A Few Classics

As well as reading some brilliant YA and adult fiction over the summer, I also read a few classic novels. 

I spent a week in the French Alps in August and decided to read some French classics while I was there. Candide by Voltaire was definitely not for me - I've decided to avoid satire from now on as I always hated it at uni as well. Madam Bovary, on the other hand, was superb. I loved it from start to finish. 

It would be a contender for my favourite classic of the year, but I followed it by reading A Room with a View, which I enjoyed even more. This is the second Forster novel I have read and I'm making plans to read A Passage to India soon. His novels remind me a little of Jane Austen's (without the guaranteed happily ever after, and a lot more social commentary). 

What I'm Writing

At the moment, I'n busy getting Fearful ready to be queried. It's almost there: the pitch is done, the synopsis is written, I'm just making a couple of tweaks to one of the chapters before I start sending out emails. 

I'm also working on my full-length version of Mirrored Snow. There have been a few false starts on this one, but I now have a firm outline that I'm happy with and I'm certain I have enough material to work with. 

I'm a few chapters in to Out of Water - my Little Mermaid retelling being posted weekly on Wattpad, which you can read here. 

I have a couple more ideas taking shape at the back of my mind, and I would really like to have another go at New London is Burning - the dystopian novel I queried last year - at some point too. Hopefully I'll have a complete draft of Mirrored Snow by Christmas, then I can start the new year with some new projects. 

A Reading Update

Why do I always let my reviews backlog like this? Why?

I've read some brilliant books over the past few months, but I'm struggling to write any reviews of them now because too much time has passed! I'm going to stay up to date from here on in, but here's a quick round of up what I've been reading lately: 

• Out of the Blue
• Circe
• Friendship Fails of Emma Nash
• Slay
• City of Brass

Out of the Blue was a beautiful novel that made me desperately want to visit Scotland (and feel a bit ashamed for not having done so already). 

I'm going to leave Circe for now as I'm going to a talk at the South Bank Centre featuring Madeline Miller very soon, so I'll blog about how amazing (so, so, so amazing) this novel is then. 

Friendship Fails of Emma Nash will probably be my book of the year. It brought on tears of laughter and left me feeling happier than I'd been when I started it. Chloe Seager is a comedy genius and she's going on my auto-buy list.

Slay was a really fun read that I think I'd have enjoyed more if I'd read it when I was a teenager. Ten-fifteen years ago, I know I would have been obsessed with this novel. I would recommend it to teenage music fans everywhere!

City of Brass: I can't believe I let this sit unread on my kindle for so long! I've already preordered the second book so that I can read it the moment it comes out. The world building in this novel is amazing. 

I've almost finished The Rose and The Dagger, so hopefully I'll post a full review of that next week. The writing is so beautiful I'm struggling to put it down.