Sam's Fireside - Cosy Book Reviews & Recommendations

"I'm going to swim with the stars". Metal Slinger was May's choice for #thatbonkersbookclub and, hands up, I wasn't looking forward to reading it. 🙈 I knew nothing about it; I just knew I wasn't keen on the title! Well, what a mistake that was! 🤦‍♀️ It is an A M A Z I N G story with one of the most mind-blowing plot twists I've ever read. 🤯 When it happened, I literally sat up in my chair and re-read the page in question — WTAF did I just read?! 😱 I went through varying emotions with the main characters. I feel like I loved them and hated them in equal measure, and if you asked me now, my thoughts would probably change during the course of one conversation! 😂 The world-building is kept to a minimum, which I liked, although I did check out the map a couple of times to see where all the different regions were located. 🗺️ Metal Slinger is an easy-read romantasy that I'm sure readers will be able to get into pretty quickly. With politics, magic, war ...

“She couldn’t fix herself anymore, and no one else seemed inclined to even notice she was breaking.” I had to listen to the book that everyone has been raving about for months. 📚✨ I knew it was a long one, and I had way more listening time than reading time, so I requested it on Libby, waited my turn, and jumped in a couple of weeks ago. 🎧 It’s written in three parts — present, past, and present again, ⏳ — and while I didn’t enjoy the past bit as much, it did explain why everything was happening, and it made things make sense. The story is pretty dark in a lot of places 🌑⚡ and more than once I had to stop and think,  “wtf did I just listen to?!!!” 😳 I got confused about the different “mancers” — necromancer, vivimancer, etc. — and what their abilities were. In the end, I gave up and just went with the story. I still couldn’t tell you which characters were alive or dead. 💀🫠 That being said, I enjoyed it, 👍 I just didn’t delve too deeply into the reasoning behind the war, the ...

“There is magic in the ordinary, magic that has the power to change the world.” ✨💫 Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J. Klune was our April pick for #thatbonkersbookclub Sequel Shelf, 📚💥 following The House in the Cerulean Sea, which we read at the beginning of the year. This sequel focuses on Arthur’s story and why he returned to Marsyas as an adult. 🏝️🧭 The book is full of magic, wonder, and love, 💙🌈 and picks up where the previous story left off, with the possibility of a new child joining the family. 👀✨ If he does, the question becomes whether he will fit in—and how that journey unfolds. 🧩💛 My heart was completely wrapped up in the idea of a family that can be so full of happiness despite the discrimination, difficulties, and disorder faced by those who are different, 😤💔 all while simply wanting what everyone deserves: love and safety. 🏡💞 Arthur and Linus are funny, 😂💀 the kids are downright hilarious, 🤣🔥 and I found myself giggling constantly while reading. There are...

"Let's go hang out with the hippies and their wine and weed." 🍷🌿. The thing with T. J. Klune’s books is that, no matter what, they make me laugh. I always struggle to narrow it down to just one quote to include in a review. 😅 We Burned So Bright was no different. Don and Rodney are so funny—even as they’re facing the end of the world, their little quips bring light to the inevitable and often leave a smile on other people’s faces. 😊 I loved the sense of community that builds along their journey to complete a task they promised themselves they’d finish before everything goes dark. 🌍✨ So many of the people they meet are just embracing those last days and weeks without a care. No need to pay for gas—who cares? Take my truck, I’m not going to need it! 🚗💨 This book is a little dark—what with the world ending and everything—but it’s also a lovely read, full of fun moments, with memories woven throughout. 🖤 I really enjoyed it. I don’t pick up short stories all that oft...

  " The sky is a velvet blanket littered with stars that wink at me for the first time in a week." To Bleed a Crystal Bloom was the March read for #thatbonkersbookclub and… I was disappointed. 😕 It’s a Rapunzel retelling, which I honestly found a little strange and quite dark. 🕯️ Our protagonist has been locked in a tower since she was two, but now has this odd fascination with the man who put her there, as well as a weird creature living in the sea. 🌊 I just found the story boring.  😴 Nothing grabbed me, nothing made me want to keep reading—but I did, because I kept hoping it would get better. It didn’t… at least not for me. 🤷‍♀️ When we discussed it, the majority of us felt the same way, and at least two of us got the ick from the relationships, 😖 never mind the nauseating references to other things I never want to think about ever again. 🤢 A lot of it felt random and unexplained, and maybe that comes in the next book—but I won’t be sticking around to find out. 🚫 So...

“I think all worlds are magic. We just get used to it.” ✨🌍 #thatbonkersbookclub chose Fairy Tale as the read for The Chiller Shelf for March (it may even have been my suggestion—I can’t remember! 🤔📚). Either way, it’s definitely my favourite of the three Stephen King novels I’ve read so far. 🙌 In my mind, it leans far more toward fantasy than horror, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. 🐉✨ I both read and listened to this one, but definitely leaned more towards the audiobook. 🎧📖 The first half of the book follows a normal kid who’s had a pretty tough childhood 💔 and has had to grow up fast. He then takes it one step further by agreeing to look after an older man who needs extra care after an accident. 🏡🩹 The second half is where the fantasy world kicks in—and wow, does it kick in. 😳⚡ We go from a normal world with a normal kid to a portal into another world where everything is very much not normal. 🌌🚪✨ Slight spoiler (but necessary!): Radar is one of the main charac...

“You turned a dark magic spell into a field full of flowers?” 🌸✨ Shaedes of War is the fourth book in the series and such a fun read! It starts a little slow, but the intensity really builds as you go. 🔥 The trials gave me Hunger Games meets Triwizard Tournament vibes, and I loved them—especially the last one. 👀💥 Edmyn and Markis bring such a great contrast to the purity of the Shaedes, and their love for their mates is intense .❤️‍🔥 And wow… the spice in this one 🌶️🔥 let’s just say… toe-curling and mind-spinning. 😮‍💨 Oh—and Collin.🥹 You will fall in love with him. Such a sweet kid who just wants to protect the realm and become fae… but will they let him? 👀✨ As with the other books, I loved discovering the different Shaedes and their powers. Honestly, I’d take a bit of each… plus a dragon 🐉 (her name would be Cora. 💁‍♀️) Thank you so much to Jenny Grimes for including me on her ARC team. 💖📚 About the Book With everything to gain and even more to lose, will their love sur...

"Books clomped off her desk and arranged themselves on a nearby shelf." ✨📚 This was my March listen for another one of @hook.me.a.book challenges. This time it's the #LetsEarItAudiobookChallenge 🎧. I wanted to enjoy this one, I really did. It sounded so good when I chose it on Libro FM, and maybe I made the mistake of listening rather than reading, but I think I missed a lot of it because I was doing other things! Whatever it was, it didn't grab my attention. Although I did finish it, I won't be reading (or listening to) the next one. Read the book description — sounds good, right? Especially if, like me, you love a witchy read 🧙‍♀️. Plus so many people loved it and it has such great reviews, although to be fair there are some not-so-great ones too. Maybe it's like Marmite — you either love it or hate it! Maybe I'll come back to it one day. If enough people tell me they enjoyed this one, then I might just give it another go. Although this one didn’t qui...

“I am not trying to take you from the life that you know. All I'm trying to do is show you a world that you deserve to see".  #thatbonkersbookclub chose Wisteria for February’s “Sequel Shelf” 📚 It’s the third and final full-length novel in the Belladonna series, which is a series I’ve really loved! ✨ Wisteria focuses on Blythe and Fate and their forced relationship — one that slowly evolves with understanding and time spent together. Blythe has never been my favourite character in the series by any stretch, but she did grow on me in Wisteria. I know lots of people loved her, but for me she was always a bit… meh! 🤷‍♀️ Fate (aka Aris) was well grumpy 😤 Quite frankly, he needed a good kick up the a**e to stop him treating Blythe the way he did. I mean, come on — did he really need to be that harsh?! This is a difficult review to write without including spoilers, but my favourite thing had to be the front door that leads anywhere you want it to 🚪✨ Just imagine how useful that ...

“Do you know how to live three hundred years?” she says. And when he asks how, she smiles. “The same way you live one. A second at a time.” I’d heard so many amazing things about The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, yet I’d never read it. So when I spotted a special edition on the Zon, it jumped into my basket as if by magic ✨ The physical edition is gorgeous — sprayed edges, glossy illustrations inside — and the story is completely my kind of thing. I loved it ❤️ I could have happily carried on reading about all the years we missed in Addie’s past. I chose to read this now because my cousin was reading it for her real-life book club, and I thought it would be lovely if we could chat about it too 📖 I’m not sure she liked it as much as I did, though! The writing is beautiful, and the story is full of emotion and tragedy 💔 I found myself wondering how I would cope if no one remembered me and I were living forever — the places I could go, the things I could see, and of course, having the ...

"LIFE is many things - good, bad, steady, unexpected - but we can all agree that each one is UNIQUE. " I didn’t really know what I was getting into with All This & More 🤔. It’s a concept I’ve only ever experienced as a child, through the Choose Your Own Adventure stories 📚. Peng takes that idea to a whole different level, delivering it in a far more complex and lengthy way. I’m not sure how much my experience was affected by listening rather than reading 🎧, but whenever a choice came up, I almost always selected the option that said continue listening. It was simply easier, especially as I was usually doing other things at the same time 🏃‍♀️🧹. The only exception was right at the end, when I chose to listen to all three endings 👀. The book blends fantasy, sci-fi, and time travel 🚀✨, which—for the purposes of this story—is explained through quantum physics 🔬. That’s something I don’t understand and probably never will 😂! I’m also not sure whether we’re meant to lik...