The Quiet at the End of the World by Lauren James
I couldn’t tell you when I bought this book. What I can tell you is that I bought this because I thought it was the author that wrote the Fallen series. It’s definitely not. As that is Lauren Kate, not James. Clearly I’m an idiot as I very much thought this was by the author of Fallen and I’ve legitimately just found out that it isn’t. I like to think I’m good with names but I’ve just been proven very wrong.
Anyway, this was one of the books I decided to get rid of when I was moving house as it sat on my shelves for years and I never once thought about picking it up. Which is what happened to the majority of books in this post series.
The premise of this book does sound interesting but I do think dystopia has had its day. We’re currently living in a dystopia, let’s be honest, so they’re not as interesting as they used to be.
Synopsis: How far would you go to save those you love?
Lowrie and Shen are the youngest people on the planet after a virus caused global infertility. Closeted in a pocket of London and doted upon by a small, ageing community, the pair spend their days mudlarking for artefacts from history and looking for treasure in their once-opulent mansion.
Their idyllic life is torn apart when a secret is uncovered that threatens not only their family but humanity’s entire existence. Lowrie and Shen face an impossible choice: in the quiet at the end of the world, they must decide who to save and who to sacrifice . . .
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
This is yet another book that sat on my shelf for years and years, and I never once thought about reading it. I do, however, remember buying this one. Well actually, my mom bought it for me from Waterstones when I was a fairly young teen I think. This was 100% from the general fiction section, not teen, so it was probably much too old for me. But that didn’t matter as I never actually read it.
I most definitely thought the title was cool and that was the only reason why I wanted the book. I imagine I actually wouldn’t have enjoyed this at the time and probably wouldn’t today either. So this was a pretty easy decision to get rid of it and when I say ‘get rid’ I either mean I sold it to a second hand book service or donated it to a charity shop. I couldn’t tell you which I actually did for this one though. I’d never actually throw a book in the bin. That would be absurd.
Synopsis: Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.
For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.
A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.
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