June Monthly Book Haul: Part One: Romance

As always, late to the bandwagon, but I'm not a fan of doing things scripted as of late (not that I needed to tell you that, just take one look at this blog). But, also late to the bandwagon in a different way, as Rainbow Rowell has become a favourite author of many, many people and I've only just got my hands on them. Usually, I avoid the popular books unless I really want to read them so the less popular or not popular books can get a chance too (and they're pretty amazing sometimes) but that's a whole other blog topic I have been meaning to talk about.

"Fangirl" by Rainbow Rowell (Unread).

Published 2013. 

The thing that caught my eye about this book is that it's about twins. I love reading books about twins. Although I am fairly close to my sister in the fact that we hardly ever fight (physically or verbally) and we usually help each other out, we're not close in the fact that we know a lot about each other or that we talk about our life with each other but that's mostly due to our personalities. With twins, you get this bond that is so different from any other and it makes a really enjoyable and interesting read. I don't wish to be a twin, I'm quite content with the relationship I have with my sister, but I often wonder what it would be like.

"Eleanor and Park" by Rainbow Rowell (Unread).

Published 2012. 
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This is about a girl called Eleanor, who has frizzy red hair and wears weird clothes, and Park, who likes music, books and being invisible. I believe this starts off as a friendship and blossoms into a relationship. I'm not sure how much I will enjoy this book, I've heard mixed things about it, but my favourite reviewer on Goodreads, Emily May , said a comment in a recent review (I can't remember which one) on how she liked the friendship-to-relationship type of theme in the book even if the book never ended up being a huge success for her. The relationship I have with Austin started off as a friendship and now we've been together two years this month, so I have a weakness for this kind of thing. I hope it's as good as my expectations.

"Hens United" by Lucy Diamond (Unread)

Published 2009.

The last Diamond book I read, "Sweet Temptation", didn't do so much for me as "Over You" did but, despite the sugar sweet endings and the easy-to-guess plotlines, she has a way of writing characters that makes you fall in love with them and can cover dark topics in a serious way without it getting depressing. "Hens United" is about a group of women after the hen night that takes place before a wedding. I believe one is divorced, one is unhappy...and I love nothing more then reading about broken marriages.

"Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams" by Jenny Colgon (Sweet Shop #1) (Unread).

Published 2012. 

This is exactly as it sounds. Rosie gets dragged away to the candy shop owned by a relative of her boyfriend and she thinks it will be uneventful but she is wrong. She also discovers the history behind the jars of sweets. I've never really been a huge candy person, I'm more of a chocolate person and savory stuff for the most part, but I have heard so many good things about this book that I didn't want to turn it away. I finally picked it up. Plus, I am quite interested in the historical background of sweets. Especially mint humbugs. 

Other parts:

Horror/Thriller.
YA. 
Historical Fiction.
Other. 

Thank you for reading!

June Monthly Book Haul: Part Two: Horror/Thriller.

The photo is missing Carrie because, at the time of the photo taken, I had it in my school bag downstairs and I was exhausted. I thought about re-taking it today but I hate how late I am to publish this haul so fuck it, it's going to get published today. Just know that it was bought, pretend it was there.

 "Finders Keepers" by Stephen King (Mr Mercedes #2) (Unread).

Published in 2015.
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My lovely boyfriend bought this for me when he found out that I had the first book of this trilogy but none of the rest - and this was a couple of weeks before I started to see the book everywhere, poor guy! Anyway, this is the only one here that I haven't read, the second book to the "Mr Mercedes" trilogy (which is actually a crime thriller and not about a car like I thought it was...hey, don't judge me like that, it's not like King hasn't written about crazy cars before!). I have no idea what it's about as I don't want to read the back through fear that it will spoil the book but I think it's advancement on a character in "Mr Mercedes".

"Carrie" by Stephen King (Reading).

 Published 1974. 

Pretty sure we all know what the story of "Carrie" is (or you should do, after three movies - I love them all, by the way) but if you don't, it follows the story of Carrie White and her overly religious and abusive mother, Margaret. Carrie has had telekinetic powers since she was tiny, but her traumatic late period triggered it's full power and, perhaps, that's what the power was waiting for. I love love love the movies because of how much I can relate to Carrie (fat and autistic, you can imagine how well that was treated in high school) right down to her weird behavior and physical characteristics in the book - I've only ever managed to read a short bit of it each time because I could never get my hands on a physical copy, but eventually did in a charity shop for £2 (with the beautiful Chloe Grace Moretz on the front...usually don't like movie editions, but it's Chloe).

"The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins (Read).

 Published 2015. 

This follows from different perspectives, but mainly focuses on Rachel - an alcoholic living with a vague friend after her inability to have a baby and the divorce with her husband (Ben), who remarried to a woman named Anna with a baby of their own. She pretends to go to work everyday on the train and looks down at the street where her train stops everyday to look at a 'happy couple' she names Jess and Jason - the same street where Ben and Anna lives, in the house she used to live in. I enjoyed this book. It was slow at the start and is familiar to "Gone Girl" (or so people say, I have never read it and have no plans to) but it caught up. The end was predictable, but I really loved Rachel and Megan and strongly felt their pain - even though everyone in this book seemed to be obsessed with marriage, babies and destruction.

"Creed" by James Herbert (Read but gave up on).

Published 1990.

As much as I enjoyed "The Secret of Crickley Hall" by Herbert, his other books have been nothing but disappointment and this one was no different.  It follows the life of Joe Creed, the paparazzi. Living up to the (mostly correct) stereotype of paparazzi, he is a horrible, hypocritical, sexist, sex-obsessed man who is quite content with ignoring his son and hurting other people. Unlike other characters' you are meant to hate but still feel for, he had nothing I wanted to feel for. Even when the demon wanted to steal his pictures and stole his son, tormented Creed, I felt pretty glad about it and was not so secretly hoping Creed would just die. My guess for what the ending ends up being is that (I guess a spoiler?) the demon was made up by his imagination or something, even though that doesn't make much sense because nothing adds up - I guess I will never know the ending. 

Thank you for reading, please continue on with the haul posts if you are enjoying them, I'll see you in my next one!

Click below for other parts of the haul:

Romance.
YA. 
Historical Fiction. 
Other.