Weekly Highlights: the 'Christmas' 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! 

It's finally Christmas! I had two whole days off and had an amazingly lazy Christmas, I hope everyone else did too. I was working non-stop right until 2 o'clock Christmas Eve and am working all this weekend too, so I'm bloody tired! Luckily I have most of next week off so, yay free time!

On The Blog

Review of Lobsters by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison (5 stars)
Review of The Wolf Princess by Cathryn Constable (4 stars)
Review of Vendetta by Catherine Doyle (5 stars)
Review of Crescendo, Silence, Finale by Becca Fitzpatrick (4.5 stars)

Currently Reading

Talon by Julie Kagawa - a new book, details below, one I've been enjoying fairly slowly.

On My Bookshelf

Breaking The Rules by Katie McGarry
For Echo Emerson, a road trip with her boyfriend is the perfect way to spend the last summer between school and college. It’s a chance forget all the things that make her so different at home. But most of all, it means almost three months alone with gorgeous Noah Hutchins, the only boy who’s never judged her.

Echo and Noah share everything.

But as their pasts come crashing back into their lives, its harder to hide that they come from two very different worlds. And as the summer fades, Echo faces her toughest decision – struggle to face the future together or let her first love go…

Talon by Julie Kagawa
To the outside world Ember Hill is an ordinary girl, but Ember has a deadly secret. A dragon hiding in human form, she is destined to fight the shadowy Order of St.George, a powerful society of dragonslayers. St. George soldier Garret is determined to kill Ember and her kind. Until her bravery makes him question all he’s been taught about dragons.

Now a war is coming and Garret and Ember must choose their sides – fight to save their bond or fulfil their fate and destroy one another.

These two are review books from Mira Ink; the first I've already read and absolutely loved, review to come very soon, and the second I've nearly finished.

It's The End of the World As We Know It by Saci Lloyd
Welcome to a world controlled by a megalomaniac Lolcat. A world where data pirates, zombies and infobots on surfboards roam free. A world at war over cheese ... When teenager Mikey Malone gets sucked through a wormhole into this parallel world, he discovers a power-crazed corporation is planning to use Earth as a dumping ground for an uncontrollable poisonous algae. It's a race against time for Mikey and his rebel friends to stop the ruthless tyrants from getting their way.

A review book from Hachette which I am super excited for, it sounds really funny - thank you Hachette!

500 Words You Should Know by Caroline Taggart
Ever wanted to ameliorate your atavistic lexicon, engage in a little intellectual badinage, or been discombobulated by tricky diction? 500 Words You Should Know has you covered. This book will inspire readers to use uncommon words in their correct context, to utilize the English language to its full potential, and to test themselves on the words they think they already know. This is a book for the appreciator of correct usage, and contains words you thought you knew (decimate, caveat, nemesis), words you should know (euphemism, diatribe, tautology), and just a few that you might want to know (peripatetic, shibboleth, callipygian). Arranged thematically, each word is dissected, with a brief explanation of etymology, historical, and modern usage, allowing you to fully understand and effectively employ the word in its proper context. 

The Coldest Girl In Coldtown by Holly Black
Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown's gates, you can never leave.

One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.

And these two are my only book Christmas presents, the first from my parents, the latter from Santa. I'm really excited for my first Holly Black book and I've already flicked through 500 Words and is very entertaining.