review

Tinsy Winsy Weeny Tots review

24th September 2017 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

OK, you are probably wondering, much as I did when I was contacted for this review, what on earth is a tinsy winsy weeny tot?

Basically, as you can hopefully see in the picture above, they are hand sized, soft bodied baby dolls which come in a collectable series. Each doll has a different, very detailed face, with a soft huggable body and a beautifully designed miniature outfit. They even come with a hospital wrist tag with an individual name and date of birth which is handy for identifying which one is which. The packaging is a card cot or hospital bed, ideal for storage too. I was actually pretty impressed with the packaging, not least because you can see which doll you are getting – I hate blind bag collectables, so stressful if you’ve got a child who has got to catch them all. (Sorry Pokemon.)

We were also sent as part of the review the pram accessory set which has a moving handle, wheels and a pram hood so your childredn can make their dolls extra comfortable and wheel them around. The baby included with the set *isn’t* one of the collectable series as far as I can tell (there are 15 in set one) but still comes in an all-in-one outfit and there is a changing bag, changing mat and fabric nappy included too.

There’s also a bedroom accessory set, but we haven’t seen that one 🙂

The first collection is limited edition and each individual doll retails at £7.99. As far as I can tell the major stockist is Smyths Toys – they don’t seem to be available on Amazon or Argos, which surprised me a bit. At £7.99 they are a bit more expensive than many collectables, but they are a little larger, and have quite a lot of play value if you have a child that likes baby dolls. The fact that the packaging on the individual dolls can be kept easily to keep your collection pristine and dust free impressed me as well.

Overall I was a lot happier with this toy range than I expected to be – the finish quality on the toys and their accessories is pretty good, and they’d certainly make very nice little birthday presents if your offspring are regularly invited to class parties.

Wildflower Bay by Rachael Lucas – review and giveaway

9th August 2016 by Jax Blunt 33 Comments

It is no secret to any of my readers here or on social media that I am a huge fan of Rachael’s work. I’ve known her for years – we first ‘met’ online on email lists back when we were very new mothers, and have been bumping into each on and offline ever since. I’ve been watching her authorly career with awe, as she goes from strength to strength as a writer – I can’t wait to see where she takes us all next.

Wildflower Bay (buy on Amazon) is a return to the world of her first book Sealed with a Kiss (read my review here ) featuring one of my favourite characters, Finn. It doesn’t start on the island though, it starts in the streets of Edinburgh, where we meet up with Isla, a career driven head stylist, who has been so caught up in chasing her dream job that she hasn’t noticed her personal life is somewhat lacking in substance.

I love Isla. Despite her being outwardly completely goal oriented, there’s a lot more going on under the covers, as there always is in Rachael’s books. I get the feeling that I’d get on with her, even though I’d exasperate her by leaving cups in the wrong place 😉 Like all of Rachael’s books, my (signed!) copy sits on my comfort book shelf (what, you don’t shelve books by how they make you feel?) of books I turn to them regularly when I want a bit of escapism from a life with too much lego underfoot. I hope you love them too 🙂

To give you a chance to get to know them, I’m hosting a giveaway for a paperback copy of Wildflower Bay. Isn’t it just adorable?

Have a handy rafflecopter widget.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don’t forget to leave a comment, and good luck!

Rachael juggles working as an author, coach and freelance writer with the aid of quite a lot of tea. She and her partner (also a writer) live by the seaside in the North West of England with their six children.

She is the author of Wildflower Bay, Coming Up Roses and Sealed With a Kiss.

For more about Rachael, visit her website at rachaellucas.com, say hello to her on Twitter @karamina, or find her on Facebook

Sneakily, you can grab part one of the ebook free here on amazon kindle or buy the whole book here

Disclosure: I was given a copy of this book for review. Amazon links are affiliate links.

Don’t forget to visit the rest of the blogtour, which kicked off yesterday at Lipstick and Lace!

Listed with other Competitions at ThePrizeFinder

Let's talk about the A word.

23rd March 2016 by Jax Blunt 10 Comments

Maurice (Christopher Eccleston), Alison (Morven Christie) and Joe Hughes (Max Vento) in The A Word. Photograph: Rory Mulvey/BBC/Fifty Fathoms

So. BBC one showed a new drama, The A word, last night about a family discovering their son has autism.

It’s very well acted – unsurprisingly given it includes Christopher Eccleston on fine, if somewhat grumpy form (possibly because he seems to suddenly have become old enough to be cast as grandad, which must be a bit of a shock for all concerned). The young lad playing the autistic boy in question is playing what he’s been asked to play very well.

But.

Despite articles raving about it (The A Word is a beautifully believable drama about autism and family tensions is just one of the many I found) I’m personally having a few problems believing it.

Within this family, we’ve been through the diagnosis process 3 times.

It’s never been easy.

First time around, the GP, who seemed to have his own belief issue with autism as a condition insisted that the problem was down to a chronic ear infection, saw us monthly for 3 months, and then prescribed 6 months of penicillin. I didn’t fill the script, did transfer to a different GP and finally got the referral that we actually needed. The child in question had had his hearing tested regularly throughout childhood, received speech therapy for lack of speech, and was at the time I caved and sought referral beyond being a handful and was regularly physically attacking me if I attempted to thwart his wishes and do something like get him to leave the house. There were other clues that all was not well, but this is supposed to be a normal length article.

I know I don’t know every autistic child (or indeed person) on the planet, but I’ve seen a fair few meltdowns and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that resulted in the child lying quietly face down on the floor. Or just slapping someone once and then stopping in apparent shock.

Also, during the diagnostic interview in the programme, the doctor(?) asked for school reports, and the family said oh we didn’t bother with those. And then the diagnosis tootled on? I know quite a lot of home educating families who have been told that they can’t access diagnosis as the child isn’t in school and it can’t happen without educational reports. (Which is wrong, incidentally, but unfortunately for a lot of children, medical professionals do not know everything, and very often are prejudiced against anything outside the norm. Our paediatrician was a lot more clued up, and just visited us at home and him at beavers, in order to see him in a social situation.)

What I’m trying to get at is the diagnosis procedure in the program wasn’t in the slightest bit believable. Ignoring the lack of educational reports, it missed out the stage where the parents, tearing their hair out, are either fobbed off, put on a waiting list, lied to, or told that it’s just poor parenting and they need to attend classes. Yes, all of these things happen and accessing diagnosis can take a very long time. (Do NOT get me started on accessing support.)

Oh, and despite us being told that this isn’t yet another Rainman lookalike, it *is* about a little boy with savant like skills for learning music lyrics.

Head. Desk.

Please. Please be aware that autistic people can be male, female, young, old, bright, not so bright, have learning difficulties or not, often have a variety of co morbid diagnosis like epilepsy or joint issues (look up Ehlers Danlos and weep) and so on and so forth. What they rarely are is savants.

Yes, yes, I know the A word is fiction. But it’s fiction that once again cements a stereotype in place, and means that people like me – female, adult etc will be told more often that I can’t be autistic. Like I was by the GP I approached to access diagnosis myself, who couldn’t get me out of the room fast enough.

He was wrong. I am. And many more people are going to be misled by this, and it doesn’t help any of us.

(And as for the throw away prejudiced remark anti home schooling in the trailer for the next episode – really? Just what does the BBC have against home education??)

One by Sarah Crossan

7th August 2015 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

https://twitter.com/liveotherwise/status/616981499682942981?s=09

I read One in one sitting I think. It’s that kind of book. It wraps around you and carries you along, though it’s not a fast paced adventure, far from it. Unless growing up is an adventure, which I guess it kind of is.

Sarah Crossan’s writing has a poetic quality, lyrical and lovely. The other book I’ve read recently that it reminded me of was Red Leaves Falling, and there are similarities to the plot in some ways. Life changing illness features in One, but isn’t the focus. Instead it’s about friendship, connections, new experiences. It’s uplifting and emotional, sad and fitting all at once.

The blurb:

Grace and Tippi are twins – conjoined twins.

And their lives are about to change.

No longer able to afford homeschooling, they must venture into the world – a world of stares, sneers and cruelty. Will they find more than that at school? Can they find real friends? And what about love?

But what neither Grace or Tippi realises is that a heart-wrenching decision lies ahead. A decision that could tear them apart. One that will change their lives even more than they ever imagined.

From Carnegie Medal shortlisted author Sarah Crossan, this moving and beautifully crafted novel about identity, sisterhood and love ultimately asks one question: what does it mean to want and have a soulmate

I’m always a bit nervous when books mention homeschooling, but this is sensitively covered. In fact I complimented Sarah on it when I met her at the YALC fringe event 😉 It’s not the important factor though money does drive the story forward. This is much more about characters than plot, and the characters are well worth focussing on.

Basically, I loved this book. I love the people, the writing, and even though I may have cried, I’ve now got two more Sarah Crossan titles on my TBR pile.

<a href=”http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1408863111/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1408863111&linkCode=as2&tag=makingitup-21″>One</a><img src=”http://ir-uk.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=makingitup-21&l=as2&o=2&a=1408863111″ width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”” style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” /> is out on the 27th August, and is available for preorder from a variety of retailers, as well as via my handy Amazon affiliate link.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

2nd July 2015 by Jax Blunt 5 Comments

buy at Amazon

Only in wartime could a stalwart lass from Manchester rub shoulders with a Scottish aristocrat, one a pilot, the other a special operations executive. When a vital mission goes wrong, and one of the friends has to bail out of a faulty plane over France, she is captured by the Gestapo and becomes a prisoner of war. The story begins in ‘Verity’s’ own words, as she writes her account for her captors.

Truth or lies? Honour or betrayal? Everything they’ve ever believed in is put to the test…

Tim read this months ago, maybe a year or more, and has been ~~nagging~~ encouraging me ever since to read it. And a while back I did pick it up and start it and while it was OK, it just didn’t really grab me, and I put it down again.

Then I did my unfinished books post. And started finishing books.

Maybe it was just that the start was a little slow. Also, what the narrator is saying about herself doesn’t make for easy reading. She’s not a lovable character – she doesn’t seem to like herself very much. But the story that she’s telling grows more and more interesting, and then when the book switches to the second viewpoint, it all becomes so much clearer.

I kind of want to go back and read the beginning now that I’ve read the end. Pick out the clues that I’m sure are there. Read the subtexts, the story between the lines. This is a book that will stand reading, rereading, discussion and debate I think. And also, maybe this time I’ll be able to read the end without crying, because quite frankly, I wept buckets.

There’s a page, you’ll know it when you reach it, that I had to stop and reread three times until I accepted it. (I hate spoilers in reviews, I hope that’s non spoilerish enough!) I’m still slightly stunned. But it was right. It fitted. You know how sometimes a book has a twist, and it’s so obviously just to get the writer out of a plot hole? This isn’t a twist as such, it’s just not where you expect/ hope the story to go. And that’s as much as I’m going to say.

Tim is reluctant to read any more books by this author because he doesn’t see how they could be as good as this. I think if they’re half as good they’ll be good enough, so I’m going to seek them out. And we’re proposing this as a family book club title, think Big will enjoy it, not sure whether Small is quite ready for it yet though – we’ll let him judge. If he isn’t, then we’ll get round to discussing it in a couple of years when he is.