Review: Asking For It by Louise O'Neill

Publication Date: September 3rd 2015
Publisher: Quercus Books
Source: Review copy

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Blurb: 

It's the beginning of the summer in a small town in Ireland. Emma O'Donovan is eighteen years old, beautiful, happy, confident. One night, there's a party. Everyone is there. All eyes are on Emma. 

The next morning, she wakes on the front porch of her house. She can't remember what happened, she doesn't know how she got there. She doesn't know why she's in pain. But everyone else does. 

Photographs taken at the party show, in explicit detail, what happened to Emma that night. But sometimes people don't want to believe what is right in front of them, especially when the truth concerns the town's heroes...

A massive thank you to Quercus publishing for sending me a review copy of this novel. 

If you don't follow me on my Twitter or Instagram, you are probably unaware of the fact that I am a huge fan of the marvel that is Louise O'Neill. I read her debut novel back in January and was so very excited to read this, her second novel, as soon as possible. 

To sum up Asking For It in a sentence, I would have to describe it as being brutally realistic, sharply written and overall an extremely important novel. The novel touches on so many incredibly important topics such as consent, rape, victim shaming, the horrors of social media, family and gender inequality. Although I can not say it is a comfortable read, I was physically appalled and feeling sick at some parts of the novel, it is a necessary read.

Asking For It centres around the protagonist Emma, an 18 year old girl who goes to a party, drinks too much alcohol, takes drugs and passes out. It is the next day when she realises what happened to her and was done to her while she was incapacitated that sets the main plot of the novel going. 

Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Publication Date: November 2014
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Source: Review Copy

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Blurb: 

Fifteen-year-old Frankie Landau-Banks has grown up a lot over the summer. She's no longer daddy's little girl - and almost immediately after starting the new semester at her highly prestigious school, she bags goofy-but-gorgeous Matthew Livingston as her boyfriend. They get along great but then Frankie discovers that Matthew is a member of a boys-only secret society that specialise in 'hilarious' pranks. Which hardly seems fair... especially when Frankie knows she's smarter than any of its members. And to prove this, she's going to teach them a lesson.

Impersonating lead member Alpha by using a fake email account is surprisingly easy, and soon Frankie is setting the boys up with all sorts of ridiculous schemes and sending them on wild goose chase after wild goose chase. Alpha's not prepared to lose face and admit it's not him sending the emails - but the fun can't last forever, and soon Frankie will have to choose between what she think she wants, and the reputation she deserves.

Thank you to Hot Key Books for sending me a copy in exchange for a review. 

I recently went to an event with E. Lockhart where she talked about her novels. If you would like to check out my blog post on that, Click Here!

Before reading The Disreputable History Of Frankie Landau-Banks, I had only ever read E. Lockharts We Were Liars and The Boyfriend List. Both novels I enjoyed, so I did go into this novel hoping that I would enjoy it. I read this novel while on my holiday and flew through it.

The novel is centered around our main character Frankie, a fifteen year old girl who has always been looked at as "small" and "innocent" by her family. Frankie attends a prestigious boarding school that her father attended and decided to shed the labels other people have bestowed upon her and to show her true self, to speak her mind and to prove she is a force to be reckoned with. 

E. Lockhart Q&A and Book Signing

Hi book lovers! 



Last Thursday I attended an amazing event held in Eason O'Connell Street, Dublin. 

The signing was a free event held in Easons Dublin and ran by Easons special YA unit Department 51  . 

Easons always put on great events as their staff are so efficient, organised and friendly. 

I had only read E. Lockhart's We Were Liars (review here) and The Disreputable History Of Frankie Landau Banks (review here) before attending the signing.  

I re-read We Were Liars a few days before the event to refresh my memory and enjoyed it just as much the second time round. 

Although the event was mainly in place to promote her newly released in the UK & Ireland edition of How To Be Bad, E did talk equally about We Were Liars and The Disreputable History. 


The area was well laid out with chairs and a speaker so everyone in the audience could see the stage and clearly hear E's stories and anecdotes that she told before launching into the Q&A. 

The book signing was  part of E Lockharts road trip to promote How To Be Bad's re-release. The road trip of events, signings and Q & A's all over the UK and Ireland actually began in Dublin. I thought it was pretty cool to be at the first event of the road trip and the hashtag was very fun to follow on twitter. 

Louise O'Neill & Sarah Bannan Book Signing

Hi readers! 


Last Friday I had the absolute pleasure of attending a Q&A and book signing featuring Sarah Bannan , author of Weightless, and Louise O'Neill, author of the award winning Only Ever Yours. 

Check out Sarah's Twitter page here! 

Check out Louise's Twitter page here!

I was so excited for this event, it was all I could talk about for weeks coming up to it. 

I traveled for 3 hours to get to the signing and went with my lovely friend Eimear (who blogs at An Abundance Of Novels) who is as big a fan of Only Ever Yours as I am. 

I am very excited to begin reading Weightless and am going to do so very soon! It sounds amazing and I've only heard great things. 

The signing was a free event held in Easons Dublin and ran by Easons special YA unit Department 51 . 

The area was well laid out with chairs and a speaker so everyone in the audience could see the stage and clearly hear the Q & A.

 I chatted to two staff members in the Easons, David and Jacqueline, and both were so easy to talk to, friendly and funny. A big shout out to Jacqueline as she was so nice and I loved talking about books with her! 

[Image Source: Cormac Kinsella ] 

The Q & A kicked off with Eason's David O'Callaghan chatting to Louise & Sarah and asking them questions both about their novels, their inspirations and about themselves. 

I really enjoyed the Q&A and I thought David was so funny and asked all of the questions I had been wanting to ask!   

I really liked listening to how well Louise and Sarah spoke and really liked the obvious friendship between them as they complemented each others novels. Both Sarah and Louise were so funny and lovely. 

Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Publisher: Hot Key Books
Publication Date: May 15
Source: Copy in exchange for review

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Blurb;
A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.
 
We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart. 
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.


Review: 


Big thank you to the amazing Hot Key Books for sending a copy of this novel in exchange for a review. This does in no way impact my opinion of the novel and all opinions stated below are my own. 

I read this novel a few months ago, around July I think, while I was on a family holiday in Alicante (see picture below of me reading on the balcony from my Instagram). When I first started reading We Were Liars I had read mountains and mountains of gushing reviews & tweets about how amazing and mindblowing this novel was. I have to say that when I first started reading this book, I really wasn't seeing the evidence of the hype surrounding how "awesome" this novel was, but by the time I had finished it- I too was blown away.

Review: Sweet Honey by Cathy Cassidy

Pub. Date: June 5 2014 
  Publisher: Puffin, Penguin 
 Series:  Chocolate Box Girls series (#5) Links to previous books in the series: (Book 1) (Book 2) (Book 3) (Book 4) 
Source: Copy for review   Author Twitter Here 

Blurb- 
The chocolate box girls.Each sister has a different story to tell, which one will be your favourite?

Honey is going to live with her dad in Australia. Determined to make a fresh start, she couldn't be further away from the tough times at Tanglewood.

Her new life is a dream come true - until school begins. The girls are different from Honey's friends in England and the only person who seems to understand her is the cute boy from the beach she's chatting to online.

But when he, the girls at school and even her dad start breaking promises, who can she trust? All alone on the other side of the world, Honey's past is about to catch up with her . . .

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REVIEW: 

A huge thank you to those at Penguin for sending me this copy of Sweet Honey in exchange for an honest and full review. I was so excited to read the next and latest novel in Cathy Cassidy's amazing Chocolate Box Girls series, links to my reviews of the previous novels are above. 

I was so excited to read this book as it is written from the perspective of Honey Tanberry, the tearaway rebellious and rule breaking eldest sister. I really didn't know what to expect from reading a book set in Honey's mind but I was blown away by this book.

Review: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan

Blurb: 

One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens—both named Will Grayson—are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical.

Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan’s collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humour that have won both of them legions of faithful fans.