The Overflowing Library

The first time Lou meets tall, dark, and handsome Christian, she knows he's hiding something. Why does he clam up every time she asks about his past? Why doesn't he have any family photos and why does he dye his blond hair black? Then suddenly his terrible secret is unveiled to the world - and it seems everything he's ever told Lou is a lie. Can what the media are saying about him really be true? Should Lou trust him? Or is she in terrible danger? But Christian isn't the only one keeping secrets. For what if their chance meeting was no accident at all ...? As lie follows lie, nothing is as it seems, and soon Lou finds herself ensnared in a web of deceit, her loyalties torn, her emotions in tatters as she faces a heart-wrenching dilemma: should she shatter the lives of those she holds dearest, or betray the guy who, against all odds, she's fallen in love with? Full of family secrets, surprising twists and unexpected revelations, Katie Dale's seco...

Being fourteen is a minefield: with fashion dilemmas, teacher trauma, embarrassing parents and boy drama, Faith is just hoping to make it through Year Ten without too many disasters. But when she and her best friend Megs sign up to take part in an inter-school choir with the local boys comprehensive, Faith's life gets even more complicated… just how is she supposed to concentrate on becoming the next Cheryl Cole when she's trying to understand how teenage boys' minds work? My Thoughts A brilliantly funny read perfect for fans of Louise Rennison. I'm fully going to admit this is not at all my kind of book and quite honestly the only reason I read it is because I met the author and heard her read an extract and was hooked. The main character Faith has a brilliant voice. She captures that teenager-ness fantastically well and as a result is brilliantly funny without being nasty or over the top. I loved following her story and seeing what she was going to ...

Present day: Icie is a typical high school teenager - until disaster strikes and her parents send her to find shelter inside a mountain near Las Vegas. The future: Beckett lives on The Mountain - a sacred place devoted to the Great I AM. He must soon become the leader of his people. But Beckett is forced to break one of the sacred laws, and when the Great I AM does not strike him down, Beckett finds himself starting to question his beliefs. As Beckett investigates The Mountain's history, Icie's story is revealed - along with the terrifying truth of what lies at the heart of The Mountain. Sara Grant's HALF LIVES is a dystopian chronicle of the journeys of two unlikely heroes in their race against time to save future generations. My Thoughts This is an interesting title and really quite a thinker. I've literally just finished it but I think it might take a while for me to get my brain around it. I must admit I got about two thirds the way through this...

People think of Mother Nature as a gentle lady. They forget that she's also Death...Sixteen-year-old Poppy Sinclair believes in quantum particles, not tarot cards, in Dawkins, not druids. Last summer, in a boating accident in the Lake District, Poppy had a brush with death. But the girl she finds face down in Scariswater hasn't been so lucky. As she fights to discover the truth behind what she believes is murder, Poppy is forced to concede that people and things are not always what they seem and, slipping ever deeper into a web of lies, jealousy and heart-stopping danger, she comes to realise - too late - that the one thing that can save her has been right there, all the time. My Thoughts This book wasn't at all what I expected. When I saw the cover and the title I thought it was a zombie book and avoided it because I hate zombie books. However I got a press release through and realised it wasn't and decided to give it a go. I liked several things abo...

A breathtaking new urban fantasy trilogy from the critically acclaimed, award winning author of The Swan Kingdom and Shadows on the Moon . When fifteen year old Mio Yamato furtively sneaks the katana - an ancestral Japanese sword - out of its hiding place in her parent's attic to help liven up her Christmas party costume, she has no idea of the darkness she is about to unleash on modern day London, or the family secrets that she is going to uncover. The paralysing paranoia that descends on her before she gets to her friend's party is her first clue. The vivid and terrifying visions that nearly get her killed are a pretty good warning too. The giant nine-tailed cat demon that comes after the sword and tries to rip her throat out? Overkill. Seconds away from becoming kitty-food, Mio is saved by Shinobu, a mysterious warrior boy. But it's already too late. Mio has ruptured the veil between the mortal realm and the Underworld, and now the gods and monsters of an...

1.        Pen and Paper Okay, strictly speaking that’s two things. But they’re the basic tools of all my scribbling. It’s true that when writing a novel I type straight on to my computer, so that I’m able to edit, reorder, cut and paste and generally fiddle to my heart’s content. But all my hard, important, conceptual thinking is done by hand (for instance, this fine article’s being composed that way…). I like to make notes in different colours, draw diagrams, figure out the structure by drawing arrows between chapter summaries, and so on. It’s messy, it’s involved, it’s the nitty gritty of novel creation and scarcely any different in feel to the way I made little books when I was a kid. There are just slightly fewer Berol pens involved now, so my fingers aren’t stained every colour of the rainbow.             2.        The Ability to Touch Type Okay, tha...

After witnessing his girlfriend in a “very friendly” position with a guy who is definitely not him, closely followed by a catastrophic car accident that shatters his leg along with his pro Tennis hopes, Ezra Faulkner returns to school for senior year, cast into social oblivion, a shadow of his former self. Ezra believes that everyone suffers a defining tragedy: it appears that his has just occurred. But this new tragic self might have its own appeal, especially after he meets the clever, oddly sexy Cassidy Thorpe, a girl who launches him into a series of transformative adventures that help Ezra learn the truth about tragedy: unlike lightning, it can and will strike the same place twice. My thoughts A quick review for this one. This book is beautifully written throughout and almost quite lyrical throughout. I enjoyed that aspect of the book a lot. I loved how funny it was throughout the en...