Weekly Highlights: the 'I forgot last week' edition

Weekly Highlights is a feature borrowed from Faye of A Daydreamer's Thoughts, where I get to highlight my posts of the week, show you my new books and talk about bookish things! 

I sort of forgot to do a Weekly Highlights last week, purely because... I just did! So this a fortnight's worth of posts and books. And can I just say that I am very impressed with myself for keeping the pattern of writing two reviews a week for over a month! 

On The Blog

Review of Vivian Versus the Apocalypse by Katie Coyle (4 stars)
Review of Dare You To by Katie McGarry (4.5 stars)
Review of The Diamond Thief by Sharon Gosling (3.5 stars)
Review of the Demon Trappers series by Jana Oliver (5 stars)

Currently Reading

Unnatural Creatures, stories chosen by Neil Gaiman. It's an anthology of creepy short stories about mythological creatures. I'm not quite half way through but they've all been good so far!
 

On My Bookshelf

Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron
A stellar cast of acclaimed fantasy writers weave spellbinding tales that bring the world of witches to life. Boasting over 70 awards between them, including a Newberry medal, five Hugo Awards and a Carnegie Medal, authors including Neil Gaiman, Garth Nix and Holly Black delve into the realms of magic to explore all things witchy.

Thank you to Hot Key Books for this, it looks awesome!

Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse 1) by Charlaine Harris
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of "disability." She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark, handsome - and Sookie can't 'hear' a word he's thinking. He's exactly the kind of guy she's been waiting for all her life.

But Bill has a disability of his own: He's a vampire. Worse than that, hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, with a reputation for trouble - of the murderous kind.

And when one of Sookie's colleagues is killed, she begins to fear she'll be next ...

I was convinced by my friend to get this last week, as she has read some of the series and swears it's incredible. So whatever, it was £1.50 in a charity shop and I have always wanted to compare the books to the TV series, so we shall see!

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

"Hi, I'm the guy who reads your e-mail, and also, I love you . . . "

Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that somebody is monitoring their work e-mail. (Everybody in the newsroom knows. It's company policy.) But they can't quite bring themselves to take it seriously. They go on sending each other endless and endlessly hilarious e-mails, discussing every aspect of their personal lives.

Meanwhile, Lincoln O'Neill can't believe this is his job now- reading other people's e-mail. When he applied to be "internet security officer," he pictured himself building firewalls and crushing hackers- not writing up a report every time a sports reporter forwards a dirty joke. When Lincoln comes across Beth's and Jennifer's messages, he knows he should turn them in. But he can't help being entertained-and captivated-by their stories. By the time Lincoln realizes he's falling for Beth, it's way too late to introduce himself. What would he say . . . ?

My first Rainbow Rowell book! I read it in less than 24 hours, I seriously could not put it down. Review to come soon. Oh, and I have to say, the librarian gave me the weirdest look when I told her what I was looking for! 

Anomaly by Krista McGee

Thalli has fifteen minutes and twenty-three seconds left to live. The toxic gas that will complete her annihilation is invading her bloodstream. But she is not afraid.

Thalli is different than others in The State. She feels things. She asks questions. And in the State, this is not tolerated. The Ten scientists who survived the nuclear war that destroyed the world above believe that emotion was at the core of what went wrong—and they have genetically removed it from the citizens they have since created. Thalli has kept her malformation secret from those who have monitored her for most of her life, but when she receives an ancient piece of music to record as her community’s assigned musician, she can no longer keep her emotions secreted away.

Seen as a threat to the harmony of her Pod, Thalli is taken to the Scientists for immediate annihilation. But before that can happen, Berk—her former Pod mate who is being groomed as a Scientist—steps in and persuades the Scientists to keep Thalli alive as a test subject.

The more time she spends in the Scientist’s Pod, the clearer it becomes that things are not as simple as she was programmed to believe. She hears stories of a Designer—stories that fill her mind with more questions: Who can she trust? What is this emotion called love? And what if she isn’t just an anomaly, but part of a greater design?

I wanted to treat myself to a new book for Books Are My Bag yesterday. I mean, I wanted to get a book from a great independent book shop in Bath. But the trains were playing up and I couldn't make it, so I picked this up, along with the tote bag, at the Christian shop in my town. Haven't heard of it but apparently it's got great ratings on Goodreads so I'll give it a go!