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The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle
The Seven Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle
Stuart Turton | 2018 | Mystery, Science Fiction/Fantasy
9
7.9 (24 Ratings)
Book Rating
www.diaryofdiffference.com

Mind blowing and unputdownable, this is one of those mystery thrillers that will keep you up at night until you see how it ends!

How do you stop a murder that’s already happened?

The Hardcastle family is hosting a masquerade at their home, and their daughter Evelyn Hardcastle will die. She will die every day until Aiden Bishop is able identify her killer and break the cycle.
But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up each day in a different body as one of the guests.

Aiden’s only escape is to solve Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder and conquer the shadows of an enemy he struggles to even comprehend. But nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

Honestly, the first couple of pages, I didn’t know where this book was going and whether I am going to enjoy it at all. But as you go through the chapters and get familiar with the story, you realise how clever this book is, and you enjoy it like you have never enjoyed any other book before.

As a debut novel, Stuart Turton did an incredible job with this book. It starts slowly, and grows into a great story. We follow the main character Aiden through many bodies, day by day. The book is set into one place, one town, one house and its surroundings, and sometimes moves backwards and forwards in time.

If you love mysteries and closed escape room books, you will enjoy this book so much!

I have always admired Aiden. Even though all the bodies he was in tried to make him forget about who he really is, he would always fight so his character can flow on the surface! I loved the sacrifices he makes towards Anna, and their relationship.

The ending, the last 30 pages are so smart, amazing and perfectly wrapped up that I couldn’t believe I never noticed those clues.

I am giving it 4 stars, because, even though I really, really enjoyed it, it was extremely hard for me to follow the times and bodies, and I couldn’t get along with the stories and solve the mystery together with Aiden - I always felt like I was falling behind, that put me under stress.

If you haven’t had the chance to read it yet, please grab a copy as soon as you can. This is the escape room mystery that we have all been waiting for!

I want to thank NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing me an advanced reader e-copy of this book, in exchange for my honest review.
  
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Sam (74 KP) rated On the Other Side in Books

Mar 27, 2019  
On the Other Side
On the Other Side
Carrie Hope Fletcher | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
6
6.7 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
I’ll begin by saying something quite controversial here that I know a lot of people won’t like:

If it wasn’t for Carrie Hope Fletcher’s YouTube fame, this wouldn’t have been taken on by a publisher. While reading it, I felt that it was more like a self-published title in quality and plot. It’s become a thing for YouTubers to bring out books and I feel like most of these will almost always lack quality. Publishers just take them on to have a bestseller because of the name on the cover.

I did like the plot, don’t get me wrong. It was interesting enough and kept me hooked all the way through. I quite liked Evie’s character and found her quite genuine. I feel that the plot and the characters could have all done well if it wasn’t for the wishy-washy writing style. The style made it seem more like Disney fan-fiction rather than a contemporary novel.

I did enjoy reading this, which is why it still has three stars from me. I binged it and found it quite a fun read. But I just couldn’t get over the bad writing style. The writing style would be more suitable for a YA audience than adult.

There’s no reason you wouldn’t enjoy it. If you’re a big fan of Disney or Carrie, you’d love this and it’s definitely worth seeing what it’s all about.
  
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LeftSideCut (3778 KP) rated The Mummy (2017) in Movies

May 27, 2019 (Updated May 27, 2019)  
The Mummy (2017)
The Mummy (2017)
2017 | Action, Adventure
An abrupt and poorly executed end to the Dark Universe
Since The Mummy came out in 2017, Universals planned Dark Universe has come to a shuddering stop.
After watching this movie I can see why.

The movie starts off ok I guess, the pretty standard 'tomb raiding' you can expect from a Mummy film.

It Tom Cruise that starts to tank it for me - I've always been able to take or leave Tom Cruise. Sometimes I like him, sometimes I don't, and in The Mummy, I definitely didn't. It just seems like he's playing a parody of himself at this point.

When we are introduced midway through the film to the plot device that was supposed to start linking The Mummy to future Dark Universe films - namely Russell Crowe as Jekkyl/Hyde - the movie falls apart even further, causing what little coherence it did have to slowly crumble.
Annabelle Wallace's character is reduced to someone who panders after Tom Cruise, even with his character constantly being an arsehole.
Jake Johnson's character is used as a weird exposition tool that pops randomly without rhyme or reason.
It's just all a little messy.

Some saving graces - The CGI effects or pretty good for the most part and I did quite like Sofia Boutella as The Mummy.

Maybe the first Brendan Frasier Mummy film was just a one off, which is kind of sad, as I was quite excited to see the Universal Monsters brought back to life.
  
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
2019 | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Another Star Wars Movie, And It's Great!
The Good:
The saga is over and we finally know where Rey comes from! Would have preferred not to have known but who cares!
A lot of people dislike this movie, almost more than Last Jedi I feel but I take it for what it is: a Star Wars movie. If they didn't make it people would be mad but they did and you can dislike the movie but it's the facetious reviews I can't stand.
We see a lot of older characters return and it really felt like a reunion of old and new.

The Bad:
The editing felt really wonky in places, the first 30mins alone was too much to handle in one sitting (had to see it twice).
I did feel like they suffered slightly by getting a different director in for Last Jedi as they're bound to have a different outlook on Star Wars. That's not discrediting Rian Johnson's directing at all. I'm just a purest and completeist, if you're going to start a trilogy with one director, keep that director for the rest of the movies.

All in all a movie worth watching over and over if you're a star wars fan. I tend to rate a movie 10/10 if it's part of a franchise like star wars that I know I'd watch over and over but as it just came out I'll leave it at 9 for now 😉
  
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Jeff Lynne recommended Revolver by The Beatles in Music (curated)

 
Revolver by The Beatles
Revolver by The Beatles
1966 | Pop, Psychedelic, Rock

"This is pretty amazing. I think this is Geoff Emerick’s first go as engineer. He’d been working there [at Abbey Road studios] but he hadn’t become an engineer yet. When I was working with Paul McCartney on his album, Flaming Pie, Geoff was the engineer as well. He told me what a marvellous thing it was for him because he used this close mic ambience on this album and did some really amazing effects, like on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Backwards stuff and all that and this was pretty advanced stuff in them days. It was more experimental than anything they’d done before. Some of the tunes on there are just great and it was them nearly getting into Sgt Pepper, you know? Probably doing more experimenting and copying tapes and bouncing them across. They hadn’t got the tracks to do it, really, so they had to use two machines and sometime three machines and then mix everything down from four tracks onto one and then start on another and mix that down to another machine. So it was very difficult to make those records, I would imagine. How did it sound back in ’66? Way better than everything else, I would say. It stood out like a sore thumb really. It was so tight and beautiful and punchy. It was the punchiest thing around. It was, like, powerful and, it seemed to me, majestic."

Source
  
Ex-Futur Album by Veronique Vincent and Aksak Maboul
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"This is a fascinating record and it has such an amazing story. Marc Hollander was Aksak Maboul, they were his crew in the 80s, and he started Crammed Discs in Belgium. He was married (still is) to Veronique Vincent [of the Honeymoon Killers]and they were recording an album in I think about 1983, and then a baby arrived, so that took over. So they left the record practically finished but not quite finished, in the drawer. And then another baby arrived, so that record got even further and deeper into its drawer! It got forgotten. And then some years ago they discovered it, and played it and thought okay, this is good stuff. Obviously Marc had the label, so they mixed it and released it, and there it was: the Ex-Futur Album. My personal connection to this record is that people kept saying oh, it sounds like Stereolab, except they did it ten years before we did! They're sort of our parents, and that's really amazing to me. We've been separated and found again later on; it's a really lovely experience, and it also makes so much sense with the kind of label that Marc is running. It's very open, and they're very open-minded people, accepting the differences, and it's what I find most attractive: the fusion, when you go get some DNA from here and there and over here and then cram it all into a song."

Source
  
Circle Of Lies (Morecambe Bay Trilogy #2)
Circle Of Lies (Morecambe Bay Trilogy #2)
Paul J. Teague | 2019 | Crime, Mystery, Thriller
8
9.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Shame you have to purchase 3rd book to see what happens (0 more)
This was the second book in the Morecambe Bay trilogy. There were all the character's from the last book and some new ones. Although the story was a continuation of the initial story of Bruce there was also another story but it did include him. In this story Charlotte is a lot more involved and she helps push the story forward. The book went back to the past again which was needed as again it gave the full picture on the current story. Sometimes, again, Charlotte annoyed me as she put herself and others in danger but I understand why she did this. Although there were 2 main stories running it didn't confuse the overall story.
I got into this book a lot quicker than the last one. This may of been because I was in the story as I had gone from one book straight onto the next one so it didn't feel so much like starting a new book.
The book ended on a cliff hanger and it wasn't resolved at all. Therefore I had to buy the second book to get the end of the story. This was slightly frustrating as I prefer to have the choice as to whether I want to purchase the next book. I didn't want to leave the story unfinished and if I had not purchased the third book I would have.
  
The Magicians: Book 1
The Magicians: Book 1
Lev Grossman | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry
10
7.3 (19 Ratings)
Book Rating
Clear and unhidden links to favourite child hood books. (0 more)
Harry Potter for grown ups
Contains spoilers, click to show
I was a fan of this book long before the TV series of the same name, and a firm believer that the book in this case is better than the screen. Unlike the TV series, the book comes across more intelligently and the characters are a lot more relatable. Lev Grossman uses popular fantasy books such as The Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter series for ideas for this novel, but adapts these childhood fantasies to an adult level.


Quentin, the main character within the novel is not your usual hero, being the high achieving teenager who could never quite best his peers, is fixated by a Narnia style story from his child hood (Fillory), which he could never quite overcome. The narrative shares Quentins journey from joining a magical college, making friends to early adulthood and finding that Fillory is real.

Despite the obvious links to other stories, Lev Grossman intelligently uses his story to explore a range of issues such as sexuality and depression, making his characters more relatable to the reader. The villains and events in the story are a lot more sinister than you might expect from a tale that combines so many of our childhood favourites, demonstrating Grossmans clever use in adult emotions. All of this succeeds in engaging the reader even further.

Although this was a book I enjoyed reading from start to finish, I did find the pace was a little fast at times, speeding from one time period in Quentins life to another. I realise that this is because Lev Grossman is portraying the events happening over the course of Quentins late teens and early twenties, but It did become a little frustrating as a reader.

The end of the plot was bitter sweet and did not follow the typical ‘all live happily ever after’ ending that you would expect from this type of tale. Ultimately the book ends on a cliff hanger and left me wanting to know more about what happened next. To me this makes the book a success.
  
WW
Where We Belong
10
10.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
What do ancient artifacts, camels, the Chicago fire, sisters, and romance have in common??? LYNN AUSTIN and Where We Belong!!! I have a confession...this was my first Lynn Austin book. I know, I know, put the pitchforks down. But when I saw the cover and the time period(Gilded Age)....I knew I just HAD up read it! What's even better, is that the sisters in this story were inspired by real sisters who travelled and did research and found incredible ancient artifacts...in the 1800s. These days it is far from unusual to have women scientists and archeologists, researchers and professors...however, in the 1800s, it was highly frowned upon and many doors to women were closed. And it is because of women like this who paved the way for us today.

The heart of the story is of course, Jesus. And how His forgiveness surpasses all of our mistakes. He is waiting for us to surrender the past to Him and let Him heal our hearts. We also take a little peek into the ancient manuscripts that have been found of the Bible and the proof that followed, that even though hundreds....thousands....of years have passed....God's word has not changed. The Bible we read today is the very same Bible that was originally written. 

There were several plot twists and I honestly had no idea HOW this was all going to end. But Lynn Austin did not disappoint. She did a fabulous job weaving the storyline with flashbacks and several different viewpoints. I loved seeing into the past of the main characters. It opens your eyes to why they are the way they are ultimately.
If you are longing for an adventure....this is the book for you! Negotiate with a Bedouin Sheik, overcome the challenges of the past, survive the Chicago fire, and above all, see Jesus work in the lives of normal, everyday people and as a result....see their lives travel down an extraordinary road as they find where they belong.

I received a complimentary copy of Where We Belong from the publishers through Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions expressed are mine alone.