The Novelle

18:00

Fairest - Marissa Meyer

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

Fans of the Lunar Chronicles know Queen Levana as a ruler who uses her "glamour" to gain power. But long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet and Cress, Levana lived a very different story - a story that has never been told...until now.

This book has been on my wishlist ever since it was announced. I am absolutely in love with the Lunar Chronicles, and funnily enough, it's the only series I've kept up with as it's been released. As I have mentioned before, I am currently travelling around Australia so don't want to be carrying books, so when Fairest was first released I was super excited to get it on my Kindle, only to find it wasn't available. Six months later, after searching on Amazon whenever I thought about it, I finally purchased and read this wonderful book. Definitely worth the wait!

Let's get straight into the nitty gritty. This book didn't have a very deep or developed plot line, it was more focussed in on the inner workings of Levana and why she is the way she is in the previous books as this is a prequel novella to the series as such, I'd say. However, I'm extremely surprised that I was so enthralled by a book with no plot as I was with this one.

Fairest gives you a raw outlook of what life was like for Levana growing up. She was treated extremely poorly by her older sister Channery and never received any kind of affection from her parents either from what I gather. All Levana ever wanted was to be loved and wanted and to not be lonely. At one point I felt as though the point of this book was for us, as the reader, to sympathise with Levana - I did feel that way for a good five minutes before I realised what a dark twisted bitch she is. I loved reading her unspoken thoughts about everything. The way she would try to justify every single dark thought she had in her own mind. It just proved how crazy she was.

Despite hating her, I still loved reading about her and actually wished this book was a little longer as I'm extremely intrigued and always love reading from antagonists point of view as everything isn't always what it seems. Sometimes it's refreshing to get the other side of the story rather than the "manufactured" one from the good guys perspective.

Marissa Meyer, I bow down to your genius in creating the most amazing and underlyingly complex characters that can provoke so many different emotions in one sitting. I don't know how you do it, and sometimes I worry that you actually created Levana and her twisted ways in the first place.

Rating: ★★★★

(Pst, I resisted reading the excerpt from Winter so as to wait until it's actual release date)

18:00

The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger

Holden Caulfield is a seventeen year old drop out who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Navigating his way through the challenges of growing up, Holden dissects the "phony" aspects of society, and the "phonies" themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scored with girls using sickly sweet affection.

Now let me get this straight, I am not a person who rereads books but I have had the recent urge to reread this book for quite a while now. I personally don't see the point in rereading books when there are just so many books out there that you haven't read or that haven't come out yet. However, this book has recently just been willing me to reread it and so I succumbed. This is by far one of my favourite books of all time and this reread has definitely cemented that for me.

Holden Caulfield is a character you will either love or hate, or even quite simply love to hate - I for one absolutely love him. He is a cynic and he is precocious, but he has this endearing naivety that you just can't help but feel for. It seems that experiences and influences in his childhood have shaped him to be the way he is, but you can tell through the writing that however cool, calm and collected Holden may seem, underneath he's just a scared little boy that doesn't know what to do with his life.

The narrative is written from Holden's perspective and the development of the story and of his character is predominantly displayed through this feature. His thoughts and speech throughout the book become more out of control as the book progresses; he starts to repeat himself a lot and the terms he uses in every day life, like "boy", "prince" and "swell" don't tend to pop up as often as they did in the beginning. The writing is very loud at the same time as being very subtle in it's background meaning which added to the greatness of this book.

This book has the simplest of stories but the deepest and richest of ways that it is portrayed and developed. It's a coming of age story that doesn't span across a long period of time (or pages in the book) but makes you feel as though you've learnt so much about yourself and Holden Caulfield at the same time. The focus isn't necessarily on what happens in the book, but the consequences and the reasoning behind what has happened - why is he acting this way? Why is he so cynical? Why is nearly everyone on the planet a phony in his eyes? It certainly has a lot of deeper meanings than the literal story itself.

The Catcher In The Rye is one of those books that I will treasure forever. I've currently only got it on my Kindle but when I return home I will most certainly buy my own copy to reread again and again as it's definitely a keeper in my books. I don't think I can express how much I love this book.

Rating: ★★★★★

(Pst, I believe I rated this higher the second time around - I don't know why I only gave it 4 stars before)

18:00

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact, just before dinner. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon - both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle - are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist...

Let's get this straight from the off, I was extremely disappointed with this book. I absolutely love the individual works of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, but this just didn't hit the mark for me.

Just because a book is written by two people it doesn't mean that it needs to feel like it was written by two people. It wasn't in the way that the two styles were dissimilar, but in the way that the story just too choppy; it changed around perspectives an awful lot that it just became extremely confusing for me. You didn't get to spend five minutes with one individual character before it would change to a completely new one, and you didn't get to fully understand what was going on with another character before it would change to yet another one. There were some times where new characters were "introduced" and you couldn't tell whether they were just a background character or an important role because it was happening so much. It wasn't that there were too many characters, but it was that they weren't fully explored like they could have been.

Due to the confusion, I didn't feel anything for the characters whatsoever - I didn't get the chance to. There was a development to a certain extent, but with the choppiness of the book it didn't seem gradual, but sudden. The characters were kind of one dimensional as well but to give them some credit they each had their own individual quirks which came with the dialogue that was absolutely on point.

The humour in this book was very "British", and for me that was just my cup of tea (no pun intended). I found myself laughing out loud on so many occasions as the dialogue was so witty, and each set of characters had their own personal humour about them - the Them (child gang) were so naively precocious and the angel and demon had so much banter and observational humour to name a couple. The footnotes as well - which are a favourite of mine in Pratchett's novels - were an absolutely delight to read and added the extra bit of humour which is definitely needed on top of the story. Now, this is what I know of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and it's a shame they couldn't have bought some other qualities of their other books to this book.

I really did want to like Good Omens but I just couldn't. Even though I love Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman individually I don't want to be fake and force myself to like something that I just didn't.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

18:00

The Island - Jen Minkman

Leia lives on the Island, a world in which children leave their parents to take care of themselves when they are ten years old. Across the Island runs a wall that no one has ever crossed. The fools living behind it are not amenable to reason - they believe in illusions. That's what The Book says, the only thing left to the Eastern Islanders by their ancestors. But when a strange man washes ashore and Leia meets a Fool face to face her life will never be the same. Is what she and her friends believe about the Island really true?

I have been reading like crazy recently, because there's nothing else to do on this god forsaken farm, and I took a day or two deliberating what to read next as I may have out-read myself into a slump (if that's even possible) and nothing was really taking my fancy at all. I chanced upon this little novella (that's actually available on Amazon UK for free at the moment) just for the pure and simple reason that it was small and would hopefully be easy to read. Might I add that for once I didn't have any prior knowledge of the book or read any reviews on it before reading it so it was a completely blank slate - which I really need to do more of.

Enough with the rambling. Thoughts.

This book was intriguing from the word go and you were immediately sucked into a world that you knew nothing about. Foreign terms were being used and a whole history was carrying on where it left off right from the start. The filtering of the worlds knowledge was shown gradually rather than an information block which, in such a short book, the author may have thought necessary to get everything across in a timely manner. However, Minkman handled this aspect perfectly.

The dystopian element to this book was wonderfully creative; it didn't need any fancy magic, monsters or viral disease, it just served it's purpose and was quite charming to say the least. I was happily reading this book however, when I suddenly realised that this is like a Star Wars fan-fiction of sorts. Now, with the fact that I didn't read any prior reviews, (which is a good thing) this came as such a shock to me, and I didn't know quite what to make of it. To be honest, I'm not a massive Star Wars fan, if one at all, and I did find it to be a bit strange how it was incorporated into the story.

Questions were asked at the beginning and were all perfectly resolved at the end and quite simply, this book felt so rich to me that I'm amazed how it all got packed into such a tiny outfit. They do say that good things come in small packages and I most definitely count this as one of them.

Rating: ★★★★☆

18:00

Hearts Under Fire - Antonio Scotto di Carlo*

Jenny is a beautiful young business woman. She lives in an Italian tourist town here she owns a shop. Her need for independence is her strength, but her innate distrust sometimes creates problems with others. One day she encounters love. More than an encounter, it's a collision, a head-on collision. Her heart isn't Eros's only target, and everything changes...Police begin investigating suspicious events around her, slowing down the construction of a new great hotel in town and rocking her life even more.

I had so many different thoughts and emotions whilst reading this book, and after the first few chapters, and the slow start, I didn't think that I would end up absolutely loving this book as much as I did. The progression and development of the the characters, was what made it for me.

The characters just felt real to me, they were multi-faceted human beings like the rest of us. As people, we all change in different situations and with different people, and although I got annoyed that Jenny was going against her strong beliefs in the book, I soon began to realise that it was just the reality of the world that I was reading about. It was nice to have a strong willed independant woman character that isn't intimidated by the first man that she meets as you get with a lot of romance novels.

The characters realness really made me think about a lot of things, but the book itself was extremely thought provoking. Laced in with the storyline, there were moments where the characters would reflect upon themselves and their actions in a casual internal dialogue manner. These moments were some of my favourite in the book as they not only relate to the story and the characters but to the real life, and any book that can make you think is a winner in my books. (I've also got a few good quotes highlighted from these sections as well!)

I have mixed feelings about the way the story was handled however. It progressed with regards to the mystery, yes, but sometimes I felt as though it was pushed to the side for the romance or the interactions between the "romancees" to be at the forefront. Personally I thought how the romance started was a little random (and a bit horrible on Jenny's side) but I have to admit that it wasn't in your face and was handled in a classy manner alongside the suspence.

The writing was suspenceful but laid back if not a little too wordy at times. I found it was padded out with a lot of unnecesary descriptions, but in my opinion that isn't anything too drastic to worry about.

I don't think I can fully describe in a cohesive way how I feel about this book as I have so many different opinions that aren't easily worded. However, overall, Hearts Under Fire was a rollercoaster of a read. Emotions flaring everywhere, suspence, romance, and reality. I'd wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone. Oh, and the twist at the end was AWESOME!

Rating: ★★★★☆