Weekly Highlights: the signed 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!

On The Blog

Review: My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent 
Discussion: stand alone's or series? Check out my thoughts and add your own here

Currently Reading

Gemini Rising by Eleanor Wood - very good, very creepy and gripping. And am about to start Ink by Amanda Sun, which I am really looking forward to!

On My Bookshelf

Gemini Rising by Eleanor Wood

How far would you go to fit in? Sorana Salem is ok with being not quite bottom of the pile at her exclusive private school. Until the mysterious Johansson twins arrive unexpectedly mid-term. Hypnotically beautiful and immensely cool, magnetic Elyse and mute Melanie aren’t like the school’s usual identikit mean girls.Soon Sorana’s sharing sleepovers and Saturday nights out with the twins. But their new world of Ouidja boards and older boys might not be as simple as it seems. And the dark secrets that they share could be about to take Sorana down a path that’s impossible to turn back from…

Thank you to Mira Ink and netgalley for this, I'm halfway through it and it is really good!

The Weight of Souls by Bryony Pearce
Sixteen year old Taylor Oh is cursed: if she is touched by the ghost of a murder victim then they pass a mark beneath her skin. She has three weeks to find their murderer and pass the mark to them – letting justice take place and sending them into the Darkness. And if she doesn’t make it in time? The Darkness will come for her…

She spends her life trying to avoid ghosts, make it through school where she’s bullied by popular Justin and his cronies, keep her one remaining friend, and persuade her father that this is real and that she’s not going crazy.

But then Justin is murdered and everything gets a whole lot worse. Justin doesn’t know who killed him, so there’s no obvious person for Taylor to go after. The clues she has lead her to the V Club, a vicious secret society at her school where no one is allowed to leave… and where Justin was dared to do the stunt which led to his death.

Can she find out who was responsible for his murder before the Darkness comes for her? Can she put aside her hatred for her former bully to truly help him? 

And what happens if she starts to fall for him?

This sounds really cool and can't wait to read this  - thank you netgalley and Strange Chemistry!

Behind the Blog

Thursday night at my local library, I attended a Q and A type event with CJ Skuse and Rachel Ward. I hadn't met either of them before, though I have tweeted, so it was really nice to put a face to the name and all that. I arrived pretty early and was the second person there. The children's librarian Tracy introduced me to them both and they recognised me from our brief conversations on twitter! This made me stupidly happy.

Anyway, once most people had arrived, Tracy got things started by asking them both about their books and to read a bit from their newest ones. Then the questions started. Tracy had a couple of really funny questions, like had they ever had a stalker and had they ever made themselves cry while writing? We found out that CJ had once gotten a letter from a sex offender in prison about Pretty Bad Things and Rachel had to stop writing for a day because she made herself feel physically sick while writing The Drowning! 

A few questions from the audience included their favourite books - CJ said The Fault in Our Stars, and Rachel said The 5th Wave had been very good - and their favourite characters of their creation - Paisley from Pretty Bad Things and Spider's Nan from Numbers. We talked recent books, like Divergent, and their writing styles, how they planned their stories and generally had a laugh!

It only lasted an hour and we ran over a little, especially as most of us had books we wanted signed! Check out what CJ wrote in my copy of Rockoholic! But they were both really great and it was amazing to meet them. Big thanks to both of them for agreeing to do this event and to Tracy for organising it! It was so much fun and I would love to do something like this again, I highly suggest keeping an eye on your own local library events!