little outside my normal reads), it took me a while to get my head round all the tech-slang, the titles and how everything worked and clicked together. If you're a huge sci-fi reader, then this won't be a problem for you. If you're not a sci-fi reader or you dip in and out of the genre, you have to be really with it to remember the difference between Psitek, Bitek & Mektek (I still not 100% sure I can tell the differences are between these three!) or you will put the book down a lot to think everything over (which I also did on few occasions).

Also, character development. Now that's a point I wanted to raise as I'm in two minds over it. As the story goes forward, Prince Khemri's character changes. Not much but a little as he begins to think for himself and release that, to use the expression, all that glitters isn't good. Garth wrote this change very subtly. It wasn't one big moment and everything changed. There were little moments that slowly, over time, made Khemri think about the situation he was in, and figure out what he actually wants.

In my eyes, nothing is going to be as good as Sabriel, but Confusion of Princes does try! This book will make his fans be itching to get it, and most sci-fi readers, I think, will enjoy this book!

Books And Their Theme Songs (Volume 11)

Two months have passed and now it's time for another exciting(ish) tale of BOOKS AND THEIR THEME SONGS! I hope you guys like the random music choices I have in store for you...!

WITHER by Lauren DeStefano
"Right In The Night" by Whigfield & "Born to Die" by Lana Del Rey



BLOODROSE by Andrea Cremer
"Come Back Down" by Greg Laswell featuring Sara Bareilles


172 HOURS ON THE MOON by Johan Harstad
"Doomsday" by Murray Gold (from the Doctor Who soundtrack) & "Heads Will Roll" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs



THE MISERABLE MILL by Lemony Snicket
"The Violet Hour" by The Civil Wars and "Tomorrow Will Be Kinder" by the Secret Sisters



THE LAST ECHO by Kimberly Derting
"Just A Game" by Birdy

SMILE - Anyone Else Feel Like This When Grammar Is Used Incorrectly?

Cover Reveals

Over the course of the weekend, three new covers were revealed that I thought you guys might want to see. We have REVIVED by Cat Clarke, LOSING LILA by Sarah Alderson & OBLIVION by Anthony Horowitz. And here they are!

So, guys, what do you think? You like? Or don't you like?

GoodRead - The Last Echo

As you guys probably know, I am a bit of a fan of Kimberly Derting's Body Finder series. So, after some begging on Twitter, the lovely Sam from Headline was very kind to send me a copy of this book (and another book which I should be reading soon, if I can make time...).

In this, the third book in the series, Violet is now part of a secret special investigative team - the Centre - and uses her morbid gift to sense dead bodies and their killers. But when she and her team start investigating a new serial killer - the Collector (or the Girlfriend Collector, depending on what you prefer...) - Violet is determined to catch this guy. But, without knowing it, she might be next...

Now, I love the series and I do feel that this is one of the best written novels in the series, and has one of the scariest killers in YA fiction that I have read in a while. One of the chapters told from the killer's point of view, I found extremely dark and extremely creepy. For a crime fan like myself, I love that Kimberly is unflinching with the profile of this dark and twisted character.

But, at the same time, it isn't my fave of the series so far. There is two real reasons that I feel that I have this problem. The first is the set-up itself. In the last book, Desires of the Dead, when Violet made the decision to join the team, I thought it was a smart move for the story to take. But, in The Last Echo, I found it took me longer to get to grips with the book because Violet was in a different situation and we had a new cast of characters to get use to. And, sometimes, it felt a bit overwhelming and, because of this, it took the first 100 pages to get my head round before it all "clicked" into place.

The second reason why the book wasn't my fave was because of the lack of Jay and the sudden increase of Rafe. One of the reasons why I fell in love with the series and the mix of the dark crime with the light relief of Violet's relationship with Jay. In Last Echo, we hardly see Jay so we hardly saw any time to spend in Violet and Jay's company. There was very little light relief in this book.

Because we spent so little time with Jay, we spent a lot of time with Rafe. I'm not sure if Kimberly is planning to do a love triangle with Rafe but, if so, DON'T DO IT, KIMBERLY! In different situations, I would find Rafe a complex character, on the edge of being an anti-hero at times. But with the whole "maybe love triangle" hanging over him and Violet, I found it hard to like him.

With all the negative points I have pointed out, I still feel that the Body Finder series is one of the best crime-based series in the YA genre at the moment and I will be waiting on baited breath for book four in the series (yes, there will be a book four. The epilogue left us in no doubt about that!)

SMILE - So...

So... for the last two weeks, my SMILE has been fine. Expect the two youTube videos I have used have been "taken down by the user". And when I saw this had happened not once but twice, I felt like this:

So I wanted to write this small "I'm sorry", here is a pic of a cute cat and Miranda eating cake. ENJOY!


(The links for the above pics are from F.Y.FRIENDS GIFS [pic one and pic two], I Can Has Cheezeburger & Fell From Fiction.