Weekly Reading Thread - May 10, 2015

I am still working my way through my “bingo card” reading list that I created for this year. I am usually put off by series – don’t want to wait another year or more for the next one and sometimes I think they drag it out on purpose, with better writing and better editing, one book would have been enough. However I did decide to add a couple of popular series to my list for this year, and it just so happens they ended up next to each other on the same “bingo line”.

First up was Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, which I followed straight after with Hollow City.
These books are about 17yo Jacob who grows up with his grandfather telling him stories about living in an orphanage during the war where all of the children had special powers (called ‘peculiars’ in the book). Jacob thinks these are just fairy tales until one day when his grandfather is killed and then he & his father travel to the island near Wales where the orphanage is located. Up until this point I was caught up in the story.

Then we learn about ‘whites’ and ‘hollows’ (monsters with super strength and multiple tongues) who hunt & kill the peculiars. Then it turned into running and fighting monsters with someone from either side dying.
I don’t mind a bit of supernatural in my books but battling monsters really isn’t my thing. I thought the writing was OK and liked the narration of the audiobook, they just weren’t my type of books. There’s a third book out later this year, but I won’t be reading it.

Next up is the Mara Dyer trilogy. The first book is The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin.
Mara is 14yo and the book starts when her best friend, boyfriend and boyfriend’s sister are killed when an old building collapses, and Mara survives. She suffers from PTSD and hallucinations after the accident and goes to a new school where she meets a mysterious new guy. Then they discover that Mara seems to have some sort of psychic powers.

I felt the author didn’t quite know where to go with this, she introduces the idea of powers and then veers off into a YA love story, and then suddenly switches back to the paranormal stuff with full forces. Much of the writing is good, but there are a couple of really unbelievable things that happen that almost made me stop reading. The first book was OK and I’d give it 3 stars.

Went straight into the second book The Evolution of Mara Dyer and am about 20% done. It’s keeping my interest, so I’ll see where it goes. Unless it really dives off the deep end, I'll also read the third one The Retribution of Mara Dyer.