Feb Faves: Books, Beauty and Black Girl Magic

It only feels like two minutes ago since I was sat here typing up my January favourites and here I am again back with another batch of things I've been loving this past month. February is typically my least favourite month of the year but this February was actually pretty good to me and there have been lots of good things happening and things I have been enjoying so let's get started shall we?

Favourite Books

   

February was a mostly good reading month for me and I ended up reading a lot of thrillers but between them I decided to pick up The House of New Beginnings by Lucy Diamond for a bit of a lighter read and I absolutely loved it! The book follows Georgie, Charlotte and Rosa who are all living in the same house on the Brighton seafront and each of them has their own story about how they've come to live there and why they have decided to have a fresh start by the sea. I loved all three characters and enjoyed seeing a friendship blossom between them as the story continued. It's a beautiful and uplifting book about friendship, starting over, second chances and is perfect for spring time. The second book that I loved this month was The Breakdown by B.A. Paris, I was a huge fan of Behind Closed Doors when it was released last year and so The Breakdown was one of my most anticipated thrillers of 2017 and it didn't disappoint! B.A. Paris does suspense and tension so, so well and she's quickly becoming one of my favourite crime writers. I wrote a review for The Breakdown here and also interviewed B.A. Paris for the blog tour last month so do check those out if you're interested in the book.

Favourite to Listen to 

When I was growing up I absolutely loved the animated movie Anastasia so my eight-year-old self was bursting at the seams when I found out that it was being adapted into a musical on Broadway and since then I've been following all of the latest news. In February their YouTube channel uploaded this video of Christy Altomare who will be playing Anastasia singing one of my favourite songs from the movie Journey to the Past and she absolutely smashed it! I really hope that the soundtrack gets released so that I can listen to some old favourites plus the new tracks and I have my fingers crossed that it will come over to the UK at some point because I need this musical in my life.

Favourite to Watch

Hidden Figures - where do I even start with this movie!? From beginning to end I sat in the cinema teary eyed, my emotions switching from horror, to anger, to happiness and then finally to pride. As a woman, this was an incredibly empowering and emotional film to watch and so I can't even begin to imagine how it would feel to be a black woman watching this movie. Hidden Figures is pure black girl magic from beginning to end. It made me check my privilege and evaluate the ways in which we have changed, but more importantly it made me think about the ways we have not and the progress that still needs to happen. I'm completely awestruck every time I think about this film. It's essential viewing for all!

Favourite in Beauty

Last month Charlotte Tilbury released two new lipsticks for Valentine's Day and being the lipstick and Charlotte Tilbury fan that I am I knew that I had to invest in them! The first lipstick on the left is called Valentine and is a pretty light pink nude colour. It's made with the glossy K.I.S.S.I.N.G formula leaving a nice sheen on the lips. And on the right is Pillowtalk, my personal favourite of the two, which is honest to God the best nude lipstick I have ever tried! I'm more of a bold lip kinda gal but this month I have been obsessed with Pillowtalk it's the perfect every day go-to lipstick that goes with everything and the matte revolution formula means that it lasts for hours without budging even after eating and drinking. Charlotte Tilbury's lipsticks really are the best of the best and are the only thing I put on my lips these days. If you're considering giving her lipsticks a go then I'd say these are two great, wearable shades to start with that would suit any skin tone.

 Favourite Online 

I've been trying to spend less time online and on my phone in general over the past month or so but one thing that I loved online in February was this collab video featuring two of my favourite YouTubers Laci Green and Ingrid Nilsen talking all things lesbian from stereotypes to sex to coming out. It was such a great and informative video and is well worth a watch.

Favourite Thing

The best thing to happen to me this month was managing to get Ed Sheeran tour tickets! Me and my lovely friend Chelle from Tales of Yesterday tried both the presale and the general sale only to come away empty handed but I finally managed to get us tickets on Valentine's Day via Twickets Ed's official partnership website for the tour. Seeing Ed perform live has been on my bucket list since way back in his + days. He's my favourite artist and I was actually shaking whilst filling in my details I was that excited. I know so many people who struggled to get tickets and so I feel very, very lucky that we'll be going to see him in April.

Favourite Memory

Photo credit to Tales of Yesterday

Last month I went to the Falling in Love and Fandom event hosted by Waterstones Birmingham to support Chelle who chaired the event and to hear authors (left to right) Lauren James, Miranda Dickinson and Maggie Harcourt talk everything romance for Valentine's Day and to get my books signed. It was such a great event and lots of bloggers turned up so it was really good to put names to new faces and to catch up with old friends at the same time.

What were some of your favourite things in February? 

Never Forget Blog Tour

Hello everyone and welcome to my stop on the Never Forget blog tour. Today I have a guest post from author Richard Davis on his top five favourite crime/thriller novels.

Richard Davis's Five Favourite Crime/Thriller Novels 

1.) Stephen King’s The Running Man. Although this is a dystopian novel, it is also the epitome of thriller fiction. An insanely exciting cat-and- mouse tale.

2.) G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. An incredibly bizarre and funny thriller that is both an entertaining story, but also a metaphysical tract. It’s the novel that got me into thriller fiction in the first place.

3.) Patricia Highsmith’s The Glass Cell. Highsmith is interested in the psychology of the people behind crime, and The Glass Cell is probably my favourite of her standalone novels. An intense, disturbing, slow burn of a tale that looks at the horrors of prison, and the circumstances that drive individuals to commit unspeakable acts.

4.) Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy. I’m cheating here, since this is really three short novellas. Although the tone of these stories falls very much into a Chandleresque hard-boiled tradition, Auster – by intentionally undermining the expectations of the detective genre, and thwarting attempts to draw neat conclusions – turns these stories into provocative philosophical meditations. The New York Trilogy, through its subversions, gets you thinking about how the plots to crime and detective novels work.

5.) Lee Child’s Killing Floor. Child’s first book is a cracking read. It builds slowly, shocks frequently, and is always exciting.

Don't miss the rest of the blog tour!

Find Me Blog Tour

Hello everyone and welcome to my stop on the Find Me blog tour! Today I have an extract of the first chapter to share with you.

Don't miss the rest of the blog tour! 

The Breakdown Blog Tour: Q&A with B A Paris and Giveaway

Hello everyone! Today I am very excited to be hosting a stop on the blog tour for The Breakdown the highly anticipated new thriller from B A Paris author of the bestselling Behind Closed Doors. I absolutely loved The Breakdown and if you missed my review yesterday you can check it out here for my full thoughts. Today I have a Q&A with B A Paris to share and I have 3 copies of the book up for grabs over on Twitter.

Q&A with B A Paris 

1) How has your life changed since the release of Behind Closed Doors? Did you ever expect it to be as successful as it was? 
I honestly didn’t have any expectations at all for Behind Closed Doors, all I wanted was to be able to see it on the shelves in a bookshop somewhere. So everything that’s happened this last year has been a wonderful and unexpected surprise. The best thing about its success is that it has bought me the freedom to write, in that I’ve been able to give up most of my teaching. Writing has now become my job.

2) What’s been your best moment as an author so far? 
Being told that HQ/Harper Collins would be publishing my book was a huge moment. Hitting the New York Times bestseller list and receiving the Neilsen Bestseller Award in January for having sold 500,000 copies of Behind Closed Doors were pretty amazing too. But without my lovely agent Camilla Wray none of the others would have happened, so the moment she said she wanted to represent me was definitely the best moment ever.

3) What can fans of Behind Closed Doors expect from The Breakdown? In what ways are they similar or different?
They are similar in that they are both psychological thrillers with a young woman who is going through a traumatic experience as the main character. They are different in that in Behind Closed Doors we know what is happening to Grace, whereas in The Breakdown, even Cass doesn’t know what is happening to her!

4) What sparked the idea behind The Breakdown?
I was travelling home one afternoon through some woods when the sky suddenly became dark, the skies opened and I found myself in the middle of a huge storm, complete with flash-flooding. It was quite scary and I began to wonder what I would do if it was the middle of the night and I saw someone who had broken down at the side of the road. Would I stop and help them? Or afraid for my own safety, would I drive on? I thought it was an interesting dilemma and The Breakdown was born. 

5) Was writing a second novel harder or easier than writing the first? 
Much harder. With Behind Closed Doors I had nothing to prove and had no particular reader in mind. With The Breakdown, I had everything to prove and had the readers who had enjoyed Behind Closed Doors in mind. I didn’t want to let them down, so the pressure was huge.

6) Do you have any advice for aspiring writers? 
Never, ever give up. Each time I received a rejection letter it made me determined to write a better novel. I allowed myself to feel dejected for about two minutes, then it was back to the drawing board, with a new idea and the conviction that I could do it.

7) What books would you recommend to fans looking for similar stories to your own?
Any novel by Mary Kubica. She has a fourth novel coming out this year and it’s brilliant.

8) Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on next?
It’s another psychological thriller but I don’t want to say too much about the plot just yet.

9) And finally, what three words best describe The Breakdown?
A gripping read – I hope!

For your chance to win a copy of The Breakdown head over to Twitter 

⭐️GIVEAWAY⭐️
Win 1/3 copies of #THEBREAKDOWN by @BAParisAuthor
RT & Follow @JessHeartsBooks to enter
UK only https://t.co/NF9HeE9r0j pic.twitter.com/Yu64hZuNMS

— Jess Hearts Books (@JessHeartsBooks) February 16, 2017

Don't miss the rest of the blog tour!

Review for The Breakdown by B A Paris

The Breakdown by B A Paris
Publisher: HQ
Release: 9th February 2017
Genre: Thriller, Crime, Mystery
Source: Copy received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review



Synopsis:

"If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?

It all started that night in the woods.

Cass Anderson didn’t stop to help the woman in the car, and now she’s dead.

Ever since, silent calls have been plaguing Cass and she’s sure someone is watching her.

Consumed by guilt, she’s also starting to forget things. Whether she took her pills, what her house alarm code is – and if the knife in the kitchen really had blood on it.

Bestselling author B A Paris is back with a brand new psychological thriller full of twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat."

Review
When you write a debut as good as Behind Closed Doors there’s a lot of pressure for your next book to live up to the same high standard. Behind Closed Doors was one of my favourite Thrillers of last year so naturally I was worried that The Breakdown wouldn’t live up to it but I needn’t have been because The Breakdown was every bit as good as its predecessor proving that B A Paris is so much more than a one hit wonder and has a promising career ahead of her.

One stormy night our heroine Cass takes a detour through the woods eager to get out of the storm and home to her gorgeous cottage and partner. As she drives she notices a breakdown on the side of the road but despite her concern doesn’t stop to help. The next morning she wakes up to the news that the woman in the broken down car from the night before has been found dead. Wracked with guilt, Cass can’t get the woman out of her head and since that night has been forgetting things and receiving silent phone calls. As Cass breaks down into a spiral of guilt and paranoia she begins to suspect that what happened to the woman in the car is somehow connected to her and that the murderer is coming for her next.

The Breakdown is quite a different read compared to Behind Closed Doors. With Behind Closed Doors we knew what was happening whereas The Breakdown is more of a mystery that really keeps you guessing. I love an unreliable narrator and we certainly get that with Cass, you’re never sure if what she says happened is the truth or the fantasies of a paranoid woman on the verge of a breakdown. The suspense and tension throughout the book make it impossible to put down. Like Cass, I was never sure what to believe or who to trust.

The Breakdown is the kind of book that has you jumping at the slightest noise and looking behind you as you walk home. B A Paris is a hugely talented writer and I’m already anticipating what she writes next.