Category Archives: Book Reviews
More Than We Can Tell by Bridget Kemmerer – Blog Tour Book Review
So on Saturday I reviewed Letters to the Lost and whilst these two are companion novels you can definitely read More Than We Can Tell without having read the former. I loved them both so highly recommend picking the pair up to devour, and you will have the benefit of already knowing a bit about Rev’s past if you read LttL first.
When I started reading I initially thought that it was going to be very similar to the first book where much of the communication takes place via letter and then e-mail. And although texts and online forum communication features here too it is not between the main characters who actually meet face to face.
The first book dealt with loss. This book tackles some even heavier issues, such as child abuse, fostering and adoption, online bullying and misogynist gamer culture, and another topic I can’t mention without it being a spoiler.
Although Juliet and Declan from the first book feature, the former is very much only briefly mentioned and Declan is relegated to best friend status but is still his awesome self. I love the brotherly relationship between him and Rev.
But this book is time to really focus on Rev’s back story, the reason behind his uniform of a hoodie which leads to his nickname as the Grim Reaper. In the book he turns 18 and that means someone he’d never quite been able to forget sneaks back into his life.
Emma meanwhile has an online stalker slide into her DMs and hack into the popular game she herself developed. The only problem is she knows that gaming culture is like that for girls and her parents are too busy with their own thing, including her mum disapproving with how much time she spends on the computer so she doesn’t feel able to share.
It’s all too common for parents in YA fiction to be absent, and whilst our main characters do have some absent parents it’s nice to see the relationships with the parents they do have explored from all angles. Something that was started in the first book too. It’s particularly good to see such a positive relationship with adoptive parents whilst also showing the challenges that foster/adoptive parents face and the abuses that can sometimes occur with caregivers too.
The end of the book turns into a bit of a thriller and there is some violence that readers expecting a romance may not be expecting.
It’s really good to explore the concept of harassment happening in the context of ‘but that’s just how it is’ and to see teens challenging that and looking out for each other.
One topic that doesn’t get that much mention in books in religion and I thought Rev’s religious views were sensitively handled. Personally I don’t follow subscribe to organised religion, identifying more as a humanist agnostic. I thought the author did a really good job in presenting a balanced view whilst respecting the beliefs of her character.
I loved Letters to the Lost and I think I loved this powerful read a tiny bit more. Actually no I can’t decide. They are both ones I’ll read again.
About the author
Brigid Kemmerer is the author of Letters to the Lost and the YALSA nominated Elementals series and the paranormal mystery Thicker ThanWater. She was born in Omaha, Nebraska, though her parents quickly moved her all over the United States, from the desert in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the lakeside in Cleveland, Ohio, with several stops in between. Brigid is now settled near Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband and children.
Website: http://brigidkemmerer.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrigidKemmerer
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/BrigidKemmererWrites
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/BrigidKemmerer
Huge thanks to Faye and Bloomsbury for my copy for review. I will treasure it and the opinions above are entirely my own.
Do check out the other two Bloomsbury Spring Titles – Truly, Wildly, Deeply by Jenny McLachlan and The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler.
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Letters to the Lost by Bridget Kemmerer – Book review
On Wednesday I’m part of the Bloomsbury Spring Titles blog tour and I will be reviewing the follow up to Letters to the Lost – More Than We Can Tell. I’ve heard you can read the books as standalones but I’ve had the first book on my shelf for ages so wanted to pick that up first.
And I am very glad I did. Now I’m not a big romance reader with regards Adult Fiction but throw me some YA Contemporary Romance and I get the gushies. I find contemporaries so much quicker to read than the sci-fi/fantasy books I usually go for so I’d highly recommend if you’ve hit a bit of a slump and want a pacy and emotional read.
This romance is fairly complex. Juliet writes letters to her dead mother which she leaves on her grave. One day she gets a response to her letter – from a stranger.
At first she is so angry and, rightly so – her privacy has been violated. So she writes back telling the mysterious author what she thinks of them.
Soon the pair of them come to realise that the other person they are communicating with share similar feelings of loss and anguish and eventually they share e-mail addresses and start chatting about life, the universe and everything.
But little do they know that they’ve actually already met in real life, and they really don’t like each other.
Declan thinks Juliet is a preppy snob and he’s known as the school’s most likely to end up in prison, after all he’s already doing community service.
Author Bridget Kemmerer creates two troubled teens searching for meaning, finding it in each other but being scared to take that next step. As an occupational therapist I also liked how the author explored the meaning people find in doing valued occcupations and the loss they feel when they are prevented from taking part in them.
There’s a shock twist towards the end of the book that I can’t help but wonder how their relationship would play out if the author had chosen to pick the alternative. We would have needed a much longer story to play that out and I was satisfied with the ending but left pleased with the knowledge that we get to delve into Declan’s best friend Rev’s back story in the follow up. Come back on Wednesday for my stop on the blog tour to read what I thought about More Than We Can Tell and check out the other blood tour stops reviewing three of Bloomsbury’s Spring titles.
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The Artie Conan Doyle Mysteries Series So Far – Book Review
Yesterday was my stop on the Blog Tour celebrating the release of the second book in the Artie Conan Doyle Mysteries series. Check out the guest post by author Robert J Harris here.
Arthur Conan Doyle is the author of Sherlock and in this middle grade series he is imagined as a young boy having a series of adventures that will later lead him to write his infamous detective series. There are two books in the series so far with more to come.
Book 1 – The Gravediggers’ Club
A ghostly lady in grey.
The paw prints of a gigantic hound.
This case can only be solved by the world’s greatest detective.
No, not Sherlock!
Meet boy-detective Artie Conan Doyle, the real brains behind Sherlock Holmes.
With the help of best friend Ham, Artie discovers the secrets of the Spooky Gravediggers’ Club.
Can Artie solve the mystery – or will his first case be his last?
Book 2 – The Vanishing Dragon
A world-famous magician.
A sabotaged illusion.
This case can only be solved
by the world’s greatest detective.
No, not Sherlock!
Boy-detective Artie Conan Doyle, the real brains behind Sherlock Holmes, is once again investigating the impossible.
With the help of best friend Ham, Artie must reveal the secret of the Vanishing Dragon and unmask the villain.
Can Artie solve the mystery – before it’s his turn to disappear?
What I thought
These were a lot of fun and very much in the vein of a couple of other series I have read recently – Robin Steven’s Murder Most Unladylike and Chris Priestly’s Maudlin Towers. It also reminds me of series such as Nancy Drew, The Famous Five and The Secret Seven that I read when much younger.
In the guest post yesterday author Robert said he didn’t want Artie to simply be a young Sherlock and Artie is definitely learning to develop skills of logic and deduction but relying a lot on guesswork and jumping to conclusions.
Despite some wrong turns he perseveres and is determined to solve the mysteries which he does, in the first book mostly with his friend Ham, but in the second with some help from other people too.
Both stories are set in Edinburgh and Robert makes excellent use of the setting – from Greyfriars Cemetery to underground streets. There are also more than a few nods to Sherlock to keep older fans amused. I really should read them but I got enough references from the many tv adaptations I’ve seen.
I slightly preferred the second book because of the magic tricks and theatrics and the introduction of Rowena who is although a little annoying to the boys, is a welcome female addition, and more than proves her worth.
I felt for poor Ham whose love of cake is often ridiculed but loved how that also became a useful plot device in the first book.
As someone who is an advocate for representation of mental health issues I was impressed by the focus on Artie’s father’s depression and the impact this has on both him and his family. I look forward to the continued exploration of that.
As for future developments I’d love to see more of Rowena, and also Artie and Ham’s boarding school would be a welcome setting for one of their adventures.
I would highly recommend this to the target age group and if you are a fan of Sherlock see if they’ll let you keep them for bedtime stories as you will be sure to enjoy the nods to stories such as Hound of the Baskervilles.
Thanks to Floris books/Discover Kelpies for The copies of the books I received for the purpose of this honest review.
kirstyes 