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I don't. I get paid in free books, which are sometimes advance/proof copies (when I do it for the BCF), and in terms of reviewing my own personal reading choices I do it because if I didn't I'd run around screaming my opinions at actual people rather than the void of the web I don't know anyone who gets paid for doing it, I can't imagine it's easy to make good money so with so many bloggers happy to do it for free, I really don't know anything about it.

Gaia - A lot of us feel that way, that discussion came up recently in (I think) in Michelle's book thread. A lot of people posted saying they feel their reviews are very samey, many of them people whose reviews I always look forward to reading, and I think we all agreed that we're simply all our own worst critics Which in itself is something worth keeping in mind when writing reviews

Too many scary films maybe? I totally wig myself out with other things, for example when I'm going to sleep, I get it into my head that there could be something (usually resembling Samara from The Ring) in my room, and that if I don't keep my duvet over my head and my eyes firmly shut, I'll look up and she'll be on top of me about to kill me I also can't deal with dark houses in general, I have to run frantically around convinced something is about to attack me

Awww really? How come? There were a couple of creepy bits, I didn't like the way but I didn't find it as scary as other books I've read. Thanks Gaia

I'm fine with light romcoms once they're well written and - no pressure! - but I trust your judgment, even if our opinions sometimes vary a bit

Yep, everyone has their own style and I agree that's what makes them great! I generally avoid talking about the plot details as much as possible, and I tend to always try to comment on: the prose (is it light or dense, does it flow well, read quickly etc) the characters (good/bad, developed/not, whether they drive the story or are secondary to plot) whether the combo of writing, characters, and plot overall accomplished the apparent goal of the novel, and why/why not. I usually aim for a paragraph on each of those three main elements, and of course it is all entirely my personal opinion, I never claim to judge books objectively because that's impossible! I don't always stick to that approach either, but it's my own personal set of guidelines for making myself think about what I've just read and if I'm stuck on how to start a particular review, I try to write a wobbly blurb on each area, then flesh it out Hope this helps

Ahh it's a great book. Glad you're enjoying it My review (if anyone is interested) is up on the BCF blog now: https://bcfreviews.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/uprooted-by-naomi-novik/

I know that feeling, but I usually feel that way about such strange books that other people don't enjoy them as much

There was some random dude in my house the other day and my housemate introduced him as (phonetically) - Louise. I'm *guessing* it was Luiz or Luis, because I think he was South American. But it threw me for a minute! I've just stuck Sachar's name on my wishlist without any one title attached to it. Having read a few of them now, would you recommend a particular one to begin with?

Timebound sounds really interesting... going on the wishlist.

Hmmmmmm. That book doesn't sound like it would be my usual kind of thing at all, but you're really selling it with that review. Might have to stick it on the wishlist!

I'm having the same trouble with rating already - I rate a book based on how I feel about it objectively, but when I place that rating subject to all my other ratings, everything tends to get a bit skewed and I feel like adjusting ratings all over the place I'm leaving them alone for now, but I might reflect and adjust the end of the year according to how I feel about all my reads by then.

Oh dear, a few duds recently Hope you stumble upon an awesome read soon My books are, I suppose, *technically* clutter, but it's a kind of clutter I like! I've never even understood people who can read a book and then just give it away (usually resulting in bags of books on a regular basis being distributed among friends or charities - great for the charities of course, but so much money on things read once and then discarded) - let alone giving away unread books! Unread books are the perfect solution to a rainy day, and solutions can't be clutter!

Huh, The Curvy Girls Club sounds intriguing. Going on the wishlist! I used to watch the Pippi cartoon when I was a kid - rewatched a few episodes on Youtube recently and it held up relatively well, for what it was! Never read the book, though.

Argh, animals! I can see one of my family dogs, Roxi, having a field day with books, but luckily my books aren't at my parents house where she is Yep, this has happened to me too on more than one occasion. Or I buy a new book, put it down on my bed when I get in, pick it up a while later and a corner has been bent back because I obviously dropped it a bit too carelessly Since finishing Solitaire (which was excellent) I've finish two more books - definitely making up for the lull last week! The additional two were Say Her Name by James Dawson and The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey (yes, Rick Yancey of 5th Wave fame). Both were horrors, the latter a good light not-scary read, and the latter a more dense beautifully-written gross-out read. In fact, I loved the latter so much that I'm about to dive directly into book two of the series. Reviews for all three to follow!

Just finished The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey. Phenomenal book. So glad there are three more in the series for me to enjoy!

Yikes, you've had quite a few duds recently! Hopefully your next few will be better

I finished Solitaire by Alice Oseman - the plot was a bit dodgy overall, but the writing and characterization made it a great read. Read Say Her Name by James Dawson quite quickly, a Bloody Mary novel - actually quite good. Nothing spectacular or highly original, definitely not scary, but an enjoyable read all the same. Would read more by him. Now reading The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey, the first in a series. I read The Fifth Wave by the same author (or rather, somewhere between a half and two thirds) and I loved what I had read up to that point, but it didn't keep me reading. This series seems to be a whole other kettle of fish, so I'm giving it a chance, and 60 pages in I think it's pretty fantastic. The writing is superb.

Oh nooooo! It would be an ex-cat if that happened to me - bad enough when tea got spilt on one of my unsigned John Green books - if ANYTHING happened to my signed TFIOS I'd cry!

Just followed her! Beth's copy sounds awesome

I stole those recommendations from you! I *loved* Sleepless. I've seen a lot of criticism of the ending, and I would have been happy for it to go another way, but I still loved it. The Glass Demon... yeah. I enjoyed reading it, I just felt disappointed by where it went. Currently reading something called Solitaire by Alice Oseman. Allegedly for fans of John Green and Rainbow Rowell, and seems to be based around a blog that documents pranks in a school where a lot of the student body seem to have blogs. Not sure where its gonna go, but I absolutely ADORE the narrator (she's basically me when I'm really depressed, but exaggerated - "I don't remember ever not being serious. As far as I'm concerned, I came out of the womb spouting cynicism and wishing for rain.") The the writing is awesome. The author mentions the narrator (Tori) fiddling with the HTML on her blog to try make the spaces between posts smaller. It just seems real, and modern. I just hope it stays this good!

The Glass Demon - Helen Grant Synopsis: The first death: Seventeen-year-old Lin Fox finds a body in an orchard. As she backs away in horror, she steps on broken glass. The second death: Then blood appears on her doorstep - blood, and broken glass. The third death: Something terrible is found in the cemetery. Shards of broken glass lie by a grave. Who will be next? As the attacks become more sinister, Lin doesn't know who to trust. She's getting closer to the truth behind these chilling discoveries, but with each move the danger deepens. Because someone wants Lin gone - and won't give up until he's got rid of her and her family. Forever. *** Review: I wanted to love this book. I so wanted to love it. It started out so wonderfully - the entire book is brilliantly written, but the start was aditionally intriguing and unusual. The German setting, the unusual character names, and the alarming circumstances in which the novel opens all immediately reeled me in and set my hopes high for the rest of the book. Some of these elements persisted throughout the rest of the story - the quality of the writing remained high, the level of creativity applied to the history and detail of the windows was fantastic, the terrifying events happening around Lin's family were eerie and disturbing. Alas, the most accurate term I can think of to describe this book is "disjointed". My biggest issue with the book - and I'm sure this will not be an issue for a lot of readers - is that the book walks the line between mere thriller and supernatural horror for almost the entire story, finally swinging in a specific direction only near the very end. And I did not like the direction it swung in. To pull off an ending like that, you need to draw on intensely sad or tragic circumstances, something deeply relatable, something that will really pull at the heartstrings. And there was nothing. There was no credible, justifiable reason for pretty much everything that occured, and that (for me) undermined the whole rest of the novel. My other issue with it was the characterization. For no apparent reason, there is an anorexic girl on the periphery of the story, serving zero purpose and ultimately having no real resolution. I don't think things like that should just be thrown into stories. Michel seems to have never encountered a girl before, and Lin seems used only to manipulating the men falling at her (apparently gorgeous) feet. Also, the sociopathic father seemingly without the capacity for emotion towards his children was utterly unrelatable. He teetered credibly on the edge, until the very end, at which point, like so much else about the book, he fell off the edge into senselessness. Ultimately, none of the characters were likeable. Despite the fact that most of this review is relatively scathing, I'm still giving the book 3.5 for being so much fun to read up until the end. Grant definitely has several writing skills, it's just unfortunate that gelling her work together and good characterization are not among them. Rating: 3.5/5

Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell (YA/Horror) Synopsis: We're waiting for you to come and play. Dunvegan School for Girls has been closed for many years. Converted into a family home, the teachers and students are long gone. But they left something behind...Sophie arrives at the old schoolhouse to spend the summer with her cousins. Brooding Cameron with his scarred hand, strange Lilias with a fear of bones and Piper, who seems just a bit too good to be true. And then there's her other cousin. The girl with a room full of antique dolls. The girl that shouldn't be there. The girl that died. *** Review: Frozen Charlotte is the second Red Eye installment I've read, after Sleepless by Lou Morgan. While imbued with a similar creepy atmosphere that makes it work well as part of a series with Sleepless, it is also a good standalone novel. My attention was drawn by the mention of 'creepy dolls' in many reviews, and the beginning of the novel completely reeled me in. It felt like the start of a Supernatural episode, except that from then on things only got weirder and weirder. Frozen Charlotte is well written novel inspired by actual dolls which I had never heard of - themselves inspired by a cautionary tale about a girl freezing to death. While the dolls give the novel its title, they were not the creepiest aspect of the book for me. Rather, it was that the book employs the opposite of an unreliable narrator - nobody around the narrator is reliable, feeding contradictory stories about each other to Sophie. I genuinely wasn't sure who to trust for quite a while, and this drove my need to find out what would ultimately happen. Despite being aware that one or more of Sophie's cousins were untrustworthy, or outright bad people, I loved the characterization of each one. For a novel that felt like quite a light, easy read, there's quite a bit of depth in it - parts of the Frozen Charlotte story are related, as is the history of the dolls through the history of the schoolhouse where Sophie's cousins now live. Creative, creepy, and full of suspense and twists, Frozen Charlotte is a great little horror read for the YA audience. Rating: 4/5

Sleepless by Lou Morgan (YA/Horror) Synopsis: Young, rich and good-looking, Izzy and her friends lead seemingly perfect lives. But exams are looming � and at a school like Clerkenwell, failure is not an option. Luckily, Tigs has a solution. A small pill that will make revision a breeze and help them get the results they need. Desperate to succeed, the group begin taking the study drug. It doesn’t take long before they realize there are far worse things than failing a few exams. *** Review: This was a seriously fun read. Once I stopped rolling my eyes at the idea of anyone taking drugs bought on the internet, I was intrigued by the premise and excited to see where the story would go. It meanders along slowly to start, introducing quite a few characters and setting the scene for the story - the exclusive Barbican complex in London where only the elite live. Once the drugs have been taken, the pace picks up tremendously - and in a matter of a couple of pages - and it doesn't let up until the very last word of the novel. I've heard criticism of both the slow start and intense ending, but honestly I thought both were just right. Even though this is a YA book, and the pacing and lightness of prose lend themselves well to that category, its still pretty dark!The imagery and descriptions of the inevitable violence are quite ruthless. Additionally, the narrative is told from the perspective of one of the girls who took the drug, so she is both trying not to succumb to her own hallucinations, and trying to protect herself and her friends from theirs. While there are a few standard horror tropes thrown here - making this a great introduction to horror genre for the YA crowd - there is a lot of creativity and originality too, so it's quite a refreshing read even for the older, more experienced horror reader. Additionally, Morgan's ability to portray mental degeneration is superb - I never found myself confused by what was going on, but I was immensely creeped out by the knowledge that was I was reading was someone starting to dip in and out of madness. My only qualm with the story is the origin of the drug. The distribution seemed deliberate, and yet there is never any explanation for how or why this distribution occurred. I'm willing to overlook that, though, because I liked pretty much everything else about the book. My only wish now is that somebody turns it into a film, because it would be a wonderful horror film for teens. Highly recommended read for fans of psychological (and a bit of slasher) horror, and definitely one I'm going to read again. Rating: 4.5/5

Exactly! it was ridiculous and totally unbelieveable, she had the personality of a cardboard box. That ruined it for me, despite the good writing.