Claire Stevens's Blog, page 22

Faceless by Alyssa B Sheinmel

This was a pretty good book about a girl, Maisie, who is caught in an electrical fire when she’s out running one day only to wake up in hospital with horrific injuries to her face.  She is given the option of a partial face transplant, which she accepts, but then has to try and get over not only the accident, but assimilate to her new features.
 
I liked Maisie as a character and although there were times when I wanted to give her a bit of a slap for being whiny it was totally understandable as the things that happened to her were pretty awful.  I also kind of wanted to slap her parents - they could have been more supportive and less self-absorbed.
 
There’s a whole interesting discussion in this book about societal perceptions of attractiveness, especially female attractiveness, and the author explores this in depth, without just resorting to saying, ‘Yup, society is bad for thinking this way.  We should totally be less shallow.’
 
The romance storyline in the book was a bit frustrating.  Maisie’s boyfriend, Chirag, was a complete drip and he needed to stand up for her more.  His drippishness and scientific way of looking at everything was off-putting.  Ultimately, Maisie learned to love herself without any romantic input andI wasglad of that - it made her a stronger character.
 
There were bits of this book that were pretty graphic and at times I found myself pulling a face like I was eating a lemon.  Like ‘Arrrggppgeessscqqq’.  The author definitely doesn’t pull any punches in describing what it’s like to have bits of your face missing but I was grateful in the end for the detail she gave as I came away having learned something, not only about face transplants and other reconstructive surgery but also about how people adjust when things like that happen to them and how it changes their view of the world.
 
This was a pretty good book all in all.
 
3.5 stars

Waiting on Wednesday - Wishbones by Virginia Macgregor

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme that was created by Jill at Breaking the Spine and it's a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we're eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting on Wednesday pick is Wishbones by Virginia Macgregor.  Here's the blurb:

Feather Tucker has two wishes:

1)To get her mum healthy again

2) To win the Junior UK swimming championships

When Feather comes home on New Year’s Eve to find her mother – one of Britain’s most obese women- in a diabetic coma, she realises something has to be done to save her mum’s life. But when her Mum refuses to co-operate Feather realises that the problem run deeper than just her mum’s unhealthy appetite.

Over time, Feather’s mission to help her Mum becomes an investigation. With the help of friends old and new, and the hindrance of runaway pet goat Houdini, Feather’s starting to uncover when her mum’s life began to spiral out of control and why.

But can Feather fix it in time for her mum to watch her swim to victory? And can she save her family for good?

What about you?  What's your Waiting on Wednesday pick this week?

Countless by Karen Gregory

Countless is the story of Hedda, a girl struggling to recover from the grip of an eating disorder.  Her anorexia has been a part of her life for so long that she’s even given it a name - Nia.  Then Hedda discovers that she’s pregnant and she and Nia strike up a truce.  Nia will let Hedda eat for the next few months for the sake of the baby.
 
This was a heartbreaking read that actually had me in tears at the end.  I know.  Me, the Ice Queen, in tears. 
 
Hedda was a really sympathetic character.  I often find it hard to empathise with characters with eating disorders, but that wasn’t the case here.  This was one of those books that wrapped me up so completely that I genuinely felt I was there.  The writing was just the right amount of descriptive to let me feel like the characters were real and that I was actually in Hedda’s dingy flat.
 
The plot first goes through Hedda’s pregnancy and then the months after where Hedda is struggling to look after herself and her baby in a depressing tower block flat on benefits.  The story deals not only with eating disorders, but also the way we as a society treat young single mothers (*narrows eyes at Daily Mail and Tory party*), about our social care system (which is actually portrayed really well) and about what it’s like to live on screw-all money a week.
 
This was unusual for a contemporary in that there was no real romance storyline, and it was all the better for it.  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE a romance thread, but having a guy come in being all, ‘Let my love be the cure for your eating disorder!’ would have detracted from Hedda’s journey and taken her strength away.
 
Instead of romance, we see quite a lot of Hedda’s family life and how this has affected her decisions over the years.  Although Hedda claims not to have a reason for her eating disorder, the more we see of her family, the more everything starts to click into place.
 
All i all this was a total emotional roller coaster.  As we watch Hedda fall back into Nia’s grip after her baby is born, I just wanted to reach through the pages and give her a damn good shake and scream at her to look after herself and her baby properly.  I was sobbing, like actually sobbing at the end, but don’t let this put you off.  Hedda’s story is sad and horrific but it’s ultimately hopeful.
 
4.5 stars

I received a copy of Countless from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

I thought this book was okay.

I know.  Bit of a minority opinion.  But this is coming from the person who thinks Ed Sheeran is dull and La La Land was shit.  So yeah.  I'm used to having people give me the side-eye.

So let's talk about the good things first.  Because there were good things about this book (unlike La La Land).

- The message that if you have a voice, you have a moral obligation to bloody well use it to speak up about things that are wrong.  Sometimes I think we live in a society where people are all too happy to point out when someone on the internet uses an apostrophe in the wrong place, but will cheerfully turn a blind eye to outrageous acts of social injustice.  This is wrong.

- The book speak sout against police brutality and institutional racism, which is a discussion that is perenially relevant.  There were parts ofthis book that just made me so angry on Starr's behalf and I had to keep reminding myself that it was fiction.

- Really positive family dynamics - Starr and her family really loved each other and were super loyal and supportive of each other.  Two parents who are both emotionally invested in their kids?  Big tick.

And now ... the not so good.

- This book was about 300 pages too long.  I heard the author on Simon Mayo's Book Club the other day and she said that this book was originally a short story.  It should have stayed a short story.  There was a lot of waffle and after a while it got boring.  The first few chapters were amazeballs, but after that it petered out and it was a chore to finish.

- Characters are defined solely by the colour of their skin and the author deals in some pretty outrageous stereotypes.  Apparently, all black people like one type of music and and all white people like a different type of music, which was news to me.  And no, not all black people dance in exactly the same way and not all white people dance the same way.  There was too much focus on what makes us different rather than what makes us the same.  

- The boyfriend (forgotten his name already) is an utter drip.  No idea why Starr was with him - they didn't really seem to have much in common and she seemed really uncomfortable with the fact that he was white.

- The writing was very powerful - which is good - but after 400+ pages it felt similar to being hit repeatedly round the head with a blunt object.

I can see why this is such a hyped book at the moment (and the cynic in me notes that it hasn't done badly in the aftermath of that godawful Pepsi advert) but for me it was sadly not a winner.

3 stars

Waitingon Wednesday - Antisocial by Jillian Blake

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme that was created by Jill at Breaking the Spine and it's a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we're eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting on Wednesday pick is Antisocial by Jillian Blake.  Here's the blurb:

Alexandria Prep is hacked in this exhilarating whodunit set in the age of social media and the cloud—Pretty Little Liars meets WikiLeaks.
 
Senior spring at Alexandria Prep was supposed to be for sleeping through class and partying with friends. But for Anna Soler, it’s going to be a lonely road. She's just been dumped by her gorgeous basketball star boyfriend—with no explanation. Anna's closest friends, the real ones she abandoned while dating him, are ignoring her. The endearing boy she’s always had a complicated friendship with is almost too sympathetic.

But suddenly Anna isn’t the only one whose life has been upended. Someone is determined to knock the kings and queens of the school off their thrones: one by one, their phones get hacked and their personal messages and photos are leaked. At first it's funny—people love watching the dirty private lives of those they envy become all too public. 

Then the hacks escalate. Dark secrets are exposed, and lives are shattered. Chaos erupts at school. As Anna tries to save those she cares about most and to protect her own secrets, she begins to understand the reality of our always-connected lives: 

Sometimes we share too much. 

What about you?  What's your Waiting on Wednesday pick this week?

Made You Up by Francesca Zappia

 Alex fights a daily battle to figure out the difference between reality and delusion. Armed with a take-no-prisoners attitude, her camera, a Magic 8-Ball, and her only ally (her little sister), Alex wages a war against her schizophrenia, determined to stay sane long enough to get into college. She’s pretty optimistic about her chances until classes begin, and she runs into Miles. Didn't she imagine him?

Before she knows it, Alex is making friends, going to parties, falling in love, and experiencing all the usual rites of passage for teenagers. But Alex is used to being crazy. She’s not prepared for normal.

I really, really liked this book!  And I was so glad because so often in the past I've built a book up in my head to be absolutely amazeballs and then I've been sorely disappointed when it doesn't reinvent the wheel.

“My first-ever friend was a hallucination: a sparkling entry on my new resume as a crazy person."

Alex was the ultimate unreliable narrator - she literally couldn't tell the difference between her hallucinations and reality - but she was so funny and cool and keen to get on with her life.  I loved her.  I thought the portrayal of her illness was thought-provoking and although I've read reviews that claim it's not a terribly accurate representation of paranoid schizophrenia, I do feel that it shines an important light on a mental illness that can be horribly stigmatized.

The whole book was packed with broken, quirky characters - the triplets, Mr Gunthrie - and I loved Miles too - they were so MFEO, even though they're both such socially awkward characters.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book.  Definitely recommended.

4.5 stars

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Uh, yeah.  This was a book club book.  Not the usual contemporary YA fare I usually read.
 
So, to start I think it’s fair to say I wasn’t really looking forward to this.  The blurb says *squints*  From the Orange Prize-winning author of ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ come twelve dazzling stories that turn a penetrating eye on the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Nigeria and the West.

Not the usually sort of thing I gravitate towards: I avoid anything that has won prestigious prizes like a rabid cow and that blurb just sounds like the worthiest, dreariest pile of tosh, like, ever.
 
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I found myself actually quite enjoying it.
 
So, bit of background info: I’m white, I live in Essex and before reading this book couldn’t have even accurately told you where Nigeria was (Africa ... somewhere in the middle?).  The author never ever infodumps and neither does she under-explain, but I can honestly say I now know approximately one billion times more about Nigeria now than I did before reading this 200-page book.
 
The book is a series of short stories, except they don’t really have story arcs, so I guess they’re more like vignettes.  Little glimpses into peoples lives.  The author is very concise with her language, getting a lot of information across with a minimum of words.
 
In a way, the blurb is right.  This is a book that explores the relationships between men and women, women and children, Nigeria and the West.  What the blurb fails to tell us, though, is how totally readable this book is.  HarperCollins, you need to have a bit of a word with your publicity department.  They’re not doing a great job. This book is about all those things listed above, but it’s also about immigration, racism, cultural expectations, feminism, misogyny, death, faith and a hundred other things.  And at no point does the author ever tell us what she considers to be right or wrong.  She just ... shows us stuff.  And then she closes that story down and moves onto the next one.
 
So yeah.  If your book club suggests that you try this book, don’t silently sigh and groan and roll your eyes and wish you were reading the next Sarah J Maas.  Just read it.  You might be surprised.
 
4 stars

Waiting on Wednesday - It Started With Goodbye by Christina June

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme that was created by Jill at Breaking the Spine and it's a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we're eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting on Wednesday pick is It Started With Goodbye by Christina June.  Here's the blurb:

Sixteen-year-old Tatum Elsea is bracing for the worst summer of her life. After being falsely accused of a crime, she’s stuck under stepmother-imposed house arrest and her BFF’s gone ghost.

Tatum fills her newfound free time with community service by day and working at her covert graphic design business at night, which includes trading emails with a cute cello-playing client. If Tatum is reading his emails right, her virtual Prince Charming is funny, smart, and talented—and he seems to think the same about her. Too bad he’s spending his summer across the ocean in Ireland…not that Tatum would be allowed to go on a date anyway.

But over the course of the summer, Tatum will learn that sometimes going after what you want means breaking all the rules. And when Tatum discovers she’s not the only one in the house keeping secrets, she finds she has the chance to make amends with her family and friends.

Equipped with a new perspective, and assisted by her feisty step-abuela-slash-fairy-godmother, Tatum is ready to start fresh and maybe even get her happy ending along the way.

What about you?  What's your Waiting on Wednesday pick this week?

Daughter of Deep Silence by Carrie Ryan

I’m the daughter of murdered parents.
I’m the friend of a dead girl.
I’m the lover of my enemy.
And I will have my revenge.

So you know that thing where you’re reading a book and about halfway through you start thinking to yourself, ‘Hang on.  Isn’t this basically EXACTLY the same as Revenge, that super cheesy program that used to be on E4?’
 
Well, that’s what happened to me while I was reading Daughter of Deep Silence.
 
Don’t get me wrong - I really enjoyed reading it.  It was fun and fast-paced and kind of melodramatic and I tore through it.  It was fun.  Like candy-floss is fun.
 
But it was exactly the same as that TV program.
 
So:
 
1) Ordinary teen girl has something bad happen to her which results in her becoming an orphan.
 
2) The bad thing happens as a result of the actions of a Family of Evil.
 
3) Girl swaps identity with someone else and spends years plotting her Ultimate Revenge.
 
4) Girl turns up in coastal home town of the Family of Evil to wreak her Ultimate Revenge.
 
5) Family of Evil happen to have a hot son.
 
6) Girl has to seduce Hot Son as part of her Ultimate Revenge plan.  Because, I don’t know.  Plot reasons or something.
 
7) There’s also a boy who used to be in love with the girl many years ago, just to gum up the works.
 
8) Girl and Family of Evil are both super rich.  Like, ridiculously rich.
 
9) There’s a boat explosion.
 
I could go on, but I won’t.  There are many, many similarities.  To the extent that I was expecting the author to reference the TV show in her acknowledgements blurb.  (She didn’t).
 
The other thing the book and the TV program have in common is that they are both pretty suspenseful. Both were cheesy, but had me on the edge of my seat at times, which made for a really exciting read.
 
There were times when we were expected to have a complete suspension of disbelief.  Like the way Frances and Grey fell in love in seven days - like completely in love where they both spend the next four years not being able to forget each other.  And their love affair seemed a hell of a lot more mature than that of two fourteen year olds.   And Frances/Libby spent four years at boarding school and is now a master of revenge?  Didn’t really ring true.
 
I’d recommend Daughter of Deep Silence, as it’s a fun read, but any potential readers will need to remember to leave any common sense of cynicism at the front door.
 
3.5 stars

Nothing Tastes as Good by Claire Hennessy

Don’t call her a guardian angel. Annabel is dead – but she hasn’t completely gone away. Annabel immediately understands why her first assignment as a ghostly helper is to her old classmate: Julia is fat. And being fat makes you unhappy. Simple, right?

As Annabel shadows Julia’s life in the pressured final year of school, Julia gradually lets Annabel’s voice in, guiding her thoughts towards her body, food and control.

But nothing is as simple as it first seems. Spending time in Julia’s head seems to be having its own effect on Annabel . . . And she knows that once the voices take hold, it’s hard to ignore them.

This was an okay read about a girl who has been recruited, after her death, to help the living.

Annabel was a bit of a messed-up narrator and really loved to fat-shame, which got a bit tedious at times.  She did grow by the end of the book, though, which was a relief.  Julia was okay, but she needed to stand up for herself a bit more, especially with her horrible, toxic friend.

The story centered around Annabel berating Julia for eating too much and being overweight, and Julia's life at school which mostly involved the school newspaper.  The narration was fine and it was easy to keep reading but the school newspaper didn't really interest me very much. 

This book has come under a lot of fire for 'glamorising' eating disorders, but I didn't get that at all.  It was narrated by someone who was suffering from an eating disorder even after death, so yes, she did have very unhealthy attitudes towards food and body images.  But it's not like we, the readers, are supposed to empathise withher views.  We know her attitudes are messed-up.  And the second main character was overweight because she binge-ate to try and get over a traumatic experience, so again, not very healthy behaviour.

The only way I can think the author might be seen to glamorise eating disorders is  by not going into enough detail about the effects of Annabel's anorexia.  In Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, the prose is so horrific and the narration so messed-up that there's no effing way you'd think she was glamorising eating disorders.  In this book, the effects seemed a bit glossed-over or only mentioned in passing.

All in all, I thought this book was okay.  It was an easy enough read but it didn't have enough bite to make it a real page-turner.

3 stars