Review - Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

Hello everyone!

The last week has been a little mad on the home front, lots of work and lots of animals! Finding time for reading was proving a little difficult, but I eventually cleared my schedule and finished my first book of 2019. I have been doing a buddy read of Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor with my friend Jonny over @jonnyslibrary. We have both now finished the book and come to terms with our feelings so it’s time for a review.

It’s been a long while since I did a proper book review so sit back and relax, this could be a long one! I sense a rant coming on :-)

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

This book follows our main character Madeleine Maxwell as she embarks on a new line of work in the elusive St Mary’s history department. The historians of St Mary’s are no ordinary scholars, they travel back in time to document events as they really happened. The main rule is not to change anything, but of course that is easier said than done. One misadventure leads to another which leads to another which leads to events that could alter the very fabric of the future world!

2.5 stars

Positives - engaging plot lines, easy to get into, interesting world building

Negatives - very triggering, unbelievable character relationships, very rushed

*Spoilers*

Aaaah this book! I seriously struggled to rate this book, it started as a 4 star then dropped to a 2 and just about redeemed itself to a 2.5 by the end. Where to start?

The setting was lovely old academic England with all the quirks of mad professors. I loved the first 100 pages when Max is doing her training. It had just the right amount of humour and brutality to really invest me in the story. However, when Max goes back to the Cretaceous period (think dinosaurs) it all went south. Firstly Sussman’s character went from being your typical arrogant man to downright awful in 2 seconds flat. He tries to rape her and then tries to murder her and you later find out he planned to kill her all along! This is a man who worked and laughed with her for 5 years! It all felt a bit jarring, but it’s not the worst. 

Disaster strikes when a mission goes wrong and several members, including her lover Chief Farrell are lost in dinoland. All of a sudden she’s out of a job and thinks her lover is dead. A few months later she finds herself in pain so off she heads to the clinic and oh wait she’s having a miscarriage. Very rushed right? 

The miscarriage part of the novel did nothing to advance the story or the characters and the way it was handled was so casual and off-hand that it really disturbed me. This is a subject that should be handled with care and not just thrown in as a random plot twist. If that wasn’t bad enough, when Chief Farrell finds out she was pregnant and lost the baby he instantly accuses her of cheating and trying to pass the baby off as his. Later on he apologises and she shockingly takes him back! No self-respecting woman would tolerate that kind of behaviour. She had just risked life and limb heading back in time to save him, why would she do that if she never loved him and was cheating on him?

The plot felt jarring and a lot of it felt cobbled together with no real structure. Suddenly characters carry out an action or say things that are completely out of keeping with their behaviour until that point! Personally, I found this book a bit triggering and nearly put it down. I loved the idea of it and I’m hoping subsequent books are better, but for now I’m not sure I’ll continue the series. It's always an alarm bell when the most believable part of a time travel novel is the time travel itself. 

Have you read this book? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below if you’ve read any disappointing books lately :-)

xoxo

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Flower design credit here! 

Series I Absolutely Need To Finish This Year

Hello everyone! 

Who am I? I've been posting so much recently that I bet you're wondering if I've secretly been replaced by an alien. I have been on such a blogging kick so here's hoping it'll carry on all through the year. *Shrugs*. We'll see...

One of my resolutions for this year is to finish at least 5 series I have already started. I am awful at getting stuck into series and then getting bogged down by other series. It's a vicious spiral. I end up not knowing what to read next and getting overwhelmed by choices. Aaaannnnddd voila, the reading slump! You feeling stressed yet? I sure am! 

Fingers crossed if I make a list of 5 series then I'll manage to stick to it and finish that resolution fairly easily :-) 

The first series I want to finish is the Shades of Magic series by V. E. Schwab. I read the first two books last year and really enjoyed the world building. I liked the characters so much that I even named on our kittens Kell! This series follows Kell and Lila as they fight for survival across the four worlds and the four Londons. Each London is deadly in its own way with Black London being the worst. The second book ended on a huge cliffhanger and I swore I would pick up the third book straight away, but instead it has been sat on my shelf gathering dust for the last 6 months! 

This next one should be fairly easy, *she prays*. Katherine Arden's Bear and the Nightingale blew me away last year and the sequel just took it to a whole new level of brilliant. The third, and final book Winter of the Witch came out yesterday so I raced off to pick up my pre-ordered copy. It is the next book I'm picking up as I am really feeling the wintry Russian vibes!

Finale by Stephanie Garber is a final book on a lot of people's lists this year. Sadly we do have to wait a few months before this final follow-up in the whimsical Caraval series is released. This series features circus like magic, plot-twists, gorgeous love interests and some serious darkness. If that doesn't sell it to you then I don't know what will. 

I have been reading Rachel Caine's Great Library series since it first came out, which has made the wait for the final book agonising. This series follows a group of young students as they become ever more entangled in the dark web of the library of Alexandria. For centuries the library has been the highest power in the world, but now it is falling to corruption and fanaticism. Jess and his friends are trying to change that. Sword and Pen comes out later this year and I can guarantee I will be reading it as soon as it comes out! 

If anyone knows the artist for this please give them credit, because it is amazing :-) 

So this one may be a cheat because technically the series isn't really finished as more books are coming, but I have 5 books to catch up on so I'm including it to the challenge. That's right, I'm talking about the Shadowhunters series by Cassandra Clare. I still have The Dark Artifices to read, The Bane Chronicles and Tales From the Shadowhunter academy to catch up! 

What series are you planning on wrapping up this year? Let me know in the comments below :-) 

xoxo

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January 2019 TBR

Hello everyone,

Happy New Year! I hope you have all recovered from the celebrations and are basking in all the hope of a new year before the dullness of January really starts. I always find January the hardest month of the year, it seems to drag by and just be dreary and cold without all the jolly festive cheer of December. To cheer myself up i’m planning on reading some amazing books this month!

The first one I need to prioritise is Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor. I’m doing this as a buddy read with my friend Jonny over at Jonnyslibrary. We have both had this book sitting on our tbr shelves for a while and as this is the year of the tbr takedown we decided to join forces for this one! This book follows a group of time travelling historians as they try to document history, but instead cataclysmiacally alter events that could threaten the very fabric of time itself. So dramatic! I’m all for time travel and sci-fi so I can’t wait to get lost in this one.

I’m hoping to carry on my Sebastien de Castell binge by reading Charmcaster, the third book in the Spellslinger series. I adore this series and it sweeps me off my feet every time. The last book had me startling Mr. Gingersnap out of his chair as I laughed raucously for whole pages at a time. The third book features Ferius and Kellen as they follow the Shadowblack epidemic further into hostile territory. When you pick up these books think of them as a cocktail of the Wild Wild West, magic and sarcasm!

Next on my list is The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare. Magnus is one of my favourite characters of all time. I love his flamboyancy and care-free attitude combined with his deadly seriousness if his loved ones are threatened. I am very excited to read this set of short stories about his life as it will help me understand him so much better ready for the imminent release of The Red Scrolls Of Magic later this year.

Photo from Penguin

My final book of the month is the much anticipated Winter Of The Witch by Katherine Arden. Now if you read my most anticipated released of 2019 post you will know this was right at the top of the list. This is the third, and final book, in this amazing series set in ancient Russia. It has strong feminist elements and features a truly fantastic range of characters. The Russian folk-lore is fascinating and really adds depth to the story. I am super excited to see where this story goes! 

I may add a couple of books to the list as I finish these ones, but for now that's it! What do you plan to read this month? Let me know in the comments below :-) 

xoxo

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