Review – TandeWrites

Emily Lloyd-Jones, Erin A. Craig, Hannah Moskowitz, Maggie Stiefvater, Reading, Review

My Roman Empire Reads

Posted on April 30, 2024April 28, 2024 by Tegan Anderson

This was originally going to be a list of my favourite books of all time, but I realised that my favourites shelf on Goodreads is littered with books I haven’t read or thought about in five years, I thought I’d focus on the books that still do occupy my brain space to this day, some read more recently than others. And I know the ‘Roman Empire’ meme is dead by now, but I have no other way to describe the impact these books have had on me.

This list is accurate to my taste in books up to the age of twenty-one, as I know there are infinite books I’m planning to read that could potentially replace every single current entry. They are also predominantly young adult and fantasy, just because that’s what’s been scratching my brain right.

This list is in no particular order, except the order in which they appear on my bookshelves.

Let’s begin!

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Review

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid | REVIEW

Posted on April 16, 2024March 1, 2024 by Tegan Anderson

This book was so fantastically written that I was able to ignore some of my issues with it. This is my full spoiler review of ‘A Study in Drowning’, which was one of my most anticipated reads of last year. This is YA Gothic, Dark Academia story, and I ended up giving it 4 out of 5 stars.

Is there a book that feels like it was written for you? A book that seems to know you in some soul-deep way? A book that seems- somehow-to love you as much as you love it? When Ava Reid set out to write ‘A Study in Drowning’, she wanted to write about that feeling. About stories that see us, that save us. There is something precious and beautiful about that, but it also creates many thorny questions, such as: if you love a story, does it belong to you?

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Review

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher | REVIEW

Posted on March 19, 2024March 1, 2024 by Tegan Anderson

This isn’t the kind of fairytale where the princess marries a prince. It’s the one where she kills him.

As the shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter, she escaped the traditional fate of princesses, to be married away for the sake of an uncaring throne. But her sister wasn’t so fortunate—and after years of silence, Marra finally realized that no one is coming to their rescue. No one, except for Marra herself.

Seeking help from a powerful grave witch, Marra is offered the tools to kill a prince—if she can complete three impossible tasks: build a dog of bones, sew a cloak of nettles, and capture moonlight in a jar. But, as is the way in tales of princes, witches, and daughters, the impossible is only the beginning.

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Ashley Poston, Krystal Sutherland, Paper Forests, Review

Books that inspired my fantasy novel (aka Forestcore Recs)

Posted on March 12, 2024February 27, 2024 by Tegan Anderson

Recently, I’ve been missing doing book recommendations and review posts, so I wanted to bring them back in a completely self-indulgent way: recommending books that inspired my own book, Paper Forests. This is a list of books that I joke about being the unofficial Paper Forests reading list, featuring dark fairytale retellings, bisexuals who can’t make good decisions, horror influences, whimsical forests that may or may not be sentient, and magic and monsters. Paper Forests is a loose ‘Hansel and Gretel’ retelling about teenagers trapped in a sentient forest afterlife, and I hope these books truly capture that spirit.

Let’s begin!

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Reading, Review

Reliving my childhood trauma one Jacqueline Wilson book at a time

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Tegan Anderson

Recently, there’s been a resurgence of people reminiscing on books that left irreparable damage to their childhoods on TikTok and, as someone who religiously read Jacqueline Wilson books before the age of ten, I feel very qualified to contribute to this conversation.

I will only be talking about the books that I’ve read and still have haunting my bookshelves, but I am very aware that there is infinite more Jacqueline Wilson books out in the world that have more vaguely traumatic content, such as the mummified cat, the art teacher, and a girl getting paralysed on a swing. And the entirety of Vicky Angel? Not in my personal top five, but I still think about it often.

This blog is full of spoilers. Let’s begin!

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Reading, Review

Best Reads of the Year (So Far) | 2023

Posted on July 11, 2023July 10, 2023 by Tegan Anderson

I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve read so far this year, and I want to spend a little more time talking about my favourite reads of the year so far and collect those thoughts in one place. I think I did a video version of this last year for what I believed to be the best books of the year (so far), but since then I’ve accepted that some of the books I love to read may not necessarily be the best of books. This list will be in no particular order, just vaguely chronological, so let’s begin!

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Reading

What I Read in 2022

Posted on January 3, 2023January 1, 2023 by Tegan Anderson

I’m still working on a post about my favourite books of 2022, so here I am instead to write a recap of the year! I haven’t done one of these big round-up posts since last year, but Goodreads has shown me all of my reading statistics for the year, and I am still a number nerd.

Reading-wise, this year has been… something. It’s been a little underwhelming as last year was my most ambitious reading year to date, and this year has been spent handling university and life and health rather than reading. However, I’ve still fallen in love with the works of many new authors, and I’ve been making the most of my local library’s app for eBooks.

This year has also been pretty tough. My mental and physical health has been at its worst and I’m yet to fall back in love with writing, the one thing I’ve loved for a huge proportion of my life. And ongoing Covid. We won’t forget about that.

But this blog isn’t going to focus on that: it’s going to focus on all the good books I’ve read this year and how I suddenly need to buy a new bookshelf because the Waterstones half price hardcover sale continues to demolish my bank account.

This post might be long. Let’s begin!

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Review

The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake | ARC REVIEW

Posted on October 25, 2022October 25, 2022 by Tegan Anderson

I will begin this review by saying that I probably shouldn’t have requested the ARC based on how little I enjoyed The Atlas Six, but I was intrigued by the ending and wanted to know more. This was a mistake. I’m breaking this review down into categories based on thoughts I had while reading this book.

0.48% “my arc is missing every third “th” this is infuriating”
My camera roll is full of screenshots of sentences that are fully unreadable because the letters are missing which killed the mood of some of the more serious discussions in the book. I wanted to put down the book the second that I noticed the mistake wasn’t a one-off, but I stuck with it and suffered through every page. However, this wasn’t even the biggest reason why the book was such a struggle to read.

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Alexandra Christo, Review

Princess of Souls by Alexandra Christo | ARC REVIEW

Posted on September 27, 2022September 14, 2022 by Tegan Anderson

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year because I completely adored To Kill a Kingdom back when I read the ARC in 2018, and I think that was one of the books that sparked my love for fairytale retellings. However, four years later, I no longer agree with a majority of the points in that review and the things that made me fall in love with the book have faded, and reading Princess of Souls really reminded me of the flaws. I think it’s going to be difficult for me to write a detailed review of the book without comparing it to To Kill a Kingdom, so I am just going to commit to the comparisons.

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Review

Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong | ARC REVIEW

Posted on September 13, 2022September 8, 2022 by Tegan Anderson

Content warnings: blood, violence, murder, weapon use, needles, description of human experimentation, descriptions of war, descriptions of head injury.

I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, but I was already intending on buying this book. Specifically the pretty Waterstones edition with the pink foil cover.

Foul Lady Fortune is the first book in Chloe Gong’s new duology following an ill-matched pair of spies posing as a married couple to investigate a series of brutal murders in 1930s Shanghai. It is a speculative historical thriller inspired by Shakespeare’s As You Like It and can also be pitched as a Chinese period drama meets a Marvel movie. The author says you can read this book without reading the original These Violent Delights duology as all the events that have already happened are explained in the text, but I think not reading those books first will negatively affect your reading experience.

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