Throwback Thurday

It's Throwback Thurday and today we're throwing back to one of my favourite series, Grim Hill by Linda DeMeulemeester!

The Secrets of Grim Hill

Pages: 187 pages
Release Date: May 25th, 2007
Status: Book 1

Cat Peters just transferred to Darkmont High and is already desperate to get out. When she hears that Grimoire, the private school nearby, is offering scholarships to the winners of a Halloween soccer match, Cat jumps at the chance. Her little sister, Sookie, and their bookworm neighbor, Jasper, try to tell her there's something ... "just not right" about the old school on the hill, and their worries are confirmed when they uncover a mystery about an entire soccer team that disappeared many years ago. Further investigation leads Cat to a book about ancient Celtic myth and fairy lore, and she soon realizes that there is something truly wicked at work inside the walls of Grimoire.


I read this book back in elementary school and just feel in love with it! This was after I read all the Spiderwick books and before I started reading YA books, and just was really into the genre.

The story revolves around Cat and her determination to get into the posh private school. Along the way, however, Cat, her sister Sookie and neighbour Jasper uncover a secret about the old school that will change their lives forever.

I read the first book, the sequel The Secret Deepens, and the third book, The Forgotten Secret before stopping altogether. It wasn't because I got tired of the series, but it was because I just got really into the YA genre by then. There are two more books after that though: The Family Secret and the Forest of Secrets.

What I love about this book is that there is a lot of mystery and a lot of adventure mixed in with the fantasy genre! This book is categorized as a childrens book (I'm pretty sure this is a middle grade book though) but the characters are amazing and the way that the author can combine all the genres together without making it too cheezy or mature is phenomenal!

So parents and elementary school librarians, this book is great chapter book for kids ages 9-12! I guarantee that they will fall in love with the series just like I did in elementary school! And besides, what's better than getting into the Halloween spirit with Fairy folklore, soccer, and some mind blowing secrets?

Happy Throwback Thursday guys!

Throw Back Thursday: Henderson's Boys

It's Throw Back Thurday!

And we're throwing back to 2009 to the release of the first book of the Henderson's Boys series, The Escape.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

It is the summer of 1940, Hitler's army is advancing towards Paris, and millions of French civilians are on the run. Amid the chaos, two British children are being hunted by German agents. British spy Charles Henderson tries to reach them first, but he can only do it with the help of a 12-year-old French orphan. The British secret service is about to discover that kids working undercover will help to win the war. For official purposes, these children do not exist

Favourite Character: Marc Kilgour :D
Favourite Scene: When Henderson first meets Marc and saves him from the Gestapo.
Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

It is late summer, 1940, and Hitler has conquered France. Now he intends to cross the Channel and defeat Britain before winter arrives. A group of young refugees led by British spy Charles Henderson faces a stark choice—to head south into the safety of neutral Spain, or go north on a risky mission to sabotage the German invasion plans. For official purposes, these children do not exist.

Favourite Character: PT Bivott
Favourite Scene: When Paul manages to knock PT out after he tries to escape from the safe house.
Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Synopsis (from hendersonsboys.com):

Charles Henderson is back home in Britain, but will the military establishment allow him to enact a plan to train teenagers as spies?

Favourite Character: Marc Kilgour
Favourite Scene: the first ever mention of Mac (aka when his mom announces that she's pregnant)
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

APRIL 1941

With no European allies, Britain has to ship fuel, weapons and more than half of its food across the Atlantic from Canada and the United States. But slow moving cargo vessels make easy prey for packs of German submarines.

Henderson and a team of young agents must go undercover to sabotage German U-Boat operations. If they dont succeed, the British people face starvation.

Favourite Character: Paul Clarke
Favourite Scene: When Henderson tells the girl in the lighthouse that Marc's his wife
Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

One of Henderson's best agents is being held captive in Frankfurt. A set of forged record cards could be his ticket to freedom, but might just as easily become his death warrant. A vital mission awaits him in France—if he can find a way to escape.

Favourite Character: Marc Kilgour <3 <3 <3
Favourite Scene: Mostly the beginning, because Vogel is so nice to Marc. Oh, and when he meets Maxine again.
Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Spring, 1943.

The war is turning against Germany, but Hitler isn't giving up. In a secret bunker deep in occupied France, scientists are hard at work on Hitler's latest deadly weapon: code name FZG-76. Back in England Henderson's boys will need to undergo advanced sniper training if they have any chance of infiltrating the bunker. Parachuting into occupied France, they track down a secret dossier filled with invaluable material and uncover the meaning of the enigmatic code.

Favourite Character: Marc Kilgour
Favourite Scene: I can't really decided on a favourite scene.
Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis (from Goodreads):

JUNE 1944

The allies have landed in Northern France. Henderson and his team embark on a mission to, sabotage German supply lines.

But the retreating Nazis are at their most brutal and desperate, which will make Henderson's Boys final mission their most dangerous.

Favourite Character: ALL OF THEM! Especially Rosie...
Favourite Scene: THE EPILOGUE! If that counts...
Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars




Just like the Gallagher Girls series, the Henderson's Boys series is one that I grew up with, and was sad to see end.

I started reading the series back in 2009, and to be honest with you, I didn't really want to read it. But immediately, I fell in love with the series. I love Robert's style of writing, and he is one of the few male authors that I enjoy and read by choice (most of the guy writers I read are due to the English department curriculum).

I think what really drew me to the series was the fact that it was set in World War II and it wasn't a survival story (well, not entirely; there is a lot of trying to keep alive in these books!), but I rebellion story to fight for a greater good.

So thank you Robert Muchamore for being one of my favourite guy writers and the mastermind behind one of my favourite series. I loved the Henderson's Boys from begininng to end (although I would've preferred Marc marrying me).

Throw Back Thursday: the Modern Faerie Tale series by Holly Black

It's my first Throw Back Thursday!

Today we're going back to 2004 with the release of the first book in the Modern Faerie Tale series, Tithe by the amazingly talented, amazingly awesome Holly Black!


Synopsis (from Goodreads):

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms - a struggle that could very well mean her death.

Favourite character: Kaye
Favourite line: "Kiss my ass, Rath Roiben Rye."
Overall Rating: 4.5 stars









Synopsis (from Goodreads):


When seventeen-year-old Valerie runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system.

But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends.
And when one talks Val into tracking down the lair of a mysterious creature with whom they are all involved, Val finds herself torn between her newfound affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming.

Favourite character: Luis...Val...NO LUIS!....Val?...I can't decide :(
Favourite line: “You carried my heart in your hands tonight," he said. "But I have felt as if you carried it long before that.”
Overall rating: 3.5 stars



Synopsis (from Goodreads):

In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing -- her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can't see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn't exist: a faerie who can tell a lie.

Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth -- that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen?

Holly Black spins a seductive tale at once achingly real and chillingly enchanted, set in a dangerous world where pleasure mingles with pain and nothing is exactly as it appears.

Favourite character: Loved Kaye in this book, but I loved Luis and Corny the most.
Favourite line: "Maybe it's good we split up. I mean, as far as boyfriends go, he was always working. Running an evil court takes a lot of time."
Overall rating: 4 stars

Holly Black is literally the reason why I started reading more and why I started writing. Once I finished the Spiderwick Chronicles in the fourth grade, I started looking for more books that could ever live up to the series. When I learned that Holly herself had her own series apart from Spiderwick, young me had my first fangirl moment.

Being nine-ish/ten-ish at the time, I had a hard time getting used to the vocabulary and older writing style; I didn't know that I was reading Young Adult at the time.

However, if I didn't read Tithe, I probably wouldn't have gotten into  the YA paranormal/fantasy books that I so adore till this day!

So thank you Holly Black! And if you haven't read these books yet, go out and buy them now! You'll fall in love and find yourself so emersed in the world!

Happy Thursday guys!