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4.5 stars

Book Review: In Search Of Us by Ava Dellaira

Title: In Search Of Us 

Author: Ava Dellaira

Published: March 6th, 2018

Publisher: Hot Key Books

Rating: 🐱🐱🐱🐱

Find the Author: Goodreads 


Disclosure: I received this ARC on NetGalley in exchange for an impartial review. As always, my reviews are fair and unbiased.


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The author of the beloved Love Letters to the Dead returns with a parallel story of a mother and daughter each at age seventeen. Marilyn’s tale recounts the summer she fell in love and set out on her own path. Angie’s story is about her search for her unknown father.
This sweeping multi-generational love story introduces readers to mother-and-daughter pair Marilyn and Angie. To seventeen-year-old Angie, who is mixed-race, Marilyn is her hardworking, devoted white single mother. But Marilyn was once young, too. When Marilyn was seventeen, she fell in love with Angie’s father, James, who was African-American. But Angie’s never met him, and Marilyn has always told her he died before she was born. When Angie discovers evidence of an uncle she’s never met she starts to wonder: What if her dad is still alive, too? So she sets off on a journey to find him, hitching a ride to LA from her home in New Mexico with her ex-boyfriend, Sam. Along the way, she uncovers some hard truths about herself, her mother, and what truly happened to her father.

First Thoughts…

I only just recently bought Love Letters To The Dead, Ava’s previous novel, but couldn’t help requesting this gorgeous book on Netgalley. There was something so entrancing about the synopsis that screamed READ ME, BECCA!

My Review…

The striking thing about In Search Of Us is that I wasn’t expecting for it to move me so much. I picked it up thinking it would be a lighter read than it was, and it totally threw me off my game (in an amazing way, somehow.) Angie, our main character in one of the alternate chapters, has never known who her Dad is. She was raised solely by her Mother, Marilyn (who is our other narrator, taking us into the past). See, Angie is mixed-race, something her Mother can’t understand, as a white woman. She knows her dad was African-American, but here she is in the middle, not knowing where she fits in. Marilyn never planned to raise Angie alone, this we find out in the past scenes, and tells Angie that her real Dad has passed. But when Angie realizes that her Mother might have been lying, she sets out for a sense of belonging. Angie searches for her family ties in L.A., intertwining to where past-Marilyn meets James – Angie’s father.
I loved the mirrors between Angie and young Marilyn. They had so many things in common (that they didn’t even realise) and that lay subtly between the lines. I think that the message in In Search of Us is hugely important, especially for mixed-race people who don’t look like one/their Parents. Ava handles this with such care and transparency that was so effortless. But with the highs in a story come the lows, like the whirlwind love story of James and Marilyn, leading to disastrous ends between their families. These tie-up scenes toward the end really tugged at my heartstrings and I felt myself poring out emotion onto the pages.
Overall, though it is a moving and heartfelt read, it’s more than that: it’s modern, important and oh-so-amazing. I love that the lines of the truth toward the end were blurred so that we might not know everything that happened in the past, especially considering every novel isn’t meant to be tied-up neatly at the end. This was such a boomerang of a novel, coming out of nowhere and just stealing my heart. While the chapters bounced oddly, I still can’t think of anyone I wouldn’t recommend this to. I’ll be getting a paperback very soon – it’s that good. Four-and-a-half, brilliant stars!


What did you think of In Search Of Us?

Let me know in the comments, on twitter @LittleMemoirs or on Facebook!
happy reading!

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Blog Tour & Review: The Red Ribbon by Lucy Adlington

Title: The Red Ribbon

Author: Lucy Adlington

Published: September 21st, 2017

Publisher: Hot Key Books

Find the Author: Goodreads 


Disclosure: I was sent this book for review. As always, my reviews are fair and unbiased.

Rose, Ella, Marta and Carla. In another life we might have all been friends together. But this was Birchwood. 
As fourteen-year-old Ella begins her first day at work she steps into a world of silks, seams, scissors, pins, hems and trimmings. She is a dressmaker, but this is no ordinary sewing workshop. Hers are no ordinary clients. Ella has joined the seamstresses of Birkenau-Auschwitz. 
Every dress she makes could be the difference between life and death. And this place is all about survival. 
Ella seeks refuge from this reality, and from haunting memories, in her work and in the world of fashion and fabrics. She is faced with painful decisions about how far she is prepared to go to survive. 
Is her love of clothes and creativity nothing more than collaboration wth her captors, or is it a means of staying alive?
Will she fight for herself alone, or will she trust the importance of an ever-deepening friendship with Rose?
One thing weaves through the colours of couture gowns and camp mud – a red ribbon, given to Ella as a symbol of hope.

Review

While I remember learning about concentration camps at school during History lessons, we never touched base on what it was like for the captors. In particular, these girls of The Red Ribbon, were prisoners held in the camps and forced into dressmaking. Although Ella, our main character, shares a love of clothes with the others, their passion is pushed aside and destroyed while they are commanded to collaborate together making couture gowns amongst the muddy landscape of their prison. 

As Ella, Marta, Rose and Carla become the seamstresses of Auschwitz, I’m truly taken by the element of sheer truth and believe-ability that has gone into the historical backdrop of these distressing times, particularly emotional for me (and I’m sure other readers) at various times. For a moment, I was wondering how such a deeply harrowing time in history could be conveyed as a Young Adult story, but Lucy does this with care, sensitivity and raw emotion that is suitable and readable for any reader from the early tween years. 

Overall, I just can’t stop thinking about The Red Ribbon ever since I closed the last page. I am truly in awe of the effort, truth and pure brilliance that Lucy Adlington has put into this novel, with these fragile and broken, yet strong and kind, characters bound together in a time where they were forced apart. This is a truly mesmerising tale of hope, sacrifice and friendship and I loved it!


Rating & Recs

Perfect for YA and Adult fans alike!

Now, for a special extract from The Red Ribbon!


I’M ELLA. I SEW…

 ‘I’m Ella. I sew…’
Imagine this:  It’s your first day of work. If you don’t do well, you’re out. Once you’re out, you’re dead.  You are literally working to survive.
This is what 14 year old Ella faces in the nightmare world of Birchwood.  Her fictional experiences are based on the real-life stories of young women prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during World War Two, where a select few were saved from death in order to work as dressmakers for their cruel camp guards and for fashion-loving Nazi officers’ wives.
Ella realises she’ll have to toughen up quickly. She fakes confidence and skills to get a job in the Birchwood sewing workshop.
‘To escape from the nightmare I wrapped myself in a world of silk and stitching…’She’s ambitious. Despite the horrors all around she dreams of escaping from Birchwood and opening her own dress shop one day. She refuses to be treated as just a less-than-human, as just a slave with a number not a name.  Talent and determination keep her going… along with the memory of her beloved grandparents…
‘I pushed material under the new machine’s sewing foot and let the stitches run on and on and on, if only to hear the sound of my childhood once more. As it whirred away I was back in Grandma’s room, a little girl again, picking up pins from the carpet…’One of Ella’s biggest challenges comes as her friendship grows with gentle, heroic Rose. Rose is a dreamer, but without Ella’s fierce streak – a quiet hero who teaches Ella the power of love and hope. She gives Ella a red ribbon as a bond of friendship.  In her quest to get home, Ella has to decide how far she’s prepared to go to survive. Will saving her own life mean sacrificing her values and her friends? 

Lucy Adlington is a writer, actress and costume historian. Her novels for teenagers, written under the name L. J. Adlington, including The Diary of Pelly-D and Burning Mountain, have been nominated and/or shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, the Manchester Book Prize,the Leeds Book Prize and the Rotherham Book Award. She also writes non-fiction for adults about the history of clothes, including Great War Fashion and Stitches in Time: The Story of theClothes We Wear. She founded the historical costume events company, History Wardrobe, has appeared on BBC Woman’s Hour discussing the history of underwear and she lives on a working farm in Yorkshire. She is currently writing a non-fiction book about women in the1940s.

Have you read The Red Ribbon?


Let me know what you thought in the comments or on twitter @LittleMemoirs!


ALSO: join in the Blog Tour celebrations by tweeting your thoughts and use the tag #TheRedRibbon!


happy reading!

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Book Review: “The Fall of Butterflies” by Andrea Portes

Title: The Fall Of Butterflies

Author: Andrea Portes

Published: May 10th, 2017

Publisher: HarperTEEN

Find the Author: Goodreads 


Disclosure: I was sent this book for review purposes. As always, my reviews are fair and unbiased.

We Were Liars meets Looking for Alaska in a uniquely funny and heartbreaking teen novel about a passionate-yet-doomed friendship, set against a backdrop of wealth and glamour.


Willa Parker, 646th and least-popular resident of What Cheer, Iowa, is headed east to start a new life. Did she choose this life? No, because that would be too easy—and nothing in Willa’s life is easy. It’s her famous genius mother’s idea to send her to ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Pembroke Prep, and Willa has no intention of fitting in. But when she meets peculiar, glittering Remy Taft, the richest, most mysterious girl on campus, she starts to see a foothold in this foreign world—a place where she could maybe, possibly, sort of fit in. When Willa looks at Remy, she sees a girl who has everything. But for Remy, having everything comes at a price. And as she spirals out of control, Willa can feel Remy spinning right out of her grasp.


Andrea Portes, author of Anatomy of a Misfit, spins a similarly incandescent, heartfelt story that explores the meaning of friendship, new beginnings, and the precarious joy and devastating pain of finding home in a place—a person—with wings.

First Thoughts
When a book is described as We Were Liars meets Looking for Alaska, you don’t think about reading it – you just do it. That’s the first thing that stood out for me, aside from the gorgeous autumnal cover and provoking blurb. I just want to take a moment to thank Harper360 and the whole team for their amazing opportunities that they give me to read these incredible books. I feel so much more than blessed to get to read these books ahead of time (even though most of my reviews are late, so sorry!) and really get to hold these characters so close to my heart. It’s one of the best feelings in the world!

Review
Willa is somewhat of a misunderstood character. She lives with her Dad, but her whole academic life has been put under close and precise orders by her famously smart Mother. She’s not popular, far from it, and she’s consumed in a cloud of never-ending depressive clouds above. Her life in Iowa is simple and consistent, but then her Mother decides that Willa will be attending a new school: a high-class, exclusive prep school that cost more than Willa can contemplate thinking of those kinds of numbers. 
Pembroke Prep is different. Willa meets Remy there, a highly popular girl with more than a few problems of her own. When Willa sees Remy, this girl who has everything she could ever want in the world, she can’t understand why she would ever need to feel this troubled. But Remy knows the true price of having everything she could ever want, and it’s not pretty. They start a twisted, borderline crazy friendship that brings Willa’s live to turmoil as she follows a crowd that she shouldn’t be in. Pembroke Prep isn’t like Iowa, and it’s more than clear that it has it’s deep, dark secrets. 
I just loved this book so much that it’s hard to think of a time when I hadn’t been consumed by these characters and this friendship. It’s not your usual kind of friendship – it’s borderline doomed, on the verge of complete failure. But Willa finally feels a part of her is home, and that changes everything. Remy is out of control most of the time and Willa can feel their connection slipping in parts, despite their unbreakable bond. Still, there’s something magnificent about this book, a feeling that makes me want to cry and smile and just fall into the pages over and over. 
Overall, The Fall of Butterflies will make your heart soar with compassion. The POV is a different kind, but it just makes it all the more unique. I was really going to give this book such high standards to live up to the books it’s compared to and although it didn’t blow them out of the water, it landed right among the greats perfectly. So much love for this book! 
Rating & Recs
I’d recommend this book to YA readers that loved Jessi Kirby, E. Lockhart and John Green.

Have you read The Fall of Butterflies?


Let me know what you thought in the comments or on twitter @LittleMemoirs!


happy reading!

Blog Tour & Book Review: “Sleeper” by J.D. Fennell

Title: Sleeper

Author: J.D. Fennell

Published: April 28th, 2017

Publisher: The Dome Press

Find the Author: Goodreads 


I received this book for review on my blog! As always, my reviews are fair and unbiased.

Sixteen-year-old Will Starling is pulled from the sea with no memory of his past. In his blazer is a strange notebook with a bullet lodged inside: a bullet meant for him. As London prepares for the Blitz, Will soon finds himself pursued by vicious agents and a ruthless killer known as the Pastor. All of them want Will’s notebook and will do anything to get it. 

As Will’s memory starts to return, he realises he is no ordinary sixteen-year old. He has skills that make him a match for any assassin. But there is something else. At his core is a deep-rooted rage that he cannot explain. Where is his family and why has no one reported him missing?Fighting for survival with the help of Mi5 agent-in-training, Anna Wilder, Will follows leads across London in a race against time to find the Stones of Fire before the next air raid makes a direct hit and destroys London forever.

First Thoughts

I love a good thriller as much as the next reader, but when it’s a YA Historical/Thriller that sounds like a fast-paced book straight from the movies, Sleeper just got a lot more exciting. I was extremely excited to be asked on the Blog Tour for this awesome book! 

Review 

As soon as I start reading Sleeper, we’re delving right into the action. I was intrigued to read such in-depth meets fast paced compulsive reading from a Historical Thriller from the get-go. First we meet Will Starling, our main character. He’s intelligent and memorable, and has been training since he was in his early tween years as an agent of VIPER, an organisation that not only had multi-worldwide facilities and connections, but more power than anyone could comprehend. 

It’s 1941 when we first meet Will in England. He’s been trained for this day, and knows exactly what he had to do: steal a notebook packed with codes among other things, to give to VIPER, commanded to kill anyone that means to stop his mission. But Will is hiding a deadly secret of his own: he’s never going to give it to them. He’s planning a whole other kind of plan with the information within the pages. But before he can do just that, the chase is on. He ends up battling for his life at sea, only to be rescued with a blank slate of the boy he was. He doesn’t know why people are chasing him, who he really is, or why this notebook seems to be the only thing that will help him now.

Just WOW. This book had more turns and twists than I could keep up with. The action was played out comprehensively and effortlessly and I loved that there was a puzzle and mystery within the story lines. Will was an exceptionally memorable character, alike the kind of Mission Impossible and Andy McNab books with white knights and heroes worthwhile of their screen – or book – time. The pace was perfect for the novel and kept me reading until the early hours of the morning, unputdownable. 

Overall, Sleeper is a thrilling and one-of-a-kind novel with an enthralling edge and mystery-driven plot. It had a certain kind of magic that makes a book just work. Even though at times Will’s character made choices that perplexed me (this isn’t a totally bad thing – surprises are good!) I would still rate this as one of the best books of it’s kind in YA. I’m so honoured to have gotten to read this book that I might not have had the chance to if I wasn’t on the tour. Completely amazing!


Rating

Guest Post

I got the amazing chance to ask J.D. Fennell a subject to write about for my Blog Tour stop! So, I chose: What YA Characters have stayed with you and why?

This was a difficult call, only because there are so many to choose from. Unless they are villains, we want our YA characters to have drive, depth and courage. Those that spring to mind are Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mallek, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Scout Finch – I could go on.
There are two that really stand out for me; two that made me want to keep returning to their world. They are also, controversially, two young adult characters from adult literature.
Aliena – Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
Aliena is brought up a lady, the daughter of Earl Bartholomew and sister of Richard, a sulky and lazy boy. When we first meet Aliena, her wit and confidence make her popular with the people of Shiring. On the flipside, these traits alienate her from outsiders, specifically Jack Jackson and the evil William Hamleigh, who consider her rude and spoiled. Aliena is my favourite narrator in a book rich with wonderful characters. She is vocal, confident and brave. Without spoiling the story, life gets pretty awful for Aliena. She goes through hell over and over again, yet she gets back up and carries on every time to protect her brother and fulfil her father’s legacy. A small tear is welling in my eye at the thought of her. She is a 17th century Scarlett O’Hara and what’s not to love about that.
Jon Snow – Game of Thrones
When we first meet Jon Snow in the Game of Thrones novel, he is fourteen years old, the bastard son of Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. Although highborn, Jon’s bastard status excludes him from both sides of Westeros society. Despite being close to his siblings, he grows up an outsider, included, but not included, in the Stark family life. Early on he is perfectly described, by Theon Greyjoy, “the runt of the litter” – a description (which may be from the TV show only) also applied to his direwolf cub, Ghost. I love all of the Thrones characters, however, Jon’s resilience, his grit, courage, his sense of fairplay and his mystery make him intriguing and have me returning to Westeros every now and again to reread one of his POV chapters. 

What do you think of Sleeper?


Will you be adding it to your TBR?


Let me know what you thought in the comments or on twitter @LittleMemoirs or #SleeperBlogTour 

happy reading!

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