Fern adores her Nanna, especially her smile, but Nanna doesn’t smile much anymore.
“It’s like the joy has gone out of her life.”
“What’s joy?” asked Fern.
“Joy is what makes your heart happy and your eyes twinkle.”
Fern takes it upon herself to find some joy and borrow it for Nanna. All afternoon, Fern feels the “whooosh! of joy” but no matter how hard she tries, her catching bag remains empty.
Dejected, Fern returns to her Nanna and tells her about her mission and all of the joy she found.
I really liked the relationship between Fern and her Nanna. I loved that Fern was so determined to find some joy for her Nanna but at the same time it saddened me that she was so aware of Nanna’s depression and that she felt responsible for making her feel better.
Fern’s ideas for trying to essentially bottle joy were adorable. I loved the solution: time and connection with a loved one.
Isabelle Follath’s illustrations complemented the story. The characters are expressive and colour is used well to highlight different emotions. I particularly liked the colours and shapes used to depict joy when Fern is attempting to collect it.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and words & pictures, an imprint of Quarto Publishing Group – Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, for the opportunity to read this picture book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Fern’s Nanna has not been herself of late. And when Mum remarks that all the joy seems to have gone out of her life, Fern decides to fetch the joy back. With her catching-kit at the ready, she goes to the park and finds joy in all sorts of unusual places. Whooooshh! But Fern soon realises that joy doesn’t fit in a bag, or a box or a tin! How will she manage to bring some back to Nanna?
Emotional, funny and uplifting, this beautiful picture book has a strong message about empathy and maintaining loving relationships with our grandparents. Guaranteed to bring a bit of joy into every reader’s life, this story is a pure delight.
When her parents die suddenly, Louise returns to her childhood home in Charleston. She and her brother, Mark, haven’t spoken in three years. Together they’re going to be confronted by the past, along with a house overflowing with their mother’s ‘art’.
“I don’t think we’re weirder than any other family,” she said.
With family secrets, the power of belief, creepy dolls and a puppet with abandonment issues, this case would be right up Sam and Dean Winchester’s alley.
I’ve seen every Child’s Play movie and enjoyed watching Ed and Lorraine Warren deal with the carnage Annabelle left in her wake. I was just a tad obsessed with The Final Girl Support Group. With all of that in mind, I was ready to fall in love with this book and was looking forward to being creeped out by it, but unfortunately it fell a bit flat for me.
Despite wanting to believe, I never did, and that took a lot of the fun out of Pupkin’s antics for me. Instead, I found him and his sing songy delight at causing chaos irritating. I liked Mark some of the time but never warmed to Louise. Aunt Honey, who managed to snag most of the good lines early on, didn’t have as much page time as I’d hoped.
I loved the funeral scene. I’m still craving some Pizza Chinese. If I didn’t find Pupkin so annoying I probably would have been able to suspend my disbelief and get caught up in the mayhem, but I couldn’t escape him.
Because my love of The Final Girl Support Group is so big, I’m going to call my experience with this book an aberration and look forward to falling in love with my next Grady Hendrix read.
Favourite no context quote:
“You’re like some kind of emotionally abusive octopus entangling everyone in your word tentacles.”
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
Mostly, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. But she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.
Some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…
Violet’s father is appalled by her behaviour (climbing trees is most inappropriate) and is threatening to send her to finishing school so he can marry her off to an eligible young man. Violet wants to be a scientist. She would also like to be allowed to wear trousers. No one understands her “insect obsession”.
‘Is there something wrong with me?’
Kate – 2019
When Kate leaves her abusive relationship, she goes to Weyward Cottage, which was owned by her great-aunt. It is here that she will come to terms with her past and discover her heritage.
I am the monster.
The first Weyward child is always a girl. This is the story of three of them, centuries apart yet connected.
Although each Weyward is given a voice in this story, Altha’s is the only one told in first person. I found something to like about all three women. In particular, their affinity with nature endeared them to me.
Be aware that on page violence against women is part of the story in every timeline. The graphic nature of some of this abuse may be triggering for some readers. Thankfully, women reclaiming their power and having the courage to be themselves was also part of the story.
Favourite no context quote:
Perhaps one day, she said, there would be a safer time. When women could walk the earth, shining bright with power, and yet live.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and The Borough Press, an imprint of HarperCollins UK, for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Kate, 2019 Kate flees London – abandoning everything – for Cumbria and Weyward Cottage, inherited from her great-aunt. There, a secret lurks in the bones of the house, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.
Violet, 1942 Violet is more interested in collecting insects and climbing trees than in becoming a proper young lady. Until a chain of shocking events changes her life forever.
Altha, 1619 Altha is on trial for witchcraft, accused of killing a local man. Known for her uncanny connection with nature and animals, she is a threat that must be eliminated.
But Weyward women belong to the wild. And they cannot be tamed…
Weaving together the stories of three women across five centuries, Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.
Baking as therapy is right up my alley. So is dessert. This cookbook covers all of the best sweet treats, including cookies, cakes, pastries and candies.
SWEET REVENGE is about taking all your bittersweet memories, mixing in a little flour and sugar, and creating something delicious AF out of them.
The target audience is just slightly younger than I am but the instructions are so much more down to earth than your usual cookbook.
Dump in egg, heavy cream, and vanilla extract.
Totally relatable. I may not be the best cook but even I’m competent enough to dump stuff in a bowl. Instructions like these make me want to attempt every recipe.
It’s difficult to pick favourites when you haven’t completed taste tests yet so instead I’m choosing the recipe I most want to try from each section:
🧁 Kiss My Molasses – molasses gingersnaps with lemon curd
🧁 Stop Texting Me, You Crepe – Oreo crepe cake
🧁 I’m Not Your Honeybuns – cinnamon rolls with honey glaze
🧁 I Hate You a Latte – latte Toblerone semifreddo
Now I need to go eat a salad.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Switch Press, an imprint of Capstone, for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
50+ killer cakes, cookies, and candies for your exes and enemies. Dumped by your beefcake boyfriend? BFF steal your one-and-only? Lab partner a more-than-periodic no-show? Don’t take these battles online. (Seriously, don’t do that, okay?). Get out your heaviest rolling pins, sharpest cleavers, and most blistering torches, and kill your enemies and exes… with kindness. That’s right – bake that loser ex a pan of Go Fudge Yourself. Gift your former friend a You’re the Devil Cake. And give that annoying admirer a Donut Call Me Again. Let them taste your over-them happiness and see what comes next… Pastry chef and tattoo artist Heather Kim serves up sinfully delicious recipes and bittersweet advice.
I’m fascinated by why humans do the strange things we do. This book answered some of the questions I’ve had, as well as some I didn’t have until I started reading.
While I have an interest in neuroscience, I don’t have a scientific background so am usually hesitant to dive into books that explore it. The blurb made this one sound like it would be accessible without a bunch of prior knowledge so I took a chance. I loved it so much that I practically inhaled it.
I have so much more appreciation for the complexities of the brain and how much we still don’t know about how it works. Given how many of its parts are involved in tasks that we often do without a second thought, it’s astounding that we function at all.
Just speaking a simple sentence, for example, requires the successful execution of operations such as word retrieval, the application of syntax (i.e., the rules used to properly arrange words in a sentence), coordinating the activity of the muscles involved in speech, sprinkling in appropriate changes in tone and pitch, and so on. Each of these tasks might require the contribution of different parts of the brain, causing language to be reliant on a large number of functioning brain regions for it to be fully operational.
This book explains how the different parts of the brain work but I’m also much more aware now of the many ways that things can go wrong. Illness, trauma and other unexpected bumps in the road that affect even one part of the brain can have life changing consequences.
Each chapter covers a different area of behaviour: identification, physicality, obsessions, exceptionalism, intimacy, personality, belief, communication, suggestibility, absence, disconnection and reality.
There are so many disorders and syndromes covered in this book, some I’d already heard of but others that were new to me. There’s Cotard’s syndrome, where you’re convinced you’re dead or have lost organs, blood or body parts, and Capgras syndrome, where you believe people close to you have been replaced by imposters. There’s clinical lycanthropy/zoanthropy, pica, hoarding, objectophilia, dissociative identity disorder, the placebo effect, folie à deux, agnosia, alien hand syndrome, Alice in Wonderland syndrome and more.
Despite how strange some of them may seem, they often just represent the extremes of the spectrum of normal human tendencies – and they are not completely foreign to us.
A lot of the stories will stay with me but probably none more so than that of Kim Peek, who had a condition called an encephalocele, “where an incompletely developed cranium allows part of the brain to bulge outside the skull – potentially twisting, distorting, and damaging brain tissue in the process.” Despite considerable brain damage, Kim was able to do something extraordinary.
He eventually could read a page in 8 to 10 seconds while memorizing all the information on it. He even began reading and comprehending the right and left pages of a book simultaneously (with his right and left eyes).
By the time he died in 2009 at the age of 58, Kim had read – and memorized – more than 12,000 books.
Morbid curiosity may make you want to read this book but, thanks to the author’s approach, you never lose sight of the fact that these are real people you’re reading about, people who have often suffered greatly as a result of what’s happening in their brain.
This book did what I’m always looking for in non-fiction. I learned plenty of interesting new things. It held my attention. It made me think. It made me want to learn more.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Nicholas Brealey Publishing, an imprint of John Murray Press, for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
The human brain is an impossibly complex and delicate instrument – capable of extraordinary calculations, abundant creativity and linguistic dexterity. But the brain is not just the most brilliant of evolutionary wonders. It’s also one of the most bizarre.
This book shows a whole other side of how brains work – from the patient who is afraid to take a shower because she fears her body will slip down the drain to a man who is convinced, against all evidence, that he is a cat, and a woman who compulsively snacks on cigarette ashes.
Entertaining though they are, these cases are more than just oddities. In attempting to understand them, neuroscientists have uncovered important details about how the brain works. Bizarre will examine these details while explaining what neuroscience’s most unusual patients have taught us about normal brain function -ideal both for readers seeking a better appreciation of the inner workings of the brain and those who simply want some extraordinary topics for dinner party conversation.
Time and Tide May Wait for None; But They Will Wait for You.
Twelve year old Mara and her father live their life on the road. Mara doesn’t know what her father’s job is, only that it keeps him perpetually busy. When she sees her father disappear before her very eyes, Mara’s casual curiosity about what her father’s work entails becomes more urgent.
“People don’t just vanish, do they?”
What she discovers will cause her to reevaluate everything she thought she knew about her father and the way they live. She’ll also gain a greater understanding of the soft places she’s been able to find for as long as she can remember.
When her father is kidnapped, Mara will need to learn his secrets in order to find him. Time and the fate of the world depend on it.
Because Mara has grown up isolated with a father whose paranoia may or may not be warranted, she doesn’t know who she can trust. This makes the introduction of new characters unsettling as Mara’s distrust is contagious.
I loved Mara. She’s feisty, intelligent and brave. She also broke my heart.
“I’m used to stuff not being safe. I’ve never been safe. Not ever.”
This book explores how fear can isolate you and grief can be all encompassing, causing you to spend so much time focusing on what you’ve lost that you don’t pay attention to what you still have. There are a lot of moral questions raised, primarily about power and its ability to corrupt, and the lengths you’d go to for someone you love.
I’m not the hugest fan of characters being able to use their abilities flawlessly the first time they try. I much prefer to anticipate the payoff that comes when heroes persevere despite their initial struggles. Because I liked Mara so much, I was able to cheer her on even as I bristled at her ability to do what seemed impossible straight away. I doubt the target audience will have any problems with her innate talent.
I loved the excerpts from The Time Tider’s Handbook at the beginning of each chapter. They gave information about how Warps work and the role of the Time Tider, and oftentimes they gave clues as to where the chapters were heading.
A Time Tider’s work is secretive, unsung and solitary, but know this to be true: they are all that stand between humanity and its destruction.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Little Tiger, an imprint of Little Tiger Group, for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Mara and her dad have lived in their van for as long as she can remember. Whatever her father does to scrape a living has kept them constantly moving and Mara has never questioned it. That is until she uncovers a collection of notes addressed to ‘the Tider’, an individual responsible for harvesting lost time from people whose lives were cut short.
But before Mara can question her father he is taken by a dangerous group who want to use his power for evil. With the very fabric of time and space at stake, it’s down to Mara and her new friend Jan to find him before it’s too late…
During my recent wanderings, I found a duck shaped snowball maker. I bought it for my mother, who loves ducks, despite the fact that if it ever snows where we live it’ll mean there’s something seriously wrong with the weather.
Sans snow, we took this new toy to the beach and proceeded to make some pretty funny duck adjacent lumps of sand. I was especially proud of our best result, which actually looked like a duck (if someone had amputated most of its bill).
Needless to say, if I was to attempt to create a sand sculpture, the result would be abstract at best.
You won’t find the sandcastles from your childhood in this book. These sand sculptures aren’t constructed with a mere bucket and shovel. The tools of this trade can include “bulldozers, pneumatic tampers, generators, cranes, front-end loaders, and huge water pumps to carry water to the top”. Todd Vander Pluym, president of Sand Sculptors International (SSI), has even created a castle that survived a 6.2 earthquake!
Although there are only two ingredients – sand and water – the design possibilities are endless. With imagination and creativity, some engineering and design knowledge, and possession of the right tools, today’s sand artist creates ephemeral, incredible, complex, and “how did they do that with only sand and water” artwork.
My brain stayed on ‘WOW!’ for the entire book so it’s difficult to choose favourites. Currently, I’m obsessed with:
Guy-Olivier Deveau’s Bleeding
David Ducharme and Marielle Heessels’ My Better Half
Matt Long’s SHARK!
Jeff Strong’s Consuming Pastime
I’m sure my favourites will change every time I revisit this book. I need to find a sand sculpture competition so I can see the artists at work.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Schiffer Publishing for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
Part performance art and part engineering, sand sculpture has become amazingly sophisticated as artists explore the boundaries of their skill with sand as a medium. Within a very short time, a sculptor can create an awesome, thought-provoking experience that will completely vanish after a few weeks. The photographs are all that’s left. Barbara Purchia and E. Ashley Rooney take you on a round-the-world tour of sandscapes showcasing a dazzling array of sculptural figures, forms, and styles. Behind-the-scenes interviews with the sand masters reveal what motivates them and how they approach their art. Todd Vander Pluym, the world’s premier sand artist and president of Sand Sculptors International (SSI), shares a contemporary history of sand sculpture, and renowned international sculptor Kirk Rademaker describes how he built a new life around this ephemeral medium.The images of these art pieces will have you wanting to stick your toes in the sand!
Tyson Parks, once upon a bestselling author, is struggling both creatively and financially. He’s already spent the advance he received for the book he was supposed to be writing and his agent isn’t exactly thrilled that the work in progress Tyson presents to him doesn’t even remotely resemble the pitch. Sent away with an impossible deadline and strict instructions to write the book he was supposed to be writing, Tyson feels defeated.
Sarah, Tyson’s partner, goes all out for his birthday, buying him a one of a kind antique desk. They both hope this will give Tyson the boost he needs to get back in the game.
Now, instead of completing the historical horror novel he wanted to write, Tyson finds himself embroiled in a real life historical horror, one that’s almost three hundred years in the making.
I found this book easy to get into and I was keen to see how the history of Tyson’s desk impacted on his present. Almost immediately I started comparing Tyson to Jack Torrance. It was hard not to. The author even references Jack, and adds a few other King references in for good measure.
I was completely on board until the on page rape scene. I love so many types of horror: body horror, slashers, supernatural horror, gore, psychological horror, monster horror… This rape scene, though? It seemed to me that it was only there as a plot device, showing the reader that the desk is influencing Tyson to act in a way that he never would without it. There are so many ways you can show me that someone is morphing into a bad guy without using rape to do it. Sexual assault has its place in fiction but not when there’s no sensitivity given to the material.
But here’s the reality: when you are joined with someone for over a decade of life, and when that decade has been a good decade – a litany of loving moments, shared compassion and consistent, unflagging support – you build a level of trust, a balustrade of understanding, of love.
Of forgiveness.
This just made me mad. Oh, and then there’s this.
It was up to Sarah to decide now. Was their story over, or had the future already been written? Sarah let out a held breath, her shoulders slump and she leans forward, her forehead to his chest.
She allows him to give himself back to her, and she to him.
Tyson, Sarah might forgive you for brutally raping her but I don’t.
If it wasn’t for this scene, I probably would have continued to enjoy this read. It coloured everything I read after it, though, and I never made it back to my initial enjoyment.
Because I really liked the way this novel started, I’d be interested in trying another book by this author. I’d definitely check out the reviews first to make sure I chose one that’s right for me.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Cemetery Dance Publications for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
On his 59th birthday, Tyson Parks – a famous, but struggling, horror writer – receives an antique desk from his partner, Sarah, in the hopes it will rekindle his creative juices. Perhaps inspire him to write another best-selling novel and prove his best years aren’t behind him.
A continent away, a mysterious woman makes inquiries with her sources around the world, seeking the whereabouts of a certain artifact her family has been hunting for centuries. With the help of a New York City private detective, she finally finds what she’s been looking for.
It’s in the home of Tyson Parks.
Meanwhile, as Tyson begins to use his new desk, he begins acting… strange. Violent. His writing more disturbing than anything he’s done before. But publishers are paying top dollar, convinced his new work will be a hit, and Tyson will do whatever it takes to protect his newfound success.
Even if it means the destruction of the ones he loves.
“You know, it’s not the worst thing in the world to have someone know who you are.”
Lily hasn’t seen her sister, Alice, since the Night of the Bathroom Floor. She can’t bring herself to visit her at Fairview Treatment Centre. Straight A student Lily thinks she needs to keep her school life separate from her home life if she’s going to stay afloat. She’s desperately trying to hold her family together.
As long as I keep moving, whatever got Alice can’t get me, too.
Lily hopes to stay as far away from Micah, who met Lily at Fairview, as possible. She’s scared of what will happen if her home life intrudes on her school life. This seems all but inevitable when Lily and Micah are paired up for a class project.
“We’re combining our classes to explore what happens when words and art collide”
While this book delves into some really dark places, at its heart it’s about acceptance. I enjoyed spending time with Lily and Micah as they got to know each other. The process of Lily learning to stop hiding was painful at times but ultimately rewarding. I adored the guerilla poetry.
Books that include characters struggling with their mental health can sometimes feel like a balancing act. They need to be real enough to be relatable but there needs to be some hope too. The author definitely doesn’t shy away from the hard stuff here but there are some rays of sunshine as well. The characters’ thoughts and emotions have an authenticity that are clearly drawn from the author’s lived experience, discussed in the Author’s Note at the end of the book.
“You are enough. Right now. Just the way you are.”
Thank you so much to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read this book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
It’s been two months since the Night on the Bathroom Floor – when Lily found her sister, Alice, hurting herself. Ever since then, Lily has been desperately trying to keep things together, for herself and for her family. But now Alice is coming home from her treatment program and it is becoming harder for Lily to ignore all of the feelings she’s been trying to outrun.
Enter Micah, a new student at school with a past of his own. He was in treatment with Alice and seems determined to get Lily to process not only Alice’s experience, but her own. Because Lily has secrets, too. Compulsions she can’t seem to let go of and thoughts she can’t drown out.
When Lily and Micah embark on an art project for school involving finding poetry in unexpected places, she realises that it’s the words she’s been swallowing that desperately want to break through.
So, you’re currently season 1 Eleanor but you want to be season 4 Eleanor. How are you going to go about scoring enough points to get into the good place when you don’t have a Chidi in your life? Written by the guy who created Chidi, this book is the next best thing.
Each time I watched Chidi stand at the blackboard I’d feel like I should be taking notes. I wanted to enrol in his class. Now I don’t have to. Michael Schur has read a bunch of long, dry moral philosophy books so you don’t have to. This is your crash course, a road map for map for ethical dilemmas:
What are we doing?
Why are we doing it?
Is there something we could be doing that’s better?
Why is it better?
There’s the “Big Three”:
Virtue ethics – “What makes a person good or bad?”
Deontology – “the study of duties or obligations”
Utilitarianism – a branch of consequentialism, “which cares only about the results or consequences of our actions”.
There’s ubuntu, pragmatism and existentialism.
Life is anguish. Welcome to existentialism!
There’s the trolley problem!
It’s about trying to do better while acknowledging that no matter how hard we try, we’re not always going to get it right. So it’s also about learning to accept failure.
As soon as I began reading I imagined Chidi teaching me. I thought he’d be the perfect one to narrate the audiobook but then I encountered a problem. Michael Schur has a sense of humour that’s evident in his writing. Chidi? Not so much, and given Chidi’s extreme difficulty in making decisions, it’s likely we’d all be dead before he decided if he was going to sign up for the gig or not. Then my brain helpfully suggested Alan Tudyk for the job and it was all over; I couldn’t move past him and I found myself hearing everything I was reading in his voice. This entertained me as much as the content.
I borrowed this book from the library but plan to buy my own copy so I can continue my journey to season 4 Eleanor. I may have to check out the audiobook to see what it’s like to experience this book without Alan Tudyk in my head.
The trying is important. Keep trying.
I’m not holding the author’s views on pizza against him, but suspect the opposite may not be true.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Once Upon a Blurb
From the creator of The Good Place and the cocreator of Parks and Recreation, a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,500 years of deep thinking from around the world.
Most people think of themselves as “good,” but it’s not always easy to determine what’s “good” or “bad” – especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, ubuntu, and more so we can sound cool at parties and become better people.
Schur starts off with easy ethical questions like “Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?” (No.) and works his way up to the most complex moral issues we all face. Such as: Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad? And much more. By the time the book is done, we’ll know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. We will be perfect, and all our friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, we’ll gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day.
Schizanthus Nerd 