malorie blackman – as told by zaheerah

Monthly Rewind: May 2025

June 4, 2025June 5, 2025by Zaheerah1 Comment

L I F E

In May, I attended Penguin Presents, a full-day event for staff at Penguin Random House celebrating their work. This one was particularly special, as it highlighted the 90th Anniversary. It was a great show with a fantastic selection of authors and an opportunity to hear about upcoming releases from the company. To be honest, you can’t really have Dame Judi Dench as your first guest and not expect it to be a fantastic event. I was lucky enough to snag a meet & greet with Jacqueline Wilson, and she signed my copy of Double Act from my childhood! I was a bit cheeky and realised that as I finished my signing with Jacqueline, Malorie Blackman’s line had just finished, so I also jumped over to her table and had the chance to say hello! These two authors were such a stable in our household. Malorie, especially with her works such as ANTIDOTE, Hacker and Thief – three of my favourite childhood reads! I always say that there are three authors whose works were pivotal to my interest in reading and, later, working in publishing (the third author being Rachel Caine). To meet two of them in one day was honestly amazing!

B O O K S

In May, I read 13 books!

8 of those books were a part of my Morganville Vampires series re-read! I’ve been slowly going back into writing which made me feel really nostalgic for Rachel’s works as I began working on my own writing.

For transparency, books marked with an asterisk (*) signify books I received through work at PRH.

Glass Houses, The Dead Girl’s Dance, Midnight Alley, Feast of Fools, Lord of Misrule, Carpe Corpus, Fade Out & Kiss of Death

Nothing has made me question my memory more as I re-read this series. I thought I had a pretty good memory of the entire series. Still, re-reading it, I’m actually laughing at how much I’ve forgotten. Not even plot points – I somehow managed to forget the characters. (Not you, Sam Glass, my beloved. I like to think he was the beginning of my obsession with red-haired characters.)

Suppose you haven’t read or heard of this series. In that case, Morganville Vampires is a massive 15-book series about a girl named Claire who discovers that the town she attends college in is run by vampires. Each book presents a new challenge for her as she becomes more involved with the town’s increasingly undead residents.

I began reading this series when I was 9, maybe 12 for the later books, and now, at 27, I think, ‘Wow, these characters were all babies.’ I used to think Claire was so calm and mature, and now I’m reading this and thinking, ‘Claire, please relax.’ You are a child and don’t need to be doing all this. A side note, but I LOVE how dated this series feels now. Something about Shane having a PSP and them playing video games that were clearly inspired by old generations felt incredibly nostalgic – I used to be so jealous of Shane having a PSP because back then, only my brother had one. Is this series peak fiction? Probably only to 9-year-old me. But I’m having so much fun re-reading this because it still feels as entertaining as it was eighteen years ago

Cry When the Baby Cries*

An insightful graphic memoir about the early years of parenthood! I heard about this book in a meeting and I was waiting for it to be released! So funny and candid!

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Books

Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time

December 1, 2020by ZaheerahLeave a Comment

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature once hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, but has now moved to That Artsy Reader Girl! Each week, a new topic is put into place and bloggers share their top ten (or your own amount) accordingly. This week’s topic is Book You Want to Read Again, so I decided to adapt it slightly to books you wish you could read again for the first time. Because there of them, way more than ten, and if you’ve been following me long enough, half of this list should not be a surprise.

The Poppy War by R.F Kuang
This is one of many books that really go without saying many words. To quote me back in 2018, “Believe the hype. It is truly worth it.” Two years later and this story STILL lives in my mind rent-free. I would happily erase my mind to see Rin, Kitay and Nezha meet again for the first time.
Jade City by Fonda Lee
I first read Jade City last year, and I have already re-read it three times. I’m currently in the middle of a read-along to re-read Jade City and Jade War again. I think it’s safe to say that I don’t wish I could reread this for the first time, I just want to re-read this series all the time.
Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine
Listen, the way I would do anything to experience the same form of happiness I felt when I discovered Khalila Seif for the first time is unreal. Rachel Caine was always more known for her Morganville series and her adult fictions, but I will never shut up about this series. I feel like this series is way underappreciated in YA. A definite re-read is in order.
The Name of the Star by Maureen Johhnson
My sister bought me a copy of this because my favourite youtuber at the time, charlieissocoollike, had talked about it. And I never would have expected to have liked it so much. I remember spending one summer just re-reading it because I loved it so much. The later books in the series were decent, but I would have been satisfied if this was just a standalone as well. I really loved the concept, and the way Maureen Johnson used Jack the Ripper was so interesting.
Thief by Malorie Blackman
I had read this book way before I discovered any sort of book community online. I think I mentioned it before that I picked it up by accident. I think this might have been my first ever dystopian book and Malorie Blackman book. I vaguely remember being really scared of this book, like a lot.
Angelfall by Susan Ee
I associate Angelfall with a particular moment in my life, the first year of college to be exact. Which is when I started my site and one of the few years of education where I wasn’t stressed out, and I was actually quite happy with my life. A friend of mine from my gaming class had recommended it to me, and we were so obsessed with talking about it all the time. I think one of my first reviews was Angelfall. The sequels didn’t live up to my expectations but getting to experience Angelfall at the time I did was so memorable.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
I think this one doesn’t need any explaining. I know, you know, we know. Let’s move on.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I’ve mentioned this before, but I was the girl obsessed with THG in secondary school. Like seriously obsessed. Somewhere in the attic are all my old Hunger Games memorabilia collecting dust. This is another book/series where I associated it to a specific timeframe in my life: secondary school before the fear of GCSEs really settled in and life was probably the least stressed I had ever been. Consider this another apology if you knew me during my Hunger Games phase, even I die a little bit inside thinking about it.
The Foxhole Court series by Nora Sakavic
Some questionable stuff happens in this series, but nothing remains as iconic as Kevin saying “Did you know I’ve never been skiing? I’d like to try it one day, though.” to a bunch of reporters.
The Astonishing Colour of After by Emily X.R. Pan

This is one of those books that was so dream-like to read. It’s very low conflict and very character-driven. I’m not someone who get emotional that easily but the ending to this book had me sobbing like a brand new person.

What’s on your TTT this week? Leave me a link or let me know in the comments!

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Books That Defined My Decade

January 9, 2020by Zaheerah2 Comments

This post was entirely inspired by Kate @ Your Tita Kate’s post, The Books That Defined My decade. I never thought to even reflect on my decade, but after reading Kate’s post, I immediately wanted to do the same.

I have a terrible memory, so I don’t remember much from my childhood, which makes me feel like I didn’t genuinely exist until 2010. At the start of this decade, I was eleven years old, turning twelve that March and, at the time of writing this post, I am twenty-one, about to turn twenty-two this March. I went from primary school, secondary school, college and university all in this decade alone. And just thinking about that blows my mind. In some sense, it shouldn’t because it’s just time passing but, at the same time, that is a lot of significant milestones in my life. I went from a child to a young adult, and reading Kate’s post made me realise that’s not a small thing. Reading is a big part of my identity, especially during this decade is where I had more choice over the books I read. While Kate’s post is more about books published in each specific year, my list is naming the books that I read in that year that made the most significant impact on me. So not all of them were great reads, but I feel like they deserve some acknowledge from impacting me in some way.

I’m going off what years I’ve put in my Goodreads profile but I feel like I might be off by a year or so hence I’ve added some books here that I actually read in 2009.

Thief – Despite Malorie Blackman being of the UK’s most beloved children’s author, I never read her acclaimed series Noughts & Crosses. Instead of the books, I knew her by were Thief and Hacker. I think this part is due to the face we didn’t have her books in my primary school library. (Maybe we did, and it was always being borrowed?) But anyway, I found Thief by accident when someone had randomly left it lying around after Golden Time. (lol remember Golden Time?) Anyway, someone remind me actually to read Noughts & Crosses in this decade.

Theodore Boone – The early 2010s was before I joined proper social media, so my ability to find books were severely limited. I don’t even remember how I managed to find Theodore Boone because it wasn’t from my school library, nor did anyone buy it for me. But I loved this series a lot as a kid. I used to watch a lot of crime shows with my family, so reading a series set in a similar environment to all the shows I was watching, but with a protagonist my age blew my mind.

The Lighting Thief – Funnily enough, this was the last time I actually up a Rick Riordan book before picking up the second one in 2019. I really loved The Lightning Thief, but my school library didn’t have the rest of the series so sadly, and with my fish brain that forgets everything every five seconds, I never got around to finishing this series. I tried continuing the series, but life got in the way. I really hope to get back to this series soon.

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Books, top ten tuesday

Childhood Favourites

July 2, 2019by Zaheerah2 Comments

The books I read as a kid primarily came from whatever my sister read and whatever little books my primary school had. Our city library had been remodelled and had a reopening when I was younger. I vaguely remember going to the opening and getting a new library card. But my dad was rarely able to take us to and from the library because he was so busy with work.

Nowadays, I just read eBooks from my library because my physical card ran out, and I’m too awkward to go back to the library to renew it. I’m not sure when I considered childhood to end, and considering, I’m only twenty-one at the time of writing, it seems too early to have this list include books I read up to until turning eighteen.

For me, there’s a blur between childhood/teenage years. So, this list will mainly consist of books that I read before the age of thirteen because it seemed like the easiest way to categorise this list. But it also makes it the shortest and hardest list to make because I have no idea what I read as a kid. I have a pretty terrible memory, so unless something is documented, I will struggle to remember it. And I didn’t start using Goodreads until I was like fourteen. Anyway, I’m rambling, but here are some books I’ve read in my childhood.

Jacqueline Wilson

Jacqueline Wilson, for me, was the quintessential British children’s author. I didn’t read Harry Potter until I was like thirteen since I used to see it as a book for Older Kids because my older sister really liked them. And because of the international success of HP, I often forget that it is a children’s series. I’m not too familiar with Wilson’s international success, but here, in the UK, her books dominated the children’s section. Even if I could never find a book I wanted, there was always a Jacqueline Wilson. Weirdly, I’ve actually only read one Tracy Beaker book, but I did watch the show a lot. My favourite was always My Sister Jodie, The Illustrated Mum or Candyfloss. My Sister Jodie was actually the last one I remember reading, which was like eleven years ago. I don’t think I’ve read anything past that.

The Morganville Vampires

I’m sort of toeing the age line at this point because I think I was around eleven when I read this series. But these books are THAT series for me that got me into becoming an avid reader and pushed me into reading beyond what was in front of me. My sister used to buy the books each year they came out, and I just read them because I didn’t have any other option because we never really had space nor money to spend on books. But I’ve already mentioned how much this series has changed me. I later discovered The Great Library series, also by Rachel Caine, which is now and forever will be one of my all-time favourite book series. I also had the pleasure of working with Rachel for the last three books as a beta reader. And I honestly cannot tell you how thrilling it was to work on those books and to have the opportunity to make it the greatest it can possibly be. My notes were pretty shitty the first time, but it gave me a lot of experience.

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Books, top ten tuesday

Books I’m Thankful For

November 20, 2018November 18, 2018by Zaheerah4 Comments

I’ve decided to keep this concise and not the normal list of ten you’d expect. There’s a different reasoning behind each of these books which have ignited my love for books and I have helped me through some difficult time. I would genuinely recommend everything single of these.

Glass Houses (Morganville Vampire #1) By Rachel Caine

Glass Houses was, I believe, the most pivotal book in terms of me becoming a reader. and who I am today. Before reading Glass Houses, I wasn’t a big reader who read a lot of books. I usually stuck to whatever my sister read, which was J.K. Rowling and Jacqueline Wilson. She bought the first couple of book and recommended me to read them. And I loved it! My sister later outgrew the series and became less of a reader, and gifted all her copies of this series to me and I later bought the rest of the series myself. (It was really sad I had to give away all my copies because of the lack of space in my house.) I haven’t had time to re-read the series like I wanted too. (Maybe I’m a little afraid because of the memory haze I have of the series) But I definitely want to sit down and re-read it all again. I have really bad memory but I can pinpoint Glass Houses and the series of the Morganville Vampire as one of the most important books in my life. Because it made me a reader, made me love books, and essentially the reason why I’m typing this post now.

Thief/ Hacker/ ANTIDOTE by Malorie Blackman

Malorie Blackman is famously more known for her Noughts & Crosses series. Which I never read. (Yet!!) As a kid, those books were always checked out, or the school library just never had it because it was pretty behind on keeping up to date. So these ones were shoved to the side, and I’m pretty sure I picked it up because I accidentally found it. Rachel Caine fuelled my love for fantasy, Malorie Blackman started my love for sci-fi. I clearly remember each of these novels so well, and I looooove each and everyone single one.

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Monthly Rewind: May 2025

Glass Houses, The Dead Girl’s Dance, Midnight Alley, Feast of Fools, Lord of Misrule, Carpe Corpus, Fade Out & Kiss of Death

Cry When the Baby Cries*

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