Mercy by Rebecca Lim

School is crazy right now, so one from the archives... November 2011 to be exact.

From the publisher:

Exiled from heaven, a lost soul seeks her soulmate...Mercy 'wakes' on a school bus bound for Paradise, a small town where everyone knows everyone else's business - or thinks they do. But they will never guess the secret Mercy is hiding... As an angel exiled from heaven and doomed to return repeatedly to Earth....

My thoughts.... 

Another cover buy... although the back cover blurb had me sucked in straight away. I wasn't expecting much from this book because I've had a few let downs lately, but was very pleasantly surprised!

Scary Story Sizzling Starts

Creative Writing with Year 8. Eeep!

Now that school is back, my reading time has completely shrunk. However, I had fun this afternoon during the little man's nap time putting together a lesson on how to start a scary story, and compiled 17 story starters to 'inspire' year 8. (Any teachers out there will understand that 'inspire' and 'year 8' don't generally go well together in a sentence.)

Anyway, I came across some awesome ones, and wanted to share some of the opening lines that made the cut...

Adding to the TBR pile #1

I may have gone a little crazy in the local bookshop today. The YA section is small, but quality. After a good half hour of browsing, I picked up these (in addition to the stack of audiobooks I may have 'accidentally' downloaded a couple of days ago...)

Podcasts I love #1

Because I spend over an hour in the car every day, I spend a lot of time listening to audiobooks. But, sometimes, after slogging through a 20+ hour listen, I often divert and listen to podcasts. For the last couple of years I've been going through a real true crime phase (Serial, Undisclosed, Up and Vanished, Real Crime Profile, Truth & Justice with Bob Ruff) but a horribly graphic recount of the James Bulger murder not long ago on one of these made me feel physically ill, and at a result, I've stopped with the true crime for the time being.

Yellow by Megan Jacobson

Paperback library copy. I think I need one!

From the publisher:

Kirra and the ghost make a pact. She'll prove who murdered him almost twenty years ago if he makes her popular, gets her parents back together, and promises not to haunt her. But things aren't so simple, and Kirra realises that people can be haunted in more ways than one.

There's a reason this book has been shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year Award.