Claire Stevens's Blog, page 46

Waiting On Wednesday - Stone Field by Christy Lenzi

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over 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 One Wednesday pick is Stone Field by Christy Lenzi.  Here's the blurb:

Catrina Dickinson is haunted by her past and feels caged in by life in small town Missouri. When she discovers a strange man in Stone Field where her family grows their sorghum crop, her life takes on new meaning. He has no memory of who he is or what brought him to Cat's farm, but they fall passionately in love. Meanwhile, the country is on the brink of the Civil War, and the conflict in Missouri demands that everyone take a side before the bloodbath reaches their doorstep.

A passionate and atmospheric reimagining of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Stone Field explores how violence and vengeance perverts the human spirit, and how hatred can be transcended by love.


Wuthering Heights is a bit of a favourite of mine, so I'm keen to see what a Civil War reimagining of it will be like.  In the original, the landscape and the house are almost as integral a part of the story as Heathcliff and Cathy are, so I'm really interested to  see how the author has interpreted this.  Plus, for a Brit, I've got a bit of an interest in the American Civil War.  Plus, I'm a sucker for a ttake-your-breath-away romance.  

Yeah, I think this one might tick the boxes for me.

The Woman In Black by Susan Hill

I read The Woman In Black for a Halloween tie-in.  It was quite short, I reasoned, so I should be able to read it pretty quickly.  Right?
 
The Woman In Black (book) tells the story of Arthur Kipps, a London solicitor who has been charged with wrapping up the affairs of a deceased client.  He travels up to a small town in the north of England, where the old lady lived in a rambling house out on the marshes.  When he starts going through her effects, more about the house’s sad history are revealed.
 
Firstly, I really liked the premise of the book.  Eel Marsh House is stuck out on a piece of land in the marshes with regular mists and a causeway that floods with the high tide cutting it off from the mainland.  It really is the perfect setting for a ghost story.  The story behind the story was interesting too - a fallen woman reaching out from the grave to avenge the death of the child who was taken from her.  All good.
 
So why only two stars?
 
The plot wasn’t awesome.  It had the potential to be great, but for a ghost story I would usually expect more tension and spookiness.  There were some tense scenes, but they were very few and far between and the author’s writing style didn’t really lend itself to tension - it was too descriptive and this slowed the action down.  I actually found myself slightly bored in some places.
 
I didn’t really understand the narrator’s actions either.  After his first spooky encounter with the house, he manages to convince himself that actually everything is fine and starts to look forward to going back the next day.  Hello?  It didn’t make sense to me, and it made me look back at the previous spooky scene and think that it was maybe not so spooky after all.
 
Another bugbear for me was that we didn’t find out the true extent of the woman in black’s power until the very end of the book.  It would have made the story a lot creepier if we had known what was at stake from the beginning.
 
*whispers* The film was better.
 
Okay, that’s not something you’ll hear me say often - or ever, really - but in this case it was true.  The film was better.  Creepier, more suspenseful, more atmospheric, better characterisation, just ... better.  And I don’t even really like horror films.
                                                                                   
So yeah.  I’ve read creepier books and I’ve read better-written books.

2 stars

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

Forgotten is a book I’ve been meaning to read for a while, so when I saw it in the library the other day I snagged it.
 
It tells the story of London, a girl who suffers from short term memory loss.  Every morning at 4.33am, her memory resets and wipes everything clean. The only way she knows who her friends are, where she sits in school and where her house is is by accessing her future memories.  Yes, London can see into the future, the way the rest of us access memories from our past.
 
Firstly, I have to say that I really liked the author’s style of writing.  This is a bit of a lame point to start on, but I thought it flowed very easily and had a lightness of touch that made me want to keep on reading.  I finished Forgotten in less than a day, and while I was reading it I really enjoyed it.  The little snippets of the future were quite interesting and funny and I liked London’s narrative and thought she was an interesting protagonist (albeit a bit judgey sometimes) and I liked all the little coping strategies she had in place to deal with her condition.
 
I also liked Luke.  He seemed very sweet and a stable influence for London, and although their relationship was instalovey to the extreme (she has to fall in love with him Every.  Single.  Day.) and their attraction seemed to be based a bit too much on looks instead of personality, they made a very cute couple.
 
The plot of the book is okay, but really only okay.  It was a really interesting concept, but I just don’t think it was fully explored.  A bit more delving and some more tension would have made the plot of this book explosive, and coupled with the author’s writing style could have probably catapulted it into my top ten of the year.  As it was, I just felt it fell a little flat.  Not bad, but definitely not up to its full potential.
 
In a way, I would rather London’s affliction had just been short term memory loss.  That way the author could have focussed much more on how London’s life had been affected and not so much on the minutae of high school life.  Making the book into a contemporary novel would have made the romantic element work a lot better.  Kind of like a YA 50 First Dates.
 
As it was, I thought the romance swamped the storyline a bit.  The future memory thing didn’t really work so well for me; I don’t think it was explored to its fullest and because the book is being sold to us as a paranormal story, I expected it to be edgier somehow.  Like l kept expecting the government to pop up and whisk London away to a secure facility and Luke would have to break her out and they’d go on the run ...
 
Or whatever.  It’s not up to me to re-write this book.  I’m just reporting how I saw it.  Ultimately this was a cute, light read to fill the time, but probably needed a bit more tension to really hook the reader in.
 
3 stars
 

Waiting On Wednesday - This Raging Light by Estelle Laure

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking The Spine.  It's a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases we're eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting On Wednesday pick is This Raging Light by Estelle Laure.  Here's the blurb:

How is it that you suddenly notice a person? How is it that one day Digby was my best friend's admittedly cute twin brother, and then the next he stole air, gave jitters, twisted my insides up?

Lucille has bigger problems than falling for her best friend's unavailable brother. Her mom has gone, leaving her to look after her sister, Wren. With bills mounting up and appearances to keep, Lucille is raging against her life but holding it together - just.
A stunning debut to devour in one sitting, Laure captures completely the agony and ecstasy of first love.

​Aw.  That sounds super.  I'm such a sucker for love blossoming when everything else is basically going to hell, so I'm definitely going to keep my eye out for this one.  This Raging Light is published in the UK on 14th January 2015 by HMH.

What about you?  What's your Waiting On Wednesday pick?

Paint My Body Red by Heidi R Kling

Paint My Body Red is the story of Paige, a high school senior who is sent to her ill father’s ranch in Wyoming for the summer from her home in California so that she can escape the aftermath of a spate of suicides that rocked her school.  One by one, fellow classmates were killing themselves and Paige’s mother fears that she will be next.
 
Firstly, I think the author deserves a big round of applause for tackling such a sensitive subject with tact and grace.  Suicide is, naturally, a very emotive subject and I think it took a lot of bravery to write this story.  Interestingly, I found that the romance side of the story (and it’s very romantic!) didn’t detract from, or lessen the impact of the tragedies or the mystery that surrounded them.
 
I think the reason for this is the way the story was told; it switched between Paige’s current life on the ranch, and the months leading up to her being sent there.  At the beginning of the book, Paige is this emaciated, nervy thing suffering psychologically and physically from the tragedy that hit her school and as the story on the ranch progresses she gets healthier and happier.  Conversely, as the story of the suicides and her home life unfold in the flashbacks, everything gets worse and worse.  It got to the point where I was looking forward to the Now chapters (on the ranch) and kind of dreading the Then chapters (back in California), looking through the gaps in my fingers and thinking, ‘Oh GOD, what’s going to happen now??’  Everything, her school life and her home life, basically turns to toxic waste.
 
Speaking of toxic, Paige makes some pretty awful decisions, romance-wise.  The horrible, toxic, emotionally-barren relationship with her stepbrother (I know!) made my skin crawl, but at no point did I put the book down and think, ‘Nuh-uh.  That wouldn’t happen.’  The author did a really good job of showing how grief-and-guilt-stricken Paige was around this time, so while the relationship was really skeevey, it always felt believeable.
 
Again, this acts as a really good counterpoint to the events in Wyoming and Paige’s blossoming friendship with Jake, a cowboy on her dad’s ranch.  He was so lovely and kind to Paige and really helped her find her way again.  Which reminds me: I have some rapidly-forming plans to go out to Wyoming (a place that until I googled it earlier today, I could not have placed accurately on a map) and find myself a nice cowboy!
 
The ending of the book was wrapped up well.  I’m a bit of a sucker for a neatly-tied-up HEA, and this book certainly delivered on this front.
 
All in all, I thought Paint My Body Red was a pretty good read and definitely worth checking out for those long cosy evenings now the nights are starting to draw in.
 
4 stars
 
I was sent a copy of Paint My Body Red in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to Entangled Teen!

Am I Normal Yet by Holly Bourne

Am I Normal Yet tells Evie’s story through starting college, making new friends and meeting boys and how the change and upheaval of all these things balance against her mental health.  For three years, Evie has lived with OCD and General Anxiety Disorder.  She has been sectioned, medicated and has been through extensive therapy and has now come to the decision to reduce and finally come off her medication for good.  Because all she wants is to be normal.
 
This book gives an accurate (as far as I can tell) and sensitive portrayal of OCD and General Anxiety Disorder whilst at the same time giving an interesting story and some awesome characters.
 
I really enjoyed Evie - she was very sweet and her reactions to her worsening condition as well as all the other stuff she had going on seemed very true to life.  She definitely makes some bad decisions throughout the course of the book, but I still carried on rooting for her.  I especially liked that the thing between her and the boy she is obviously supposed to be with was left unresolved, but hopeful. 
 
There’s a good cast of supporting characters too, who are all well-fleshed-out.  Guy the Baddie was a proper knob-end with all his emotional fuckwittage, and although it annoyed me when Evie kept wanting to be with him, I thought that this was a pretty accurate representation of a lot of relationships!
 
The plot kind of weaves around a bit, following Evie as she goes from college to home to disasterous dates to home to her friends...  Sometimes the plot felt a bit - I’m struggling to find a better word than ‘weavey’, so I’m just going to go with that - but what made up for it was Holly Bourne’s writing.  She has this chatty way of writing that pulls you right in and makes the words on the page flow very easily.  You get the impression that if you met up for a coffee with her in Starbucks, you’d end up having a proper good old natter, setting the world to rights.
 
I really liked the fact that the author included feminist arguments and discussion in the book, even if at times it felt a little bit shoehorned in.  The good intention is there, though, and she does a good job of pointing out issues like hidden sexism, the difficulty of being a woman living in a porn-saturated society and how far we really have still to go before we can achieve true equality.  I especially liked the struggle Evie had with balancing her feminist beliefs with her desire to be liked by boys and be in a relationship.  It felt very honest and real.
 
There were a couple of things that made me frown - I don’t necessarily agree with the importance the author places on the Bechdel Test (I get that it’s an indicator, but plenty of films with strong female characters doing awesome things fail the Bechdel Test.  Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity was just incredible, but the film fails the Bechdel Test as there aren’t two female characters who have a conversation that’s not about a man).  I also wasn’t keen on the criteria the girls have for what makes you a woman - there were some references to being a woman if you menstruate or have a vagina.  This is a little bit trans erasure-y for my tastes.  I realise this is a contentious line, and it’s honestly not an argument that I want to start up here, but it did seem to jar a bit in what was otherwise a really good book.
 
4 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - Sanctuary Bay by Laura Burns and Melinda Metz

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking The Spine.  It's a chance for us all to highlight the upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.  This week, my Waiting On Wednesday pick is Sanctuary Bay by Laura Burns and Melinda Metz.  Here's the blurb:

When Sarah Merson receives the opportunity of a lifetime to attend the most elite prep school in the country-Sanctuary Bay Academy-it seems almost too good to be true. But, after years of bouncing from foster home to foster home, escaping to its tranquil setting, nestled deep in Swans Island, couldn't sound more appealing. Swiftly thrown into a world of privilege and secrets, Sarah quickly realizes finding herself noticed by class charmer, Nate, as well as her roommate's dangerously attentive boyfriend, Ethan, are the least of her worries. When her roommate suddenly goes missing, she finds herself in a race against time, not only to find her, but to save herself and discover the dark truth behind Sanctuary Bay's glossy reputation.

In this genre-bending YA thriller, Sanctuary Bay by Laura J. Burns and Melinda Metz, Sarah's new school may seem like an idyllic temple of learning, but as she unearths years of terrifying history and manipulation, she discovers this "school" is something much more sinister.

Hmm...'genre-bending YA thriler', eh?  Posho society school hiding dark secrets, eh?  Sign me up right now!  Plus, I'm getting some pretty serious coverly love here!

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

Tris and Four, Buffy and Angel, Clary and Jace, Mara and Noah.  I only need to say their first names and you already know who I’m talking about.  They’re the special snowflakes, so amazing and unique (despite the fact that there are hundreds of them) in their ability to save the world whilst successfully negotiating their way around backstabbings and love triangles that the rest of us can only look on in mute admiration.
 
And that’s the premise of The Rest of Us Just Live Here.  It’s a book that, for once, doesn’t deal with the special snowflake and her love interest (who smells of vanilla and seawater, and has eyes the colour of uncut emeralds) and how she manages to save the world, despite being bookish and socially awkward.  Instead, the kids in this book are the ordinary ones, the ‘other’ kids who go to Sunnydale High, the ones who aren’t Shadowhunters, who aren’t divergent, or psychic or in love with a vampire.  And okay, one of them is one-quarter god, but they’re one-quarter the god of cats, so their usefulness is fairly limited. 
 
I realise that I’m sounding a bit down on the whole special snowflake oeuvre.  I don’t mean to.  I like a special snowflake as much as the next hopeless romantic, but there was something deeply refreshing about a story where the kids are just dealing with normal stuff, like mental health issues and being gay and having crap parents whilst trying to ignore an impending apocalypse and letting someone else save the world. 
 
In this book, the special snowflakes are the indie kids.  You know who they are.  They have unusual names and often dress in black and they always, always blow the school up in order to prevent the apocalypse. This time, the indie kids blew the school up to save the world from the Immortals, but the ordinary kids also reminisce about the time they saved the world from vampires and soul-eating ghosts.
 
They also reminisce about the time all the indie kids were dying beautifully of cancer, which made me snort with laughter and then clap my hand over my mouth in self-horror because cancer isn’t funny and The Fault In Our Stars is a great book.  But still.
 
So the indie kids do their thing, they save the world and they betray each other and they die in beautiful sacrificial ways and they get embroiled in love triangles, but there’s also a really human story here too.  Mikey and his pals are just trying to survive high school - literally and figuratively.  In a way, you can take the indie kids as a metaphor for the way we all feel sometimes; like everyone is just a bit more special and useful and wanted than we are.  What this leaves us with is a really clever mixture of speculative and contemporary fiction. 
 
And I loved the cleverness.  The plot and the writing are eyewateringly sharp and relevant and this is such a clever, funny book that I found myself constantly going, ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ and underlining passages.  And then I would quickly rub out my underlinings because the copy I have is actually a library copy.  But anyway, the thought was there.  Patrick Ness has done a superb job of identifying all the YA tropes and sticking a pin in them, but at the same time making you really interested in what the indie kids have got going on.
 
I only ever give five star reviews to books that have not only entertained me, but also have, in my opinion, a lot of re-read value.  The thing is, with The Rest Of Us Just Live Here, the book I want to re-read is the story of Satchel and Finn and the rest of the indie kids.  Is it bad that I want to read the full story of the kids who are intended to be a cliché?  Does a book warrant five stars if this is the story I want to re-read?  Sod it, I think it does.
 
5 stars

It's Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han

It’s Not Summer Without You is the second part of Jenny Han’s Summer trilogy.  I read The Summer I Turned Pretty earlier this year and really loved it, so I was super keen to get my hands on the next instalment.
 
It’s Not Summer Without You picks up nine months after the tragic revelations at the end of the first book.  Spoiler Alert (although if you’ve read the first book it won’t really be that much of a spoiler) - Suzannah has died and the two families have splintered.  The two dads have kind of gone off into their own orbits; Laurel, Belly’s mum, has retreated into her own grief-shell; and the two boys Belly loves, Conrad and Jeremiah, are having their own problems and it looks like long, hot summers at Cousins will be a thing of the past.
 
Because the trilogy is based around the summer, Jenny Han has obviously had to set this book the summer after the last book.  That’s fine, but it did mean that there were a lot of flashback scenes to catch us up on the intervening nine months.  I was glad to get some infill, but the flashbacks did pull me out of the story a bit. 
 
The tone of this book is a lot darker than the previous book.  The Summer I Turned Pretty is just about as fluffy as its title suggests, but It’s Not Summer Without You deals with the impact of Suzannah’s death on everyone who loved her, as well as the toxic relationship Belly is struggling to hold onto with Conrad.
 
Speaking of which, can I just take a moment to say what an arsehole I think Conrad is?  Seriously, he is such a penis and I really couldn’t see what the attraction was with him.  I didn’t ship him and Belly in either of the books, but in this one his spoilt-brat behaviour reaches a crescendo.  I won’t go into details, but Belly does grow a pair in the book and call him out on his behaviour, but I would have been happier if she’d seen from the start what a tit he was being, especially when his brother is so pleasant.  I’m not saying she has to marry Jeremiah or whatever, but if she ends up with Conrad at the end of the third book, I will be writing a very strongly-worded review.  Possibly with swearing.
 
Like in the first book, the house at Cousins seems to be a character in its own right.  It holds so many memories for all the people who spent their summer there that when its future is jeopardised it feels like a real tragedy.
 
In all, this was a decent follow up to The Summer I turned Pretty, but I think the final book in the trilogy is probably going to be the doozy.  I hope so, anyway.
 
3.5 stars

Waiting On Wednesday - Beautiful Broken Things by Sara Barnard

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill over at Breaking The Spine and it's a chance for us all to highlight upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.  This week my Waiting On Wednesday pick is Beautiful Broken Things by Sara Barnard.  Here's the blurb:

Here’s my theory on Significant Life Events: everyone has them, but some have more than others, and how many you have affects how interesting you are, how many stories you have to tell, that kind of thing.

I was still waiting for my first one.

After yet another typical summer where nothing of any significance happens, Caddy vows that now she’s sixteen this year will be different; she’ll get a boyfriend (a real one), lose her virginity and experience a Significant Life Event. If only Caddy knew what was just around the corner - a whirlwind of wild spirit and fury with a dazzling smile and sad eyes by the name of Suzanne – and a significant life event that no one could have predicted.

Caddy and Rosie have been BFF’s since they were little girls, but when enigmatic and beautiful new girl Suzanne starts at Rosie’s school, Caddy allows her insecurities to threaten her friendship with Rosie. Caddy wishes she were more like Rosie and Suzanne – confident, funny and interesting – but beneath the make-up and bravado lies a secret side to Suzanne that intrigues Caddy. Despite their differences very soon the three girls are inseparable, and things get a whole lot more complicated.

Under Suzanne’s influence, Caddy begins to see how much fun a little trouble can be. But climbing out of bedroom windows for forbidden midnight walks on the beach begins to lose its shimmer as Suzanne’s troubled past is revealed and her present begins to unravel. The course of friendship and recovery is rougher than any of the girls could have imagined, and Caddy is about to learn that downward spirals have a momentum of their own.

Firstly, can I get a moment to appreciate that cover.  Tres jolie, n'est-ce pas?  Secondly, this sounds like a great book.  I love stories about crazy, intense friendships and it sounds like this book is going to tick the box.

What about you?  What's your Waiting On Wednesday pick?