I sucked at math. I mean, I barely new what way up I was during class let alone what the fuck an integer is. I spent the majority of the year doodling bubble letters in my blueberry scented gel pen (c'mon guys, it was the early noughties) and skipping class as often as I dared, preferring to spend time in the library where the marks on the page actually made sense to me. Like, what is algebra? Some kind of animal? A disease? I don't even fucking know. So when it rolled around to exam time, the most I could hope for was to be able to write my name legibly at the top of the page (and even in this task I struggled. My handwriting is bad) I barely new where I was and had a hard time comprehending what the hell was going on. Math? That's like, numbers right? I thank all the gods that the marking gurus decided, in their infinite wisdom to lower the pass mark that year to 23% because I guess we all sucked. Somehow I actually passed, not with a fantastic grade or that but I actually passed. The markers must have found something they could grade in amongst all the song lyrics, quotes and cartoon ponies I scrawled across my exam paper. Or maybe they just had a really great sense of humour.

Mercy by Rebecca Lim felt like that goddam math exam all over again - I have no fucking idea what the hell is going on here.

Mercy, I think, is an angel (though I only know this because it says so on the blurb) who wakes up to find herself inhabiting a new human body periodically. She must use her enormous wit, talent and bravery (ha) to accomplish good deeds (for some reason) and make her time on earth worth while (I think) She lands in Paradise - a small town hiding great tragedy - in the body of Carmen, posing as a participant in a multi-school choir concert. There she meets Ryan and his stick-figure parents who are struggling to come to terms with the kidnapping of their daughter, Lauren two years previously. Mercy takes it upon herself to rescue Lauren and right the wrongs of this fractured family and town.

Shit. Pretty much complete shit.

If you enjoy sexist bullcrap with an emphasis on over-bearing and aggressive romance coupled with a meandering, tissue-paper thin plot and populated with wisps of smoke on the breeze in place of supporting characters overseen by an unsettling puppet-master third-side of a hideous and oppressive triangle of love then by all means - be my guest and get ready to fall in love with Splintered by AG Howard. If, however, you are not a fan of fiction-for-the-insane and would prefer not to read a shoddy rehashing of Tim Burton's 2010 movie Alice mashed up with American McGee's awesome video game of the same name then this is really not the book for you.

Alyssa's family has a history of insanity, beginning it seems with Alyssa's great-great-great grandmother who was the inspiration behind Lewis Caroll's classic story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. With Alyssa's mother incarcerated in the most ridiculous asylum I have ever had the misfortune of reading about (if a nurse were to casually wander around with an unprescribed and loaded syringe of some unspecified sedative just chilling in her pocket, believe me she'd me struck off sharpish) Alyssa dives back down the rabbit hole to Wonderland to right the wrongs of the past and break the curse of madness her family appears to be struck with.

I hate when I can't find something. No. I think you misunderstand me - I hate when I can't find something. I will literary tear my apartment to pieces, a vein throbbing on my forehead, hands shaking, a cold sweat breaking out on my back before collapsing in a sobbing, retching heap on the floor if I can't find something (and then I discover that my sunglasses were on my head all along. And then someone has to die) Missing objects are the bane of my existence. I once lost my favourite mittens at the train station. I watched them waiting forlornly on the bench on the platform as the train pulled away, my nose pressed to the glass in anguish, a solitary tear sliding mournfully down my pale cheek as I came to the realisation that they would never again grace my freezing hands. That was a bad day.

I fall apart over lost socks, keys, lighters and cups. So I can only imagine how Nora Grey must be despairing over her missing brain. That's a pretty massive thing to become separated from. But there's really no other explanation for her absurd behaviour other than being clinically declared brain-dead. Pull the plug guys, she's long gone.

This time round, Nora appears to have some kind of episode or something, breaks up with the delightful Patch, and then wallows in regret for the remainder of the book, all the while blaming everyone's favourite fallen angel. I guess she's also suffering memory loss - Nora!! You ended it with him, you dumb broad!! There's all the usual shenanigans - some jolly slut shaming, Fat Vee trying desperately hard (and failing) to be funny and Nora whining about how badly she needs a job, getting one (following the most lax job interview ever) and then managing to only complete one solitary shift before skipping off into the night, never to be seen by her employers again (yeah, that's one restaurant she'll never be able to show her face at again) - culminating in, once again, Nora fighting her for life at the hands of yet another fallen angel (why are so many of the population of Coldwater angels in disguise?!) this time in the cellars of Ye Olde Amusement Park (apparently, amusement parks have cellars? Who knew?!) built by none other than - yup, you guessed it - the fallen angels!! I guess they had time on their hands? Or a passion for cheap, salmonella laden hot dogs and rickety death traps rides?

I have spent all week cleaning up vomit. Most of it canine. Some, I'd hazard to guess, feline. Sadly this is just the way the cookie crumbles when your pets get into the garbage. All there is left to do is shrug and grab the mop. Again. This is really not my favourite pet-care chore. In fact, it's my least favourite. It turns my stomach. As a nurse, there's not a lot of bodily fluids that have this effect on me. I'd like to think I've mostly suppressed my disgust reflex. But vomit? No. Never. However, I would gladly wipe up puke off the floor all day long than ever subject myself to Adorkable by Sarra Manning again. Ever. This book caused me pain.

That old familiar jaw-ache reared it's ugly head when I was first introduced to our delightful main character and co-narrator, Jeane Smith. Jeane is super cool and totes amazeballs at life. That is, if your definition of cool is being completely vile to anyone who wanders into your vicinity, purposely dressing as if you are colour blind or insane or just really lazy with your laundry and cultivating a deep seated, frightening superiority complex.

Jeane's a self sufficient, 17 year old living in London and running her online empire - Adorkable: the brand, from her living room. She has all the usual "boy trouble", school shit and in the end discovers that it's okay to be different. That's pretty much it. This book is very poorly plotted. There's way too much of Jeane sounding off, Jeane being cruel and abrasive and Jeane verbally and mentally abusing her peers, to fit much actual story line in there. There are a lot of threads begun and then just left loose to flap. Like Jeane's uncomfortable situation with her family which she mentions a few times but makes no move to resolve, or her awkward relationship with her ex-boyfriend who she swears she's still best buds with but never calls, never thinks about and never really sees again. But she does find the time to squeeze in a "relationship" with the most totes amazeballs guy in school, Michael (our second co-narrator) who also happens to be just about the most boring guy ever to breathe. He's wheeled along behind her, cowering from the blindingly, brilliant light of her sheer awesomeness as they half heartedly toss a few bland jokes and insults back and forth. It really is pitiful. The worst of it is that Michael isn't only dull and pathetic. He's also an arrogant self absorbed dick:

This book reminds me of those peppermint chocolates in the green bag you can buy at the market for like 99p. You eat one and life is great, it's sweet and melty and smooth. Fine. So you keep trucking - you eat another. And the seed of doubt is planted. Do you really like these candies? Do you?! They're very sweet after all. But you bash on. And you eat one more. And no. You do not like them. They're sickly, they're samey, they're all the sugar in the entire universe compressed into a bite sized circle of tooth-achingly saccharine nastiness. And yet, you keep coming back for more. You can't stop putting these goddam sweets into your mouth until you literally have to go lie down in a darkened room until your stomach ache eases off. 

Similarly, Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare was just too much. I was so overloaded by the sheer volume of stuff shoehorned in there I had to go relax in a hot bubble bath to de-stress. The characters were so overpoweringly samey compared with every other character Cassandra Clare has ever written about. Ever. I felt the same way I felt while eating those goddam peppermint chocolates - stuffed full of the same, repetitive junk until I was queasy and shivering. But still I carry on. I keep eating and I keep reading. Why? There's something, like a masochistic moth to a white hot flame, that keeps drawing me to Cassandra Clare's writing. I don't even know what. Maybe Ms Clare hides some subliminal messaging in there somewhere. Like - "Keep reading, you know you want to. Buy my books. Give me all your money." There's really no other reason why I keep inflicting these fucking Shadowhunters on myself.