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The Untold Story – Genevieve Cogman

Return to the world of the Invisible Library for Irene’s most perilous mission yet . . .

Librarian Spy Irene is heading into danger. Not for the first time, but could this be her last? She’s tasked with a terrifyingly dangerous solo mission to eliminate an old enemy, which must be kept secret at all costs. But even more troubling news emerges. Multiple worlds are disappearing – and the Library may have something to do with it.

Determined to uncover the truth behind the vanished worlds, Irene and her friends must descend into the unplumbed depths of the Library. And what they find will change everything they know. This may be Irene’s most dangerous assignment of her hazardous career.

My thanks to Black Crow PR for the opportunity to host this leg of the blog tour and for providing a review copy ahead of publication.

The Untold Story, for fans of Genevieve Cogman’s wonderful series about The Invisible Library it is time for the biggest secret to be revealed – the story of the Library.

This is the culmination of events, the point where all the threads will be pulled together and what better way to to that than by having Librarian Irene and her companions seek out the story which began it all? The Library has been at the heart of everything through the previous seven books and Irene has shown she will do whatever it takes to complete the missions which the elders at the Library will set her. Of late, however, the book retrieval missions which Irene would traditionally undertake appear to have been reduced in number as diplomatic discussions are becoming more numerous – as is the case at the start of The Untold Story.

Irene is tasked with getting a treaty signed, she feels she is being kept out of the The Library but respects the task she has been assigned to complete and is preparing for a prolonged negotiation. She is alone as her dragon partner, Kai, has not been allowed to attend. Fate will not allow Irene to conduct a “normal” negotiation though and soon readers will enjoy another display of Irene’s resourcefulness and blind luck as she tries to wriggle out of a dangerous predicament. It’s a great opening to the story and allows Genevieve Cogman to bring readers back up to speed with recent events in Irene’s life while also getting the players in place for the next chapter in the story.

The Untold Story is the eighth book in the Invisible Library series so it’s not a jumping on point but there is still care taken by the author to ensure readers are aware of enough background information to get full enjoyment from the new story. There are characters returning from previous books who will play key roles but more importantly there are many familiar faces who will seek to aid (or hinder) Irene as she undertakes her most challenging mission to date.

Irene has discovered the truth about Alberich but she needs to keep that infomration to herself if she can. However, he remains the most dangerous enemy of The Library and he wants to meet as he is proposing a peace treaty. Irene, however, is doing her own investigation into Alberich as she tries to understand what made him turn against the Library in the first instance. To fully understand this she begins to dig deeper into the history of the Library and its creation – how did this astonishing force come into being?

The history of the Library is a well kept secret and someone or something does not want Irene to find out anything about its creation. Working on rumour and story Irene finds a storyteller who can fill in some of the gaps in her knowledge. Will the story she hears let her understand what has turned Alberich from faithful Library servant into a dangerous enemy who is hellbent on destroying the Library? If she can get to the truth then perhaps she may finally defeat Alberich and bring a new peace for the Library.

There are no spoilers in my review but I can tell you that this is a wonderful story which shocks, entertains and fully rewards readers as the secrets are revealed. There are some unexpected casualties along the way and I am not sure Irene’s life will be the same after The Untold Story ends. What I do know it that I have loved this sweeping saga of Librarians, Dragon and Fae – the cautious politics and the sneaky deceptions. The Untold Story is an essential acquisition for any fantasy reader and I do hope there may be more stories from the Library one day.

The Untold Story is published by Pan Macmillan and is available in paperback, digital and audiobook format. You can order a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-untold-story/genevieve-cogman/9781529000634

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November 9

Have You Seen Me – Alexandra Weis

SOME SECRETS CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE … FOREVER.

Lindsey Gillett is missing.

And she’s not the first girl at Waverly Prep to vanish without a trace.

To help cope with the tragedy, new history teacher Aubrey LeRoux organizes a small student investigation team. But when the members start turning up dead across campus, Aubrey suspects there’s more going on than anyone is willing to admit.

The murdered students all had something in common with Lindsey. They shared a secret. And what they uncovered could threaten the future of the historic school.

At Waverly Prep, someone wants to keep the past buried—along with anyone who gets in their way.

I received a review copy through Netgalley and the book was brought to my attention by Jamie-Lee at Black Crow PR

When you grow up reading books set in schools and featuring school kids you don’t realise schools feature less and less in your chosen reads as you move away from MG, YA and into (in my case) crime and thriller fiction. So when I started Have You Seen Me – a crime thriller set in a residential school I was transported back to a period of my life where schools were the staple location for the books I read.

Have You Seen Me is a YA thriller which is aimed at readers aged 12 to 17 and I would absoultely have been here for this book at that time of my life. It has a group of school friends who have concerns the adults responsible for their care are not listening to their worries that something has happened to a girl in their class.

At Waverly Prep missing girls seem to be something of a recurring issue. The staff at the school believe the missing girls simply ran away, they were disruptive troublemakers and they didn’t seem to want to be at this illustrious institution. Aubrey Leroux was a student at Waverly Prep and girls in her year went missing. She suspected foul play at the time but she didn’t know she had been a suspect too.

Aubrey had been a scholarship student and there would have been no way that her family could have afforded to send her to Waverly Prep were it not for her academic prowess winning her a place. Naturally this singled Aubrey out amongst her peers at the time, the fact she was dark skinned in a school with mainly white rich kids was also a situation she endured. Now Aubrey returns to her old school to take up a teaching post. Her new boss, her old headteacher, remembers she brought attitude and problems with her so Aubrey is already striving to make a good impression in her new role.

It’s not the best start for her though – as when she was a student – a girl has gone missing from Waverly Prep and Aubrey feels there have been too many instances of missing kids for it to be a coincidence. She believes there is a danger in the school and she wants to investigate. But the local police don’t support Aubrey’s suspicions so it falls to Aubrey and a group of her students to conduct their own enquries.

The missing girl is Lindsey Gillett. Her classmates hail her as a popular student but this isn’t mirrored by the staff opinion of her. Aubrey starts to look further into Lindsey’s time at the school and with her student investigators they start to ask tricky questions. The old groundskeeper remembers Aubrey from her time as a student but he warns her off looking too much into the background of the school and the large grounds it sits in, particularly the old battlefield and graveyard.

Of course the more the students and Aubrey snoop the more likely they are to draw unwanted attention and soon a missing girl is the least of their worries as one of their number meets a nasty end. There’s a murderer hanging around the school and it doesn’t look like he is going to settle for just a single victim.

As this is a YA novel the more brutal detail of the murder scenes are not shared with the reader – that’s all down to your imagination. But the manner of the deaths and the set-up to a catastrophe is still rather disconcerting at times. I liked the imagination Alexandra Weis brought to the second half of the story when the danger is ramped up to the max. But it was a bit of a slow burn initially and I found the students and their manipulation of their teacher to be irksome rather than engaging – I am putting that down to my age though!

All in I enjoyed Have You Seen Me. It was darker than I had expected but not in a graphic way. A couple of twists were a little too easy to spot but the exectuion of the story was still well handled. Stick with it through the build up for a full on last third where virtually anything goes.

Have you Seen Me is published by Vesuvian Books and is available in Hardback and digital format. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08Z5XJ74Y/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2

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