The Overflowing Library

I just wanted to finish the year with a simple post to finish up 2015 on the blog by saying as always thank you to all the wonderful publicists who continue to send me all the books, all the authors who indulge my fangirling and all my lovely bookish friends old and new I have made since I started my blog who are all brilliant and make this crazy hobby of mine worthwhile. Total books read in 2014: 213 British Books Challenge final total: 121 5 Star Reads:36 Book of the year:  One by Sarah Crossan I've read a lot of awesome books and I hate to narrow down but I've picked this because I still think about it six months after finishing it and I enjoyed the fact that it made me realise novels written in verse can be awesome.

The end of the year is here finally. I've spent the month reading pretty much whatever I fancy rather than worrying about review copies as such and dipping into a few adult books over the Christmas break. Read in December My sister's keeper by Jodie Picoult Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin Wild Lily by KM Peyton Who's that girl by Mhairi McFarlane The Reluctant Journal of Henry K Larsen Everyone Brave is forgiven by Chris Cleave Moth Girls by Anne Cassidy Operation Blackout by Victor Watson Book of the Month I have been waiting for a new book from Mhairi since I read her last book this time last year. I was so pleased when this arrived and loved it as much as I hoped I would. Events attended I went to a lovely event in London held by My Kinda Book seeing two of their 2016 debut authors talk about their books Harriet Reuter Hapgood with Square Root of Summer and Sara Barnard with Beautiful Broken Things . I've read both and they are awesome On the blo...

I am very excited to be hosting the 2016 British Books Challenge 2016 taking it back over for the first time since 2013. The British Books Challenge is a reading challenge to encourage you to read at least 12 books by British authors in a year. These can be fiction, non fiction, adult, UKYA, childrens whatever goes as long as they are by an author from Great Britain. To sign up for the British Books Challenge all your need to do is to create a post or a page (bloggers) or a video (booktubers) to show that you are joining the challenge and link to that page / post / video in the Mister Linky below The FAQs for the challenge are here My personal challenge page is here It'd also be fab if you could grab the British Books Challenge button (in my right side bar) and display it wherever you will be posting your reviews Any questions tweet me @overflowingklc

Another pile of books I cannot wait for this month such is my reading life... Keep you close by Lucie Whitehouse When the artist Marianne Glass falls to her death, everyone insists it was a tragic accident. Yet Rowan Winter, once her closest friend, suspects there is more to the story. Ever since she was young, Marianne had paralyzing vertigo. She would never have gone so close to the roof's edge. Marianne -- and the whole Glass family -- once meant everything to Rowan. For a teenage girl, motherless with a much-absent father, this lively, intellectual household represented a world of glamour and opportunity. But since their estrangement, Rowan knows only what the papers reported about Marianne's life: her swift ascent in the London art world, her much-scrutinized romance with her gallerist. If she wants to discover the truth about her death, Rowan needs to know more. Was Marianne in distress? In danger? And so she begins to seek clues -- in Marianne's ...

I tried to do a top ten post but I really couldn't. Instead here are all my five star YA reads of the year. They are all books I adored over the last 12 months. Done in read order because I can't rank them at all. The Last Leaves Falling by Sarah Benwell I loved this book. I read it on one sitting and adored every page. It is truly just a beautiful, yet sad, book which I cannot recommend enough. We are all made of Molecules We are all made of molecules is simply brilliant. I love all the characters and it was enough book I devoured in a matter of hours. Other Girl by Nicole Burstein I thought this book was brilliant. So funny and it really appealed to my geeky side far more than it probably should have. I loved it. This is not a love story by Keren David Above all this book made me want to visit Amsterdam. Or go whole hog and live in Amsterdam. I loved the story and the characters and now desperately want more Keren David's to read. The Belo...

After Iris Blue Gadsby’s twin sister, Iris, died three years ago and her family has never been the same. Her histrionic older sister, Flora, changes her hair color daily; her younger siblings, Jasmine and Twig, are completely obsessed with their pet rats; and both of her parents spend weeks away from home–and each other. Enter Zoran the Bosnian male au pair and Joss the troublemaking boy next door, and life for the Gadsby family takes a turn for the even more chaotic. Blue poignantly captures her family’s trials and tribulations from fragmented to fully dysfunctional to ultimately reunited, in a sequence of film transcripts and diary entries that will make you cry, laugh, and give thanks for the gift of families. Flora in Love Just when Bluebell thought her crazy family were behaving normally, her parents make an announcement that could turn everything upside down. If only Zoran, their au pair, would come back to live with them. Unfortunately he's too busy t...

All I want for Christmas is… a new GEEK GIRL story! Harriet Manners knows a lot about Christmas. She knows that every year Santa climbs down 91.8 million chimneys. She knows that Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer was almost definitely a girl. She knows that the first artificial Christmas trees were made out of goose feathers. But this Christmas is extra special for Harriet, because four days ago she had her First Ever Kiss. Now she just needs to work out what's supposed to happen next… A romantic festive treat from the internationally bestselling award-winning author of the GEEK GIRL series. Also includes a BONUS previously unpublished GEEK GIRL short story TEAM GEEK! My thoughts I was very excited to receive All Wrapped Up as a review copy last week and it didn't take long for it to creep to the top of my TBR. This book is essentially two short stories bound up to look like a full sized novel. The publisher has even printed the words in the book slightly bigger to ma...

I've had a pretty good month bookwise. I've had some awesome 2016 titles dropping through my letterbox which have been a pleasure to read. It's also meant I have loads of review scheduled for the new year for you all. Books Read in November Beautiful Broken Things by Sara Barnard (5 stars) When I was Me by Hilary Freeman (3 stars) Whisper by Chrissie Keighery (4 stars) All Wrapped up by Holly Smale (4 stars) Never Evers by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivson (4 stars) After the Last Dance by Sarra Manning (5 stars) The Icarus Show by Sally Christie (4 stars) Front Lines by Michael Grant (5 stars) The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood (4 stars) Lily and the Christmas Wish by Keris Stainton (5 stars) How not to disappear by Clare Furniss (5 stars) Waiting for Callback by Perdita and Honor Cargill (4 stars) Flora in Love by Natasha Farrant (5 stars) All about Pumpkin by Natasha Farrant (5 stars) Book of the Month I knew How not to Disappear would be good a...

So I spent a bit of time of Goodreads lately and added loads of 2016 releases to my wishlist. Ended up doubling my wishlist within a couple of hours full of books I am dying to read. Here are a few of them Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave Published May 2016 From the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Little Bee, a spellbinding novel about three unforgettable individuals thrown together by war, love, and their search for belonging in the ever-changing landscape of WWII London. It’s 1939 and Mary, a young socialite, is determined to shock her blueblood political family by volunteering for the war effort. She is assigned as a teacher to children who were evacuated from London and have been rejected by the countryside because they are infirm, mentally disabled, or—like Mary’s favorite student, Zachary—have colored skin. Tom, an education administrator, is distraught when his best friend, Alastair, enlists. Alastair, an art restorer, has always seemed...

One girl, two lives. Which is real? When Ella wakes up one Monday morning, she discovers that she is not herself and that her life is not her own. She looks different, her friends are no longer her friends and her existence has been erased from the internet. Even worse, years of her history appear to have been rewritten overnight. And yet, nobody else thinks that anything weird has happened. A tense and dark psychological thriller full of unexpected twists and turns about the random events and decisions that make us who we are. If you can't trust your own memories, then who can you trust? My thoughts   I really enjoyed this book. I wasn't really sure what to and I've been in a weird reading mood of late DNFing books left, right and centre but this managed to keep me hooked right the way through. When I was me is the sorry of Ella who wakes up to find everything in her world is similar to before but slightly different. She spend the book trying to get her he...

Another quiet month for me book wise sadly. Here's what I managed to get through over the past month. Books Read in October Royally Obsessed by Meg Cabot (4 stars) Tonight the Streets are ours by Leila Sales (3 stars) Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone: Illustrated edition (5 stars) Life and Death Twilight Reimagined by Stephenie Meyer (3 stars) Prom Princess by Meg Cabot (4 stars) After Iris by Natasha Farrant (4 stars) The Hollow Boy by Jonathan Stroud (4 stars) Book of the Month Yes this is cheating but the pictures throughout this book are so beautiful that it couldn't not be my book of the month this month. Events Attended None sadly. On the Blog Blog Tours Zeroes Blog Tour Railhead Blog Tour Monsters Blog Tour AWOL series A series of posts from me catching up with reviews AWOL intro post Activity books Books I wished I'd DNfed TV and film tie ins Books I loved I also blogged about the 2016 releases I am looking forward to....

Another month and another set of books I cannot wait to get my hands on. I'm mostly focusing on 2016 releases this month ready for the new year. Jolly Foul Play by Robin Stevens - Out March 2016 Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong have returned to Deepdean for a new school term, but nothing is the same. There's a new Head Girl, Elizabeth Hurst, and a team of Prefects - and these bullying Big Girls are certainly not good eggs. Then, after the fireworks display on Bonfire Night, Elizabeth is found - murdered. Many girls at Deepdean had reason to hate Elizabeth, but who might have committed such foul play? Could the murder be linked to the secrets and scandals, scribbled on scraps of paper, that are suddenly appearing around the school? And with their own friendship falling to pieces, how will Daisy and Hazel solve this mystery?   I  love this series. I cannot wait for this to be released. How Not to Disappear by Clare Furniss - Out January 2016 Hattie's summer ...