The Sand and Shadows series spins out of the Shelby Nichols series of books and remains close-knit to the original series. If you haven’t yet discovered Shelby, I’m duty-bound to tell you to read Carrots, the first book in the Shelby Nichols universe. The fast-paced action and fun characters make the books fly past in […]
The Book of Sand is an immersive and rich story that will dry out your mouth and scratch your skin with its vivid images of the desert and its sparse population. Clinging on by a thread to survival, the family at the centre of this tale are a mismatched gimcrack bunch, much like the patched-up […]
Menna van Praag has crafted a wonderful supernatural story that is firmly rooted in the real world. The story follows four sisters who live very ordinary lives with relatable everyday struggles. With quite a focus on the normal part of their lives, the book smoulders along with just dreamy references and flashbacks to the mystical […]
If you’ve been following Shelby Nichols since ‘Carrots’, you are likely to be familiar with Colleen Helme’s writing style. Each of her previous books acts like a sponge that sucks you in with ease, depositing you at the end of the book before you know what’s hit you. As I have mentioned many times before […]
At the time of writing, it is not hard at all to imagine the US President as a populist demagogue, but in the hope that this will soon be a distant memory let’s zoom in to Lizzie Fry’s action-packed fizzer of a witch book. The premise of the book is that magic is present to […]
In Exile is one of those special books that takes you on a journey that is both epic (the return of a god), and very personal (how it affects schoolgirl, Grace, and her friends). From the chance meeting early on, through to the dramatic climax, the feeling that the situation is spiralling out of control […]
The striking thing about Crooked God Machine is its style. It is unlike other books. The alternate dystopian universe presented in this book is rendered believable by the equally unhooked writing. The characters think differently from those of us on planet Earth; their circumstances demand it. Strange monsters lurk in the marshes, machines roam the […]