The Book Hour

A Danger to Herself and Others released earlier this month, and I am so excited to have author Alyssa Shienmel on the blog today! After loving Alyssa's earlier work of psychological fiction Faceless, I had high hopes for this one and it did not at all disappoint. Since A Danger to Herself and Others tells the moving story of a young girl struggling to come to terms with her mental illness, I was curious as to what inspired Alyssa to write about the experience of being institutionalized, so I jumped at the opportunity to ask her about some of the research involved in writing the book and the things that inspired her.  ➸ I don’t always remember exactly when or how I come up with an idea for a new book, but I do remember exactly how A Danger to Herself and Others first made its way into my imagination—the spark for this book began on Twitter. An editor I know tweeted that she was looking for a YA novel where a character is confined to a single room for much of the st

Happy 2019! 🎆 I'm really pleased to say that my reading is off to a great start this year, with a couple of new all-time favourites found already. I've set a goal for myself to read a minimum of 8 books each month in 2019, which I managed to just surpass in January! Another goal is to re-read one of my favourite books every month, although I'm not going to count those in my wrap-ups because I've probably talked about them already elsewhere on my blog. This month I re-read Radio Silence by Alice Oseman, and am pleased to report that it made me cry just as hard second time around.  So without further ado, here are all the books I read in January! 🌟 ❇  No. of books read: 9 ❇ Genres: 2 contemporary, 2 romance, 1 literary fiction, 1 dystopian, 1 fantasy, 1 historical fiction, 1 classic The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo ★★ ★ ★ When I first started reading this book, I was initially so disappointed. The premise of an epic love story tha