Monday Minis
It’s been crazy over here. So a true catch-up Monday minis post this week – three books I’ve read (slightly late, to my shame), and where I feel like I don’t have all that much to say about them but want to showcase the books all the same. Huge thanks to the lovely publicists for sending me these books for review – and as always, opinions are entirely my own.
Something Certain, Maybe by Sara Barnard is not quite my usual fare. It is a contemporary YA novel with a good dose of romance, set around Rosie who is going off to university to study pharmacy. Rosie has her life planned out – uni, career, everything. But uni isn’t quite what she expected – and the girl she falls for, Jade, is pretty much the only thing she loves about the experience. And then her mum develops health issues too. Something Certain, Maybe is an ode to not knowing, to the insecurity that moving away to university brings with it. It is a book that shows that you don’t need to know all of the answers, and that it is fine to flounder a bit. And for me, personally, it hit on a lot of things I was feeling in that first few months of going away from home, of realising I was doing the wrong course, of struggling with my own choices. But, at the same time, as a book, this didn’t quite work for me. I found it a bit too slow, a bit too evasive. Perhaps that is because I have grown up since then, but it didn’t grip me – I found myself putting it down again and again, taking breaks – or truly make me care about the characters as more than concepts. It is a solid book, but one that I think I wouldn’t re-read.
Hunt the Stars by Jessie Mihalik is a fun space opera romp. The first in a new series, this features Octavia, the captain of a space ship and her crew, and rival frenemy Torran Fletcher who hires them for a job. It is twisty, though not entirely unpredictable. The characters are solid, and it is very entertaining. I enjoyed my read, even if I’m not sure if I did so enough to continue on to the next in the series. It is a bit too superficial and will-they-won’t-they for my tastes, but I can see this working really well for a lot of readers who are more interested in straight romance elements than I personally am. It is more character focused than on the space opera elements, and it’s definitely not the right book if you’re looking for hard science fiction – in terms of storytelling it is closer to paranormal romance set in space than it is to traditional science fiction, which I think caught me out a bit.
For the Throne by Hannah Whitten is the sequel to last year’s For the Wolf. It concludes the duology, and it is just as compelling and delicious as the first book. It goes into more detail about the characters introduced in For the Wolf, though this second instalment focuses on Neve, Red’s older sister, who has taken on the throne – though for most of the story, she is lost in the Shadowlands. This is a dark fairytale, and where For the Wolf was Beauty and the Beast for those who never wanted the Beast to turn into a sleek prince, this is self-determination, rejection of fate and accident of birth. Best read in quick succession, this is a duology I’d recommend for fun escapism and folklore-inspired fantasy fans. It has grown-up fairy tale vibes, but far less wholesome, and it is completely up my street. These aren’t perfect books, and I don’t think I’d go as far as consider them favourites, but I’ve reread the first one, and I’ll probably reread the second one too. They’re the sort of lovely comforting books with an edge that just work for me.