The Novelle: review

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: ★★★★☆

18:00

Review: Deception Point

Author: Dan Brown
Source: Market (secondhand)
Published: 2010

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Rachel Sexton works for the National Reconnaissance Office as an intelligence officer. She is also the daughter of a Senator currently running for President. Her father's main offensive, and a very popular one, against the incumbent President is to attack the huge amount of NASA funding. Rachel is barely on speaking terms with her father, believing him to be totally corrupt, but is still worried she is being used by the President when he asks her to verify an amazing find by NASA, a find which will settle the arguments about NASA funding for ever. Reluctantly agreeing to view the find Rachel is whisked off to the North Pole. What she finds once she gets there takes her breath away. However, she quickly learns that nothing is what it seems, and, with two civilian scientists, is soon fleeing for her life.

For me, this review doesn't need to be too long winded; although whether that happens as I begin to write may be a different story however. Dan Brown never fails to create a page turner with his pacey action thrillers but Deception Point didn't really hit the mark for me I'm afraid in other categories.

The whole book for me seemed a little too one dimensional despite the many view points that the book was written from - nothing ever really happened. Well, a lot happened, but it wasn't exciting like his other books. It all seemed to be a bit too obvious and put together, (I'm not sure if I'm wording this correctly) like you had the obvious baddies and goodies and it wasn't too hard to fit the puzzle pieces together to figure out what was going on.

The story seemed to follow a strict structure of characters get into an "impossible" situation and miraculously survive, repeat. I know the story wouldn't be any good if the main characters just died at the first obstacle, but some of the situations that they got out of were ridiculously unbelievable and even when you think that there's absolutely no way out they find some even more ridiculous way of escaping. It was a book worthy of a lot of eye rolling to say the least.

Also. Unnecessary romance. WHAT?!

Don't get me wrong, the writing was the usual Dan Brown; interesting in it's factual research and pacey. However, the writing alone cannot hold the rest of the unfortunately disappointing read.

18:00

Review: Here's Looking At You

Author: Mhairi McFarlane

Source: Amazon Kindle

Published: 2013

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Our heroine Aureliana returns to school after fifteen years for a reunion. School doesn't hold happy memories for her, as being a roly poly Italian (known as the Italian Galleon), she was bullied incessantly throughout her years there. Now in her 30s, Aureliana wants to put the past behind her once and for all and face up to the bullies who made her life hell. But she is much-changed from the girl she once was - all curves and because I'm worth it hair - and no one recognises her when she arrives. Losing her bottle, she backs out on her plan for revenge and slinks off, hoping never to be reminded of her years at school again. But fate gets in the way, and after the reunion her path keeps crossing with James - major hunk and Aureliana's major crush back at school. But alas, as a cronie to the bullies, Aureliana to this day believes that his beautiful exterior hides an ugly interior. As they continue to cross paths a love/hate relationship ensues until eventually something shifts, and they both start to discover what the person underneath is really like.

I read Mhairi McFarlane's first book 'You Had Me At Hello' last year (I believe) and absolutely adored it, so as soon as I saw that her second companion novel was being released on kindle, and for very cheap, I had to grab it as soon as possible - even though it's taken me a little while to getting around to reading it.

The story is told from Aureliana (Anna) Alessi and James Fraser's perspective, and is ever so casual in the writing style that it just draws you in immediately. The use of popular culture references and slang definitely help with this and make you relate to the story. The plot itself was absolutely lovely to read, but it was extremely predictable; it was a stereotype in itself in an ugly-duckling-becomes-a-swan sort of way. It wasn't quite as predictable as some movies with the best-friend-takes-off-their-glasses-pulls-down-their-hair-and-suddenly-they-are-beautiful, as it was a lot more hard work than that, but it was teetering on the edge.

Anna wasn't a character I particularly liked to be honest. She was insecure about her looks, yes, because of her past, but there comes a point when it just becomes tedious when someone is so modest and doesn't appreciate themselves all the time. In a way, it almost becomes an attention play (which I don't think was intentional) and starts to be quite annoying. The way she was just so oblivious and naive to any kind of sign or fact that she might be attractive started to get on my nerves as the book went on. James' character on the other hand was absolutely fantastic and I grew to like him more and more as his character developed throughout the book; he learned from his mistakes.

I absolutely LOVED the banter between the characters, it was just me all over. The witty sarcastic comments were just wonderful and I found myself laughing out loud on many an occasion - and for someone that doesn't really react to books that's a pretty mean feat. Even in the first book I found the dialogue to be second to none and it definitely didn't disappoint in this book.

Here's Looking At You was a lovely story but was just a tad too predictable for my likings. However, I'm still keen to read more by Mhairi McFarlane as she has wonderful writing skills and I want to see what else she can come up with.

18:00

Review: Inside Out

Author: Maria V. Snyder

Source: Amazon Kindle

Published: 2010

Rating: ★★

I'm Trella. I'm a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I've got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? The only neck at risk is my own…until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution.

From the off with this book I was instantly reminded of Wool by Hugh Howie; an amazing book about a population living in a silo. The similarity in plot lines may have tinted some of my preconceptions about the book but my general opinion not so much.

To cut a long story short, it was pretty much everything I don't like in a YA book - the main characters were annoyingly self righteous, there was an unwanted predictable romance, and talking about predictable, the whole story was obvious from start to finish with no plot twists (apart from one) that really surprised me.

As you joined Trella on her journey through the pipes of the Inside, the writing was fast paced and actioned packed enough that you got sucked into her world and felt the same things that she was feeling. Panic, confusion and lonlieness to name but a few. However, there was just something missing.

The whole book was a bit too one dimentional and lacked any real bite to take it to the next level. The characters were simple, the plot was simple and I felt as though there was so much that could have been done with this book that just wasn't.

The only thing that piqued my interest (and I can't even tell you, for spoilers) was the search for Gateway - the door to the Outside. Throughout the book the characters had many theories about Gateway and it's real or not real existance in Inside. That leading question was what propelled me through this book as I wanted to find out the answers as well. The ending however, I found to be a bit abrupt - I got confused as to what was happening and had to reread a few paragraphs a few times before I still didn't get what was going on - yes, that sentence sounds weird but I still don't know what actually happened.

Maybe this book would have appealed to me more had I been a bit younger, but it just didn't tick the boxes for me I'm afraid.

18:00

Review: The Duff

Author: Kody Keplinger
Source: Netgalley
Published: 2010

Rating: ★★★★

Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper is cynical and loyal, and she doesn’t think she’s the prettiest of her friends by a long shot. She’s also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush. In fact, Bianca hates him. And when he nicknames her "the Duff," she throws her Coke in his face. But things aren’t so great at home right now, and Bianca is desperate for a distraction. She ends up kissing Wesley. Worse, she likes it. Eager for escape, Bianca throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits relationship with him.

I have no idea why I put this book off for so long. It was always one of those books that I saw and thought "Oh, it's just going to be another predictible contemporary". Predictable? Yes to a certain extent, but like any other contemporary? I think not.

The characters were very believable and relatable, and although sometimes Bianca annoyed the hell out of me, I felt as though I could empathise with her. Nothing she did was so outlandish to think that it would never have happened as I, myself, have had some of the exact same feelings that she's had at one point or another as I was growing up at school. I loved the way that she, Wesley and the other characters around them grew as people and realised their actions; it wasn't a stilted change, but a fluid evolution of life.

The Duff highlights the idea that nobody is perfect, and I love that moral. We all have our flaws, things we don't like about ourselves, and our own problems, and each and every persons problem is personal to them no matter how insubstantial it may sound in comparison to others. In general, there are just so many ideas that Keplinger promotes in this story that I don't want to go into all of them to save from spoiling the whole book. It's just what makes it so wonderful.

I only have a couple of hang ups on this book; I don't like the promotion (especially to the teen audience) of using sex as a distraction. Also, the term "Duff" was only used by one person, nobody else even knew what the word meant or said it at all. To me, it did seem as though Bianca was being a bit over dramatic when she was thinking about it all the time as if everybody was saying this about her. I guess that is high school all over but you know what I mean.

This book wasn't that stereotypical and cliche like a lot of "high school" books, but was scarily quite accurate (from my experience anyways). It had all the drama of a school; from the classes, homework, boys and friendships - it really covered all bases with regards to school life as well as continuing on with the story. The sub-plot of Bianca's family life was also nicely woven into the story as well giving it some extra depth.

I flew through this book in less than 24 hours, which is amazing for me - it was fast paced, attention grabbing, funny, and there was never a dull moment. It portrays the great things about growing up without ignoring the nitty gritty of real life. The Duff is what contemporary should be.

21:00

Review: The Illustrated Man

Author: Ray Bradbury
Source: Bought
Published: 1951

Rating: ★★★

I read Fahrenheit 451 last year, and that was my very first Bradbury book – I fell in love with it so much that I had to try some more of his works. The Illustrated Man revolved around a large tattooed man who’s tattoos predict the future and all that will happen in the world, these are then translated into a selection of different stories from in and around the world depicting the stories that have been coming true from the illustrations on this mans back.

Before I started, I didn’t realise that this book was a selection of short stories and I was in fact very pleasantly surprised. Each story had it’s own moral to bring to the reader through thought provoking story telling from the masterful Bradbury – I felt as though each chapter had something that I could take from the book and apply to life at the moment. The fact that it was being written in a dystopian world made you see what could happen in the future if you don’t take heed of the things that went wrong in this book.

As much as I loved the morals in the stories, from about half way onwards, they started to become a little bit too preachy for my likings; morals were being chucked at you as if you didn’t have a choice and would be stupid not to take note of them and I didn’t like that. It was just starting to become a little too much.

At the beginning, the stories linked in with the all round idea that these were tattoos on an illustrated man, but as the stories progressed we didn’t hear anything of that man until the last chapter which I did find to be a little disappointing as I would have liked it to have all pulled together a little more. I haven’t read too many short stories, and I did enjoy that concept of it with the dystopian sci-fi feel they all gave, but I just felt as though it started to drag towards the end. I cannot fault Bradbury’s beautiful writing though, as it is just so enthralling and readable, but there was just something about this book that didn’t quite make it.