Eek so thrilled to be involved in the cover Reveal for the amazing Stephanie Butland’s second book, The Curious Heart Of Ailsa Rae.  I absolutely loved Lost for words so can’t wait to read this!

The Curious Heart Of Ailsa Rae is available to pre-order Here.

Before I reveal the fantastic, beautiful cover here is a little about the book.

Book Description:

Cover Reveal:

So without further ado here it is!

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Isn’t that totally gorgeous! I love the colours and that open door just speaks of so many opportunities.  Is it about her opening her heart, her life or about the opportunities open to her?  I can’t wait to find out!

About The Author:

Stephanie Butland lives in Northumberland, close to the place where she grew up. She writes in a studio at the bottom of her garden, and loves being close to the sea. She’s thriving after cancer.
Twitter: @under_blue_sky
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stephanie-Butland-Author-282828548412029/
http://www.stephaniebutland.com
#Loveday

I’m delighted to be on the blog tour for this fabulous children’s book, the first children’s book to be reviewed by Over The Rainbow Book Blog!

Rocky Rock’s And The Colourful Socks is available to buy in ebook and paperback Here.

Book Description:

Can you help Rocky Rocks find his socks? If you can see, you must tell me, what colour sock you can see? I’ll give you a clue, it rhymes with bed, could it be the colour… Rocky Rocks and the Colour Socks is a fun and interactive way of learning through rhyme by Seniha Slowinski. Illustrations by Nick Roberts.

My Review:

Rocky Rocks is a very fun, cute and educational children’s book which can help children learn their colours.  The reader is taken through the house, visiting the different rooms to try to find a sock of a particular colour.

The story is told in a gentle, easy rhyme with makes it very easy for children to follow.  My eldest is four and he really enjoyed guessing what colour sock we were finding from the rhymes.  The gorgeous illustrations that accompany them provide lots of fun whilst trying to find the missing sock from clues given in the rhyme.  This also gives lots of opportunities to help the children develop their vocabulary and important describing words like under or on.  We had great fun trying to find other objects in the rooms as each room is filled with lots of fun things to find.

My children absolutely loved this book and it has become a firm favourite in our house.  My eldest spends ages looking at it himself enjoying the pictures, as he can’t read much yet.  He especially liked the picture of the real Rocky and makes up lots of stories about him.

I really hope there are going to be more stories of Rocky’s adventures as I think they will be a favourite with pre-school children everywhere.

Huge thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

Hi my name is Seniha Slowinski

And I am really excited about my project please read on to find out why!

My Rocky books are aimed at children, starting from pre-school age upwards and are inspired by my dog (the ‘real’ Rocky) with all the cute and funny things that he does and the children that I taught at Arnott pre-school in Thamesmead.
Teaching children dance at pre school age is very different to teaching older children or adults as they have a shorter attention span and get distracted easily! For this reason I would break up the session with various tasks including story time!
Whilst reading I was not captivating the attention of the little ones and the story was not engaging enough to keep the children interested!
Which is when I came up with the idea to get the children involved!

The books are about discovering and learning by following the character Rocky on his journey, which involves learning about significant things in life such as colours, learning to count and identifying things that their parents, carers or guardians may do on an everyday basis, such as shopping, going to the park, to the gym etc.

Some of the books involve interactive aspects and questioning that enables the children to participate and respond whilst others may have a learning message and factual information.

The books are written using rhymes which are repetitive and make it fun for the child/children to gain a more enjoyable experience.

Some of the stories are based on true events that Rocky has experienced such as visiting the sights of London, boxing, going to the park and training.

 

I am very excited to be on the blog tour for The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda.  I loved her first book, All The Dead Girls so I jumped at the chance to review her second novel.

The Perfect Stranger is available to purchase here.

Book Blurb:

Having reached a dead end in Boston, failed journalist Leah Stevens needs a change. When she runs into an old friend, Emmy Grey, who is moving to rural Pennsylvania, Leah decides to join her. But their fresh start is quickly threatened when a woman with an eerie resemblance to Leah is assaulted by the lake, and Emmy disappears days later.

Determined to find Emmy, Leah helps Detective Kyle Donovan to investigate her friend’s life for clues. But with no friends, family or digital footprint, the police begin to suspect that there is no Emmy Grey. Forced to question her version of reality and to save herself, Leah must uncover the truth – no matter how dark or terrible it may be…

My Review:

The Perfect Stranger is a brilliantly plotted and intriguing thriller.

Set in a small town, the author perfectly captures the claustrophobic atmosphere with everyone whispering about the murder and having an opinion on what happened.  There is an uneasy atmosphere throughout the book which intensifies as the book progresses and we delve deeper into what happened.  The town seems to be at war with itself as the older residents are dissatisfied with the newer residents that have just moved in and who they think are changing the town that they love.  As a reader you are constantly wondering which of the colourful characters you can trust and who knows what.  This is especially true in the school where Leah works and the students there, who all seem to react to the news in various ways and who seem to be very interested in what has happened.

The book definitely contains some interesting characters and my opinion changed on all of them throughout the book.  I was never sure who I liked and who I didn’t as I was often proven wrong about the kind of person they were.  I loved that the author was able to do this and keep me on edge.  I read quite a lot of mysteries and its always great when I am not able to guess what happened and who done it.

My feelings about the main character, Leah, changed the most throughout the book.  I was never completely sure about her and what she was about.  Most importantly I wasn’t sure if she was a reliable narrator and if things had happened as as she described.  I wondered what she was running from that made her guard her new life with such fierceness.  Why was she willing to move in with Emmy, a girl she didn’t really know so easily?  I did feel sorry for her at times as it is hard to be lonely in a new town and feel like you are on the outside looking in, but there were other moments when she really frustrated me particularly when she kept insisting on conducting her own investigation into Emmy’s disappearance.

The pace of this novel is fairly slow to begin with as the author sets the scene and we learn morn about Leah & Emmy’s past but it soon picks up about half way through and then becomes almost impossible to put down.  I loved the ending which took me completely by surprise and I felt it was a very satisfactory ending for this fantastic book.

This is Megan Miranda’s second book and the second that I have read.  I will look forward to reading more from her in the future, she is definitely an author to look out for!

Huge thanks to Corvus books and Anne Cater for my copy of the book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

Megan Miranda is the author of the bestseller ALL THE MISSING GIRLS. She has also written several books for young adults. She grew up in New Jersey, graduated from MIT, and lives in North Carolina with her husband and two children. THE PERFECT STRANGER is her second novel of psychological suspense. Follow @MeganLMiranda on Twitter and Instagram, or @AuthorMeganMiranda on Facebook.

www.meganmiranda.com

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of this book from my review do follow the blog tour and find out what these other bloggers are saying!

 

I’m delighted to be kicking off the blog tour for this fantastic book.  Ivon is such a thought provoking book and I so enjoyed reading it.

Ivon will be released on the 8th February 2018 but is available to pre-order here.

Book Blurb:

The year is 2144, and the world is powered by sport – politically and practically. Each community owes its prosperity or otherwise to the success of its teams and athletes. A person’s class is determined by their aptitude for sport. Once their useful life as an athlete has expired, they are placed in stasis at an age predetermined by that class.

But not in Wales.

Separated from the rest of the world by a huge wall, the Welsh still play games for joy. They play, they carouse, they love, they die. They have fun.

Of all the Welsh, the greatest sportsman is an unreconstructed genius called Ivon. When the chance arises to become the first Welshman to cross the great divide into England, he cannot resist. His parents, exiled from England before he was born, know what London will do to him. They are desperate to have him back. But London will not give up an asset like Ivon so easily.

Ivon is a celebration of where sport has come from and a satire on where it is going.

My Review:

Ivon is a truly fascinating and thought provoking novel that could literally be a glimpse into our future.  For me I felt that it had a 1984 feel to it as we are currently trying to find new ways to fuel our world and it is apparently possible to create power from people’s phyical exertions, though admittedly you would have to do a lot of exercise to gain just a little power.  This did lead me to wonder if this will be a way to create energy in the future.

The world Michael Alywin has created in this book is a truly scary and chilling one.  This is especially true for someone who was never very good at sport at school and therefore would be at the bottom of this society.  The lack of feeling towards other humans is awful, with everything including death being something that just happens for the good of the commune.  The residents aren’t allowed to have relationships, fall in love and start a family.  Anyone who does is dealt with very strictly and kept away from each other.  Sex is only used for the generation of more power and not for the creation of new life, that is done is a lab in the hope of creating more elite sports people.  No one is allowed to have a free thought or to rebel against the leaders and if they do they are sent to The Institute of Improvement and Correction which re-educates them back into model citizens.  I can’t imagine a world without love and free thought and this idea sent a chill down my spine whilst I was reading it.

Even sport activity that is so important in this life is controlled with technology, with every move made in the game carefully thought out and decided by a computer.  The idea of which is very scary as surely sport is one of the only things left in life that can’t be controlled this way and needs free thought in order to work? I sincerely hope this isn’t the case for future sport as half of the fun is the uncertainty of it and the skill and decisions made by the athletes.

As the book progresses the differences between this new world and the one we currently live in are further highlighted by the existence of Wales which stand for The Western of Lapsed Era Savages (tongue in cheek comic genius by the author), the residents of which still live a life that is very similar to the one we live now.

I loved the two man characters Dusty and Ivon.  I thought they were such caring characters is a very cold world who tried their best for their fellow citizens despite great resistance.  It was quite heart breaking to see their continued strive towards trying to create a better world for people and watching them being continually blocked, not least by the citizens themselves who believed their current way of life was just fine the way it was.

This is Michael’s debut book and I very much look forward to reading more from him in the future. If you like clever, thought provoking dystopian fiction then you will love this book.

Huge thanks to Red Door publishing for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

Michael Aylwin is a sports reporter for the Guardian and Observer. He lives in Southfields.

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of this book from my review do follow the blog tour and find out what these other bloggers thought too.