Book Reviews – Sally Partridge

LEGO book review: Blood to Poison

Published on January 16, 2022 by Sally PartridgeLeave a comment

Seventeen-year-old Savannah is angry, its an anger that has travelled through her family as a curse – a curse she is determined to lift. But blood curses are nearly impossible to break, and in her quest to discover the answers, Savannah finds herself in the middle of a war between rival factions of witches. Blood to Poison is Mary Watson’s third magical young adult novel (YA) with Bloomsbury, and it’s just as immersive and wonderful, with just a lick of darkness to set it apart.

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How To Support Local This Christmas

Published on November 3, 2020September 1, 2021 by Sally Partridge1 Comment

It’s been an insane year, most of it spent under strict lockdown conditions. Local businesses took a huge knock with many small enterprises only managing to hold on.

The local book industry was one of the many sectors hit. If you look past the bigger publishing houses and chain bookstores you’ll see a wide network of independent bookshops, small publishers, authors, freelance designers, editors and proofreaders, and bright young people just starting out their career.

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Lockdown LEGO Book Reviews

Published on August 24, 2020August 24, 2020 by Sally Partridge1 Comment

One thing that’s become apparent to me on social media is that lockdown has affected us all differently, especially our sleeping and reading habits. I’ve been home for more than half a year now and I’ve only just started enjoying reading books again. In the first few months, all I wanted to do was watch Netflix and read graphic novels. I must have read hundreds of them (my poor credit card will vouch for that.) I think it was the nagging anxiety caused by the spreading virus – I didn’t want my attention drawn away for too long.

I have finally found my reading groove again, which I’m sure my new friends on Instagram were partly responsible for.

So here is a roundup of some of my lockdown reads so far.

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Review Roundup

Published on August 17, 2020August 17, 2020 by Sally PartridgeLeave a comment

Sea Star Summer has been out in the world for five months. It had a bit of a delayed start due to the pandemic. Books weren’t able to leave the warehouse before lockdown, and review copies were locked away in an office while everyone worked from home. But we got them out in the end, and books soon made their way to readers.

Here is a roundup of all the reviews and press coverage I could find so far.

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Stay inside, read a book

Published on May 28, 2020May 29, 2020 by Sally PartridgeLeave a comment

It’s winter and it’s cold and there’s a pandemic raging. If you, like me, would rather stay inside and nest underneath a fort of fluffy blankets, it helps to be entertained.

I have been stocking up on ebooks and more recently, placing orders for the paperbacks I just have to own. (I just finished My Dark Vanessa and wow – just wow). I also have a book that just came out, but it feels wrong to promote it without mentioning the other amazing local YA titles available to read. Besides, who buys just one book?

So here is a list of South African YA fiction that you can read right this very minute and a few you should definitely pre-order.

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LEGO book review: The Wicked Deep

Published on March 5, 2020March 5, 2020 by Sally PartridgeLeave a comment

I’ve always wanted to write a book about the ocean. Not the blue sky and sunshine kind, but a gloomy one that evokes that timeless, haunted feel only the sea can conjure – of countless wrecks and lost souls, of buried secrets and quiet, solemn knowledge.

So naturally, when I find a book that ticks all these boxes, I’m one very happy reader.

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Local books to buy your loved ones this Christmas

Published on November 29, 2019December 15, 2019 by Sally PartridgeLeave a comment

For me, the festive season means two things – time to buy presents for my nearest and dearest, and having quality time to catch up on reading. To help you do both, I’ve put together a list of books by some of South Africa’s best female authors that were published this year.

Please do yourself a favour and visit The Book Lounge in Cape Town or Love Books in Jozi and ask for their personal recommendations. There were so many good books published this year that deserve to be taken home. (I cheated and mentioned a few more at the bottom.)

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LEGO book review: The Deathless Girls

Published on October 22, 2019 by Sally PartridgeLeave a comment

I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula when I was in grade ten. It was a difficult novel to read, one of those books where you start reading a paragraph and end up daydreaming about something else for ten minutes. It took me a long time to finish. But it was a point of pride. I was on a mission to read all the great works of classic literature I could get my hands on (which were also incidentally free to take out from the library.) To me, Dracula was the classic that defined gothic literature.

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