Six For Sunday – Getting To Know You: Six 2019 Favourites

It’s time for another Six For Sunday and we’re still getting to know one another! This week we’re sharing six of our 2019 favourites!

Six for Sunday is a weekly meme hosted by the lovely Steph at ALITTLEBUTALOT. You can find a list of prompts for January, February and March here

Six 2019 Favourites

If you read my post Christmas Blogmas posts you’ll know I did a series of posts on my 2019 favourites, so sorry if you’ve read this and find this a little repetitive! I’ve tried to give a little more explanation here!

Rumblestar – Abi Elphinstone

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? Live a life filled with adventure with Abi Elphinstone in this brand new series where a whole new world is waiting to be discovered…

One of my plans for 2019 was to read more middle grade fiction, one of the first things that I picked up was the short story Abi wrote for World Book Day – Everdark. I absolutely fell in love with Smudge and Bartholomew and was eager to delve back into their world! Smudge and Bartholomew aren’t the focus of Rumblestar but it didn’t take me long to warm to Casper and Utterly and it was a complete delight to follow them on their adventures. I was pleased to have the chance to catch up with Smudge at the end of the story though!

Find my Rumblestar review here and find more information on the next book in the Unmapped Chronicles: Jungledrop here

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A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder – Holly Jackson

The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it.

But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn’t so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth?

A debut YA crime thriller as addictive as Serial and as page-turning as One of Us Is Lying.

If you asked me my favourite genre it would be crime so when this YA novel was announced I was so excited. It’s safe to say that this one absolutely lived up to my expectations. I was hooked from beginning to end, what a fantastic story this was!

Find my A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder review here and find more information on the sequel Good Girl, Bad Blood here

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Nothing To Hide – James Oswald

Suspended from duty after her last case ended in the high-profile arrest of one of Britain’s wealthiest men, DC Constance Fairchild is trying to stay away from the limelight. Fate has other ideas . . .

Coming home to her London flat, Constance stumbles across a young man, bloodied, mutilated and barely alive. She calls it in and is quickly thrown into the middle of a nationwide investigation . . . It seems that the victim is just the latest in a string of similar ritualistic attacks.

No matter that she is off-duty, no matter that there are those in the Met who would gladly see the back of her, Con can’t shake her innate determination to bring the monsters responsible for this brutality to justice.

Trouble always seems to find her, and even if she has nothing to hide, perhaps she has everything to lose . . .

I’m a big fan of James Oswald’s first crime series featuring Inspector Tony Mclean but I think it’s possible I may grow to love this series even more. This was a fantastic follow up to the first book in the series, I loved catching up with Constance again! I think there’s some time to wait until a third book in the series arrives but I know that as soon as it is announced I’ll be preordering!

Find my Nothing To Hide review here

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Theatrical – Maggie Harcourt

Hope dreams of working backstage in a theatre, and she’s determined to make it without the help of her famous costume designer mum. So when she lands an internship on a major production, she tells no one. But with a stroppy Hollywood star and his hot young understudy upstaging Hope’s focus, she’s soon struggling to keep her cool… and her secret.

Gorgeously fresh, funny and commercial YA romance from the author of Unconventional, and The Last Summer of Us.

I have absolutely no idea why it took me so long to pick up this book. I’d owned it for quite a while before getting around to it but I was hooked within pages and absolutely adored following Hope as she completed her internship. I may well be late to the party but I’ll be shouting about how good this one is for a while!

Read my Theatrical review here and find more information on Maggie’s 2020 release The Pieces Of Ourselves here

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The Blossom Twins – Carol Wyer

Their parents thought they were hiding…

One beautiful summer’s evening, thirteen-year-old twins Ivy and Erin Westmore snuggle down in a tent in their back garden, giggling and sharing secrets.

When their mother goes to wake the girls the next morning, their tent is empty.

The alarm is raised and Detective Natalie Ward is put onto the case. When the twins’ bodies are discovered on nearby marshland, covered with deep pink petals, an icy shiver travels down Natalie’s spine. Everything about the girls’ deaths reminds her of a horrifying case she worked on earlier in her career, which saw a killer of the worst kind placed behind bars.

The next day, that feeling is heightened when she receives a chilling note saying ‘I’m back’. Is this killer a copycat or did Natalie put the wrong person in prison all those years ago? In a small town, where no stranger goes unnoticed, what is Natalie missing?

Consumed by the case, determined to prevent more deaths, Natalie misses the fact that it is her attention the killer wants. And to get it, he has his sights set firmly on her precious daughter Leigh…

Gripping, fast-paced and nail-bitingly tense, this book will keep you flying through the pages long into the night. Perfect for fans of Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott and Karin Slaughter.

In my Best of the Best post I said that Carol’s Detective Natalie Ward series was my favourite of the year and I read all five books in the series last year and any of them could have made this list but I’ve gone with the latest in the series, that was released right at the end of 2019. What a book this was! There was a huge twist at the end, and I may forgive Carol for it in time but it sounds like she’s planning to play with us readers emotions a little more in 2020!

Read my The Blossom Twins review here

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Doom Days – Bastille

I know this isn’t a book, does this mean I’m cheating? To fill my last spot I had to decide between my favourite film, tv and music of 2019 and I went with Bastille’s third album Doom Days. I was obsessed with Bastille’s first album Bad Blood and would regularly listen to it on repeat I could have listened to Pompeii solidly for days on end. Doom Days is up there with their first album for me. I could listen to it over and over again, it’s tough to decide on a favourite track from it. In my Favourite Media post I shared the video for Joy so today I’ll leave you with another great track Another Place

They were my #SixforSunday! If you’ve taken part leave a link to your post below and I’ll be sure to check it out!

Also help me out with a future Six for Sunday, if there’s a particular book you associate with me let me know which and why in the comments!