The Journal Of Curious Letters (The 13th Reality #1) by James Dashner - Blog Tour Review

For people who have followed Life Of A Nerdish Mum for a couple of years now, will know that I went through a huge Maze Runner phase and I read every thing I could find in the series (though I'm now slacking as I still haven't read the Fever Code!) So when I got the opportunity to review the first book in James Dashner's middle grade series, The 13th Reality - The Journal Of Curious Letters, I absolutely jumped at the chance. As well as my review today, I have an exciting tag for people to complete and share, so definitely make sure you check that out! 

The Journal Of Curious Letters (13th Reality #1) 

What if every time you made a choice that had a significant consequence, a new, alternate reality was created — the life that would’ve been had you made the other choice? What if those new realities were in danger? What if it fell to you to save all the realities?

Atticus Higginbottom, a.k.a. Tick, is an average thirteen-year-old boy until the day a strange letter arrives in his mailbox. Postmarked from Alaska and cryptically signed with the initials “M.G.,” the letter informs Tick that dangerous — perhaps even deadly — events have been set in motion that could result in the destruction of reality itself. M.G. promises to send Tick twelve riddles that will reveal on a certain day, at a certain time, at a certain place, something extraordinary will happen. Will Tick have the courage to follow the twelve clues M.G. sends to him? Will he be able to solve the riddles in time? Will Tick discover the life he was meant to live?

My Review

The Journal Of Curious Letters was so much fun! I really enjoyed the riddles and the fast paced adventure through the book. 

Tick was a really great character and he felt very realistic to me. He wasn't the usual perfect protagonist and he had his own faults, so it all just made him more loveable and easy to get behind. It was also so very nice to see a happy family and a character having a good relationship with their dad. It's so incredibly rare to see this is any kind of book. 

The riddles themselves were interesting and they weren't dumbed down for a younger audience, so me as a person (ever so slightly haha) over the target age enjoyed trying to work out the clues alongside Tick. 

Overall this was a really good book, with plenty of action and it certainly kept me invested and on the edge of my seat. You can tell this is the first book in the series as it feels very much like a set up for future action, but this didn't detract from how much I enjoyed the story and I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series. 

I gave this book 4 stars. 

Thank you very much to Sweet Cherry Publishing and James Dashner for the opportunity to review The Journal Of Curious Letters. 

The Tag!

And here are the prompts for the tag! I'll be tagging a couple of people on twitter, but if you want to do the tag yourself, then consider yourself tagged! My own answers to the tag will be up on a blog post very soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that in the near future. If you do complete the tag, make sure you use the #The13thReality so people can check out your answers. 

About The Author

James Dashner was born and raised in Georgia but now lives and writes in the Rocky Mountains. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Maze Runner series: The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, The Death Cure, and The Kill Order. His newest series is The Mortality Doctrine: The Eye of Minds, The Rule of Thoughts, and The Game of Lives.

Don't Forget To Check Out The Rest Of The Tour

Finish It February 2016 Wrap Up!

Back at the end of January I announced that I would be taking part in Finish It Feb and I gave myself a nice varied list of 12 books to choose from throughout the month to pick up and read.

I  really enjoyed the idea of this challenge as I have a bad habit of starting a series and then being distracted by something else. So having to concentrate on finishing things off, or at least finishing the books I own in a series so far, was very motivating.

I'm definitely glad I chose to give myself so many books to choose from as I don't think I would have been as successful as I was as I would have felt restricted if I only had one or two options.

Onto the books I read...

The first book I read was Death Note: Black Edition, Vol. 4 by Tsugumi Ohba. It's the fourth bind up of Death Note and it is not the final book in the series, however it is the last one that I own so far that I haven't read. I plan on picking up the final two volumes in the next couple of months and will read them as I get them so I stay up to date.

The second book I read was The Kill Order by James Dashner which is a prequel to the Maze Runner trilogy. I own all of the Maze Runner books (so far anyway as I believe there will be another book out this year which I'll also be picking up and reading), but this is the only one I hadn't read.

And finally the last book I read for Finish It Feb was Clariel by Garth Nix, which is another prequel to a trilogy. I've owned it for quite a while now as I was super excited when it was released and then books for review and other books got in the way. While I was reading this Garth Nix actually announced that the next book in the series will be out in October this year (2016), so I'll definitely be picking that up when that comes out too.

Three books doesn't seem like much, but it's three books of series that I now no longer need to read and I enjoyed seeing the pile go down as I chose them, so I will probably do this again at some point in the future.

If you want to check out any of the reviews I did for the books I read, my Goodreads profile is here.

Did you take part in Finish It Feb? What books did you choose to read?

How Not to End a Trilogy - My Review of The Death Cure (Contains spoilers, many spoilers)

The Death Cure by James Dashner is the third and final book in my 2015 Reading Challenge for the PopSugar topic of a "trilogy" and oh boy was I disappointed.

The first two books in this trilogy, though they had their faults, kept me interested and I liked the characters and I really wanted to know what was going on. I continued reading on the promise that everything would be explained and we would understand what was happening.

I'm annoyed at myself while writing this review as I normally take notes as I read, but for some unknown reason I didn't for this book and so all my thoughts are disjointed and I'm trying to get them straight so I can explain my feelings. I apologise for things being out of order and slightly jumbled.

I'll start with the characters, all of them, yes ALL OF THEM have lost any personality that they had and any character development that had been going on in previous books just comes to a grinding halt from page one of the Death Cure. One of the worst casualties of this is Theresa, in The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials I thought she was very interesting and I was looking forward to learning more about hers and Thomas' relationship. I thought in this book she would be given the chance to redeem herself for the things she had to do in the past and would come out stronger and more badass than before, but no, there was nothing except bits making her sound awful and then she's killed off in one sentence and no one even really cares. She's actually barely in the book at all. I also grow to dislike Brenda and Jorge after liking them before, Brenda is used as a way to progress the plot and Jorge is just a peripheral character all of a sudden, Also I must have been really confused in The Scorch Trials because I thought that Jorge was the same age-ish as the rest of the characters but in this book his relationship with Brenda is described as Uncle and Niece? It could just be me who totally missed something but that was the impression I was under.

Onto Thomas our main protagonist, he has spent the last two books bemoaning the loss of his memory and being determined to get it back no matter what. So when he's offered the chance to get his memory back, what do you think he does, yep he doesn't do it!! And for what reason? Oh because it's a scary looking machine. Seriously after everything they've been through and dealt with, he can't bear two minutes of discomfort to get what he has wanted all this time. This now means that not only does he not get any memories, but we as readers get no answers bar the tiny bits of dream memories that are thrown in every now and again. This made me really angry as this was the great reveal I'd been waiting for and it was taken away from me!

The story in this book also seems all over the place. There is a whole lot of action but nothing really happens. Dashner brings in  this Right Arm movement people and then doesn't really do anything at all with them except use them to create drama in the final scenes. I also wondered why the book became a zombie apocalypse survival story, I understand it was people beyond "the gone" but it just became one fight/escape after another, Oooh and another thing, where was Dashner going with the whole the group being followed in Denver and all the streets being quiet and then,...what? Was he going somewhere with it and then forgot about it? It feels like a whole heap of different ideas he had which he started but then never followed through to completion.

Another part of the story which baffled me was the introduction by Brenda that this Chancellor Paige was super important and we should look out for her, there are posters of her face everywhere etc and then all we get is that she came in while Thomas was unconscious and leaves a note for him. We don't even get to meet her and I was waiting from the moment Brenda mentioned her for her to appear somewhere. And then right at the end we get an email from her explaining the happy ending that we got (yes it was a happily ever after, well for the munies anyway) that it was all WICKED's fault anyway releasing the Flare. This would have made an excellent plot point DURING the story, not as an after thought at the end.

One final piece of the story I want to mention is the storyline with Newt. I feel if Thomas had read the letter at an appropriate point and followed through with Newt's request, then Newt's death would have been a lot more emotional and I would have been genuinely upset as I had previously enjoyed Newt as a character. As it was though, it just felt kind of shoehorned in and like I said, that Dashner had started a plot line and then totally forgotten about it.

Overall this book was extremely frustrating and very unsatisfying. I had enjoyed the trilogy up to this point and then the ending has left me disappointed. I probably will pick up the Kill Order at some point purely because I'm a completionist, but I will get it from the library or something rather than buying it. I would recommend reading The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials and then just making up your own ending as I think you'd probably do a better job yourself.

I started this book on the 4th of July 2015 and I finished it on the 6th of July
I did originally give this book 3 stars on Goodreads, but while writing this review I have amended that to 2 stars