My Review of The Maze Runner

My original choice for PopSugar's reading challenge category "a trilogy" was the Bourne Identity, I have owned the books for years and have only watched the 1st movie (which I wasn't overly enthralled with) and thought now was a perfect time to read it. As I've got more into my challenge, I have decided they are just not what I fancy and I didn't want to get myself into a reading slump by reading something I wasn't interested in. So I decided to choose something a little more fast paced and something I wanted to read and that was The Maze Runner trilogy by James Dashner, the first book being The Maze Runner.

I'll start by saying that I'm not really sure why everyone seems to think that this book starts off slow, I think it starts off great and just keeps going. There is pretty much action from page one and it just builds from there.

James Dashner has done some excellent things in this book, the memory erasure was extremely well thought out and explained really well, he creates an incredibly creepy feeling during the book with the maze and the artificial environment. Did I mention how horrendous the Grievers sounded?! Urgh! One thing that really irritated me throughout the book was the weird slang that the boys used, I really didn't feel there was any need for it at all as they all knew the correct words and slang for what they were saying. To me it feels like Dashner came up with this language at some point in the past and wanted to use it in one of his books.

I did very much enjoy this book and I am looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy (though I've now found out that there is a prequel? I'm not counting that though I will probably still read it). As much as I did enjoy it though, I felt like there was something missing and I could happily put the book down and not be constantly wondering when the next time I could pick it up would be, not enough to make me dislike it, just enough to make me like it less than other books I have read recently.

I started reading this book on the 17th of April 2015 and finished reading it on the 25th of April 2015
I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads

Things that go bump in the night - My review of The Haunting of Hill House

I took my time choosing the book for the PopSugar challenge topic "a book that scares you" as I wanted something scary, but not too scary, because as I've got older, I just can't deal with horror the way I used to be able to and now pretty much everything terrifies me. I decided on a classic that sounded more psychological than outright horror and it's one I have wanted to read for a long time, the book I chose was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. There will be a spoiler in this review, so you have been fairly warned.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the writing, it seemed slightly "off" to me. The book was written/published in 1959 and yet the writing seemed to try and make it feel like it was written a lot earlier than that. Once I got into it though, I got used to how it sounded and it felt natural.

The story itself took almost half the book to get started, but I did enjoy the character building with Eleanor. I absolutely love how Eleanor made stories in her head about things that she saw as she was driving along as I do the same thing when I'm out and about. Something I didn't like was the conversations between the guests at the house, I know it was written in a different time, but seriously who has conversations like these people do? All the make believe and non sensical stuff at times took away from the story and I found I didn't really follow what they were talking about.

This bit contains the spoiler. After finishing the book, there are a few things I'm still unsure about so if you can answer any of them or have your own thoughts please let me know! I'm not 100% sure whether there actually was any paranormal activity or whether it was just fear creating fear. And finally the ending left me confused, did Eleanor really exist? Did she kill herself? What happened?

Overall though I enjoyed this book and I'm glad that I got around to reading it.

I started reading this book on the 2nd of April 2015 and finished reading it on the 4th of April 2015
I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads

My Review of Throne of Glass

I'm currently trying to make a concerted effort to read my 2015 Reading challenge books as I'm actually finding it quite restrictive even though I thought it would help widen my horizons with genre, content and authors etc. I think next year, I may come up with my own challenge which will allow me a lot more freedom, but we'll see how things go.

Anyhoo, onto my review of Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas, which I chose for the topic "a book with a love triangle" for the PopSugar part of my reading challenge.

The story certainly gets right into it from page one, so it grips you from the get go and you want to carry on reading to find out what is happening. I felt that the world was really well built and I could picture each place perfectly in my head with the descriptions given. I do feel though that you could tell at times that this book was written by a younger person, not that it mattered or was in any way detrimental to the book, but I noticed it enough to feel like I should mention it.

The characters for me are great and I love the characters I'm supposed to and love to hate the characters I'm supposed to hate, which means that the author has done a good job. Having read Divergent just prior to reading this, I felt that Celeana actually seemed younger that Tris even though Celeana is 18 and Tris is only 16. I can't put my finger on why I felt this, but there was just something that made me feel that their ages were reversed.

The hints of magic throughout the book are tantalising and I can't wait to see more of it as the series continues, the story is also left at a perfect jumping off point, leaving me wanting to read more.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to continuing with the series.

I started this book on the 8th of April 2015 and I finished it on the 12th of April 2015
I gave this book 5 Stars on Goodreads