Lil

I have been looking forward to this film for so long. No surprise then that I booked tickets for the very first screening at my local cinema yesterday morning. I wasn't disappointed, if anything it was actually better than I was expecting! It's been a long while since I saw the original cartoon of Beauty and the Beast, so I can't do a direct comparison, but in my mind this live action adaptation surpasses it. When you want to watch a film again immediately after the credits have rolled you know it's a good one. Let me just start out by praising the musical god that is Alan Menken. At least 50% of my musical soundtrack Spotify playlist is accredited to him, and if he could score every movie for the rest of my life I would be a very happy girl. He scored the original Beauty and the Beast, so it would have been rude, and foolish, not to invite him back for the remake. This time acround the soundtrack is even more breathtakingly beautiful and enchanting, and together with t...

***Firstly, massive thanks to Simon and Schuster and Books and the City for surprising me with a proof of this novel - and for the adorable jigsaw that accompanied it!*** Meet Bridget, a successful travel journalist with ambitions to turn her quirky relationship blog into a novel. But, after numerous rejections from publishers, she accepts an alternative proposition: Nicole Dupre died leaving behind a bestselling novel and an incomplete sequel, and the family need someone to finish it. Bridget is just thankful to have her foot in the publishing door. But as she gets to know Nicole’s grieving family, and the woman behind the writing, Bridget’s priorities begin to change … As a rule, I don't like chick-lit and I don't much like children. Imagine my surprise then when I really loved this book! Maybe my tastes are changing now that I've hit my mid-twenties... The premise is simple - if every person you've ever loved has taken a piece of your heart, can you ever love someone...

Nemesis (n.) 1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome; 2) A person’s undoing; 3) Joshua Templeman. Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman hate each other. Not dislike. Not begrudgingly tolerate. Hate. And they have no problem displaying their feelings through a series of ritualistic passive aggressive maneuvers as they sit across from each other, executive assistants to co-CEOs of a publishing company. Lucy can’t understand Joshua’s joyless, uptight, meticulous approach to his job. Joshua is clearly baffled by Lucy’s overly bright clothes, quirkiness, and Pollyanna attitude. Now up for the same promotion, their battle of wills has come to a head and Lucy refuses to back down when their latest game could cost her her dream job…But the tension between Lucy and Joshua has also reached its boiling point, and Lucy is discovering that maybe she doesn’t hate Joshua. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game. Review Contemporary romance isn't ...

This review is for all three books in The Royals series - because I binge read them this week and they're now all one big crazy mess in my head. These Royals will ruin you… -------- PAPER PRINCESS Ella Harper is a survivor—a pragmatic optimist. She’s spent her whole life moving from town to town with her flighty mother, struggling to make ends meet and believing that someday she’ll climb out of the gutter. After her mother’s death, Ella is truly alone.  Until Callum Royal appears, plucking Ella out of poverty and tossing her into his posh mansion among his five sons who all hate her. Each Royal boy is more magnetic than the last, but none as captivating as Reed Royal, the boy who is determined to send her back to the slums she came from. Reed doesn’t want her. He says she doesn’t belong with the Royals. He might be right. Wealth. Excess. Deception. It’s like nothing Ella has ever experienced, and if she’s going to survive her time in the Royal palace, she’ll need to learn to issue ...

  Cornwall, 1793: Rose Pengelly's father has been ruined—he has lost his boat yard and his fortune, plunging Rose and her mother into poverty and debt. There appears to be only one way out of their terrible circumstances; for Rose to marry Mr Tregellas, a powerful timber merchant and the man Rose believes is responsible for her father's downfall. He has made his terms clear; either she marries him or faces homelessness and destitution. Desperate, Rose sets out to find evidence of Mr Tregellas's wrongdoing. In her search, she encounters a mysterious young sailor called Jim, who refuses to disclose his identity. Even as she falls in love with him, she questions who he really is. He may help her restore her fortune and her good name, but does he ever tell her the truth? Review From the cover of this novel I got a Catherine Cookson/family saga vibe that I have to admit almost put me off. But the blurb and the comparisons with Poldark had me sold. For a debut novel this has all ...

  You went to bed at home, just like every other night. You woke up in the back of a taxi, over 250 miles away. You have no idea how you got there and no memory of the last ten hours. You have no phone, no money; just a suicide note in your coat pocket, in your own writing. You know you weren’t planning to kill yourself. Your family and friends think you are lying. Someone knows exactly what happened to you. But they’re not telling… Review  Thanks to Corvus Books for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for a review. Thanks also to them for sending me an anonymous fake taxi receipt - a cheeky nod to the plot of this novel that left me massivey confused and accusing my long suffering boyfriend of pranking me! As to the book itself, it has all the ingredients for a good psychological thriller , and the opening was really strong. The central character I found really annoying and difficult to like -  but that really isn't uncommon for me in novels of this genre! It is ...

I was lucky enough to snag one of the gorgeous proof copies of this book. Massive thanks to Francesca Russell at Cornerstone! When big-shot literary agent Peter Katz receives an unfinished manuscript entitled The Book of Mirrors, he is intrigued. The author, Richard Flynn is writing a memoir about his time at Princeton in the late 80s, documenting his relationship with the famous Professor Joseph Wieder. One night in 1987, Wieder was brutally murdered in his home and the case was never solved. Peter Katz is hell-bent on getting to the bottom of what happened that night twenty-five years ago and is convinced the full manuscript will reveal who committed the violent crime. But other people's recollections are dangerous weapons to play with, and this might be one memory that is best kept buried. Review There is a lot of hype surrounding this book-although I have to admit that I hadn't heard of it or the author before-so I was eager to see what all the fuss was about. On the face o...