Tag Thursday – The Summer Bucket List Tag

It’s Thursday! This week today represents the last day of my working week! Good news I’m not back in the office until Wednesday, bad news I’m watching my best friend’s four year-old so I’m not convinced it’s going to be much of a relaxing long weekend! I have been told I can make use of the hot tub though so everything has a silver lining!

Today it’s time for another Tag Thursday and this week I’m just about sneaking in right at the tail end of summer with the Summer Bucket List tag. I spotted this on Steph’s blog A Little But A Lot at the beginning of August and the lovely Charlotte suggested I complete it when I demanded she pick the tag I completed this week!

The Rules

• Link back to the original creator in your post.
• Feel free to use any of my graphics in your post, or create your own!
• Tag 5 other people at the end of your post, and let them know you’ve tagged them.

The Last True Poets Of The Sea by Julia Drake

The Larkin family isn’t just lucky—they persevere. At least that’s what Violet and her younger brother, Sam, were always told. When the Lyric sank off the coast of Maine, their great-great-great-grandmother didn’t drown like the rest of the passengers. No, Fidelia swam to shore, fell in love, and founded Lyric, Maine, the town Violet and Sam returned to every summer.

But wrecks seem to run in the family: Tall, funny, musical Violet can’t stop partying with the wrong people. And, one beautiful summer day, brilliant, sensitive Sam attempts to take his own life.

Shipped back to Lyric while Sam is in treatment, Violet is haunted by her family’s missing piece-the lost shipwreck she and Sam dreamed of discovering when they were children. Desperate to make amends, Violet embarks on a wildly ambitious mission: locate the Lyric, lain hidden in a watery grave for over a century.

She finds a fellow wreck hunter in Liv Stone, an amateur local historian whose sparkling intelligence and guarded gray eyes make Violet ache in an exhilarating new way. Whether or not they find the Lyric, the journey Violet takes-and the bridges she builds along the way-may be the start of something like survival.

Epic, funny, and sweepingly romantic, The Last True Poets of the Sea is an astonishing debut about the strength it takes to swim up from a wreck.

I have to wait until October to get my hands on this one, but I did read an extract in the season’s YA Buzz Book and it really captured my attention. I think it has the potential to be heartbreaking, and it will probably drag all sorts of emotions from me that I’m not prepared for. It’s set on the Maine coast and features an aquarium filled with sea life so I’m pretty sure it meets this prompt!

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Three of us tried to come up with a book that I’ve read that fulfilled this prompt and failed miserably! Charlotte and Amy were throwing title after title after me and I’d not read any of them!

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Evermore by Sara Holland

Jules confronts the girl who is both her oldest friend and greatest enemy in the highly anticipated sequel – and conclusion – to the Top Ten Bestseller Everless.

Jules Ember was raised hearing legends of the ancient magic of the wicked Alchemist and the good Sorceress. But she has just learned the truth: She is the Alchemist, and Caro – a woman who single-handedly murdered the Queen and Jules’s first love, Roan, in cold blood – is the Sorceress.

The whole kingdom believes that Jules is responsible for the murders, and a hefty bounty has been placed on her head. And Caro is intent on destroying Jules, who stole her heart twelve lifetimes ago. Now Jules must piece together the stories of her past lives to save the person who has captured her heart in this one.

Jules goes on one hell of a journey throughout Evermore both across Sempera and through time. This was a wonderful conclusion to Everless although I still want more from this world!

Check out my reviews for both Everless and Evermore!

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Gilded Cage by Vic James

In modern-day Britain, magic users control everything: wealth, politics, power—and you. If you’re not one of the ultimate one-percenters—the magical elite—you owe them ten years of service. Do those years when you’re old, and you’ll never get through them. Do them young, and you’ll never get over them.

This is the darkly decadent world of Gilded Cage. In its glittering milieu move the all-powerful Jardines and the everyday Hadleys. The families have only one thing in common: Each has three children. But their destinies entwine when one family enters the service of the other. They will all discover whether any magic is more powerful than the human spirit.

Have a quick ten years. . . .

This book was just WOW! The whole trilogy left me speechless. So many feelings, and the plots and twists just blew my mind, I don’t think I’ve ever second guessed characters quite so much in my life.

My Gilded Cage review

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No Time To Cry by James Oswald

Undercover ops are always dangerous, but DC Constance Fairchild never expected things to go this wrong.

Returning to their base of operations, an anonymous office in a shabby neighbourhood, she finds the bloodied body of her boss, and friend, DI Pete Copperthwaite. He’s been executed – a single shot to the head.

In the aftermath, it seems someone in the Met is determined to make sure that blame for the wrecked operation falls squarely on Con’s shoulders. She is cut loose and cast out, angry and alone with her grief… right until the moment someone also tries to put a bullet through her head.

There’s no place to hide, and no time to cry.

I absolutely adore James Oswald’s Inspector McLean series, it took a little while for me to get round to reading it but once I picked it up and read it straight through in one sitting. I just loved it and couldn’t put it down, I needed to find out what had happened!

I reviewed No Time To Cry earlier this year

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My Box-Shaped Heart by Rachael Lucas

Holly’s mum is a hoarder, and she is fed up with being picked on at school for being weird . . . and having the wrong clothes . . . and sticking out. All she wants is to be invisible. She loves swimming, because in the water everyone is the same.

Ed goes to the swimming pool to escape the horrible house he and his mum have been assigned by the women’s refuge. In his old life he had money; was on the swim team; knew who he was and what he wanted. In his old life his dad hit his mum.

Holly is swimming in one direction and Ed’s swimming in the other. As their worlds collide they find a window into each other’s lives – and learn how to meet in the middle.

This is such a gorgeous book! I loved seeing Holly and Ed’s relationship develop as they both dealt with their own personal issues, it was just so wholesome and everything I would have loved as a teenager!

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Rumblestar by Abi Elphinstone

‘Adventures are unpredictable and often terribly badly behaved – a bit like pickled onions if you’ve ever tried to fork one on a plate – but they have a way of unlocking people and turning them upside down so that all the astonishing things fizzing around inside them start to tumble out…’

Eleven-year-old Casper Tock hates risks, is allergic to adventures and shudders at the thought of unpredictable events. So, it comes as a nasty shock to him when he accidentally stumbles into Rumblestar, an Unmapped Kingdom full of magical beasts.

All Casper wants is to find a way home, but Rumblestar is in trouble. An evil harpy called Morg is sending her followers, the Midnights, into the kingdom to wreak havoc and pave the way for her to steal the Unmapped magic for herself. But Casper cannot turn a blind eye because the future of his own world, he discovers, is bound up with that of the Unmapped Kingdoms. 

And so, together with Utterly Thankless, a girl who hates rules and is allergic to behaving, and her miniature dragon, Arlo, Casper embarks upon an adventure full of cloud giants, storm ogres and drizzle hags. Can he, Utterly and Arlo, the unlikeliest of heroes, save the Unmapped Kingdoms and our world from the clutches of Morg and her Midnights?

I’m trying to mix up my reading a lot more currently, trying to read middle grade, young adult and adult every week. I’d just read two adult crime books when I picked up Rumblestar and it was such a delightful read! Rumblestar just blew me away, it had me smiling and laughing, but really caught me in my feels at points. I fully expect The Unmapped Chronicles to become a firm favourite of mine.

My Rumblestar review

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Hedda from Countless by Karen Gregory

‘Is there anything that’s concerning you?’ Felicity says. ‘College, home, boyfriends?’ Though she’s more or less smiling at this last one.

I don’t smile. Instead, I feel my face go hot. Silence stretches as wide as an ocean. 
When I look up, Felicity has this expression on her face like she’s just seen Elvis. Slowly, she leans forward and in a gentle voice I’ve never heard her use before she says, ‘Have you done a pregnancy test?’

When Hedda discovers she is pregnant, she doesn’t believe she could ever look after a baby. The numbers just don’t add up. She is young, and still in the grip of an eating disorder that controls every aspect of how she goes about her daily life. She’s even given her eating disorder a name – Nia. But as the days tick by, Hedda comes to a decision: she and Nia will call a truce, just until the baby is born. 17 weeks, 119 days, 357 meals. She can do it, if she takes it one day at a time … 

Now Hedda certainly didn’t clear every hurdle, but she definitely passed a number of obstacles in this moving tale of a girl trying to do her best for her unborn child while battling an eating disorder.

My Countless review

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter’s life is miserable. His parents are dead and he’s stuck with his heartless relatives, who force him to live in a tiny closet under the stairs. But his fortune changes when he receives a letter that tells him the truth about himself: he’s a wizard. A mysterious visitor rescues him from his relatives and takes him to his new home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

After a lifetime of bottling up his magical powers, Harry finally feels like a normal kid. But even within the Wizarding community, he is special. He is the boy who lived: the only person to have ever survived a killing curse inflicted by the evil Lord Voldemort, who launched a brutal takeover of the Wizarding world, only to vanish after failing to kill Harry.

Though Harry’s first year at Hogwarts is the best of his life, not everything is perfect. There is a dangerous secret object hidden within the castle walls, and Harry believes it’s his responsibility to prevent it from falling into evil hands. But doing so will bring him into contact with forces more terrifying than he ever could have imagined.

Harry Potter really needs no introduction. There’s all sorts of interesting sounding food in Harry Potter, from Pumpkin Pasties – which I’m not sure about, to Chocolate Frogs – which I certainly would eat! But this book has made my list for the Welcome Feast! All that wonderful food appearing on the tables thanks to the House Elves, I would be in my element!

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To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic.

Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior – to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

I read this book for my GCSEs. I’d always been fairly aware of my black history. Despite growing up in a very white area of South West England but this really inspired me to delve a little deeper into things such as the Civil Rights Movement. My English teacher also recommended a lot of additional books to read, things like Beloved by Toni Morrison and I Know Why The Cage Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Thanks for reading! I’m not tagging anyone as I think a lot of people have already completed it and we’re right at the end of summer! If you’d like to do it please consider yourself tagged and drop me a link in the comments I’d love to see your answers!