Literary PSA: I Capture the Castle

  It's been a while since I did one of these, but long ago I decided to start a NEW THING: Literary Public Service Announcements. Essentially, I'm going to pimp a book that I read before I started blogging, but that I want to foist upon the world due to it's high levels of sheer awesomeness, for the good of the public and all that jazz. Instead of me just telling people over and over that they should read something "JUST BECAUSE!!!1!", I've decided to actually explain in a more eloquent fashion just why my favorite books are my favorites.

Last time on Literary Public Service Announcements: The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty.

And now this week's PSA:



 'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink'. Cassandra Mortmain, seventeen years old and poised 'between childhood and adultery', is already a deadly observer of human behaviour. She lives with her family in the remnants of a moated medieval castle. Money is so short that her beautiful older sister declares she would marry the devil himself to get it; their father, an experimental novelist once briefly imprisoned for attacking his first wife with a cakeknife, now suffers from writers' block and sulks in the gatehouse. His second wife, Topaz, is an artist's model who wafts about communing with nature, naked under her macintosh. But when the American heirs to the castle turn up - an energetic mother and her two eligible sons - Cassandra is quick to sense that their lives will change ...

Best known as the author of The One Hundred and One Dalmations, Dodie Smith wrote this charming and funny novel in the forties. Exiled in America with her pacifist husband, and desperately nostalgic for English eccentricity, she created her own. The result was an immediate bestseller, admired by writers as diverse as Lady Antonia Fraser and Armistead Maupin, and has been made into a film. As the Punch reviewer wrote, it is an excellent novel: 'fascinating, well written, vividly imagined, and crammed with interesting and living characters'

Goodreads

 

I briefly considered writing this in the kitchen sink, but that would be colossally uncomfortable, and also computers shouldn't really get wet, and I am, sadly, not that eccentric.

 I Capture the Castle tell the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, living in not-so-genteel poverty in a vast and crumbling castle. She wants to be a writer like her father (only much less weird and experimental), so she starts a diary, and ends up chronicling the most significant six months in her family's lives.

 This is the sort of book that seems to have been made for me. It's extremely British, and I love the British. It's funny, heartfelt, and full of wit. It's It tells the story of an eccentric family with a pair of sisters who fall in love with a pair of brothers... and everything gets messed up. It has a glorious movie adaptation with some of the most handsome--



Oops. Sorry. Got distracted there. But the movie adaptation perfectly captures the wit, charm, and longing of the original, and of course the casting of Stephen is utterly--



FOCUS. I mean, young, tank-top-wearing Henry Cavill is not, sadly, in this book, but there are SO MANY ROMANTICAL ENTANGLEMENTS. Hot heirs to local estates, ruggedly handsome local gardeners, American boys with wicked senses of humor. This book, it overflows.



"I regret to say that there were moments when my deep and loving pity for her merged into a desire to kick her fairly hard."

Cassandra is my literary sister. Her voice is so engaging and delightful and lovely. She's funny, she's quaint, and she's observant. She's the plain younger sister who thinks she's logical and writerly, but she learns fast that love can change a lot of things. Her elder sister, Rose, lives  like someone in a Jane Austen novel, desperately waiting for a rich heir to rescue her from her really dire financial situation (the book is set in the 1930's, for the record). Oh, wait, look-y there. The two young, rich, eligible heirs to nearby Scoatney Hall have just returned from America. Rose sets her sight on the eldest, but of course, things aren't that simple.

 

I read this book for the first time when I was about thirteen or fourteen. It was one of my mom's favorite books from her childhood, and soon it became one of my own. It's a classic that reads more modern, that feels accessible and will make you giggle and swoon. There's a bittersweet strain through his book as they fade further into poverty, and her formerly successful author father gets more and more stuck in writer's block. He hadn't written a word in ten years, and the whole town thinks he's a drunk, even though he really just sits up in his tower reading detective novels. For a long time, Cassandra and her stepmother coddle him, believing him to be a genius, but finally they snap and... well, things start changing.





There's also a scene where the hot guys arrive for the first time at the castle while Cassandra is in the bath. 

Hilarity.

It's hard to summarize this book, honestly. When boiled down, it could sound trite or predictable. When summarized a different way, it can sound melodramatic and soap-operatic. And, well, it is, in a way. But it's also eccentric, hilarious, strange, wonderful, and perfect for Janeites and/or those with a raging case of Anglophilia.

Other covers:

 

 

 

And one more for the road:

Review: Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas

Review: Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas
Goodreads 
Release date: August 27th, 2013
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Series: No
Source: Purchased
Rating: THIS BOOK IS CRAZY. I blazed right through it. ENJOYABLE it is not, but awesome it is. It's so well done and also
!!!!!?????!!!!  ⊙︿⊙  ヘ（。□°）ヘ ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ



Paradise quickly gets gruesome in this thrilling page-turner with a plot that’s ripped from the headlines and a twist that defies the imagination.

It’s Spring Break of senior year. Anna, her boyfriend Tate, her best friend Elise, and a few other close friends are off on a debaucherous trip to Aruba that promises to be the time of their lives.

But when Elise is found brutally murdered, Anna finds herself trapped in a country not her own, fighting against vile and contemptuous accusations. As Anna sets out to find her friend’s killer, she discovers harsh revelations about her friendships, the slippery nature of truth, and the ache of young love.

Awaiting the judge’s decree, it becomes clear to Anna that everyone around her thinks she is not only guilty, but also dangerous. And when the whole story comes out, reality is more shocking than anyone ever imagined...


The cover: I refuse to even SHOW you the American cover, because it's wretched, and choose only to focus on the UK edition, which is luckily the one I have. Okay. Fine. Here's the American version. It's cheesy and stupid. Let's move on.

 

The UK version actually looks dangerous. It's sharp and dynamic and utterly frightening, just like the book.

The story: I did not realize this book was written under a pseudonym. Abigail Haas is the pen name of Abby McDonald, who wrote a book I enjoyed, Getting Over Garett Delaney. GOGD is light, heartfelt, and funny. Dangerous Girls is brutal, ugly, and full of mind-fuckery. I can't believe they exist even on the same planet, let alone that they came from the same person's brain. So bravo to Haas/McDonald. Nothing about Dangerous Girls feels forced or amateur or anything other than brilliantly done. This is a crazy, ripped-from-the-headlines ride that will make you never want to go on vacation or make friends or talk to people again. And it will make you do this:



It will make you do this a lot.

Anna, a girl from an elite private school in Boston, goes to Aruba with her friends for spring break. What should be a week of partying and boozing turns into a nightmare when her best friend Elise is brutally murdered. And things become even worse when Anna becomes the target of the prosecution. Soon she's imprisoned in a foreign country and is on trial for her life--all while she scrambles to find out who's lying, and who's a murderer.

 

INTENSE.

This book is powerful. It seizes on to your brain and doesn't let go, even as it horrifies you through tense trial scenes, horrific flashbacks, and painful memories. The plot jumps around in time to better give you a full picture of the circumstances, and you don't breathe once while it does it, either. I felt sick the whole time I was reading this, but in a good way. In the way I was meant to. It's so awful and ugly and... well, dangerous. The writing is brilliant and authentic. Some chapters have the format of a deposition, some of a television report, but most are from Anna's point of view, which is both painful and wonderful. Because Anna is very engaging, and her circumstances are so very terrible, and there's a horrible development every minute as truth perception become totally twisted.



Yeah. This book hurts. Despite the misleading American cover, this is not a breezy beachy read. This is a read littered with broken glass. This is a book about how love can be the ugliest of human emotions, about twisted relationships and violence and TOTAL MIND-FUCKERY and twists and turns and an ending that actually made me gasp "NO!" in a very public place. Seriously, if I'd been in a bar, I would have taken a shot right at the end. THE END DESERVED A SHOT OF HARD LIQUOR. OR SEVEN.



This book is also enormously frustrating, because you root for Anna SO HARD, and the trial is SO UNFAIR. Everybody else in this book is a terrible person. Well, except for one or two, but I'll say nothing about it. Believe me when I say you want to be as unspoiled for this book as possible, so you will also feel like doing shots upon finishing it. Get that tequila ready, boys and girls of legal drinking age. (Just because the minors in this book are corrupt doesn't mean YOU should be.) I became so emotionally attached to Anna and Elise, even though you learn so many gritty things about them. This book is NOT for weaklings. It's not for the faint of heart, or those who can't stomach awful things or descriptions of hardcore partiers. It will leave a foul taste in your mouth, but by god, is it worth it.

The trial is intense and scandalous, but so are the relationships behind it. We spend a lot of flashback time getting to know Anna, Elise, Anna's boyfriend Tate, and Anna's parents. This never drags down the pacing, though; the tension remains bowstring-tight throughout the whole novel. I think I probably turned blue at certain points because I, like a true YA heroine, forgot to breathe so often. Truth in this book is such a nebulous thing, and so is innocence and guilt and my sanity. I'm pretty sure I don't have a brain right now. Like, my head is just a casket full of jell-o.



Oh, and I'm officially NEVER going to Aruba. Or having friends. Or dating. Or drinking. *hides empty shot glasses*

Review: The Infinite Moment of Us by Lauren Myracle

Review: The Infinite Moment of Us by Lauren Myracle
Goodreads 
Release date: August 27th, 2013
Publisher: Amulet
Series: No
Source: ARCycling
Rating:

 

 For as long as she can remember, Wren Gray’s goal has been to please her parents. But as high school graduation nears, so does an uncomfortable realization: Pleasing her parents once overlapped with pleasing herself, but now... not so much. Wren needs to honor her own desires, but how can she if she doesn’t even know what they are?

Charlie Parker, on the other hand, is painfully aware of his heart’s desire. A gentle boy with a troubled past, Charlie has loved Wren since the day he first saw her. But a girl like Wren would never fall for a guy like Charlie—at least not the sort of guy Charlie believes himself to be.

And yet certain things are written in the stars. And in the summer after high school, Wren and Charlie’s souls will collide. But souls are complicated, as are the bodies that house them...

Sexy, romantic, and oh-so-true to life, this is an unforgettable look at first love from one of young adult fiction’s greatest writers.

The cover: ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIMOUS. I wish my ARC had this cover! It's the reason I wanted it in the first place.

The story: I don't really know what to say about this book. I loved its frank and honest portrayal of teen sex; I hated its flat, boring, and unlikable characters. I liked Myracle's prose, though it was extremely tell-y at points; I disliked the insta-love. In the end, my dislikes far outweighed my likes, even though this is a book that could have been so much.

What I did like:

Wren's issues with her parents. At first I thought this was what the focus would be on, because the first pages of the book spent so much time explaining how Wren, the perfect daughter, has always lived for her parents. Her own desires are getting lost beneath the things that they want for her, and it's crushing her. They want her to go to Emory and become a doctor, and they've convinced themselves that's what she wants, too. Wren wants to take a year off and do community service in Guatemala. She wants to see the world, take a break, figure out what she wants. So many teens can relate to that, and I thought Myracle did a fabulous job. But then... Then, a really boring romance rook over the entire plot, but I'll save that for later.

I also liked Charlie. He's a foster kid who's had it rough, but unlike most foster kids in YA lit, he's currently in a very nice home with very nice people. That was lovely to read about, as was his bond with his younger foster brother and his tentative relationships with his foster parents. Again, the book should have focused more on Wren and Charlie's home lives and how that CONTRIBUTED to their romance. But no.

I also really, really, REALLY like the attitude this book takes towards teen sex. It handles it very realistically and naturally (and awkwardly! I loved that). Wren goes on the pill, Charlie gets tested, they have very honest conversations with each other. Things may get a little explicit for some, but it's all done pretty tastefully and romantically a. Sex-positivity in YA is always a plus for me.

Here ends the pluses.

Things I didn't like:

The romance: Meet Wren and Charlie. They have interesting back stories, but no personality. Charlie loves Wren for no reason. One day they make eye contact in a parking lot. Charlie and Wren are in super duper love and it's super duper boring. This is pretty much it.

 

They really, really, REALLY LOVE EACH OTHER, and I have no idea why, even though they tell me about it every five pages. I don't have an issue with how quickly they fell in love. Some authors have pulled that off. I don't doubt Myracle has the skill to write a spectacular love story, but I never felt anything when it came to Wren and Charlie. I never had any clue what the foundation of their love was.

The focus on nothing BUT romance: This book skims the surface of so many great topics (first sex, the end of high school, the beginning of your life, child abuse, the foster system, parental pressure, etc.), but with it's short length and endless lovey-dovey cheesy dialogue, there was just no time to get into it. Wren's very interesting conflict with her parents just gets magically fixed at the end when a character, who'd been very resolute in their opinion, suddenly does an about-face. Charlie's anxiety over his foster family magically goes away because... well, because Wren is selfish and Charlie is giving and blahhhh.

Wren: Oh, I so easily could have loved Wren. I should have. Her storyline with her parents was so powerful. So I have no idea why Myracle chose to write her as insecure and self-centered in her relationship with Charlie. Charlie is seriously perfect. Boring, yes, but sweet and eight thousand percent in love with Wren. But he is not rich, and works most days in his foster dad's store, and takes care of his younger brother, who is both in a wheelchair and HORRIFICALLY BULLIED. So yes, Wren, he cannot be glued to your side twenty-four hours a day. He is not CHOOSING THEM OVER YOU by spending one hour a week with them. Did you miss the part where the kid is bullied and in a wheelchair?! Oh yes, and please, Charlie, give up the college scholarship you've worked so hard for, abandon your fledgling family and little brother, to go to Guatemala with Wren so she feels more secure in your love. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask someone to do.



Then she flips out on him because he ends a phone conversation prematurely. And completely shuts him out. For like a week. I don't expect or want all characters to be perfect, but I need to be able to understand them, but I literally couldn't understand Wren's brain when she was behaving like this. It didn't make any sense, and it didn't feel like the reasonable, earnest Wren who tries to make her parents proud would behave like this.

But the worst of it was Starrla. Oh, Starrla, why did you even exist as a character? She and Charlie used to hookup, and... I honestly don't even know how to describe her, but her portrayal made me really uncomfortable. She's the "skanky girl with issues" that Charlie used to hook up with. Wren is excruciatingly jealous of her for no damn reason. The final Starrla confrontation is so... BIZARRE AND UNCOMFORTABLE. And of course Wren gets all saaad about it, like it happened to her. I'm sorry to be vague here, but I can't really get into more specifics.

Suffice it to say that Bea doesn't approve of it.

The only characters with personality are Starrla the Strumpet; Tessa, Wren's best friend; and PG, Tessa's boyfriend. I would have rather read a book about them. Tessa's the cliche "best friend who's more vibrant, talkative, and outgoing than the mousy protagonist", which is of course why I liked her.

This book had a lot of things going for it, but with characters I didn't connect to, instalove that took over the plot, and bizarre logic, it just never won me over.

Book Haul Vlog, or the One with the Truth About London

Yes, that's a Friends reference in my blog title, and no, I have no London truth. I just wanted to reference Friends.

 

Anyway, I bought things this week, though I shouldn't have, and I'll probably buy more while in London, which I shouldn't do. Whatever. IT'S LONDON, BABY!


Books mentioned:

Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
The Diviners by Libba Bray
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Reached by Allie Condie
Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas
Behemoth by Scott Westerfield
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling
All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

If only I could buy Marry Poppins' carpet bag, so I could somehow get all these home.

Review: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Review: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Goodreads 
Release date: September 18th, 2023
Publisher: Scholastic
Series: #1 in the Raven Cycle
Source: Purchased
Narrator of audiobook: Will Patton
Rating: Beautifully written, full of mystery, and absolutely wonderful.




“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we’ve never been before.


The cover: I'm not usually a huge fan of bird covers, because birds are EVERYWHERE, nowadays (birds--they're so passe), but this one is perfect. I love the style of the art, and I'm glad the cover included that triangular thing, because it's integral to the plot, and I wouldn't have been able to picture it otherwise.

The story: This is both the first audiobook and the first Maggie Steifvater book I've ever read, and I can guarantee you it won't be the last of either. Though I only listened to the first 40% on audiobook (I was short on time, and those things are loooooong, and I am a very fast reader when I use my eyeballs), I think I maybe slowly be becoming a person who listens to audiobooks. Maybe. The jury's still out, though I was definitely sold on this one. The narrator's smoky, Southern drawl perfectly captures the mystical properties of the setting and the story.

The mythology in The Raven Boys has a wonderful and unique mix of magical South, Welsh fables, and elemental magic. Maggie Stiefvater's command of language is simply stunning, and best of all, her characters are wholly real. I LOVED the fortune-telling, the premise, the doom and fates and mystery that soaks into every page of this novel, but mostly I loved the characters.

Sometimes books that focus on so many main characters can feel a little stretched, but The Raven Boys never does. This could be due to it's excessive length (I think a good fifty pages could have been pruned out by snipping here and there). Mostly, though, I think it's because every main character is compelling and fully-rounded. We first meet Blue, the prickly teenage daughter of a small-town psychic. She's the only person in her family without any clairvoyant capabilities, she has the ability to enhance the psychic powers of those around her. Short, spark-plug Blue has spiky hair and an even spikier demeanor and I loved her to pieces.

Then we meet Gansey. Gansey. Oh, Gansey, boy after my own heart. He should be everything I (and Blue) hate--entitled, rich, overly charming, presidential, and condescending. But Gansey is the heart of the story and the linchpin on his group of friends. He has brains and an imagination as wide as the skies. He's a mad scientist and a crazed explorer. He's a boy on a quest. He is, as Shelver pointed out in her absolutely brilliant review, King Arthur in search of the Holy Grail, and the other Raven Boys, all other students at the very snotty Aglionby Academy, are his knights.

We have Adam, scholarship kid and thoughtful, quiet listener. He and Blue have a very sweet, very hesitance romance blooming (though I must admit, I'm a Gansey-Blue shipper. They're just so hilarious together, and I'm a big fan of opposites attracting). Then there's Ronan, furious at the world, blasting his way through life. RONAN, my baaaaaabyyyyy. And lastly, there's Noah, always in the background. *cuddles Noah*

There are many reasons why Blue should stay away from boys, and these boys in particular. There's the fact that it's always been prophesied that she'll kill her true love if she kisses him. Then there's the fact that she saw Gansey's spirit on St. Mark's Even, which means a) he'll be dead within the year and b) either he's Blue's true love, or she's his killer. Not good, not good. But despite herself, Blue gets tangled up in Gansey's quest to find the resting place of an old Welsh king. She and the Raven Boys discover the magic in the world, and in each other.


My nitpicks are few, but, as ever, still present. This book is too long, and a big spoilerrific thing at the end is left pretty unclear, but I guess it's meant to? I don't know. I got totally confused about things. Lots of unresolved plotlines and characters. And also THAT LAST SENTENCE, MAGGIE! You can't just DO that to a person. MAN. Also, this book is long AND SLOW. So very, very slow. If you want a book where you become steeped in the mood, where the small-town stage is fully set, where you get long backstories and anecdotes, then you're in luck. But if you're not, just keep in mind that this book takes it's time to get places, much like my friend's North Carolinian grandma, who walked slow and talked even slower. But I promise you, the goods are worth waiting for.

 This book seems to exist out of time, with it's Welsh lore and Virginia country cadences and old-time mystery. But the plot is full of sharp surprises that never let you relax. And, I must say it again, CHARACTERS. Characters is how Stiefvater won me over, and characters is how she earned my heart, and Gansey characters is why I neeeeeed the sequel nowwwwww. Poor people who had to wait a WHOLE YEAR between books while I only have to wait... NOT ALL ALL. *dives into The Dream Thieves*

Brutal Endings to Series and Why They Are the Best

Warning: Harry Potter spoilers below, but really. You should know how it ends by now.

ETA: Also Mockingjay. Get with it, guys.

I have always preferred books I can invest in. Books that worm their way into my heart. Books that make me feel. These are the books that have both characters I care about and very high stakes. The books with the VERY highest of stakes are fantasies and dystopians, which usually deal with things on a life-or-death scale.

Which is why I like when people die.

No, I'm not a sociopath. I don't actually ENJOY death. But I want my fantasies in particular--and my series enders, in extra particular--to WRENCH OUT MY HEART. I want the heroes to EARN their endings. Nobody can claim that Harry and Katniss didn't have to sacrifice a lot of friends and family to get to their endings. How lame would the last HP have been if EVERYBODY LIVED? No. No, be brutal, authors. Be without mercy. Kill your Weasley twins! Kill your fan favorites! Except no, OMG, no, I still live in denial, Fred Weasley is alive and happy somewhere making people laugh, keep thinking happy thoughts.



I'd already been mulling over this blog post idea, spurred from a conversation I had with Lili, when my blog friend, Christina from Reader of Fictions, posted this on Twitter:

Starting to think that I can't COMPLETELY love an epic fantasy series unless at least one of the major characters is killed off.
— Christina Megan (@Reader_Fictions) August 13, 2013

I recently read and loved a fantasy series ender, which I won't name for spoiler-reasons (you could easily figure it out, though), which was perfect except for one thing--all the central characters made it out unscathed. Victory was claimed way too easily, in my opinion. I mean, I cared about all those characters, and I would have been devastated to lose the ones I love the most, but you know what? I like when books devastate me. That means I care. That means the author is so good that she's moved me and managed to convince me that these characters are not just names on a page, but actual, living, breathing people. Who, any second, may no longer be living or breathing.



A book is a million times more riveting if you're not sure if everyone will survive. I mean, you don't have to be as cruel as George R.R. Martin, or anything (FOR MY SANITY'S SAKE, PLEASE DON'T BE, AUTHORS), but take him as inspiration. Nobody's safe in his books. And it keeps the tension and the enjoyment (and the despair and the pain, oh gods the pain) very high.

 

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, GEORGE. MISSION FREAKING ACCOMPLISHED.

The best way to have your life ruined is by fictional characters. It's just a fact. It's fun to invest in something so deeply that wounds us SO GREATLY but also makes us SO HAPPY... without it ACTUALLY having an effect on our lives. (Well, sort of. To an extent. A little bit. Finnick, I still feel the void you left behind.)

TROLL.

So please, please, genre authors. Be like George. Be like Joss. Be like J.K. Make me cry like I've never cried before. Raise the stakes and the consequences. If you've created a world or a scenario where people could die, by all means, KILL THEM. You'll have fans railing against you for years to come, and that, of course, is the truest sign of true love, for I only love the authors I hate.

LIFE RUINER.

Book Haul Vlog--Brought to You From Sunny Spain!

This vlog is different for multiple reasons. One, I usually post on Saturday, and, as you clever people have probably noticed, it is not Saturday. Two, I am coming to you from SPAIN! So instead of my normal backdrop of books and boring apartment walls, I have provided a beautiful ocean vista for you. Now let's all sip sangrias and talk about reading on the book. *slides on sunglasses*

As always, because my computer is EL WORSTO*, turn the volume alllll the way up to hear the audio.


Books mentioned:

The Infinite Moment of Us by Lauren Myracle (thanks, ARCycling!)
The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater (thank you for letting me borrow, Carina!)
The Promise of Amazing by Robin Constantine (thanks, Balzer + Bray and Edelweiss!)
  
Vacation reads!
 
Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard
Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger
Ten by Gretchen McNeil
Once We Were by Kat Zhang
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay
Frozen by Melissa de la Cruz

AND MANY OTHERS, including but not limited to: This Song Will Save Your Life, Steelheart, Boy Nobody, and Belle Epoque, because my favorite method of packing for vacation is to just bring everything. If you don't have variety, you get BORED. I need options! Who KNOWS what mood I'll be in? Serial killers on moment, Victorian zombies the next... I despise being limited. *igores the ereader and all the egalleys and 200+ plus Kindle titles*

I wish you guys were all here with me to enjoy the sun and the relaxation! Hope you all find a couple minutes to have a "fake-cation" of your own. Put on headphones, drown out the world, read a really escapist book--whatever you want. Give yourself that treat! :)

*I am aware this is not Spanish. Do not yell at me, or I'll throw you in the sea.

DNF Review: Tumble & Fall by Alexandra Coutts

Review: Tumble & Fall by Alloy Entertainment and Alexandra Coutts
Goodreads 
Release date: September 17th, 2013
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Series: No, thank God
Source: BEA
Rating: I wold like to drop an asteroid on this book.  
DNF page 212.



A novel about the end of days full of surprising beginnings

The world is living in the shadow of oncoming disaster. An asteroid is set to strike the earth in just one week’s time; catastrophe is unavoidable. The question isn’t how to save the world—the question is, what to do with the time that's left? Against this stark backdrop, three island teens wrestle with intertwining stories of love, friendship and family—all with the ultimate stakes at hand.

Alexandra Coutts's TUMBLE & FALL is a powerful story of courage, love, and hope at the end of the world.

This photo encapsulates my every feeling about this book.

Reading this book was like walking into a bakery. I saw, behind the glass, the most beautiful, most appetizing cake I've ever seen. Everything about the outside of this cake was gorgeous. Whoever piped the frosting is a true artist. I read the menu to see what flavor the cake would be, and OMG, it sounded delicious! It had everything I liked inside it! So of course I bought it. I bit into it, expecting rich, moist cake, only to realize... it was made of sawdust. And garbage. And sliced tomatoes (I hate sliced tomatoes).

Reading this book was kind of like that.

I mean, do you see that cover? That is one stunning cover. The title is gorgeous and gets the song "Stand by Me" thoroughly stuck in my head. The synopsis is intriguing. All the icing is inviting and well-done. But what the icing is covering... no.

Once again, I have learned the hard way that things are not what they appear.



Sometimes, I DNF a book because it's offensive, or really poorly written. This book is neither of those things, but it is bad. Blah characters, no plot, and wretched world-building. Never once does it feel like the world is coming to an end. There's no urgency, even though it's these people's last week alive. The internal logic of the characters is just a mess. And worst of all, this book has no heart.

"But Gillian!" you may be thinking, quite justly. "If you hated it so, why did you read so much of it?"

 

Let me summarize the "plot". There are three separate story lines told by three different, utterly interchangeable POV voices: Sienna, Zan, and Caden. Heck if I can tell you one thing about their personalities, Sienna in particular. She has an INCREDIBLY BORING story where she falls in love with this boy Owen in three days. On the surface, I SHOULD get it--world is ending, time is rushed, everybody is falling in everlasting love because everlasting doesn't mean anything anymore. But it's not like that. She means it, Daddy, she really looooves him. She's going to abandon her father and little brother right before the apocalypse because she lurves him. Even though I have no idea how or when or why Sienna and Owen are in love. Or if they are actually even people. I might have dreamt them. I kept forgetting Owen's name.

Zan's storyline showed one or two glimmers of promise. Zan's boyfriend died ten months ago. A mystery drops into her lap concerning his whereabouts on the day he died, so she and her boyfriend's best friend, Nick, go on an adventure. This had potential, but... man, things just got weird. And boring. This book is mostly excruciatingly, soul-suckingly boring. Nick was actually a decent character, and I like to think more came out of this story further on in the book, but once they found the horrible Gretchen person, I just could NOT.




And Caden's story. What. The. Hell? He legitimately gets kidnapped by his uber rich father and it's all so WEIRD. Like, the weirdest of weird. I don't understand the logic of this story. None of the characters behave like real people! Like, the world is ENDING, Caden, CALL YOUR MOM AND SISTER AND LET THEM KNOW YOU'RE ALIVE AND LOVE THEM. And OMG, he and his father are so weird. They go hunting? The dad hires his son a prostitute? I don't even? I can no longer even.

And if you think these three, disparate story lines intersect in any way, guess again. They may be set on and around the same island, but they have less than nothing to do with one another. Switching chapters and POVs was like switching books. And I seriously cringed everytime it got to Sienna's, because Sienna's was by far the dullest and most irritating.



Obviously this book was a huge failure and an even bigger disappointment for me. I was SO looking forward to Tumble & Fall. It was one of the books I was most hoping to get at BEA, and I normally ADORE Macmillan books, but I just cannot with this one. Like The 100, I don't think it's packaged-by-Alloy-ness did it any favors. This book tries valiantly to be deep, to have heart, to be poignant, but it just plain doesn't.

So I DNFed. I'm not particularly proud of it. It's not something I often do. But I've only got so much time, and there are so many books out there that WILL grab my attention and move me deeply. But this ain't it.