July

The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
All Sarah Waters books are fantastic and this is one of the best. I actually had a nightmare about it. Very chilling, in a psychological horror sort of way. I was reminded of the film 'The Others.' Not because of the plot, I won't give that away, but just the feel of it. The way you're thinking 'I'm not scared at all, aren't I brave' most of the way through, and then you turn the last page and realise you'll never sleep tonight.
This one gets one of my rarely bestowed STARs.


What I was - Meg Rosoff
Even better than How I Live Now. A weird mix of Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn. Very different, and it's always nice to come across something different.








Maurice or The Fisher's Cot - Mary Shelley
More remarkable than the story is the fact that this tale for children by the author of Frankenstein was considered lost and only discovered in 1997, 150 years after it was written.
It's quite a sweet story, which she wrote for the daughter of a friend. It was found in the library of an Italian man who is descended from a friend of Shelley's. Amazing. There's an article about it here.


Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer
OK, I'm sad and pathetic, but I'd no sooner closed this book than I'd ordered Breaking Dawn on Amazon. And I may or may not be reading Midnight Sun on the Stephanie Meyer website (she posted it there, it's allowed, so neh!).
And really it's just too ironic of me to be yelling, 'Get a life, Bella' when I just spent 3 days of mine reading a million-page book about vampires.
Leave your inner feminist at the door, girls.



Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer
Good grief. Just, good grief.
Know when to stop, people.