Claire Stevens's Blog, page 61

Love Letters To The Dead by Ava Dellaira

This book didn’t do it for me, I’m afraid.  I don’t enjoy writing negative reviews and I think it’s only fair to the author that if I give her book a low rating I explain exactly why, so this review is going to have a few spoilers in it.

Love Letters To The Dead was nearly my first DNF of the year.  At around 15% the plot and characters were feeling like nails down a blackboard and I was ready to delete it from my Kindle, but I carried on with it for a little bit and the plot picked up a bit and I stuck it out to the end.

Love Letters To The Dead is an epistolary novel.  I don’t think I read the book description properly when I bought it, because I didn’t realise that it would be written entirely in letters - I assumed there would probably be normal prose interspersed throughout.  When I realised it was going to be completely letters, I thought, ‘Okay, fair enough.  Something a bit different.’  But by halfway through, I was thoroughly tired of this format.  It led to a very polarised point of view and I felt like I was watching scenes from a distance or through a window or something, which in turn made me not care very much about what was happening.

The letters are written by Laurel, a fifteen year old girl who is grieving for her sister who died earlier that year.  Laurel has just started high school in a new area - a deliberate plan on her part so that she won’t be reminded of her sister at every turn.  As she writes her letters to dead celebrities, she gradually starts to make friends and come to terms with her sister’s death and the fragmentation of her family.

As I said, the letter format wasn’t for me, but to cap it off Laurel does this really weird thing, where in her letters to Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse or whoever, she tells them their own autobiographical details.  This is when Laurel is writing to Judy Garland about her (Judy’s) father:

He died when you were only thirteen, just after you were signed by MGM.

Um, I think Judy Garland was probably aware of that without you needing to tell her, actually.

This is to Amy Winehouse:

Your parents divorced when you were nine.

She knows.

Laurel does this a lot in her letters.  In one letter to River Phoenix, she goes on for four Kindle pages about his early life.  I get that the author telling the reader about these people, but it’s incredibly jarring and pulled me right out of the story.

Ava Dellaira has written some very flawed characters.  She’s obviously a skilled writer and she certainly didn’t take the path of least resistance and write easy, likeable characters!  Some of my favourite characters in literature have been the twisted, spiky ones, but I just didn’t manage to connect with the characters in this book.  Laurel’s mum is incredibly selfish - after May’s death, she cleared off to live on a ranch in California, leaving Laurel to the care of her grief-stricken father and aunt.  Of her friends, I found Tristan patronising (Buttercup), Kristen pretentious (‘I’m just one of those regular weirdos.’) and Hannah mean.  I felt sorry for Natalie, who seemed a very sweet girl and heartbroken over undeserving Hannah’s fickleness, and Sky was lovely, too, but that was about it.

And Laurel’s sister!  I spent a lot of time trying to work out whether May had mental health issues that made her behave the way she did, but nothing concrete was ever alluded to.  I came to the conclusion that she was just as dumb as paint.  Because, seriously?  What kind of an idiot takes her thirteen year old sister out to the movies and then clears off with her boyfriend, leaving her sister with a twenty-four year old man for the whole evening?

Another problem I had was that most of the people Laurel wrote to were people who I didn’t particularly admire in real life.  Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Judy Garland, e e cummings, River Phoenix - I don’t enjoy their work and I think their private lives were pretty tragic.  And don’t get me started on Amy Winehouse.

This is kind of a key point, I think.  It really hampered my enjoyment of the book, but I can see it being a key selling point for other people and would really enhance their whole reading experience.  I went to school with some Doors Bores and they would have absolutely loved this book, I reckon.

There were aspects of this book I liked.  Like I said, Dellaira is obviously a skilled writer and some of her descriptions and scenes were spot on, like when Laurel starts school and is too shy to approach anyone at lunch.

I think what I’m trying to say is that although I didn’t enjoy this book, and rated it accordingly, I think there are people who would (and have) loved it.  I wouldn’t rule out reading anything else by this author, but this book wasn’t for me.  Recommended if you love poetry that doesn’t rhyme and for people who own psychedelic The Doors t-shirts.

3/10

Feature and Follow Friday

Feature Follow Friday is a weekly blog meme hosted by Parajunkee's View and Alison Can Read. -

Today's question:   How do you cure a book hangover/blogging slump/reading slump? - Suggested by Take Me Away... 

Reading slumps don't happen that often for me, but when they do it's horrible!  I mean, this is reading we're talking about!  It's like having a breathing slump.

When it hits, I usually stop whatever book I'm reading at the moment and shelve it.  Then I'll take out an old favourite like *coughs* Twilight *coughs* or something where I already know the story and don't have to concentrate too much and just have a lazy flick through.  Mostly I try not to panic.  I know the slump will pass before long and I'll be back on my reading high.

You can follow me on Bloglovin'  I always follow back :)

From A Distant Star by Karen McQuestion

I received a copy of From A Distant Star in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to Skyscape and Netgalley. 

Lucas has been battling cancer for some time and now he is dying.  His girlfriend Emma is the only one who hasn’t given up hope.  When her hopes are rewarded and Lucas pulls back suddenly from the brink of death and makes a rapid and miraculous recovery, it seems that everything is falling into place.  But something is wrong and soon Emma and Lucas find themselves on the run from government agents who seem very interested in an unidentifiable object Emma found on Lucas’s farm.

The narrative is a dual POV, although we hear much more of Emma’s side of the story than Scout’s.  The plot rolls along nicely.  I found it a little slow at first, but once the action started to get going it really picked up pace.  I really liked the idea of what happened between Scout and Lucas and the author has obviously put some thought into world building and the way an outsider would see the human race.

The various characters she brings into the story were pretty interesting and I especially liked the crazy conspiracy theorists!  Emma was sweet, although when the story started out I have to admit I was a bit confused by her almost aggressive optimism that her at-death’s-door boyfriend was going to make a recovery.  But he did, so I guess she was right and I was wrong!  I liked the way she went from being a bit of a follower to a leader.

I loved Scout, too, and I would actually have liked to hear more from his point of view.  His views on the human race were interesting and he was pretty adorable - I especially liked the way he changed after being immersed amongst humans for a while.

‘Tell Emma I’m sending her less than three.’

(Less than three means ‘love’.  Like this:

Lucas was the only character I didn’t really connect with, but at the beginning of the book he was in a coma and for the rest of the book he was Scout, so I guess that was inevitable!  His mother was pretty awful and when Emma was remembering how horrible she’d been I wanted to reach into the book and shake Lucas and tell him to man up and defend his girlfriend!

Still, this was a pretty good book. 

7.5/10

Waiting on Wednesday: P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly awaiting.

This week, I started my countdown to the release of P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han, due for release on 4th June here in the U.K.

Goodreads: Lara Jean didn’t expect to really fall for Peter.  She and Peter were just pretending. Except suddenly they weren’t. Now Lara Jean is more confused than ever.
When another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean’s feelings for him return too. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?
In this charming and heartfelt sequel to the New York Times bestseller To All the Boys I've Loved Before, we see first love through the eyes of the unforgettable Lara Jean. Love is never easy, but maybe that’s part of what makes it so amazing. 
Why I'm waiting:  I read To All The Boys I've Loved Before earlier this year and I just loved it!  Lara Jean was one of the funniest MCs I've read about in a long time and I can't wait to see what she's going to come up with next.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

This was a Book Club book.   I’ve only ever read one Neil Gaiman book before - Stardust - and that was the graphic novel version and it was years ago, so I really had no idea what to expect.

I’m still struggling to think how to describe The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  It’s kind of a coming-of-age novel, except that the protagonist - whose name we never know (of course!) - is only seven for the large part of the book.  It’s kind of a fairy tale, in that it deals with supernatural species, except we never really find out what those species are.

The book starts with the main character as a grown man coming back to the town he lived in as a child for a funeral.  On a whim he wanders off and drives through the town, heading for the land where his childhood home used to stand.  When he gets there, he goes up the lane to the Hempstock farm, where his childhood friend, Lettie Hempstock lived with her mother and grandmother and when he gets there, he starts remembering all sorts of things his mind had suppressed.

The nearest I can come to describing the experience of reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane is that thing where you smell something really nice when you’re completely starving and it leaves you even hungrier than before.  A sort of unsatisfied yearning.

Don’t get me wrong; if I had to put a label on this book, I’d totally call it art.  Gaiman’s writing is incredibly evocative and you get a perfect sense of exactly what he’s trying to describe to you.  I think he’s one of those rare writers who knows exactly the right word to use in any given situation, and that’s an incredible skill.

The plot is bonkers, and I say that as a connoisseur of paranormal, fantasy and sci-fi.  Because we’re only seeing it through the eyes of a seven year old, there’s an awful lot that remains unsatisfyingly unexplained and an equal amount of bizarre stuff that is just accepted, unquestioningly.

The boy is a lovely character.  He’s selfish and naively brave and intriguing and serves as a perfect foil to the mysterious Hempstock women, the evil Ursula Monkton and his pliable, insipid parents.

Aah ... the Hempstock women.  What the hell are they?  They’re not human, but are they fairies?  Aliens?  Demons?  Angels?  We may never know.  And what are they supposed to represent?  I thought at various points that they might be the personification of the three Fates, or maybe the maiden-mother-crone archetype.  Maybe both, maybe neither.  Are they supposed to represent anything at all?  Maybe not.

I've actually decided not to rate this book.  There's no doubt that it's a Good Book, but I have no idea if I enjoyed it or not.  I think there are a lot of aspects that were lost on me, that there were allegories and metaphors that I just missed and ought to have picked up.

So yeah, this book is absolutely crackers.  Do I regret reading it?  Not a jot.  Could I even begin to tell you what it was about.   Mmm...not so much.

‘I wish you’d explain properly,’ I said.  ‘You talk in mysteries all the time.’

Yeah, I know how you feel, mate.

Happy Friday!

No reviews today because I'm still grappling with Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  Instead, how about some awesome bookish taxidermy:
You're welcome!

Disappear Home by Laura Hurwitz

I received a copy of Disappear Home in exchange for an honest review.  Thanks to Albert Whitman and Company and Netgalley.

Disappear Home tells the story of Shoshanna and her mother and sister.  It’s 1970 and they have just  escaped the Sweet Earth Farm where they have lived with their violent father and a bunch of other hippies for the past few years.  They flee to San Francisco and meet up with a friend of theirs, Judy, and the four of them try to create a new life together in the nearby countryside.

I have a bit a fascination not only for the hippie movement of the late ‘60s but also for the aftermath in the early ‘70s, so this book pressed a lot of buttons for me.  I loved the descriptions of when the family lived in Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love, but more than this I liked the way the author described how the hippie movement had changed by the early seventies, how there were still plenty of people who believed in the whole peace and love ethos, but that for many the whole scene had turned a bit skeevy with drug addicts and panhandlers where there used to be flower children.

The writing is simple enough to keep the plot flowing well but descriptive enough to give you a real sense of what it was like to live then, basically as an itinerant.  Shoshanna and her sister Mara have never been to school, their mum never wants to stay long enough anywhere to put roots down, both from a dislike of authority and the government and a fear that their father will find them.  I felt really sorry for Mara as all she wanted was some stability and to be like other kids.

The story is told from a distant third person POV and although Shoshanna is clearly supposed to be the main character, her sister, mother and Judy also take an equal portion of the spotlight.  Although the POV meant I didn’t connect with Shoshanna as a character that much, it was interesting to see what life was like for the other characters as well. 

Judy seemed like a really grounded, lovely person.  Shoshanna’s mum seemed completely flaky in some of her beliefs - she refused to see a doctor about her cough, claiming that the body could heal itself and refused to let her children eat chocolate or ice-cream because junk food is apparently a right-wing conspiracy by The Man to try to kill minorities with diabetes and heart disease - but at the same time she was a fragile, damaged person with mental health issues, so she was still likeable.

Shoshanna’s dad, Adam, was a bit of a one-dimensional baddie, but it was interesting to see the full extent of his evilness to unfold as the story progressed, from someone who was violent to his family, to being a drug addict and dealer and murderer.

All in all I’d definitely recommend Disappear Home, and because the plot is quite gentle and gets wrapped up in a nice, neat Happily Ever After I’d recommend it for the lower end of the Young Adult age range.

8/10

Dragons Are People, Too by Sarah Nicholas

I received a copy of Dragons Are People, Too in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to Entangled and Netgalley.

On the face of it, Kitty Lung is just an average sixteen year old girl.  She goes to high school, she has a massive crush on her best friend, she reads gossip magazines.  Appearances can be deceiving, though, because Kitty is in fact...a WERE-DRAGON!

I want to say that again.  WERE-DRAGON! 

Seriously, I’m ridiculously pleased about reading a book about were-dragons.  I don’t know of any other were-dragon books out there, and I’m surprised because were-dragons are cool!  I never really got on board with the whole were-wolf thing, probably because I’m not a fan of dogs, but dragons...  Now there’s a shape-shifter animal I can get behind.

Kitty and her dragon-best-friend, Sani, attend the same school as Jacob, the president’s son, ostensibly as the children of diplomats, but actually they’re on a security detail to protect him.  Kitty and Sani both work for a super-covert dragon division of the government where they use their abilities as spies and bodyguards.  One day, a new girl starts at the school and that’s when things start to go a tiny bit wrong.

There’s some really nice world building in this book.  The author has obviously put a lot of thought into the quantum mechanics of shape-shifting, and I really liked that.  There were also some quirky little touches, like all Chinese dragons having a coloured stripe in their hair and how dragons from different parts of the world have different appearances and abilities.  The world building was introduced gradually, too, and not all as one huge infodump.

Kitty was very enjoyable as a protagonist.  She had enough abilities to make her kick-ass and a lot of fun to read about, but managed to avoid being a Mary-Sue.  Chinese dragons, like Kitty, have a serpentine look and no wings (I’m thinking Haku from Spirited Away) and can fly using the earth’s magnetic fields, which is obviously awesome, but Kitty had failings too and these made her really relatable.

The only area where I felt this book fell down slightly (and it was only slightly) was in the romance.  I liked Sani well enough as a character, but he didn’t seem to move the plot along very much.  His main purpose seemed to be to provide some well-honed muscles for Kitty to perve on every now and then.  I’m as much of a fan of a decent set of biceps as the next girl, but the romance didn’t really feel necessary.  There were points where I thought the book would have worked as well, or even better, just as an action-adventure, almost like someone had turned round to the author and said, ‘You know, if you’re writing a YA book, you’ve gotta put some romance in.’

Still, all in all this was a fun, compelling book and I look forward to seeing more from this author.

8/10

Cleo by Lucy Coats

I received a copy of Cleo in exchange for an honest review.  Many thanks to Hachette Children’s Books and Netgalley.

Cleo tells the story of the young Cleopatra.  Yes, that Cleopatra.  Her father, the Pharoah, has just fled Egypt and her mother has been murdered.  Fleeing for her life, Cleo takes refuge in a sacred temple of Isis, a goddess of whom Cleo is the Chosen representative, but as time passes Isis’s power wanes and Cleo is forced to return to Alexandria.

Lucy Coats has obviously done her research into this topic.  Just Wikipedia-ing Cleopatra show that so much of what we know about Egypt during this period is open for interpretation and I think Coats did a good job of using the facts we know and building a back story from them.  I especially enjoyed the detail she included about the gods and life in Egypt.

The plot moves quite slowly and there’s a lot of description but there was still enough going on to keep me interested, especially in the political manoeuvring between Cleo and her sisters.  The romance between Cleo and Khai was very sweet and didn’t overwhelm the rest of the story.  Khai was an okay character - he was nice enough but at times it did feel like he was just inserted to provide romantic interest.  I actually preferred the relationship between Cleo and Charm - it was very sweet and gave a lot of depth to Cleo’s personality.

I liked Cleo’s voice in this book.  She was very relatable and yeah, I know that she wouldn’t have used phrases like ‘boy toy’ and so on, but guess what?  She wouldn’t have used any of the words in this book, because she spoke Ancient Greek, not Modern English, so I think it’s okay that Coats used a bit of poetic licence.  She made some odd choices at times, like risking everything by kissing her boyfriend where they could be seen, but on the whole I liked her.  She did, however, come across as a bit docile.  I didn’t really connect the Cleo in this book to the Cleopatra who was a powerful ruler and who seduced Mark Anthony and Julius Caesar.

Also, Cleo being the Chosen of Isis became a little bit off-putting after a while.  It seemed like every time she was in a sticky situation, Isis would send a sign, like a flock of ibis, and everything would be okay.  Cleo was an intelligent girl, so I’d have liked to have seen her use her brains to get out of difficult situations, rather than relying on a deus ex machina.

All in all, I thought Cleo was an okay book.  It didn’t knock my socks off, but it was a nice enough read.

6/10

Click! by Scott A Butler

I picked this up on a whim, really.  I think it was a recommendation from someone on Goodreads and it was free on Amazon for the weekend, so I thought, 'Why not?'

Click! is a short story about Peter, who is spends a lot of time watching television and even more time being harassed by the bullies at his school, until one day he finds something that might let him get the upper hand for once.

I really enjoyed this story. It was quite short - it only took me about half an hour to read - but the writing flowed nicely and the author managed to pack quite a lot in and it read like one of those old R L Stine Goosebumps stories, even down to the unnerving ending.

I think this story has the potential to be expanded on in the future and possibly made into a short novel with further background and development of the characters and plot.  I'd be interested to read it if that happens!

8/10