Book Review: House Swap by Rebecca Fleet

We going to have an accidental theme.

‘No one lives this way unless they want to hide something.’ 

When Caroline and Francis receive an offer to house swap, they jump at the chance for a week away from home. After the difficulties of the past few years, they’ve worked hard to rebuild their marriage for their son’s sake; now they want to reconnect as a couple.

On arrival, they find a house that is stark and sinister in its emptiness – it’s hard to imagine what kind of person lives here. Then, gradually, Caroline begins to uncover some signs of life – signs of her life. The flowers in the bathroom or the music in the CD player might seem innocent to her husband but to her they are anything but. It seems the person they have swapped with is someone she used to know; someone she’s desperate to leave in her past.

But that person is now in her home – and they want to make sure she’ll never forget . . .

This book is sadly not really a thriller, it tries to have a twist but especially doesn't work and with the audiobook production I was more annoyed than anything. It mostly dances around the facts of the story, or things that they no reason to dance around other than laziness and to drag this thing out. The characters are very bland, they work in marketing kinda bland (they might not work in marketing, it just reference to obsession with marketing as a job in film. I don't know what they work as). I think this lacking important thriller elements as well as the characters not having much development. I guess we're meant to feel sorry for them, but I don't know who they're meant to be.  The audiobook performance was fine, not sure why they decided to spend the money on four narrators for this book. Frankly, it would have worked better with just one, with the dumb twist. It's probably OMG moment when the narrators switch but as soon as the POV was introduce it was clearly not going to be who she thinks it is, otherwise they couldn't market this as Thriller.  This book does have Thriller elements, like an obvious mystery that you know will be solved as soon as you know what terrible secret the MC has, so it's not thrilling at all. There's also the Husband's mystery drug problem, that he started because of stress, so it is a prescribed drug. I know it's not antidepressants but imagining it was and his wife was just being an arse about him still taking it, it would really fitted with this book. It's never stated so feels very McGuffin. I guess it's a sleeping pill, he's a therapist, so maybe he's meant to have self-prescribed them but that would be a scandal on it's own.  If this is not a Thriller what genre is it? I guess Drama, or just fiction for what it would be market in bookstore or library. The idea of that's promised on the back is a Thriller, but its more about petty relationships. Most of the relationships were sex scenes: have an affair and it's love because the sex is good. I'm Ace so if this meant to have been some great love story with tragic ending, it's okay if you say so. The one time it goes to back to a thriller, it sways away again. I got really excited that something was going to happen but then it didn't so back to petty nonsense.  Overall, I gave this book 2/5 stars for Dead Hamsters. If want something that's actually a thriller then go for You Let Me In (I will review this book soon, I read it first and probably should have review it that way.). It's actually a thriller and I didn't question not finishing it. It has a similar feature of someone renting their House to someone while they away.

What do I actually want to with my Life?

Okay, bitches. I'm 25 years old, closing on 26 and I feel very unfilled. There is a novel I've been writing for ten years now and yes she hella abandoned, but sometimes she in my brain still. I have other ideas. I'm not filming, editing or writing.

I'm only listening to audio books while I do random pointless things that I don't enjoy that much, I'm just insanely good at pointless stuff. I don't what I want to do, the one course I tried to apply for gave me error and I should phone someone about that.

I should start doing more.

Anyway, I joined a dating site. Don't be weird and try to find me. I'm going to be weird, but not the creepy level of guy weird. Just a photo of me in a fake British Phone booth level of weird. I probably talk about the awkward experience on twitter if you want immediate updates. They're showing me a lot straight girls, which is an odd choice.

Book Review: Outside by Sarah Ann Juckes

Scottish music, it's a thing.

Here's the thing about being Inside. Ain't no one believes that they are.

Ele has never been Outside, but she knows it exists - she just has to prove it.

Her whole world is Inside. Trapped with her books and the Others and Him. 
She has never seen a tree or felt the rain but that's about to change. Ele's getting out. For good.

Another book about someone being raised in isolation, but this time it's for the YA market. I would say it's Young YA, it has very dark topic but the way it's handled is almost middle-grade. I guess if you're not a 12 year watching True Crime Docs but that was me.

Ele has not been properly socialised so she doesn't know the words for basic objects and only has access to four books to frame her world. She speaks in a confusing way and it took me a while to figure out whether the word she kept using was meant to positive or negative. I got used it to eventually but I don't think it helps that I started this book while in a waiting room and didn't read it for hours later. Probably better to read the first fifty pages in one go.

Another language choice that is uncomfortable is the way she describes the character, Willow, whose mixed raced with a dead Jamaican Mother and ginger Scottish father. Yeah, it's does get minus points for stereotypes. Having diverse characters is a plus but the some of the descriptions of Willow by Ele are oddly racist; not in the racist way in that she been locked in a room entire life so doesn't know the connotation of the things she says; more in what the hell does that mean? "His head hair ain't like no truths in no books. It's all together and bouncy." I think Juckes is trying to be poetic, but it's more what? This could just be a me thing.

This book tries to have twists, but if you know true crime then it obvious what they'll be and you won't be shocked.  It's also a very Juvenile Happy Ending way, I mean the characters literally say we don't why, it just is, which is realistic of life, but the way it's said doesn't help. I do say this Young Ya, and to clarify is not a bad thing. A young side to YA is needed, so this book might be good for Young teen wanting to step their toes into something darker but safe in that there will be Happy ending for the characters.

This book is set in Scotland, but where in Scotland? Fantasy Scotland probably. So I was born in Scotland, I was raised in Scotland. I went to school in Scotland. Okay, I'm probably overkilling this. There's just a lot of questionable things in this book that makes me think that Juckes has never been to Scotland or had her book proofread properly. She checked with someone's mum that the dialogue was correct. There's odd things referring to potatoes as Tatties and potatoes: " brown spotted balls called 'potatoes' - once Willow also called them 'Tatties'' and this not something someone would do unless they were questioned. Frankly, it should be the other way if you wanted to point out that Scottish people called them that. You either use that word or you don't. The Scots was, of course, wrote very touristy, but this book is obviously meant for a non-Scottish audience. The thing that made me really go what?, is this scene: When he’s done with the slow song, he starts playing something else. Something fast.  Something that has him dancing from left to right as his arm swoops from side to side and up and down. The music bounces off the walls and has me sitting up, smiling, my feet bouncing along like they’re running on music.‘Come on!’Willow shouts, spinning round in a circle and bouncing from foot to foot. I get up and copy him, though it’s difficult without a violin to play myself. I hop from one foot to the other. Spin round. [dance till collapsing] ‘Phew! Ah, that’s a fun one.’I pull my head to the side so I can see him. He’s smiling wide at the ceiling, pulling in breaths from his inhaler. ‘Irish,’he says, catching my eye. ‘They know how to dance."

So this is the thing called Ceilidh in Scotland, and if you had gone to a Scottish School you would know from the age of 8, we are all taught Scottish Group dancing and this continues until we were finally free of P.E. (in 6th year in my case) but still would make us do them at the Christmas Dance (at least my school did), we were made to do them at Christmas Dances during Primary. The Gay Gordons are drilled into my head. My point is there is a scene where a Scottish person plays a fiddle fast and does a dance that can't wrap my head around at being like anything that exists. Is he meant to be 'Riverdancing' with a violin? Maybe the targeted audience won't be old enough to immediately think of that Irish Scene in Titanic and all those dead Irish people. There are really fast Scottish dances and that type of music would be associated with Scottish dancing, if you were Scottish. There are other questionable things like Ele somehow never seeing trees on her way outside, or not being eaten alive by midges. This isn't really a big deal, just in the back of mind, where the hell in Scotland is this meant to be? I think Highlands but a lot of Scotland has middle of nowheres. Basically, all the questionable Scottish stuff just becomes really distracting and I don't get the choice.

I mean if you're not from Scotland, then I don't know why you would do it. The setting is never really described in detail, there's a lack of houses so I know it must be in the countryside but that's it. It could be anywhere.

Another big problem is the unquestioning nature of the characters, I guess spoils for after the 30% of the book. Ele gets outside and through a series of events ends up staying in this boy's, Willow, house and his dad doesn't question anything. Even with this going on for several days, with this girl who doesn't understand the basic things of the world and it's obvious that this is a case where the police should be called. She is also magically toilet trained and she learns everything really easily.

Overall, I give this book 3/5 stars for Dead Trees. This is a book with serious topics that is unrealistic in its execution. This is on the Younger side of YA (which they has been lack of in recent years and they should be more published), with the protagonist being thirteen and the push for a happy ending. Maybe I'm just to jaded to be really touched by this story especially there are several books with similar topics. This is okay but not story that will stick with me.

I received this book for review off NetGalley and the publisher Penguin. It was published on the 3rd January 2019. Do I have to say that this review was honest?

Weeks of writings.

I wrote something fictional. Does that make up for the dead space on the last two Saturday? I've decided against back tracking my post this year (Okay, I'll allow myself a space from Saturday to Saturday to fill that space). I did finally write a book review so that's something. I even felt the completation to write weird fiction. It's was only something about Death being my BFF and only a paragraph with no plot or real character development ideas.

The Oscars are out and Bradley Cooper is not nominated for Best Director so I'm semi-happy. He's apparently disappointed that just showing up does not get you nominated. A Star is Born is nominated for Best Adapted screenplay which is a joke. The dialogue in that film was terrible but maybe that's the directer's fault. The Oscars are the Oscars. Some times good films, some times the best campaign.

I've not been doing much. I'm in a month long readathon, with my own readathon for the end of this month still unplanned. I've caught up on my reading goal this month. The reading is the only thing I've been doing. I've been trying with the reviews. Not editing. No point filming without editing what I've got. I still want to make videos. I do.

My future is mystery. A thing I wanted to apply for this year, is not going to be in Scotland this year so that's great. Tried to apply for another course and there was an error so I think I might have to do the horrifying thing of calling them. Maybe I should actually just write things.

I spent today watching Disney films as form of a Marathon because teenagers are idiots. I choose Black Cauldron because it's a mess but I love parts of it. We're realised it has a forbidden forest, so now Harry Potter is clearly ripped of this and Trolls 2.

I'm going to just post this mess of a post. See you losters.

Book Review: Whiteout by Gabriel Dylan

Ski Trips: For the rich kids to die on.

Charlie hopes that the school ski trip will be the escape from his unhappy home life he so desperately needs. But there is something wrong with the remote ski village of Kaldgellan. Something is out there, something ancient and evil, among the pines and the deep untracked drifts, watching and waiting. 

And when the storms blow in, Charlie and his schoolmates wake to find the resort deserted. Cut off from the rest of the world far below, as night falls the few left alive on the snowbound mountain will wish they were somewhere, anywhere else. Only ski guide Hanna seems to know of Kaldgellan’s long-buried secrets, but whether Charlie can trust her is another question…


This is the second Red Eye book to featuring snow storms that cause isolation and with it having other similarities I couldn't help but compare them, especially as 'Fir' is one my favourite Red Eye books. I was pretty excited for this concept, as Teen "30 Days of Night" which oddly is one of the vampire films not mentioned in this.
                                                 
This book has third person narration that closely follows a few different people in the group. Charlie is the main character and gets a sort of romance. There are lot of characters at the start with this meant to be school trip, with thirty pupils so probably has two or three teachers with the group, so it's slightly confusing with all the girl names thrown around. We have other characters such as Tara who is the spoiled ex-rich girl; she is a terrible person, that's her deal and she only there to undermine everyone else. She meant to be the character you dislike the most, but guess who I dislike the most?That's right, Nico. My notes involve telling Nico to go die in the snow. Nico is your toxic geek stereotype with side of sexism. This sexism comes in his first introduction so that I was able to confirm that this quote made it to the finial book by using the Amazon Preview: "Ellie’s blue eyes were locked on to Stefan, a glint of admiration hovering there that gave Nico a twinge of envy. She was pretty, although he wondered if she’d be even more attractive without so much make up."

Yeah, Ellie is described as breaching her hair and wearing fake tan, and skiing with hooped earrings so is probably in that awkward phrase of make-up but it's makes me dislike Nico immediately because girls are judged for their make-up use even when it's fantastic. There's other comments by Nico through out the book make me dislike him for his toxic geek culture. I think these comments are meant to make him relatable but he just makes me think of those guys who quiz girls when they say they like Star Wars and deny that girl geeks exist. You can have shitty characters or flawed characters, but it doesn't add to the character or more importantly challenged. So with that sexist comment, I started counting how often the characters cry, 3:1 when comes to girls to boys. One of those times Tara cried for no reason and then never again. Maybe that was to show she was attention seeking. It's really minor thing, they are diverse side of girl characters so can just ignore Nico if you want.

Another thing to mention about Nico is that lot of his geek references feel slightly dated, I mean he plays World of Warcraft which isn't much of thing anymore. Also it's subscription based game, with it being £10 a month. It does have a free mode and these kids are on a ski trip so maybe they parents would pay that a month for game but it's seems more likely they would be messing about on Gary's Mod or Skyrim. I don't think MMORPG are much of thing anymore or I don't think any fantasy games really have online player mode. Films are mentioned as well but films can be randomly discovered that game with pay wall wouldn't. Though, no date is actually state. They have phones but are never described so I guess this could easily take place when I was a teen and not going on the sky trip where someone smuggled weed into several other countries. I don't think they went to Austria.

I love vampires, and was really excited to hear that a Red Eye book would be tackling them. They're done okay, somewhat old school with side of sort of original myth. The final conflict was decent and with Red Eyes being established as having no win situations sometimes the states were pretty high till the end.

Overall, I give this 4/5 stars for h. A lot of filler characters, but there's one character with strong motivation so that's fun. I guess I don't like the ending, it's not terrible but it meant to be a redemption for these characters that didn't feel earned for at least one of them well at least for me. . I get what their arc was meant to be, maybe it would have been better to focus on less characters for this story. I guess they all like 16 or something anyway. It's a decent horror story, in probably in the middle for me of the other Red Eye books which I have reviewed all of them.

I received e-arc of this book for free to do an honest review.

Forgotten Post.

I had an idea for this week's post but I didn't hit when inspiration stuck so I'm just staring at the two words I wrote to represent that idea and I'm not sure exactly what I am meant. Everyone is now out of the hospital, and no one went unexpectedly in during that time. Despite someone almost hitting me on a roundabout by driving straight on to it while I was on it and I had right of way, because I was right of them and like I said I was bloody on the roundabout.

Actually I've had a lot of car incidents recently, it's probably due to all the driving I've had to do, so I'm tired and I have done nothing. The exercise goal is out the window at the moment but I need to get back to it. We are at home now so there's no excuse. I guess there's so much I want to do it and it's not the fun goal so it's the one I'm willing let slip over messing around with my bullet journal while some random crime show plays in the background, and my family is horrified.

We're spending time together in the living room more, as in they all sat in there in this evening, I guess hospital visits have gotten us to use spending time together, though a lot of them were going room to room while the room's patient falls asleep on you and then picking a room to stay in when they both do it. Sometimes that room is hallway out of there.

I know some people are really freaked by hospitals, but they are normality of my childhood. Seeing someone post surgery and basically get better has always been my experience. I know some people have trauma and others never enter one until they were sick. It's a new hospital, it's can't have too many ghosts yet (though who knows what the ground was use for before).

I'm still tired from driving despite not having drove since Monday. I came down first to take the bins out (also to check on those flurry things that live in separate rooms of my parent's house) and they got of Tuesday so it felt stupid to go back up to an already cramped house. I had already been sleeping on the couch where I would go with more people in it. My sister will secretly be glad that we're gone from her house.

I managed to film something while they were gone, also I randomly cry while talking about how stressed I have been. Editing is still not happening. I just need to sit and do it. Just there's never enough time for productivity, turns to waste.

I remember what I was going to write, but I'll save it for next time when maybe I have the energy for deep thoughts.

2019 Goals

Back again, once again, here we are again.

Okay, let's get into my hopes and dreams. I'm trying to be realistic with goals and I know January is not going to be a good starting month for anything due to family members going to have surgery and will have recovery times. It's going to be stressful, by the time you have read this the surgery will have happened. So let's get into the goals:

1. Read a book a week: This one is straight forward. 
2. Finish 12 series: Okay, I would be happy with five because that's more than last year. I keep buying full series and then I don't read them because go me. I need to actually finish series, though it's hard when authors often randomly bring more books later in the series.
3. Read More of My Own Books: So I read 34 of my own books this year, having read 120, I would like that number to be higher. I think ideally what I read should be from half my books. 
4. Stop with the Insane Book Buying: I feel like I should ban books until I finish editing the book hauls I have lol. It's not about book hauls, it's just I buy a lot and don't read a lot of them. I would like to more read books than unread books.
5. Write a Review a Week: Straight forward, share my thoughts on a book or film. Probably mostly books.
6. Write a Post a Week: Having a self imposed deadline I think would help me, it did in the past, but it's keep slipping away from me so easily. I guess I'm more self-conscious about writing.
7. Write More in General: I guess I want to actually work on a novel. I have ideas and it's still something I would like to do. 
8. Published a Video a Week: Not sure if I should put this as two weeks as that would be more realistic, but I want a better scheduled for myself. I just have to edit things through again. I also know that this will be a fail in the first two weeks of the year due to a session of family surgery, the family who go through surgery together stay together. I'm not having surgery, it's other two other family members this time but obvious stressful and have to do stuff in preparation and it won't be great environment to get anything filmed or edited probably. 
9. Do More Complicated Videos: I think part of the problem is that I'm bored just doing standard BookTube videos and should actually follow through with ideas. I'm sitting on two ideas with two series I still want to do. I just need do stuff.
10. Continue Bullet Journaling: I like the process and tracking how many pages of a book I've read that day and my process of actually doing stuff. 
11. Exercise Most Days: I'm going to try and exercise at least 20 minutes everyday, this is me trying to create new and healthy behaviour. Sometimes I might not time or have a major flare ups meaning I can't do much, so will have to save my energy for just moving around the house. I want to become fitter and honestly lose weight in the hope that make me feel better. It won't solve my issues, part of the reason I've struggled with exercise routines is because of fails up. Another big problem is not finding a exercise that works for me. I can't do jogging because the cold air makes me immediately out of breath (thanks asthma) and I feel awkward doing that. I don't like team supports and strict times don't work for me. I would join a gym if there was one than ten minutes away. I brought exercise bike, I know I need more methods of exercise than that, but it's a good start. 
12. Apply for things: I want to go to college or get in a training programme. I've had two years on the sidelines and it's getting me nowhere so I'm going to actually finish Application forms. The family thing has finally happened so time to do things. I'm still tore but let's me more involved in the universe.

If I actually do the last goal, I wouldn't mind letting other thing slide. Like I said, January is not the best month to start anything, there will be messed ups and that's okay. I think the important of goals is just keep going. I will hopefully see you next week, because life is busy.

2018 Goals in Reflection: What is happiness?

Another year ended, more goals to reflect on.

1. Actually read a book a week. Okay, I read 120 books in total but out of the 53 weeks of that 2018 overlaped I managed to do it for 46 weeks, with missing three weeks in October. I don't see this as failure, because life happens and continued to do after failing.
2. Finish 12 series. Okay, I don't why series goals are so hard, even when I have a list to follow. I finished four and two of those were series started before this year so that's something. 
3. Buy less, read more of my own books. Okay, I definitely failed in the buy less side but I did read 14 books that I brought this year next to the seven last year and I read 34 of my own books next to the 15 of 2017, so it's an improvement but still not great. 
4. Sort of that Netgalley situation. Okay, I still find myself requesting more books than I'm reviewing but we are going to fix this probably this year, especially as I lose access to the good library. What if I move, just so I have access to a decent library. My stat went from 51% to 49% so not great. 
5. Published a Video a Week (actually aiming for two). Okay, this was fail for the most part. I've tried several times to do this but life and energy levels got in the way. 
6. Keep going with the Silent Protagonist and Before & After series. I did this but not to success, I did one Before & After, I filmed more Silent Protagonist than I filmed.
7. Film seconds of my day. No, this stopped happening after January and I never edited any of the clips together. 
8. Write. God damn it write. Ha. Nope. I've started stuff but all I have are failed attempts at NaNoWriMo.
9. Write a Review a Week. I had more success than the other writing but not great or consistent. 
10. Start Writing my blog constantly. Ha. Nope. I've started writing a lot of posts, with not enough time for that week and then never go back to finish them even when it was half decent idea. I would like to forced myself to just finish stuff, no matter how bad I think it is. 
11. Bullet Journal. Okay, so this is fail and successish. I did this half way into February, stopped and took it up again in August and I'm still doing it. Bullet Journaling is very try and error, find the right spreads for me. My First attempt was too much effect and didn't work. So I did it for seven months of this year and have continued into this year. I like tracking things. 
12. Pain. Why? Yeah, I tried but I have no answers still. I am on medication for other older medical issues so that something. Also I should take my medicine. 
13. Be happy. Somehow. Can I just say no and move on? No, okay, well I wasn't necessary unhappy but not the best year of my life or anything. The world still sucks and I don't know what the hell I'm doing. 

So not a great year of goals, but I never plan to actually finish all my goals. I just try to do better than the year before. I'll be back next week for my goals for this. Taking bets now for what is just a repeat of last year, I do have addiction and things won't be back.