WTF Did I Miss This Week? #18 (w/c 30/01/17)

The publishing world: 

This week features the biggest amount of new releases I've ever been able to find:

There were also more exciting cover reveals:

'The Victoria In My Head' is definitely my favourite cover - it's just so cool!

In other news:

• Leigh Bardugo is releasing an illustrated collection of fairy tales in September. It's called 'The Language of Thorns' and US folks can already pre-order. 
• For the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter, Bloomsbury will be releasing these beautiful special editions. I'm a Hufflepuff, but I want to collect all of these covers!  
• This is both bookish and music-related news: Enter Shikari are releasing a book. For a mere £35, you can own 'Dear Future Historians: Lyrics and Exegesis of Rou Reynolds for the Music of Enter Shikari'. 
• Last year's list of most borrowed authors was released, and was overwhelmingly filled with children's authors. This is brilliant news - #coverkidsbooks!

The music world:

Found a few more new releases this week:

A whole bunch more new music:

After the success of the 'Castle on the Hill' video, Ed Sheeran released one for his other surprise release, 'Shape of You':

One OK Rock weren't content with just being the biggest-selling band on the planet, so they decided to release another new video:

Decade released more of their second album into the world:

'Everybody' should watch the new live Don Broco video:

And my favourite video released this week was twenty one pilots farewell to the 'Blurryface' era, closed with an official clip for 'heavydirtysoul':

For fans of heavier music, there were new releases from Suicide Silence, SHVPES, Bury Tomorrow, Our Hollow, Our Home, and the first official footage of CJ's return to Thy Art Is Murder.
Also this week: a guest vocal from Skindred's Benji Webb on the new Sumo Cyco single, Arcane Roots did what they do best, The Ready Set shared some 'Cotton Candy' with Call Me Karizma, This Wild Life covered 'First Date', Creeper covered The 1975, and AFI released another single from 'The Blood Album'.
Biggest surprises? Patrick Stump's 'Who's the (Bat)Man?', featuring on the Lego Batman movie soundtrack and Chris Shiflett of Foo Fighters fame is now releasing country music.

As if we didn't have enough tickets to buy, there were even more tour announcements:

• Biffy Clyro have announced an intimate show for War Child, calling at Shepherd's Bush Empire on February 20th. 
• Memphis May Fire are touring America in March, with Blessthefall, The Color Morale, Sylar and Bad Seed Rising. Pretty epic line-up.  
• Thursday have announced a reunion tour across the US throughout March and April. Support comes from Basement and Touché Amoré.  
• Highly Suspect have announced a huge American tour between March and June. 
• Between March and July, John Mayer will be touring America, Europe and the UK. 
• All Time Low will be headlining venues across Europe in April. UK tourmates SWMRS are also along for the ride, but no Waterparks on these dates.
• Jamie Lenman, the ex-frontman of Reuben, will be touring the UK in April and May. 
• The Fearless Invasion tour is coming to the UK in May. I Prevail, Ice Nine Kills and Oceans Ate Alaska will all be performing at Slam Dunk festival, closing the tour with a headline show at London's Camden Underworld.
• Catfish and the Bottlemen have announced a US headline tour in May, preceding their August and September tour supporting Green Day.  
• Courage My Love are touring Europe and UK in May and June, supported by HalfLives. 
• Muse will be touring across America with 30 Seconds To Mars and PVRIS between May and September. This hasn't been officially confirmed at the moment, but the tour poster looks pretty genuine.
• Nickelback are touring from June to October across America and Canada. The tour is supporting the release of 'Feed the Machine', the album they're releasing on June 9th. Support comes from Daughtry, Cheap Trick and Shaman's Harvest.

In other news:

• Zac Farro is back in Paramore. YAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
• Music journalist and author Marc Spitz died earlier today. RIP. 
• Faultlines parted ways with their vocalist, Christina Rotondo...
• ...and Memphis May Fire's guitarist Anthony Sepe left the band...
• but Oceans Ate Alaska have gained a member - new vocalist Jake Noakes.
• Cute Is What We Aim For have been announced as main support for We The Kings self-titled  US tour...
• ...while Trash Boat will be joining New Found Glory for their American album celebrations...
• ...Bury Tomorrow are taking Crossfaith, Black Peaks and Any Given Day on the road throughout the UK...
• ...and VANT will be joined by Dead! and Black Foxxes at alternate dates on their tour. Check out the tour dates here to see who's the support at your show.  
• Kellin Quinn, vocalist for Sleeping With Sirens, now has a label! His first signing are Chase Your Words, and I think they're about to get huge. 
• Talking of signings, Teenage Bottlerocket have re-signed with Fat Wreck Records...
• Basement have been signed to Fueled By Ramen...
• ...Super Whatevr are the newest Hopeless Records signing...
• ...The Raven Age have signed to BMG...
• ...and He Is Legend have been signed to Spinefarm Records. 
• Beyoncé has announced that she's pregnant with twins. Congratulations!
• All Time Low have designed a shirt to raise money for ACLU. It's a worthy cause, so get hold of one if you can! 
• There were plenty of festival announcements, including: Download, Download France, Slam Dunk, Groovin The Moo, TRNSMT, 110 Above, Belsonic, Lasrageous, Sabroso, Hit The North, British Summer Time in Hyde Park, Park Life, Punk Rock Bowling, Punk Rock Holiday and So What?!...
• ...while Teddy Rocks announced their day splits. 
• Warped Rewind also added another band to their cruise of nostalgia: American Hi-Fi! 
• Everyday Sidekicks will be releasing their new EP on the 31st of March...
• ...and k. flay's new album, 'Every Where Is Some Where', will be out on April 7th. 
• Sadly, a fan was brutally assaulted during a Code Orange gig in America. The band have spoken out against violence at shows and shared a GoFundMe to assist with medical bill.
• Mark Hoppus hinted that there would be new blink-182 music released in April. Presumably this will be the deluxe album that Travis Barker mentioned towards at the end of 2016...
• Green Day got their fifth no. 1 with 'Still Breathing'...
• ...while Deaf Havana's latest album, 'All These Countless Nights', charted at #5 on the UK Official Album Charts. The boys didn't hesitate before celebrating, and I'm so proud of how commercially successful the UK rock scene have been this year so far.
• The final piece of news this week: Black Sabbath played their last ever show on Saturday. It's the end of an era, and a shame to say goodbye to such a legendary group. Sadly, their ex-keyboardist Geoff Nicholls passed away on the 28th of January - a supremely sad week for the band. RIP. 

'Fifteen' (The Dreamwalker Diaries #1) by Jen Estes

*This review will contain spoilers!* 

First things first, I need to say a huge thank you to Curiosity Quills Press, for sending me this title in exchange for an honest review. 

'If you die in your dreams, you die in real life. Or so say the proverbial old wives, slumber party legends, and A Nightmare On Elm Street.'

For the last three months, Ashling Michelle Campbell has been having the same dream every time she falls asleep.
She's in a crowd of people, straining to get closer to a stage where a group of prisoners are waiting to be sentenced. The pushing and shoving ceases as the sea of people parts, collectively getting to their knees to worship at the feet of the monstrous thing who walks down the makeshift aisle they've made: with a black, slimy mouth, curved claws and dead eyes, he's so close yet so far from being human.
The disgusting humanoid says her name, and she's terrified. How does he know who she is? But one of the prisoners gets dragged forward, and she has to deal with the shocking realisation that her future self is up on the stage.
As if that wasn't hard enough to accept, she then has to watch her future self get thrown into the crowd and devoured. She is literally eaten alive before her very eyes, every single night.
After she wakes up, she breaks her dreamcatcher in frustration. It's obviously not helping - if the damn thing worked, she wouldn't still be having the nightmare! She tells her best friend Tate, but he's Lakota and believes in their superstitions so he's certain that she's just made things much worse for herself. His fear makes Ash paranoid, and before going to bed that night she tapes the dreamcatcher back together, repairing it as well as she can.
It changes everything.
That night when she falls asleep, she wakes up and she IS future Ash. She's no longer watching from the crowd: she's experiencing the nightmare first hand. It's even worse than it was before, because now she can feel their teeth and claws tearing through her skin. When she wakes up, she's bleeding: the bite wound inflicted in the dream becomes real.
Ash is terrified. She tries so hard to stay awake all night, fighting the urge to sleep, but before long she's going under. When she comes to on the stage, she realises she can remember everything that happened the night before. She's completely aware that she's in a dream, and she can manipulate everything going on around her. She frees the other prisoners - the enigmatic Gray Eyes (who we later learn is called Coop), Reyna, James and Cyrus - and they escape, heading down into the secret tunnels running beneath the town.
Meanwhile, in the waking world, Ash takes part in a sleep study at the local university. She confides in Dr. Dietz about the craziness of her dreams, and he suggests that she focus hard on the spot where the dream ended. If she can visualise the scene around her she should be able to jump back in where she left off, continuing the dream rather than reliving the beginning over and over again.
Due to the butterfly effect, everything Ash does in the present changes the course of the future. She wants to stop the monster getting in charge - he's the Jumlin, the big bad in another Lakota legend that Tate introduces her to - but has no idea how to do this... Until she works out that the Jumlin is Walker Smith, the man running against her Aunt Lavaughn in the town's mayoral election.
Ash embraces her role as a dreamwalker, constantly brainstorming ideas of how she can help save the town, even getting veritable genius Tate involved in her schemes. But when Aunt Lavaughn gets shot and killed outside her office, Ash goes back in time to make sure she won't go to work that morning, inadvertently causing her mother to take Lavaughn's place...
As well as dealing with her time hopping, Ash has all of the usual struggles of a teenage girl. Her mother decided to foster Nadette, a recently orphaned teenage girl, a few months ago, and the two constantly come to blows. To make matters worse Tate is completely infatuated with Nadette, ignoring Ash as soon as she flounces past. So much for best friendship!
And how can a girl care about getting good grades in chemistry when she's so busy trying to save the world every night?

I can't remember the last time I felt so invested in a story. Due to the non-chronological nature of the narrative, it's impossible to clearly predict what's going to happen. Every single time Ash jumped into the future I didn't know what she was going to discover, and I was craving more information on how the town got into such a state. It's fascinating to see how things rapidly change based on the actions in the present, and it made me deeply consider the way that the smallest thing could make the biggest difference to someone's life.
Reading on became a compulsion. I started reading 'Fifteen' on the train on the way to London to see Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties, and I continued reading in the breaks between sets, when I went to the bathroom, even while queuing to buy merch! I wouldn't recommend reading 'Fifteen' if you're planning on dipping in and out of a book: this is an immersive experience, and one that you need to commit yourself to wholeheartedly.
There are predictable bits: it was very obvious that Walker Smith was the Jumlin, and the eventual reveal of who Laughing Bear - the key to making all of his spawn immortal - was also not surprising in the slightest. But the things that I thought would happen didn't: Tate and Ash kiss but their relationship never develops further than that, which means we don't have to deal with the best friends becoming love interests trope, and at the end of the novel her mother is still dead because she doesn't always find the time travel easy.
Ash's struggle is very realistic. She isn't too intimidated by the news that she's a dreamwalker because she assumed that her dreams were taking her to the future - it was the only explanation that made sense. But she needs to stay on the ball constantly, flying under the radar as she intercepts her friends from the future and trying different outcomes each time to get to a more desirable conclusion to each night's installment of the journey.
This is the most exciting dystopian I've ever read. Because the outcome seems avoidable, the quest to prevent it ramps up the tension and means you really root for the characters. I found myself flinching every time Ash made a faux pas and revealed herself to the people in the future, but the banter lacing most of her interactions had me giggling despite the fact that I felt very on edge.
The only reason I didn't give it five stars is because at times it gets a little overwhelming. There are a few very rapid timeline changes that left me feeling dizzy, and they weren't written in the clearest way. That, combined with the thinly veiled foreshadowing ruining the surprise of the twists, were the only two problems I had, but other than those this was a pretty perfect example of a dystopian.
If you don't want to start a new series you're in luck - 'Fifteen' works pretty well as a standalone (if you can deal with a couple of unanswered questions!). I'm definitely going to be reading on, though: I'd be an idiot to stop reading here!

If you're thinking about starting a new series, look no further. You won't be disappointed when you delve into this world.
I'm going to pick up the recently published 'Sixteen', second book in the Dreamwalker Diaries series, as soon as I can, because this was utterly gripping. I hope it's a direct continuation, because even though this could work really well as a standalone I NEED answers. Will Ash be able to save her mother? Has she managed to save the future? Is the Jumlin threat wiped out for good? So many questions! 

January wrap-up

It's crazy that the first month of 2017 is already over. It's been a very trying month - from Donald Trump's inauguration to the acceleration of Brexit talks - but it's finally over, and we survived. Hopefully the next eleven months will be easier.

Bookish wrap-up:

I started off the year as I mean to go on: by reading 23 books. That included 3 graphic novels and 4 non-fiction titles.
This was probably my most diverse reading month on the blog EVER. I read an adult contemporary, a classic, two thrillers, two crime novels and two novels written in free verse. Phew!

The best books I read in January?:

These books all deserved the five stars I gave them. 

The worst books I read in January?:

I don't know if I was being too nice last month, but I didn't give any books one star. These three just scraped two stars, but now I think I might have been a bit generous... 

Musical wrap-up:

If you checked out my Top Five Wednesday post yesterday, you'll find it easy to guess my album of the month - yep, You Me At Six's 'Night People'.

I haven't listened to all of the albums that were released this month yet, and I'm sure I'm really going to enjoy Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes' 'Modern Ruin' and AFI's 'The Blood Album', but for now the award has to go to my boys, who are finally back on top after a dreadful fourth album. 

I was going to give song of the month to one of the new You Me At Six tracks, but instead I've decided to award it to Mallory Knox for 'Better Off Without You'. 

Every song they release is stronger than the last, and I can't wait to finally get my hands on the new album - it's bound to be huge.

This was another month in which I only went to two concerts. You Me At Six were amazing at their acoustic performance, but I have to say that my concert of the month was A Day To Remember's astounding show at Wembley Arena. 

I hope you enjoyed this wrap-up. See you at the end of February! 

TOP FIVE WEDNESDAY: Top five current favourite albums

(Top Five Wednesday was created by GingerReadsLainey. Find out more at the Goodreads group!)

This week Top Five Wednesday is taking a break from discussing books, so I thought I'd use it to talk about my other love - music! My favourite albums change ALL THE TIME, so these are only my current favourites: I hope you'll check them out and will enjoy them as much as I do. 

5) 'We Don't Have Each Other' by Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties

I've been listening to this album non-stop because I'm actually seeing Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties live TOMORROW! A heartbreakingly poignant concept album, this tells the story of Aaron's marriage breaking down following his wife, Diane, having a miscarriage. You won't get through this one without shedding a tear.

Favourite song?: 'Divorce and the American South'.

4) 'I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it' by The 1975

This album is always going to be in my top five. I hated The 1975 before this was released, and now I can't get enough of them.

Favourite song?: 'Loving Someone'. 

3) 'All These Countless Nights' by Deaf Havana

For a while I was worried that we were never going to get another Deaf Havana album. Things went eerily quiet, and it didn't look good. Then 'All These Countless Nights' was announced live on stage last year, and I was beyond excited. This album was worth the wait.

Favourite song?: 'Trigger'. 

2) 'The Boy Who Died Wolf' by Highly Suspect

When I discovered Highly Suspect at Reading festival last year, I didn't expect to fall in love with them as quickly as I did. Then 'The Boy Who Died Wolf' was released, and I was HOOKED. 

Favourite song?: 'Wolf'. 

1) 'Night People' by You Me At Six

This shouldn't be a surprise. I've seen You Me At Six five times in the last five months, and I think their new album is the most exciting material they've released since the launch of 'Sinners Never Sleep' back in 2011.

Favourite song?: 'Take On the World'. 

I hope you enjoyed this Top Five Wednesday, and that you find a new favourite band thanks to one of these albums! See you next week.