The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving – 3.5/5*

I’ve had this sat on my Audible account for ages and I finally decided to put it on whilst I was walking home from dropping the kids at school. There’s a lot of backstory and scene setting but the descriptions are beautiful and the language, though obviously old-fashioned, is rich and emotive so I didn’t really notice that absolutely nothing was happening for at least half the book.
The story itself is a simple, traditional headless horseman ghost story but that doesn’t mean it isn’t super creepy. There’s something about spectral hoofbeats pounding the ground that immediately makes me shiver!

Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon 5/5*

I was very excited to open this on Christmas morning – I have had serious cover lust for it ever since it was released. I had no idea what it was about at all so I just had to hope that it lived up to the pretty front jacket!
The way the chapters were interspersed with charts and ‘doodles’ and ‘handwritten’ lists made it somehow more interesting than it would have been as just constant first-person narrative. A great YA first-love and coming of age novel, the story is very sweet and it has a great plot twist at the end.

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe – 3.5/5*

The three stories in this collection were suitably creepy in the end but to get there you had to plod your way through a whole lot of ‘phantasmagorical’ description and world building. Now I like long words, but there were times where I had to check the dictionary for definitions more than once a sentence and I like to think I have a fairly wide knowledge of vocabulary!
All of that aside, the stories were traditional horror at its best but do I think I will be sticking with Poe’s poetry from now on as it is more my style.

The Apple Tart Of Hope by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald – 4/5*

The second novel from Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, Apple Tart is the kind of story that leaves you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside – a bit like eating a warm apple pie on a cold, miserable day.

It’s a perfect read for January when it is dark outside all day and it seems like it’s never going to be warm again. I read most of it in one sitting and it flew by. Brilliant characters tackling the trials and tribulations of young love and high school hierarchy, Apple Tart is a beautiful novel about friendship and never giving up on hope.

Alienated by Melissa Landers – 4.5/5*

This was my book of the month – read why here.

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