B3THANY READS

Title: Illuminae Author: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff Rating: 5/5 Illuminae isn't a book. It's an experience . I could sum up the plot to try and sell it to you, but that wouldn't do it justice. What makes the story special is the way it is told; the way it puts you in the driving seat of this massive spaceship and guides you through it, rather than just telling you. Illuminae is a quasi-graphic novel, but with an emphasis on the 'novel' part. We don't get the detailed illustrations of characters and settings you would normally expect from a regular graphic novel, but it's certainly still 'graphic' in other ways. Every time I picked the book up, I was excited to explore all the different types of documents it uses to tell the story - emails, text messages, transcripts of announcements, conversations ... you name it. You truly feel like a detective sifting through these documents to find out what really happened. I particularly liked how the writer

Tomi Adeyemi has said many times before that  Children of Blood and Bone was written in response to cases of racism and police brutality in America. Now, almost 6 weeks after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I want to analyse Adeyemi's debut novel in light of this tragedy, and how it made a mark on the Black Lives Matter movement. 'Children of Blood and Bone was written during a time where I kept turning on the news and seeing stories of unarmed black men, women and children being shot by the police. I felt afraid and angry and helpless, but this book was the one thing that made me feel like I could do something about it.' (Tomi Adeyemi, 2018) I read this book back in 2018 when it was first published, and instantly knew it was one of my favourite books I had ever read. I decided to re-read it the day after George Floyd was murdered, and was overwhelmed by just how powerful the story is to the BLM movement. As a privileged white girl, I felt like Childr