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...