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One of Us is Lying: Book Review

I really like a good thriller, and usually anticipate it to be full of who dunnits, mystery, intrigue and fast paced. I particularly like insights from the ‘killer’. I saw a lot of love for this book before picking it up and I had huge expectations and unfortunately the book just missed the bar for me. I gave this 3 stars on goodreads but it’d probably put it closer to 3 and a half as it’s not bad, it’s just average, and I was a bit disapointed.

I’m really getting through the multiple POV book this month. One of Us is Lying has four characters you frequently read through in a chronalogical timeline and includes an epilogue three months after the murder. The premise is, 5 students walk into detention but only 4 walk out alive. So someone died in the room. The death actually happened pretty quickly and right at the start of the story so the rest of the book, I knew, would be focusing on the investigation and experiences of the other four characters.

Each chapter seems to unveil a bit more about each character so you begin to build a picture of their character but I found it quite slow moving. I enjoyed some of the contemporary references but some of the stereotypes made me feel uncomfortable. It felt like what teen movies are based on and that just reminded me of the film ‘Cabin in the Wood’s (this book is nothing like this film, but the select characters, princess, geek, bad boy, jock etc made me feel reminisent). Actually, of all the films it reminded me of The Breakfast Club meets Gossip Girl meets Pretty Little Liars. It was all very relevant I guess which made it feel like this is something that could really happen.

I wouldn’t say I disliked this book, it was just average and I felt it didn’t live up to the hype. There are a couple of red flags which do make a lot more sense with the big reveal of which I didn’t see coming actually at all. So that was good. I just felt some of the filler content was a bit bland and where it was multiple POV’s you didn’t really get as much character depth as I would have liked but for a 370 or so page book it’s a fairly quick, easy read.

One of my goals for 2020 is to read 52 books or around one a week. Some might be new, some are ones I’ve had for a while or been meaning to read, some I haven’t quite finished yet and some will be recommendations from others. You can see all the books I’ve read so far on my Good Reads 2020 Reading Challenge.

June 29, 2020
Break the Curse – Fairyloot Unboxing

Here I am unboxing the March box from Fairyloot which was themed Break the Curse and featured themed items from favourite cursebreaker fandoms. The box was massively delayed and finally got to me on 1st May with worldwide shipping delays so I was excited to finally opening it and I’m looking forward to joining in with the group Readalong next week. I’ve done a little unboxing video which you can watch here.

The box included some really lovely bits such as:
A gorgeous cursebreaker book sleeve designed by @eviebookish inspired by A Curse So Dark and Lonely
Raven Boys headband illustrated by @taratjah inspired by The Raven Cycle
Wonderland passport cover designed by @noverantale inspired by Heartless
Tumbler with a quote from Queen of Nothing designed by @noverantale
Lanyard designed by @catarinabookdesigns and with a Caraval theme
Genie notepad designed by @catarinabookdesigns
Two tarot cards inspired by Throne of Glass and designed by @gabriella.bujdoso
Book of the Month is Bone Crier’s Moon by Kathryn Purdie

June 28, 2020
How We Are Crisis Schooling

When schools closed in the UK due to the pandemic I kind of prepared myself for doing this long term. We are not home schooling right now, it’s not worth the arguments and quite frankly I am not in the mood or motivated enough to dedicate my day to fun filled home schooling. Some parents have been, which is amazing, some kids are back at school and having a great time. Some kids are kind of caught in the middle, like my nine year old daughter.

Evie is supposed to be in year 4, approaching year 5. She’s not one of the year groups the school is open to and we are not key workers. I don’t mind her being her really, so I’m find with her being off until September. I know she’ll catch up, I know we will probably be doing a mix of blended learning next term aswell as she starts year five. I’m not really worried about her education at her age.

However, I thought it might be helpful to share the stuff we are doing for very laid back crisis schooling that Evie is enjoying. It’s pretty parents hands off rather than helping with the odd question, Evie can follow the instructions well enough and it’s keeping her busy and occupied. Our schooling time is generally between 9-1pm with some breaks.

Evie does the three daily lessons for year 4 on BBC bitesize
Two pages of five workbooks which include comprehension, telling the time, decimals and fractions, French and grammar and punctation.
Reading around ten pages of a book a day
Playing a maths game like timestables rockstars
Two Mrs Wordsmith word-building sheets
Mindfullness colouring/emotional learning
Topic – the tudors where we use the home school learning pack
We need to get out for more walks really and aiming to do this daily for 30 minutes.

This allows me to get what I need to do, done and occupy Felix. Adam usually helps her with the maths questions and we are able to check her work after aswell. It’s not perfect, but it is something.

Over the summer holidays we won’t be doing some big school catch up thing but we will continue with some of the things, mostly the mindfullness, reading and maths games. I don’t want to stop doing everything because the days will be very long and boring but I don’t want to continue focusing on school work and lessons. I want to take the pressure off a bit and have more flexibility. That being said, Evie will hopefully be going to her dads in July and August as more things are opening up which will be so good for her.

June 27, 2020
Nevernight Book Review

This month I finally started reading Nevernight, the first in the Nevernight chronicles and I am so glad I did. It was part of a monthly buddy read with a group of other readers, some who had read the book before and some who were reading for the first time. I guess I was inbetween as I’d had the audio book for a while and had heard the epilogue so I knew what was coming but that made the journey getting there so much more interesting.

The book has an unusual format which I’ve not come across before but I really liked it. Part one was full of back and fourth chapters explaining the past and present, with our protagonist Mia on her way to the red church to train to be a blade; an assassin (my kind of book for sure!). The flashbacks paved the way for the the journey to the church. The book also includes lots of footnotes, some quite lengthy and some short, snarky and snappy which I loved. The footnotes provided an interesting way of getting extra lore across in this new world in a way that is more natural to the storytelling because it didn’t make sense for the character to have to explain in the book. The book is narratted, (I suspect by Mr Kindly maybe?) and the footnotes kind of carry that across better than the third-person style text does.

Mia is such a badass character. She’s smart, interesting and confident, sometimes overly so due to her abilities as Darkin and having her shadowcat drink her fear. I mean that would be a pretty cool thing, right? To be able to drink ones fear away. I imagine I’d get a lot more stuff done if I wasn’t held back by certain fears and anxieties. The book is brutal, def one for mature eyes and has sex, a lot of blood (a lot) and violence throughout. There are moments of real laugh out loud humour too, which I loved.

I’m excited to read the next book, Godsgrave and finish the trilogy with Darkdawn because I have no idea where Mia will go next. I can’t wait to follow her journey though. You can buy Nevernight below using my affiliate link.

June 26, 2020
Introducing #BookChatwithKat

#BookChatwithKat is a new community hashtag I have created to use on bookstagram. This is to help share bookish realated content. If you use the hashtag bookchatwithkat on your IG posts I will regularly do shoutouts and share to my stories. I will create bookish photo challenges and templates to use. I want to use the #bookchatwithkat tag so that I can find more book reviews, bookish photos and connect with book lovers.

Creating a Hashtag #BookChatwithKat

So I’ve long been wanting to create my own little bookish community – a place to share books, reviews and enjoy the fandom together. My first step in this has been creating a community hashtag on Instagram. I would love it if you used this hashtag with any book reviews, book box unboxings and general bookish chat. I’ve also created a July Photo Challenge with a bookish theme and I’d love to see you use the prompts to create fun bookish photos.

the bookchatwithchat photo challenge for July

I use photo challenges to inspire me to take new photos and showcase and talk about my favourite books. I want to grow this as a community so I’m excited to see what other content will be shared. I’d love to create an online bookclub to help arrange buddy reads, do reading sprints and challenges. Hopefully, I will be able to do giveaways in the future too.

I feel like I’ve come into my own by changing to a bookish aesthetic and I’ve met some lovely people along the way. I’ve found some amazing small businesses that create bookish inspired goodies. Mostly, I love being able to geek out on my favourite fandoms and characters with others. It’s been a part of me I guess I haven’t really talked about much. Friends know I like to read but maybe don’t get quite how much I love the merch created from these amazing worlds.

I’ve also created some IG story templates for people to use for reading progression and TBR lists. I hope you will join me!

June 25, 2020