The Mountains of Instead

Championing fiction as an escape from pandemics, politics and bad TV.

Miles To Go Before I Sleep (Review, Forever by Maggie Stiefvater)

Forever  Maggie Stiefvater Scholastic 2011
Forever is the final book of The Wolves of Mercy Falls and this review contains spoilers for the previous two novels. You have been warned.
When last seen, Grace was disappearing into Boundary Woods as a wolf, accompanied by a messed up rock star, leaving an e…

All The World's A Stage (Review: The Rogue's Princess; E. Edwards)

The Rogue's Princess Eve Edwards Puffin 2011
Mercy Hart is as good as they come... or at least she's trying very hard to be. Brought up in a strict, if not unkind, family she has been imbued with her father's Puritanical values since birth and strives to uphold his beliefs both privately …

Author Interview - Ransom Riggs

I recently had the pleasure of reading and reviewing the fantastic Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children - a book that single handedly ended a scarily extended reading slump with its originality and eerie storytelling. I am sure that many who have read it have wondered at its genesis and,…

Announcing... the new incarnation of UK Book Tours

As some of you will be aware, UK Book Tours, as was, is no longer. The fabulous Lynsey worked tirelessly to create a UK focused book tour site and while, sadly, she is unable to continue to run what is an extremely admin. heavy project, a few of us have happily taken over.

Yep, myself Carly (of Wr…

The Earth Is Blue. There Is No God (review of Life: An Unexploded Diagram by Mal Peet)

Life: An Unexploded Diagram Mal Peet Walker 2011
Clem Ackroyd is the only child of a small family living in the Norfolk of the 1960's. Born into post war Britain neither he has little interest in the world at large apart from the vague whim that he wishes to escape into it and away from the suffo…

Afar In The Lost Lands (Review: Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children; R. Riggs)

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children Ransom Riggs Quirk 2011
Jacob has grown up with his grandfather’s strange tales. Stories of a fantastical orphanage, filled with bizarre inhabitants and run by a mysterious Bird. While the orphanage is always portrayed as a place of sanctuary, Abe’s storie…