#53 Warcross

Warcross by Marie Lu

Ready Player One meets Dota 2, if you like either of those then you will undoubtedly love this!

A few years ago i read Legend and really enjoyed it then quickly followed it up by reading Prodigy which i also enjoyed, ive no idea why i never finished the trilogy by reading Champion... I think at the time a lot of people said it wasnt a great ending so i avoided it. My point is that i enjoyed the writing and since then ive added a few more of her books to my TBR, mainly The Young Elites which i am yet to read but when i saw the gorgeous cover of Warcross i knew i had to have it, its beautiful!

I read the description and instantly fell in love with the premise and actually started it quite soon after buying it i picked it up to read which is rare, normally they sit dormant in my bedroom for ages!

The story follows Emika Chen who is an orphaned juvenile delinquent living in a run down apartment in New York City, she is a skilled hacker and works as a bounty hunter meaning she hunts down petty criminals for the police department to cash in the monetary reward. When she is 3 months behind on her rent and faces imminent eviction she decides to hack into the game Warcross which has a yearly tournament for the best teams, she decides to try and steal a high level power up from one of the players in order to sell to pay off her rent arrears but when she accidentally glitches into the game for the whole world to see she fears that she will be arrested but when she receives a call from Hideo Tanaka the owner of Henka Games who created Warcross instead of anger he offers her a job... She must track down another hacker called Zero who is trying to sabotage the tournament so she is ultimately entered into the Warcross tournament as a Wildcard.

Right so for full disclosure reasons i really couldnt get into the first half of the book, i found it SO bloody boring! Dont get me wrong there were bits and pieces that happened that were interesting but i was thinking why isnt the game being explained more? why isnt she explaining more about the glasses and how they work? I love love loved the world but couldnt get why she didnt build on it more, it was so futuristic and cool but the story focused way too much on Emika! Also the romance was ever so slightly unnecessary, they could have followed the exact same path and just been friends, i hate unnecessary romance!

At around 62% of the way through i suddenly became so invested in the story, something just clicked and i then understood why it had so many 4 and 5 star ratings! For me the most interesting part of this story was the game Warcross, i want to play it! it sounds quite similar to Dota 2 which i spent so much wasted youth playing (no regrets!) unfortunately the story didnt revolve too much around the game and it just a side plot and judging by how this book ended i heavily doubt it will even feature in the sequel!

I have settled on a 3.5 stars rating as i cant forgive how crap the first half was, im sure many people loved it from the start but i just couldnt gel with it but once i was into it OMG couldnt put it down and i will most definitely be picking up the sequel (when it decreases in price and they release a paperback version) also im calling this now, i bet they make this into a film and done right it would be epic!

#52 11 Missed Calls

11 Missed Calls by Elizabeth Carpenter

Firstly thank you to NetGalley for this free arc in exchange for my honest review!

This story follows Debbie who is married with 2 young children, when her second child is little over a month old the family go abroad on holiday with Debbies best friend Monica, her husband and their young son. On this holiday Debbie does not return and no one knows what happened the night she went missing.

The book is told from 2 perspectives, Debbies which is told in past tense and Annies/Anna's (Debbies daughter who was a month old when she diappeared) which is told in present tense. Anna never stopped wondering and looking for her mother, at certain points in her life it became an obsession and clearly messed her up. Debbies story begins when she has Anna and tells the indepth story of how she struggled being a new mum again and juggling 2 children. Her husband Peter seems to be a 'stereotypical husband' of that era (late 80's/early 90's) where he works all day and expects his wife to be a mum but also a chef and maid too, that irritated me to no end. Monica is also a big part of the story as not only is she the best friend but she also ends up marrying Peter and helping to bring up Bobby and Anna which in any thriller is very suspicious.

What this book does well is it makes you believe certain things as true such as we believe Nathan to be Leo's father so we never question that hes alive throughout nor is it ever mentioned that he too disappeared, i liked this twist as it was very clever! The ending was a but meh as Debbie was portrayed to be the loving mother who would do anything for her kids but the ending contradicted that for me.

I have so many mixed feelings about this book, im between a 2 or 3 star here but think im settling on a 2.5. It wasnt a bad book or terribly written i just think there are so many better thrillers out there like Gone Girl, Girl on the Train, The Girl in 6E etc

No i didnt guess the twist but i didnt really care that much either, yes i was intrigued and wanted to see it through until the end and im glad i did but how i know im loving a thriller is because i will constantly be thinking up what the twist is and thinking of my own conspiracies but i wasnt doing that with this book. It wasnt terrible and i did enjoy it but it doesnt stand out much as a UK thriller in my eyes.

#51 Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

<SPOILER FREE>

I LOVED THIS!! OMGGG!! GAHHHHH

I dont even really like fantasy much, ive never gelled with the stories, plot, writing styles, characters, world building... you name it and i will tear it apart. I havent liked a new release YA fantasy in yearssss but this blew me away!

I saw this on Amazon for the bargain price of £4 and i thought well why not give it a go plus the cover is completely stunning and the spine will look beautiful on my shelf. From the first page this had me sucked in, i love a good map!


Ok ill try to stop fangirling now and actually talk about the bloody book! So this is a high fantasy inspired by West African culture/legend. It is told from multiple perspectives chapter to chapter. Zelie is our main protagonist (and shes a badass) when the king kills her mother to destroy all magic in the kingdom Zelie embarks on a journey to restore magic to the land. The other main characters are Amari who is the Kings daughter, Inan who is the kings son and Tzain who is Zelie's brother.

So Amari was the stand out character to me, her character has so much growth and development. The first 50 pages or so shes sweet and innocent and if im honest a bit boring but she bacame a badass in her own right. She didnt rival Zelie but was badass in a different way. Tzain and Inan are slow burners as i wasnt bothered about either of them but as the story went on i grew to love them as much as the girls!

This book is 525 pages and ive heard a lot of people complain about the length but for me when im enjoying a story and im really immersed in it then i want it to be as long as physically possible so i was glad that it was a bit bigger as i got to enjoy the story for longer.

There were SO many twists and turns in this story and it keeps you on your toes every step of the way. Trigger warning for violence as it can be quite gory so if that isnt your thing then i would give this a miss.

Im really happy that the next book comes out soon(ish), im already on the countdown to March 2019!!