beautiful malice- rebecca james

O.M.G.

im not usually one for omg, lol, rofl etc., in fact i make fun of people that say lol in real life. but o.m.g. (said pausing deliberately at each full stop and in a high pitched excited twitty voice) is the only thing that comes immediately to mind after having just read the entire book in a day (at work, in between customers none the less).

so i read the excerpt about a month ago, and i wrote it off (unjustly, i know this now) immediately as another trashy looking vampire/werewolf/crappy 'ting' albeit with a seductive beginning.

but, behold! not a vampire, hairy wolf boy or emo fallen angel, (not that the excerpt ever implied there would be, i just assumed. and made an ass out of u and me...) not even a sniffle, on any page, despite the fact that the cover makes it look like it's being marketed to that kind of audience. and it wasn't shit!

intriguing from the start, katherine is the girl with the murdered sister and the miserable, grief affected existence. alice is the beautiful charismatic one with the promise of secrets beneath that glittery exterior. and oh my god (o.m.g!) she is super crazy and evil. it's fantastic. so, so gripping. the plot is structured around katherine's present, living life cautiously with her little girl sarah, and flashes back into the past gradually uncover the events that lead to life as it is now.

and the best bit was the way it wrapped up so nicely, (no, not in a nice way, but in a complete jigsaw kind of way) and the way the reason alice is such a crazy bitch is a something that makes you go... O.M.G.

dont just bedazzle, vajazzle!

dear god. has anyone else heard about the vajazzling craze that is sweeping across the world? well. its a cool word, fun to say, but the idea of gluing things to my bits seems kind of odd...
apparently it started getting popular in new york, where after letting them rip off strips of pubic hair, some mad folk allowed the staff to cover their vajajays in little bits of sparkly plastic. or if you are particularly rich, you can choose swarovski crystlals (no i am not kidding).
cindy barshop, owner of completely bare spa, does have a few sage words of advice in relation to vajazzling and men- 'They love it! They love it even more especially when it's a surprise'.

hahahahaha i'll be sure to try it, thanks cindy.
AND word on the street is that it penazzling will also soon be available. yay!

sorry john!

Cannot believe i forgot to put any of John Green's amazing novels in my YA top 10. Cos he is really, really, up there in terms of being a FANTASTIC author. Super fantastic in fact. One of my favourites. Ever.

I read Looking for Alaska (years ago, but i remember it being utterly fab, time for a reread), Paper Towns (Q makes dork chic look chic'er than chic) and An Abundance of Katherines (Colin puts relationships in a graph and still manages to be sexy) and i just finished Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan. And it was great!

There is Will Grayson. There is Tiny Cooper. And there is the other Will Grayson. When the three meet up outside a porn shop through a series of mildly unfortunate coincidences (okay maybe extremely unfortunate), enter a totally fabulous high school romance, a musical, some heartbreak, and a particularly beautiful plain glass bowl.

I liked John Green's Will Grayson better, and while this may be just a case of me falling slightly in love with yet another of Green's nerdy-sexy-intelligent-witty-but not too gorgeous-i wish-you-were-mine-not-in-a-book characters, it may also be because i found the o.w.g. (other will grayson) a bit depressing, and while he was depressing in a relatable way, it still got a bit boring. Towards the end i almost felt like i was wading through a type of goo, a very nice type of goo that i was happy to be surrounded by, but that was just a bit slow to get through. I was also bit confused by the ending with the ovation of Graysons. I feel slightly like I missed something, like someone had told a joke i didn't understand, although it very possibly was just be me being a bit thick.
All in all though, it was a brilliantly voiced gay extravaganza, and while to me it smelt more of classic John Green, Levithan's voice gave it a nice edgy feel and the two complemented each other delightfully.
Highly recommended.

gecko times

i randomly mentioned to my dad the other day that i wouldn't mind a pet gecko. i then forgot about it, came home yesterday and mum was all 'dad caught you a gecko' and it was on the floor sitting under an upturned salad bowl. i was super impressed with dads gecko hunting prowess, and gecko feet are one of the good things in life, all padded and spindly and geckoey. am going to release it back into the trailer out the front of the house so it can go back to being a free and marbled gecko.

the glass demon- helen grant

When Lin finds a dead guy under an apple tree, laid out snow white style with the crisp, barely nibbled fruit lying next to him, it seems like just another bad omen to follow the uprooting of her family. So she almost doesn't notice the glittering pile of glass on the ground.
It is only later on she remembers about Bonschariant, the Glass Demon, said to haunt the Allerheiligen stained glass windows. The windows her father is researching, the windows that dragged her family to the middle of a german forest inhabited by huge surly men with slavering monster dogs, the windows that might destroy them all.
Well written with a tightly constructed plot, this deliciously suspensful novel dangles tantalising between both crime and fantasy. It ended in a very satisfying way and I really, really liked it. Lin, Michel (the cute son of the huge surly man with the toothy canine) and the super creepy Bonschariant were all I could think about for a 48hour period, and damn I hope there is a sequel.

my top 10 YA books of all time (except for the ones i have forgotten to include)

in no particular order:
feeling sorry for celia- jaclyn moriarty (and all her other books. she is amazing)
the great gatenby- john marsden
my candlelight novel- joanne horniman
hitchhikers guide to the galaxy- douglas adams
on the jellicoe road/saving francesca- melina marchetta (i absolutely cant decide which i like better. i blame my indecisive libra starsign...)
guitar highway rose- brigid lowry. yes it is a bit cliched but i loved it at thirteen and i still love it. the whole book just smells of summer.
spud- john van de ruit. fucking hilarious.
the book of fred- abby bardi
came back to show you i could fly- robin klein
what now, tilda b?- kathryn lomer