Until this very point in my life I had absolutely no clue who Nicolò Manucci was. Let me introduce him to you in case this is a first for you too. He was a 14 year old who left his home, in Venice with ‘a passionate desire to see the world’. He was a teenage …
Review: An Island by Karen Jennings
“I was never against the country, never against independence. It was the shit that came after that I was against.” This book. Wow. When I initially heard of the book, it instantly reminded me of Tom Hank’s from Cast Away. Once I started reading the book I realised there was no similiarity at all between …
Review: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
What does one write about a book that has everything written in it? How does one express the multitudes of emotions felt through a book spanning across 200 years in just under 800 pages? How does one thank the author who invested 11 years of her life to bring to you this mammoth of a …
Review: The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
They say beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and I suppose this book in one short phrase is exactly about that. Set in the Regency Era of sorts, you’ll immediately find yourself thinking about Bridgerton, novels by Judith McNaught set in the same era and even Great Gatsby by the descriptions of the …
The Colours We See by Kaisa Winter
“The great big universe was infinite and beckoning, and I was at the precipice, ready and willing to jump.” Being a teenager is hard. Being an young adult is harder because nobody and nothing can prepare you for all the experiences life will put you through. Being an young adult also means new responsibilities, freedom …
Review & Blog Tour: The Undying Tower by Melissa Welliver
Title: The Undying Tower Author: Melissa Welliver Publication date: 09 September, 2021 Age group: Young Adult Genres: SSF, Dystopian Synopsis: What if living forever was a death sentence? Decades after the discovery that a small percentage of the population has stopped ageing, theAvalonia Zone is in crisis. From overpopulation to food shortages, the ‘Undying’ have been blamed forthe state’s problems, …
Recipe for the Book – A Cuban’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor
Recipe for the Book – A Cuban’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor NameyFrom the Kitchen of The Urban Reader Ingredients: A Cuban girl, a grieving trifecta (loss of grandmother, boyfriend and best friend), one ticket to England, a cute English bloke, many flavours of tea. Flour, water, yeast, sugar, salt and all …
Review: Poison for Breakfast by Lemony Snicket
Poison for Breakfast is such a delightful book! Well it’s odd to call it delightful if you consider that our author probably had poison for breakfast. But it’s delightful, well technically it’s bewildering. This is book about a mystery, it’s also about death, it’s even about philosophy, but mainly it’s about bewilderment. Poison for Breakfast …
Review: Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
Ariadne is the story about a righteous man. No. It’s about many righteous men. It’s about how in the wake of these righteous men and heroes it is the women who suffer the consequences silently. It is also a story which brings to light the many women who have either been sidelined or have been …
Review: Second Place by Rachel Cusk
“… my individuality had tormented me my whole life with its demand to be recognised.” Second Place is a rewriting of Mabel Dodge Luhan’s memoir “Lorenzo in Taos”, which talks about the time D. H. Lawrence came to stay with her in Taos, New Mexico. The story is about our protagonist M who invites L …