Rain Before Rainbows by Smriti Prasadam-Halls (Review)

Rain Before Rainbows by Smriti Prasadam-Halls, David Litchfield (Illustrations)

About the author

Smriti Prasadam-Halls is an award-winning, internationally best-selling children’s author whose books have been published in more than thirty languages. Her titles include the Publishers Weekly #1 bestseller I Love You Night and Day, illustrated by Alison Brown. Smriti Prasadam-Halls previously worked at the BBC and in children’s publishing and television as a writer and editor for twelve years. She lives in London with her husband and three sons.

About the illustrator

David Litchfield is an illustrator from Bedfordshire in the U.K.

Blurb

In this heartfelt story about courage, change, and moving on, a girl and her companion fox travel together away from a sorrowful past, through challenging and stormy times, toward colour and light and life. Along the way they find friends to guide and support them, and when the new day dawns, it is full of promise. With gorgeous, richly realised illustrations and immense hope at its heart, Rain Before Rainbows holds out a ray of sunshine for anyone looking for light.

Review

I discovered this book a few days ago and I must admit I fell in love with it straight away. The illustrations in this book are absolutely beautiful and I got my husband to read it straight after me as I wanted him to see this wonderful book as well. Although the physical book of this is not released yet so I had to enjoy the digital version but the digital version on Kindle and Apple Books is free.

This book has been written for people going through a difficult period which with lockdown in place people have found the world a rather different place and this book is all about finding the light in dark places.

Rain Before Rainbows is a wonderful book for children and adults alike. The message is all about hope and that with friends and support from others you can get through the darkness. The girl and her friend the fox go on a journey to find a new and better day, they meet new friends and find a new day with hope and promise.

I highly recommend this book to everyone and I give this book a massive 5 out of 5 Dragons. I have also preordered myself the hardback copy of this book because I love it so much.

Purchase Links

Waterstones • Book Depository

(All purchases made using one of the above affiliate links gives a small percentage of money to myself with no extra cost to yourself. All proceeds go towards the upkeep of this blog. Thank you)

First Lines Friday: 12/06/2020

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

Hello!

Welcome to my first ever First Lines Friday! I have been following this weekly feature for a while now and have decided to give it a go because I have been enjoying reading people’s posts and trying to guess the book.

So here are the first lines…

(The answer is below the cats!)

Her skin was rather sallow, Anne thought as she studied herself in the silver mirror, and she had too many moles, but at least her face was a fashionable oval. At eleven she had no womanly figure to speak of, but that hopefully would change in the next year or so.

The answer is Anne Boleyn: A King’s Obsession by Alison Weir

Fresh from the palaces of Burgundy and France, Anne draws attention at the English court, embracing the play of courtly love.

But when the King commands, nothing is ever a game.

Anne has a spirit worthy of a crown – and the crown is what she seeks. At any price.

So that is my First Lines Friday! Please drop me a link with your First Lines Friday and I will head over for a visit.

WWW Wednesday: 10/06/2020

WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

The rules are answer the questions below and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you will read next?

It’s that time again everyone! Here is what I have been up to in my book world.

What I am currently reading

I started this yesterday and so far it is proving to be very enjoyable.

What I recently finished reading

I loved this book so much, here is my review.

What I think I will read next

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As per usual I’m never sure what I will read next but here are some of the options that I might consider.

So that is my WWW Wednesday, please drop me a comment with your WWW Wednesday or any thoughts of the books I have listed.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I’ve Added to my TBR and Forgotten Why

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For more info please check out Jana’s blog.

This is a perfect subject for me because my TBR list is full of books I can’t remember why I added them. This will be hard to just choose ten so I have gone for authors I have never read before or indeed heard of before! I really can’t even remember adding these books to honest.

Penelope’s Daughter by Laurel Corona

With or Without Pulp by Michael J. Elsey

Grave Robbers by Sherry Allred

Apricots and Wolfsbane by K. M. Pohlkamp

Fawkes by Nadine Brandes

White Lady by Jessica Bell

The Mermaid’s Sister by Carrie Anne Noble

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

Almost Midnight by Rainbow Powell

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So that is my chosen ten. Please drop me a comment with the link to your Top Ten Tuesday and I will head over for a visit.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins (Review)

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

About the author

Suzanne Collins (born August 10, 1962) is an American television writer and author. She is known as the author of The Underland Chronicles and The Hunger Games trilogy.

Blurb

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to out charm, outwit, and out manoeuvre his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined — every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favour or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute . . . and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

Review

I was so excited when I saw this book was being released as I love The Hunger Games trilogy so I immediately preordered the book and started reading it as soon as it arrived on my doorstep. I will be honest I did not read it as quickly as I wanted but my course reading delayed things slightly, otherwise this book would have been finished in a very short period of time as I could not put it down.

It was so wonderful to revisit the world of The Hunger Games again and I was not disappointed. I know a lot of people have not been happy with this book but I think it is because they weren’t expecting it to be about a young President Snow and how he came to be. I also liked how different this book was from The Hunger Games, it was a lot more philosophical and thought provoking than the trilogy. It really made me think about the human condition and what a human can be capable of in the right conditions.

Seeing an early version of the Hunger Games before all the glamour and showbiz that appears in the trilogy was really interesting. The arena was a plain old beaten up sports arena and nothing fancy, it was a very different perspective. The tributes were also treated very differently and I felt really sorry for them, especially Lucy Gray.

Lucy Gray was an interesting character who I couldn’t help but feel sorry for. This poor girl who loves music and is very gifted has the roughest ride possible. She also sings the song that we know so well from The Hunger Games. I really liked Lucy Gray and the Covey, they were interesting characters and I would have loved to have learned more about them.

Seeing Snow as an 18 year old boy and learning about how he lived through the war was also an eye opener that you do not see in the trilogy. The war was brutal for everyone and the things that people resorted to to survive were extreme and not something usually seen when the world is normal.

This story is primarily the development of the tyrant President Snow and how he came to be how he is. You can see how this 18 year old will make choices in his life to get where he wants to be. He won’t care who gets in his way or who gets hurt, the only thing that matters is that he gets to the top.

Overall, I loved this book and highly recommend it but I know some Hunger Games fans will not agree as it is rather different. I give this book a big 5 out of 5 Dragons.

Purchase Links

Book Depository • Waterstones

(All purchases made using one of the above affiliate links gives a small percentage of money to myself with no extra cost to yourself. All proceeds go towards the upkeep of this blog. Thank you)

May 2020 Wrap Up

Hello my fellow Book Dragons

I hope everyone has had a good May and have a fantastic reading plan for June.

So this is what my May looked like in books, as usual please click the picture of the book to go to my review.

Books I read in May

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

352 Pages

Format read: Paperback

5/5 Dragons

The Fall of Icarus by Ovid

56 Pages

Format read: Paperback

5/5 Dragons

The Complete Poems by Catullus

224 Pages

Format read: Paperback

3/5 Dragons

Katherine of Aragon, the True Queen by Alison Weir

624 pages

Format read: Paperback

4/5 Dragons

The Dolphins, the Whales and Gudgeon by Aesop

58 Pages

Format read: Paperback

5/5 Dragons

Total pages read in May: 1314

So not as many pages or as many books as April but still a good month for reading. Please drop me a link with your monthly wrap up or any thoughts on the books I have read this month.

The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon by Aesop (Review)

The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon by Aesop

About the author

Aesop (c. 620-564 BCE) was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop’s Fables.

Blurb

Aesop’s animal fables are some of the earliest stories ever told, thought to have been composed by a slave in Greek antiquity and giving glimpses of a world that is harsh, pitiless and yet also eerily familiar.

Review

Having never read Aesop’s Fables I thought reading this little book of just some of them would be a good introduction to them and now I will be honest I desperately want to read the complete book.

I started reading this little book thinking that I would dip in and out of it but I could not put it down. I just loved every fable and could not believe how relatable they still are for the modern day. These fables will never age in my opinion.

Aesop was clearly a man who had met a lot of people and seen a lot of life to have come up with so many of these very true fables. I really loved how most of the fables used animals instead of people and these animals did not follow the traditional stereotypes of animals so in The Ageing Lion and the Fox the lion is sly and cunning and the fox is the clever one who works out what the lion is doing. Where usually we think of a lion as a brave and noble creature, Aesop is telling us not to judge a book by its cover.

I loved this little book and it took me a tea break to read it. The book made me laugh, it made me smile and it made me think. I give this book 5 out of 5 Dragons and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Purchase Links

Waterstones

WWW Wednesday 27/05/2020

WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

The rules are answer the questions below and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you will read next?

Hello!

I can’t believe we are in the final days of May, it seems to have rushed by. So here is my WWW Wednesday…

What I am currently reading

I love this book so far! I simply cannot put it down, and it is making me want to dig out my Hunger Games books and read them again.

What I recently finished reading

I really enjoyed reading this and I am very excited to read the next one in the series. To read my review click the picture.

What I will read next

As usual I cannot be exactly sure what I will read next but I’m pretty confident it will be Anne Boleyn A King’s Obsession by Alison Weir because I enjoyed Katherine of Aragon The True Queen so much.

So that is my WWW Wednesday, please drop me a comment with your WWW Wednesday and of course any thoughts of the books I have listed.

Thanks for stopping by.

2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge

Hello everyone, and an especially big Hello to all my new followers! Welcome and thank you for joining me.

So it is usually around this time of year that I review how my reading challenge is going and to be honest it is usually going better than this. My aim this year was to read 70 books and usually this would be quite easy for me but it would appear not so this year as I am now 8 books behind! I only usually do the Goodreads yearly challenge as I don’t usually do very well with other challenges. I tried a summer one last year and failed massively so I just avoid other challenges even if I do love the idea of them.

Now just after Christmas I had a reading slump which obviously did not set me up well for the year and ever since I have been playing catch up and to be honest falling behind. Studying has also impacted as I have been doing lots of reading but not of entire books and I have also been reading a lot of journals and articles.

So what shall I do?

Firstly, I could read lots of small books and make up the total quite quickly, being as I have quite a few of the Penguin Little Black Books series left to read then this is a tempting proposition.

Secondly, I could admit defeat and lower my target, but I hate admitting defeat! This is also a downfall with me because I will read a book I’m not enjoying to the end because I won’t be beaten, but invariably I regret this at the end of the book and realise that the book has actually beaten me.

So which shall I choose?

Well at the moment I’m going to stick to my target and try to read some smaller books as I have been reading quite a few massive books recently. I will review my target again in September as I really hope to get more reading done over the summer.

Fingers crossed I get there.

Please drop me a comment with any advice you may have to hit my reading goal! How are you doing with your reading goals and challenges?

Happy Reading!

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Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen by Alison Weir (Review)

Six Tudor Queens: Katherine of Aragon The True Queen

About the author

Alison Weir was born in 1951 and is a British writer of history books, and latterly historical novels, mostly in the form of biographies about British Royalty.

Blurb

At sixteen years old, Catalina is alone among strangers. Six weeks from home across treacherous seas, everything is different: the language, the food, the weather. And Catalina can find no comfort in any of it. She misses her mother. She mourns her lost brother. She cannot trust even those assigned to protect her. The first of henry’s queens. Her story.

Review

I have been collecting the series of the Six Tudor Queens since they were first published and finally I have started to read them. Thankfully so far I have not been disappointed.

I have always been fascinated by the Tudors and I have fond memories of my big sister teaching me about Henry VIII and his six wives. Elizabeth I is my favourite Tudor and I am fascinated by her history. Due to this I could not resist a historical fiction novel by Alison Weir.

I love Katherine of Aragon. She was a queen who knew how to rule and her leadership won a war against Scotland. Henry would have done much better if he had followed her advice but sadly she was another woman who was ignored because she was a woman.

This novel is fantastic at portraying the life of Katherine and I love how most of the letters that are contained in the book are genuine letters, although the language has been modernised to suit a modern novel. The other element I love is that it contains songs that Henry VIII composed and performed because as we know he was a very accomplished composer.

To start with I could not get enough of this book and I couldn’t put it down but as it drew to the inevitable I had to keep having a break because I felt so sorry for poor Katherine. She was the perfect wife, who did everything that was expected of her and more apart from producing a male heir and for that she was punished most severely and unjustly.

Katherine was unbelievably strong and never stood down from her principles and the rights of her daughter Mary. She could have so easily stood down and possibly have had an easier life, but then she would have lost everything she stood for and a woman of Katherine’s character would never have lived with the thought of giving up.

This book was beautifully written and the detail included was excellent. I also liked the characters that Weir created for the ladies in waiting and maids because no real knowledge about those characters are known so that was pure Weir. Maria was an absolute favourite of mine. She was a woman of fire and spirit.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I am very excited to start the next one in the series about Anne Boleyn who in my opinion helped change the course of history, although I don’t think she was a very nice person. I highly recommend this book to historical fiction fans and just Tudor lovers. I give this book 4 out of 5 Dragons. It did not get the full 5 sadly because I did have to take a few breaks from it.

Purchase Links

Book Depository • Waterstones