C.K. Robertson's Blog, page 14

Ep10 Plots & Shots: The Cursed Child by J.K Rowling

Hello Readers, Friends & Listeners,

This Wednesday our drunken YA podcast delves into The Cursed Child by J.K Rowling. And it gets quite a slating from us.

Issues up for debate include:

What the hell is a Panju?
Every single plot-hole
How much of an arsehole Harry Potter is
How much we hate time-jumping

As always, spoilers, rambling, swearing, drunk nonsense and 0 professionalism. Tune in next Wednesday.

Book Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Hello Readers & Friends,

Oh. My. GOD. I gave this book 5 stars on GoodReads but it's just not enough. I haven't felt like this about a contemporary book since A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It's worth every ounce of hype it gets.

To summarise, it tackles themes of police brutality in America through the eyes of Starr Carter, a 16-year-old girl who witnesses her friend being shot by a white policeman. What follows is how Starr copes with being the only witness and how she finds the bravery to find her voice. Subplots are equisite, following her ex-gangbanger father and his growing rift with drug-lord King, how she copes with her private-school white boyfriend, racism at school, friends falling out and watching her neighborhood slowly rip apart around her.

I cannot think of a single person who I woiuld not recommend this book to. It's honestly a modern masterpiece, from the authentic dialogue and the world it builds. Every character is dripping with personality and story. It's the most heart-warming and touching book to ever hit my bookshelf. It's funny, clever, witty and so, so important.



Also, you rarely read books nowadays where family plays such an important role. Starr's family is beautiful, dysfunctional, loving, caring, and relatable. We can all see a little bit of her mama in our own, or a bit of her brother Seven in someone else in our family. There is such a strong family dynamic, at times I felt like I was part of the family, I felt as though I knew them so well. They teach wonderful family values, which is also something rarely in YA. Her father is an ex-con, and is painted in such a wonderful, moral light. I think it's so important that under-represented characters like this are used in a protagonist format.

Starr is such an authentic and inspirational heroine. I hope that young black girls read this and know that they are being represented and spoken for in the best possible way.

This book tackles important social and political issues which must not be ignored. It tells a story of the importance of standing up for yourself and uniting against what's wrong. I cannot find a single flaw in this book and avise that everybody pulls it to the top of their TBR list ASAP.

I can't WAIT to watch the movie.

Love,
C x

Book Review: Viper by Bex Hogan

Hello Readers & Friends,

A contraversial review today. I got a signed copy of Viper by Bex Hogan in my Fairyloot Favourites box and it's been raved about online as YALC approaches (Bex will be there doing a signing.) Unfortunately, it really didn't hit the mark for me and I have to give it 2 stars.

The story follows Marianne, daughter of the infamous Viper who captains the most dangerous ship of ruthless bandits in the Eastern Isles. The Viper is meant to defend the 12 isles, but her father is basically a lunatic who just likes to torture and murder people so Marianne is obviously a bit stressed about this and doesn't want to follow in his footsteps. This is the basic jist.

It could have been great. The bare foundations of everything was there - cool characters, a twisty plot, a great storyline and lots of betrayals. Unfortunately it fell flat in every possible way, and it felt like reading a first draft rather than the finished piece for me.

So, here are the main problems for me. SPOILERS below.

1. The writing. It is very, very, very simple. It breaks the key writer rule of 'show don't tell,' and just word-vomits every scene for us in a 'this happened and then this happened and she felt sad and then this happened and she felt angry' sort of way. It read as though it was written for the youngest part of YA fiction, but then goes into quite gruesome detail describing torture scenes and injury, and alludes to rape quite a few times. So who is the audience?

2.  The pirate story was strong enough without threading through this weird magic subplot. If you're going to go down the magic route, go down the magic route. Don't just keep mentioning it every few chapters as though it was an afterthought. All mentions of magic felt random, confusing and as though she was trying to squeeze two main plotlines into a single story.

3. The plot carries the story, the characters bring nothing to it. They could be anybody and it would still be the same. The only interesting character with any depth is The Viper himself.

4. Marianne is annoying and boring. She's so unrealistically obsessed with being moral that she will often put her own life in danger rather than defend herself properly. She was always getting caught and was one step behind The Viper at all times. I never saw her show any emotion, I was just told what she felt. A few times when tragic, horrible things happened to her I just didn't care because when I was reading it, I didn't feel like she cared herself.

5. There was no worldbuilding. Apart from one quite nice description of the Floral Isle I still don't understand what all the different isles are or what they do - none of it is memorable at all. 

6. I don't know if the father 'plot twist' was even a plot twist because it was so obvious.

7. Lack of depth in every character and scene. This story could have been strung out into a wonderful book if it had been written by someone like Bardugo, but it was too fast-paced with too-bland characters.

8. Marianne finds out she is supposedly this long-lost princess and just DGAF. She barely reacts or even thinks about it, ever!

9. 'Romance' between Bronn and Marianne is dull as dishwasher and need not have been included.

10. She has been betrayed time and time and time and time again by people she knows and loves and yet somehow decides to put all her faith in Torin with no proof he is trustworthy and he conveniently decides he trusts her as well and they band together to form this unstoppable duo after knowing each other for 2 minutes. Girl, please.

To summarise, for me there was so much potential and scope for this story but it lacked so much depth it read like a detailed synopsis or draft. I won't be picking up any more of this series when they release :(

Love, C x

Ep09 Plots & Shots : Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Hello Readers, Friends & Listeners,

This week we did a poll and you guys chose which book you wanted us to review. The overwhelming winner was Coraline by Neil Gaiman! A niche option, but we love it.

We were more sober than usual, (and coherent) but this was counteracted by the fact that Bronte was basically falling asleep, so expect less of her brutal commentary and more of my annoying posh accent trying to run the show.

Expect:
- Callie repeating how scared she was during Coraline
- Bronte repeating how much she loved Coraline
- Callie speaking over sleepy Bronte
- Sleepy Bronte being sleepy
- Strong feelings about sewing buttons into eyes
- A joke about lack of orgasms

As always, full of spoilers, swearing, rambling and no professionalism.

Starting Bookstagram: A Guide

Hello Readers & Friends,

I get  a few messages every week asking me for advice on how to start up and run a Bookstagram account. I'm not sure why, as I'm not a big name or anything, but I'd love to be able to help :)

My account is @ByCkRobertson and in just under a year I have (very gratefully!) found myself with approx 8,000 followers. According to SocialBlade, I get 450 new followers a month on average - which isn't bad! SO, I decided to put together a helpful guide for you all.

A couple more links I have to share are:
My Instagram editing guide (for my summer theme last year) 
My in-depth guide to using Instagram Insight tools

If you find this guide useful, I would love for you to share it with credit. Don't forget to sign up to my newsletter and you'll get this kind of stuff straight to your inbox about once a month, before anyone else  :)

All my love,
C x

Ep08 Plots & Shots: Divergent by Veronica Roth

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Hello Readers, Friends & Listeners,

New podcast information for you - we will now be posting every Wednesday, so now you'll know when to expect our next podcast :)

This week's episode we (try to) cover Divergent, by Veronica Roth. Neither of us actually remember recording this episode, so that gives you an idea of what to expect.

Discussions include:
- Killing off all the factionless
- Tris vs Katniss
- How drunk we are
- Four sniffing poop


As always, spoilers, swearing, rambling and no professionalism.

Love,
C x

Book Review: More Than This by Patrick Ness

Hello Readers and Friends,

A new book review this week. My first read by Patrick Ness and I did it because John Green told me to. And if the creator of Alaska Young tells me that a book made him go, 'oh my God,' then I'm going to read it.

I gave it 3 stars. Bronte recommended it to me (podcast to follow!) as she loved it. And when I go on Goodreads, it seems like everyone else loved it too. John Green bloody loved it. And it left me feeling really confused, like did I miss something? Is everyone reading the same thing as me?

The blurb hooked me, I'll be honest. And when the first page opens with the main character dying, you're gripped pretty much instantly. The spoiler-free synopsis is that a boy dies, then wakes up again in what he believes is hell. So let's go into this...

Let's break it into talking points of what I liked, and didn't.
SPOILERS AHEAD

The Writing Itself
The writing is fine. It's easy to read and  and I finished the book pretty quickly considering it's size. Ness keeps you twisting and turning, never sure what's real and what isn't. In all honesty, I found the first half of the book when the only character in the world is Seth a little boring. It was quite slow-paced and when there's no other characters to interact with and all you have to deal with is Seth's inner monologue, it can get very boring and tedious. How many times is he going to pee? How many times is he going to think about how tired and hungry he is? Spoilers: too many. But once the second half of the book started and new characters were introduced it got much more interesting. And as I said, it was very twisty and unpredictable, which kept me turning the pages quite happily.

Seth
God, sorry, but Seth is so boring. Everyone on Goodreads is raving about him being a great LGBT character but I found him super bland, and I found his relationship with Gudmand bland and boring too. There weren't enough flashbacks for me to really feel invested in them, or to understand just how much Gudmand meat to Seth. And really, Gudmand is the supposed only reason Seth has to live. When Seth loses Gudmand, he decides to kill himself, but we never get to see where this desperate love comes from. We see no banter, no deep connection, no nothing. It's a typical secret-gay-relationship-that-gets-discovered-and-is-banned. To me this wasn't groundbreaking LGBT representation, it was actually quite stereotypical and melodramatic in Seth's response to Gudman's betrayal. I just didn't understand why Seth loved him, or what there was to love. The deepest connection we witness is when they're lying in bed and Gudman is spouting some deep-yet-vague mumbo jumbo about beauty.

Thomasz
Thomasz was a nice character, the innocent and underestimated little Polish boy who is lost and lonely and clings to Seth and Regine. I really liked his character and the way it always ended up being him bailing the others out of trouble and being the bigger, braver one of the three. The only thing that I found a little annoying was his inconsistent language style.

Regine
Yeah, she was cool. Sassy big black girl from England with a take-no-shit attitude who didn't conform to any stereotypes as the only female character in the story, which was nice.

The Storyline
My understanding after reading GoodReads reviews is that the whole point is that you never really know what's happening and that everything is an ambiguous mystery with no clear conclusion (a bit like Inception), but for me there were WAY too many unanswered questions. It went far beyond being a cliff-hanger ending to being an unsatisfying and under-developed finish for me.
Perhaps I'm missing the point. To be honest, I feel like I was missing something big as it's so raved about. Who knows!

Here were my key unresolved questions:
1. How did the world get in this way? Was it global warming or what? They just keep saying the world was ending, but not explaining why or how?
2. When is this supposed to be set?
3. Who and what was The Driver? How did it heal Seth? If they have the power to heal people like that, surely they could have survived in the real world. Who made the Driver? Is there only one?
4. Why would Seth go back into the programme at the end? Surely this defies the whole point of the story, for him to want to escape his reality once more. Why couldn't they have stayed and freed everyone and started life up again? Or at least have given people the choice?
5. How did Thomasz end up in England? I feel like this part was explained but I didn't understand it?
6. Why was Thomasz murdered? Why would someone transport immigrants all the way overseas just to kill them?
7. Why could Seth see the others' memories but they couldn't see his?
8. Why was it such a big secret that Gudmand slept with Monica that Seth couldn't tell the others until the very end? Like they would have cared? They didn't even know Gudmand. I didn't even care.
9. Why did the three of them wake up? This malfunction was never explained properly. Surely there would be more people around the world with the same malfunction. I would have loved if they found this new civilization of people who had woken up over the years and found each other.

So that's about it for me now. I'll save the rest for the podcast which will inevitably come soon. Overall, I was dissappointed but still feel like I missed a bigger picture with this one as it's so highly regarded. I look forward to trying The Knife of Never Letting Go to get a better idea of Ness' writing.

Love,
C x

Book Review: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Hello Readers & Friends,

Another Rainbow Rowell review. Whilst I did really enjoyed Eleanor and Park, for me it didn't quite live up to the hype. But Fangirl hit the mark for me, and I gave it a happy 4* on Goodreads.

I read it in less than two days, it was an easy, quick and fun story and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was a classic coming-of-age love story in a way, but our heroine was incredibly relatable, struggling with social anxiety and hiding in her world of fan fiction. It was about finding herself without her twin sister, about finding her talent away from fan fiction and finding love when she's so desperately afraid of it.

I obviously loved Cath, and I also really rated Levi as her love interest. He was intelligent and authentic and just a great character, I could really see how they worked together. His interest in her hobbies was super endearing and he was a realistic (dumb boy) character right from the get-go. You couldn't help but love him.

Reagan, Cath's roomate was fun and ballsy. She was the strong, sassy friend that Cath needed and everything about her was very empowering.
 I hated Wren, and Nick as well. But I feel like for the most part, they were written to be disliked, so that was all played out well. I found Wren so selfish, even though it's clear she was just struggling through the same things Cath was in a different way. Their dads illness was perhaps a layer that the story didn't need, but it didn't feel overbearing or tiring in any way.

  Img Src  One thing I didn't like so much (which is entirely a personal preference) were the frequent excerpts from her fanfiction. I just don't like a story within a story, I find they slow the pace of the main storyline and I can't invest in the substory. A couple of pieces to see her writing style would have sufficed, we didn't need it threaded throughout the story. Perhaps I missed something metaphorical within the story, but if I'm being honest, I only skimmed through those parts. Also, the parts I did read felt like a similie for Harry Potter, which made me dislike it even more. Like, Cath was definitely writing Harry/Draco fic.

I really liked Cath's character arc, it wasn't crazy leaps and bounds but realistic and appropriate developments. She did find herself, and she was happier and stronger in herself by the end of the book after several things happening. She always stayed true to herself, especially when it came to her mother, which I also really liked.

Also, I do feel like the fanfic community is marginal and niche, and I love that there's a whole book dedicated to it. Without being a fanfic reader or writer myself, I still enjoyed it thoroughly.

Overall, I would really recommend this book to anyone. The parts I didn't like were completely down to my own reading style and nothing to do with the writing or the storyline. It lived up to the hype and was the first YA contemporary I've really enjoyed since Starry Eyes by Jenn Bennett. It tackled everyday problems really well and gave us some really loveable characters.

Love,
C x

Ep07 Plots & Shots: You by Caroline Kepnes

Hello Readers, Friends & Listeners,

Sorry for the unplanned Podcast haitus. We usually upload every Monday but we've both been super busy, didn't record for ages and then I couldn't get around to editing. Blame me.

Anyway, this may just be our drunkest episode ever.
After six hours of drinking, Bronte and I decide to discuss You by Caroline Kepnes. Due to the nature of the book, it's graphic and gross.

NSFW topics covered include:
- Would we have sex to save our lives?
- How much I hate Benji (over and over)
- How much we both hate Beck
- Wanking in public - not okay
- TV comparisions

As always, full of rambling, repetition, laughing, and swearing. Not professionals, just drunks. Rate us on iTunes and come back next Monday :)

Love, C x 

Book Review: The Glass Sword

Hello Readers & Friends,

Unfortunately, not a great review from me today. I finished The Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard. I want to start this off by saying how much I loved The Red Queen, which I gave 5 stars. Unfortunately what happened with The Glass Sword is what often happens with fantasy series, which I'll go into.
I gave it 2 stars.

What I liked:

- It was, like the first book, really easy to read and you don't have to think much/ at all.





- The cover.


- The idea of all the different powers and weaknesses. It's like Pokemon on steroids.

What I didn't like:

- It did that classic thing that all YA Fantasy series are so guilty of where the first and last book is amazing and the middle ones are just boring, repetetive, getting-to-the-point storylines. I found this storyline so boring, it's just the group travelling from place to place a lot and discussing what to do from a strategy point of view. I found it so hard to keep reading. It actually took a few weeks for me to read the whole book becuase when my option was 'read this book' or 'play crossword puzzles on my phone' I kept reaching for the phone. Not a good sign.

- All the characters sounded exactly the same. There is meant to be this love triangle between Cal and Kilorn and they could both be the same person for all I know.

- The romance is literally nothing. There's no sexual tension, no romance, no nothing. BOOOORING.

- There was so much scope for so many awesome characters as they begin recruiting interesting people like Nanny and Nix, but unfortunately they also all blend into one. I can't tell the difference between any of them, they're all totally 2-dimensional and just there to make the plans work out and have no backstory.

- The majority of the book is extremely slow-paced, just boring travelling and repetetive conversations and narrative, and then the bits that you do actually want to delve into (meeting all the new recruits etc,) is totally glazed over and suddenly things happen so quickly that months have passed in the space of a couple of pages and there's been no growth in tension at all.

- Mare is totally unrelatable in this book. Who forgets about their entire family so many times? Including Gisa who she was supposed to love so much in the first book. Why is she so selfish? She's done a Harry Potter and let being 'the one' go to her head and I just really don't like or understand her and her way of thinking.

- There were no twists :( The end was meant to be dramatic but I just didn't care at all about Mare or anything else for it to shock me.

- Aside from the writing being bland, it was just so, so reptetive. I wanted to pull my hair out at how many descriptions there were of Mare 'feeling the lightening' running through her body. YAWN. We get it. She's electric. Next.

Overall, it was a big no from me and I won't be continuing the series.

Love,
C x