The book eating girl

The Naturals is an incredibly gripping, fast-paced young adult thriller mystery which revolves around the lives of five teenagers: Cassie, Sloane, Dean, Lia and Michael - who are all part of a program created by the FBI called the 'naturals'.  Each 'natural' possesses a specific gift - some can detect deception, analyse stats, easily read facial expressions and emotions, and get into criminals minds to fill in the missing pieces and are also able to mirror a persons thought patterns, personality, behaviour and environment. It was really interesting to see them interact with one and other (their individual gifts making it all the more intriguing) - and I cannot even imagine living in a house with all of them haha!  The Naturals Program is a classified endeavour which utilises these exceptionally skilled teenagers to crack infamous cold cases.   This being the first book in the series, follows Cassie as she joins the program and has to grapple with being surrounded by ...

Violet Sorrengail has been preparing her entire life to join the Scribe Quadrant, and to live out her dream documenting history and being surrounded by books. However, the commanding general (who is also her mother) forces Violet to follow in her siblings footsteps and join the Riders Quadrant - which consists of hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of the kingdom of Navarre: dragon riders (and they may or may not be willing to kill each other to get there).  Violet is in no way prepared for what awaits her, and when she gets to Basgiath War College its very quickly established that she is the smallest and weakest out of all the cadets. This only makes her more of a target as with fewer dragons willing to bond to cadets, most would be willing to kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would would kill her just for being her mother's daughter - including Xaden Riorson, an incredibly respected and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. With ev...

Do not be fooled by the title and cover of this book! While, yes, a part of it's plot does follow ex-best-friends Bradley and Celine as they rekindle their friendship (and possibly a romance..?), there is so much more to this book on top of the (incredibly well done) relationship development. Both characters are incredibly headstrong in their own right, and facing their own struggles which throughout the course of the story they realise they can overcome with a little help from each other. I think just the fact that I would read this book minus the romance speaks volumes about Talia Hibbert's writing (the sarcastic humour is on point by the way), and the characters are so well fleshed out - they truly feel like real people and teenagers with honest struggles, and made reading this book a genuine delight from start to finish :) Also, gumpy and sunshine is also not usually one of my favourite relationship dynamics to read about but Brad and Celine definitely made it work (for me ...