How to make mini book covers #bookishhobby

I’m back with a DIY project and as far as bookish hobbies go, this is the cutest one yet! I’ve seen plenty of photos on Instagram of little mini book covers and I always wondered how to make these. I have finally found the answer and I’m happy to share it with you. And don’t worry, the good news is that it’s really not all that difficult!

Okay time to start! First, think of some book covers you want to make in advance so you know when you start that you’re not adding another 30 minutes trying to decide. I just picked my last ones that I read and the ones that I’ll be reading in the next few weeks, so not especially favourites. I’m sorry I don’t have lots of photos of the start of the project but I’m talking you through it step by step so it should be clear enough.

Note: The following instructions mention a programme named Canva but you can easily do the same in Word. I tried and tested it and it gives the sames result, only the colours in Canva that you need for the spine are a bit more diverse in shading, and they suggest colours there too based on the colours in the image which is helpful too. I only found out after I had already made this post so I’m giving you my original review.

First, open up the site Canva, make an account or log in and ‘Create a design’ by selecting an A4 document. Make a rectangular ‘shape’ on the page by choosing a square in the ‘element section’ on the left. On the bottom of the page you can increase the percentage of your view and I scaled my view to 120% so that I could fit the covers nicely into the squares at the right time. Now it’s entirely up to you how big or how small you want your covers but as a guideline I set my square at around 70 mm horizontally and 40 mm vertically. You can add the ruler when you go on the top into File – View Settings – Show rulers and guides.

   

Now open another tab and Google the title of the book you want, you want to see a book cover so once you hit enter choose the tab images to see all the covers. You don’t have to go on a website but you can just choose an image, you click on it and when you see it bigger on the right side of your screen you simply right-click on the cover and ‘copy the image‘, then go to the Canva page and paste it.

It’ll be too big but you can change the size when you go to the corner of that cover picture. Make it fit in your square and if you’re happy with it, copy/paste the image again for the other side. You’ll be able to turn it upside down too so that your book cover will look good from all sides. Make sure you have left a little space between the two covers because that’s the spine of your miniature version of the book.

You can change the colour of that spine by simply clicking on your square. It’ll show a color icon next to shape above your page and you can change the color to another one that goes well with your cover.

Time to print these via Share – Download – PDF Print

And we have:

                                           

Now the really fun part starts! What you need is some foam (you can do it with paper too, there are other tutorials I’ve seen that use paper, but my way is so much faster) and glue. Cut out two pieces of the same size as your cover, glue them together with some mod podge (I didn’t find that here so I used the glue I had) and into the booklet and there you have it. Use a minimum of glue (even less than I’m showing here) and spread it out with a piece of paper or cardboard, because it’ll cause the paper to wrinkle if you use too much.

And this is how it’ll look on my Instagram 🙂

So what do you think of these mini book covers? Cute innit? I’ve seen some bloggers making covers for all the books they read in a year. I’m not going to start such a collection but I’m keeping the ones I made as home deco in a jar.

Oh and as a behind the scenes… this is what I’m working with… or better yet how :-). For full disclosure, Poes did not have any glue on her, it’s a small miracle.

Till next time! Tell me what you think, I’d love to hear if it’s a yay or a nay!

Stalking Jack The Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco #BookReview

Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord’s daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.

Against her stern father’s wishes and society’s expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle’s laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.

The story’s shocking twists and turns will make this dazzling debut from author Kerri Maniscalco impossible to forget.

I was in the mood for reading some historical fiction and when I saw this novel about Jack The Ripper, well how could I resist? I’m also a big fan of the cover and reading the story I can say that the woman on the cover fits the story perfectly, she even made it easier for me to imagine Audrey Rose. 

There’s A LOT that I liked about this novel. First of all I loved how the author was not afraid to dive right into the story. The novel opens with an autopsy in Audrey Rose’s uncle Jonathan’s laboratory and just reading that first line about the moment before making the incision was enough to know that I was really going to enjoy the story and writing. The author inserted real photos of that period which gave the story a sense of authenticity, and afterwards I read in the afterword also a number of details about the Jack The Ripper murders that she tried to replicate in the story as well. 

I also loved how Audrey Rose didn’t want to fold to the Victorian standard expectations for a woman. I loved her fascination for the dead and how she’s adamant that she’s just as capable to perform a postmortem as a man. She has to walk a fine line, on the one hand she has to have tea parties and if she wants to wed soon she needs to be on her best behaviour, but on the other hand she sneaks away to assist her uncle, she doesn’t shy away from looking at Jack The Ripper’s havoc on his victims, she isn’t afraid to tell her mind and as an act of defiance further along she wears her riding gear.. when she’s not riding. She’s a perfect heroine and the exact character this novel needed!       

I’d say she’s the star of the show but that’s a lie because she has to share first place with Thomas, another student of her uncle. Thomas has mad deductions skills, I was seriously in awe and I don’t know if I loved the murder mystery or the courting going on between Audrey Rose and Thomas most. I’m tempted to go for the latter. The flirting (on a Victorian level) was so good and I loved Thomas’s pursuit and his little remarks. Apart from that they were also great as a detective duo and I think it’s no coincidence that Thomas addressing her often as Wadsworth always gave me major Sherlock and Watson vibes.

Last but not least, the story is of course about Jack The Ripper. Audrey Rose and her entourage are called upon and soon enough it doesn’t let her go. There are a few possible suspects but I figured out who Jack The Ripper was very soon, without any real grounds I admit but I still knew I had to be right on this and I was. Authors always follow the same formula and I have cracked that formula so it takes a lot more than this to surprise me, although she did try to create some doubt. While I knew who I didn’t completely understand the why though and finding out left me a little speechless. Now I wonder about the real Jack The Ripper even more!

Stalking Jack The Ripper is an original young adult novel with a great Jack The Ripper twist. I neither expected the morbid details nor the romance but I loved both and I do hope to read the next in the series in the future.

I bought a paperback of this novel. This is my honest opinion.

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney #BookReview

Isolated on their private island in Cornwall, the Darker family have come together for the first time in over a decade. When the tide comes in, they’ll be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. When the tide goes back out, nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing – because one of the family is a killer . . .

As the leaves of autumn fall, Daisy Darker arrives at her grandmother’s house for eightieth birthday celebrations. Seaglass, the Darker’s ancestral home, is a crumbling Cornish house perched upon its own tiny private island.

Every member of the family has their secrets. Nana, alone for so long. Daisy’s absent father, Frank. Her cold-hearted mother, Nancy. Her siblings, Rose and Lily, and her niece, Trixie, full of questions and without a father of her own. Daisy has never had an easy relationship with her family, but some secrets are much darker than others. This will be a gathering that some of them won’t remember.

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Alice Feeney is one of the best writers that I know and she delivers another spectacular story in Daisy Darker. I want to say that she keeps getting better and better but all of her stories are next level and I always recommend her if someone asks for suggestions for novels with great twists.

There are six characters next to Daisy who come together at Seaglass house to celebrate her grandmother’s 80th birthday. The sea separates the house from the main land and they can only cross it when the tide is low so basically they are trapped for the night in an isolated location with no escape from each other. As if that’s not bad enough, there is a killer among them! The characters were all very well fleshed out and the flashbacks to the past really made me get to know each of them: Nana (the grandmother), Frank and Nancy (the parents), Rose, Lilly and Daisy (the daughters), Trixie (Lilly’s daughter), Connor (childhood friend until he stopped speaking to Daisy), and Poppy (Nana’s dog). The first pages with everyone arriving at the house made me wonder if I would have trouble knowing who’s who but the characters are very distinct from each other. One by one they also get finished off. Who will be left, who is the killer and why? What is the secret that is being kept? The answers are nothing short of jaw-dropping.

Daisy was a great character and I felt a bit sad for her because she’s always been a bit of the black sheep in the family. She defied death multiple times but that didn’t earn her more love from her parents or sisters, except from her grandmother who always adored her. Daisy was born in one big dysfunctional family and as the story progressed the true colours of all of them came out. Still, with some of them gone I found it difficult to find answers to the pressing questions. For a brief, silly moment I even wondered if Daisy was the killer herself, even though everything was told from her POV with the necessary panic…

Well I certainly got value for money because this novel was very very clever, the pacing of mounting tension was perfect and the story that led up to all the murders was nothing I expected. I didn’t see that one special plot twist coming that I’m normally not fond of but was actually quite appropriate in this story… Ok I didn’t really see the rest of the twists coming either except for this one fundamental one and that’s only thanks to my ever-present paranoia (and not because it’s obvious when you read what it’s compared to in almost all of the reviews therefore I will not mention it). Let’s just say it’s best to go into this novel blind. Let it just surprise and hook you as it did to me!

I bought an ecopy of this novel. This is my honest opinion.

Hold Back The Stars by Katie Khan #BookReview

Carys and Max have ninety minutes of air left. None of this was supposed to happen.

Adrift in space with nothing to hold on to but each other, Carys and Max can’t help but look back at the world they left behind. A world whose rules they couldn’t submit to, a place where they never really belonged; a home they’re determined to get back to because they’ve come too far to lose each other now.

Hold Back the Stars is a love story like no other.

Why oh why didn’t I read this sooner? Another one of my backlist and what a winner. Hold Back The Stars is a novel set in an utopian world. It’s a mix of romance, new adult genre with a sci-fi background (I don’t even have a category for that). Not really my kind of read right? Well things can change :-).

On the one hand Carys and Max are floating in space and trying everything they can to get back to the capsule. Time is ticking away and each chapter shows how many more minutes of oxygen they still have left.

In alternating chapters the author took me back to the beginning, where Carys and Max met. Carys drove shuttles and Max was working in his parents supermarket while also answering all sorts of questions about cooking as a chef. How Max became an astronaut and ended up in space was a mystery to me but the story was cleverly constructed and it actually made some kind of sense.

Max and Carys were in their early twenties when they fall in love. The thing is, in this utopian world the story is set in, they want the people to develop their individuality so therefore you can only become a couple at the age of 35. Yep the taste of forbidden love is the best.

I was completely on board with this new world, the rules, the different voivoids and the rotations to other voivoids every couple of years until it was time to settle down.

The author is a star (yes I couldn’t not say it) and I can’t believe it’s her first novel. There are several topics inserted into the story that are stepping stones for contemplation, about family issues and personal choices, and of course if a real utopia can exist.

The ending has everything you want and the lead up to it lets the reader take a peek at other possible scenarios how it could have played out. Cari’s life without Max, or Max’s life without Cari,.. you’ll have to see in the end what the scenario is that the author picked. If you ask me then she picked the right one but it goes straight through the heart!

This novel had the perfect mix and was a joy to read. Forbidden love has never felt so good. Also what an absolutely beautiful quote is this:

“The thing about first love, Cari, is that it breaks you. It changes everything about who you are for the next person.”

Hold Back The Stars was an amazing story with so much to give. At first I was hung up on their past lives more but in the end you know them so well and it catches up and I was hanging on to those moments in space and hoping so much for a miracle.

I’m definitely adding her other novel, The Light Between Us, to my readlist!

Oh by the way, good to know that Hold Back the Stars is in the works at studio Lionsgate, to be directed by Justin Baldoni (Five Feet Apart) from a screenplay by Christy Hall (I Am Not Okay With This), produced by Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen (Strange Things and Arrival).

There’s work to do for some of you I believe, you better read the novel before you watch the movie! It’s only 1.99p at the moment btw.

I bought a paperback copy of this novel. This is my honest opinion.

Lovely Vicious (book 1) by Sara Wolf #BookReview

Seventeen-year-old Isis Blake hasn’t fallen in love in three years, nine weeks, and five days, and after what happened last time, she intends to keep it that way. Since then she’s lost eighty-five pounds, gotten four streaks of purple in her hair, and moved to Buttcrack-of-Nowhere, Ohio, to help her mom escape a bad relationship.

All the girls in her new school want one thing—Jack Hunter, the Ice Prince of East Summit High. Hot as an Armani ad, smart enough to get into Yale, and colder than the Arctic, Jack Hunter’s never gone out with anyone. Sure, people have seen him downtown with beautiful women, but he’s never given high school girls the time of day. Until Isis punches him in the face.

Jack’s met his match. Suddenly everything is a game.

The goal: Make the other beg for mercy.

The game board: East Summit High.

The reward: Something neither of them expected.

/

Novel number 300-something of my backlist and I’m ashamed to say I actually chose it as my next read because I confused it with another novel that I’d been meaning to read and clearly don’t have in my library (Truly Devious btw) Vicious, devious, you can see how got it mixed up right? Another funny thing about this novel is that Sara Wolf made it into a trilogy and the new title of this book is actually Love Me Never. Honestly if I’d have seen that title with that new cover I’d not have touched it. I know it’s one of my flaws and I’m happy I was oblivious because it turned out not such a bad read. I read it in a day!

What I enjoyed most of all about this novel were all the words and comments that came out of Isis Blake’s mouth. The writing style – the snide remarks especially – was very entertaining and it really made me smile a lot.

Isis makes an enemy of Jack Hunter, the school’s heart throb because he’s not at all interested when the friend she just made, Kayla, throws herself at his feet at a party and he makes that painfully clear. Isis doesn’t stand for it and demands an apology for the way he treated her but he isn’t giving in. She steps it up and then his retaliation made my heart pitter patter but unfortunately I found the next moves of Isis taking it quite (too) far. The romance is definitely not instant although you can feel there’s something between them.

Underneath this confident, battle-armour Isis there’s another side of her that left her wounded. There are layers to both Isis and Jack which bring more serious themes to the story and in the end they really pulled at my heartstrings. It ends with a cliffhanger so be aware that it’ll leave you wanting to know more. Overall, I have absolutely no regrets picking this one up, even when it wasn’t my intention.

I bought an ecopy of this novel. This is my honest opinion.