Book reviews - Bookfair addition

I am back from my lovely vacation and ready for a new year of blogging. I will post a review of my year 2016 soon, but for now I'll start with a book review. In October I attended Europe's biggest bookfair and (pretty randomly) picked up three books I've never heard of before. I've read them all by now and here are the reviews (in the order I've read them, not the quality of the books).

Girl on the Net: How a bad girl fell in love

This was so much fun! How a bad girl fell in love is romance/erotica which is usually not my genre at all but when I saw it in the shelf it looked really cool. And I was so right.

The author, Girl on the Net, is a british sex blogger and this is (as far as I can tell) her debut novel, in which she tells about her extravagant sexcapades, about falling in love and about life in a long term relationship. Usually I couldn't care less about love novels, but this book was truly fantastic! It was everything. It's hiliarious and smart and sexy and it has a refreshing truth. There are very explicit sex scenes but then there are also brutally honest descriptions of everyday problems. Reading this book was like talking to a dear friend who just gets it: love, sex, life, everything.

Michael Grant: Messenger of Fear

When I've seen that Michael Grant has a book series (well it's only two books) which I didn't know about, I just had to have the first book. I've read two series by Michael Grant before, one was BZRK which was interesting and smart but lost it's intensity a bit in the second book, the other one was the Gone series which is wonderful with a sometimes confusing but all in all sound plot and great, mult-dimensional characters. So I had high hopes for Messenger of Fear but I have to say I was so disappointed.

First of all, it has an unreliable narrator which is a device I always find a bit annoying. The story is told by a girl who wakes up in a weird world with no memories and somehow moves from event to event as some kind of apprentice of a supernatural creature. Yes, it's really weird. But the worst part was that she is so naive and blind. At least in the middle of the book readers know who she really is because there are signs everywhere. The big reveal at the end is so obvious and predictable. But still the main character just doesn't get it. Which is frustrating to follow. It's a short, quick read but still I had to fight through it and I just kept going out of respect for the author's previous work.

Sally Gardner: The door that led to where

I really didn't expect anything from this book. The title is really confusing and to be honest, the only reason I picked it up, was because it said it is a story about two Londons and I was just reading A darker shade of magic at that time, and it sounded similar. It is different but it is just as well, maybe better, you can't really compare the two books as A darker shade of magic is for adults and The door that led to where is YA. But it's good. Really good. I was surprised by how much I liked it.

The story is about a high school graduate who finds a job at a law firm. There he finds a key with his name engraved which leads to London of the 19th century and he soon is caught up in adventures between the times. It's a clever and original fantasy novel but what I loved most about it wasn't even the fantasy bit. It was how real it felt. The main character and his friends and family are from a poor area of London. Their lives are marked by poverty and crime and hopelessness. But still they are the most awesome people you know, They understand friendship and love and loyality and they fight for what they want against all odds. They are really diverse and multi-layered, perfectly created. They are the kind of characters you wish you could be friends with in real life and isn't this the best literature can do?

Have you read any of these books? How did you like them?