C.A. Gray's Blog, page 67

The Gender Game

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This one really surprised me! I feel like I’ve tried it a few times and I’m not sure why I stopped reading it then, because it’s pretty fast-paced from beginning to end. It’s a creative take on the dystopian genre in the sense that the male/female division is one I haven’t seen done elsewhere. I also appreciate that it was equal opportunity: on one side of the dividing river is Matrus, in which women are in charge and men are subjugated to their rule, and on the other is Patrus, in which the opposite is true. Violet finds herself caught in between in a sense, because while she is Matrian, she has a little brother whom she loves, and she knows he’d have no kind of life in Matrus. She tries to smuggle him to Patrus when he’s eight, but he gets captured and taken from her. She, in turn, finds herself a criminal delinquent as a teen, with a penchant for violence and an anger problem. But when she accidentally kills her second a female attacker–a crime which all but requires her death–she is offered an intriguing proposition: die for her crimes now, or cross over to Patrus, marry their contact, and with him attempt to steal a mysterious egg which Patrus originally stole from Matrus. The mission will mean almost certain death… but if she succeeds, Matrus promises her a reunion with her brother. It’s a no-brainer, of course, and Violet accepts.

I expected that Lee, her Patrian “husband,” would become the love interest–but I should have known from his name alone that he wouldn’t be. (No YA male lead would have a boring name like “Lee Bertrand.”) Enter Viggo Croft: handsome, disgruntled against Patrian society for his own reasons, and earning his living as a warden (essentially a police officer) by day and a prize fighter by night. He’s to be Lee and Violet’s scapegoat: they have to pin the theft of the egg on someone, and he’s the perfect choice. In order to accomplish this, they need to be able to control where he is and when–which will require gaining his trust. That’s Violet’s job, of course… but you can imagine how complicated that gets along the way.

I raced through to the end, and went straight into book 2… unfortunately, the second book in the series got seriously cheesy at around 40%. So cheesy that I’m probably not going to finish it or the rest of the series–which bums me out, because I was excited about this one. Still, book 1 is totally worth the read, even as a stand-alone!

My rating: **** 1/2

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Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han

Today’s podcast review comes from this blog post review of Always and Forever, Lara Jean. 

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Review of The Devil in the White City

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A fascinating profile of a very specific time in history, paralleling the lives of two men: one, Daniel Burnham, the chief architect of the “White City” of Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair, and the other, Dr. H.H. Holmes (real name: Herman Mudgett), the infamous murdered supposedly inspired by his near contemporary, Jack the Ripper.

The World’s Fair should never have been possible, so many things were against it. But Burnham had a vision and refused to give up. He was determined to outshine the fair in Paris a few years earlier, in which the Eiffel Tower astonished the world, and he was determined to do it (more or less) in time for the 400’th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World. Despite setback after setback, and a less than stellar opening few months, Burnham did it. They imported real cowboys and Indians for the Wild West show, and real Egyptians and belly dancers to populate the “Streets of Cairo” exhibit. Every building was illuminated with electric lights, the first most of the visitors had ever seen. And the structure that outshone the Eiffel Tower? That turned out to be the world’s first Ferris Wheel (constructed by its namesake.)

Meanwhile, Mudgett adopted the alias H.H. Holmes, inspired by the hero of Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing. He was handsome, charismatic, and apparently irresistible to the women he seduced and later murdered. He was a pharmacist, and had a hotel built near enough to the fair to attract visitors. But they did not know that the rooms had been outfitted as gas chambers, and the bottom of the hotel had been outfitted with a kiln perfectly suited to incinerate human remains. The World’s Fair was the perfect setting for him to prey on young women away from the protection of their families for the first time.

The book is very historical except for a few places (where we’re in the heads of the victims before they die), and I thought the part about Burnham was a little dry at the beginning. But once the fair was eminent, his story became just as interesting as was Holmes’s. Also, I hear they’re making this a movie! I’m super excited to see it. The World’s Fair would make an excellent setting for a fictional story… I’m filing that away in the back of my mind.

My rating: ****

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Review of Always and Forever, Lara Jean

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I enjoyed this book as I did the first two… the characters are still excellent and very believable. This book just felt super episodic to me. Lara Jean and Peter have been together for over a year when the story starts, and they’re preparing to go to college. Lara Jean wants to go to the in-state school that Peter already knows he’ll be attending on a Lacrosse scholarship, but she doesn’t get in. She plans to go to a different school that’s only a few hours away and transfer to his school the following year, but then she ends up getting in to another one that is much better and much farther away. This puts tension on their relationship–should they keep trying to date long-distance, or should she let him go (as Peter’s mom wants her to do), so that he can focus on Lacrosse?

I encapsulated the whole book right there more or less, but those elements of conflict are a VERY slow boil. For the most part, Lara Jean is baking, trying to perfect her chocolate chip cookie recipe, and trying to plan her dad’s wedding to the next door neighbor. There’s a definite bittersweet quality to much of the book, and it encapsulates that coming-of-age sadness of leaving the old behind in order to embrace the new. I’m glad there wasn’t a love triangle in this one (that would have gotten a little old), and I definitely love Lara Jean and Peter together. And (spoiler alert) I’m glad it ends happy. I’d have been REALLY annoyed if it didn’t. (Still, I kind of wonder whether Lara Jean and Peter will make it, long-term. It seems more likely they’ll break up after a year or two.)

One thing I loved about this entire trilogy was that, while the author clearly acknowledges that sex is a common element of teenage relationships, Lara Jean and Peter never actually do it, despite having dated for over a year. She never explicitly gives a reason for this, and I like the fact that it doesn’t seem like they need an excuse. It’s a big deal, and they just… haven’t yet. I wish more books targeted at teens made this seem like an ok choice.

My rating: *** 1/2

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P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han

Today’s review comes from this blog post of Jenny Han’s PS I still Love You

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Review of P.S. I Still Love You

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I’m torn on how to rate this one (4 or 5 stars — it’s definitely one of the two, though). On one hand, it’s laugh-out-loud funny in multiple parts, and I found myself grinning like an idiot in many more. On the other hand, there were a number of sections of the story that really dragged… but I also probably shouldn’t fault it for that, because it’s not a gripping suspense, and it’s not meant to be. Lara Jean’s story is episodic, slice-of-life stuff.

While “To All The Boys” had a specific plot (Lara Jean’s little sister Kitty sent out all of her love letters to get her back for something she was mad about, and Lara Jean invented a fake boyfriend to keep the guy she really liked from figuring out she still liked him), this one didn’t have that much of a plot until about halfway through. “To All The Boys” ended (spoiler alert) with a pseudo-cliffhanger: will she or won’t she get back together with Peter? This one starts with their reconciliation (which is SUPER cute, btw), but after that, they’re just… together. Which is fun, but there’s no conflict until Lara Jean gets a letter back from the fifth boy from the first book–the “one who got away” in many respects. Also, Peter still goes running the second his ex-girlfriend Genevieve calls, and while he promises Lara Jean that he’s just there for her as a friend because she’s going through a “hard time,” he won’t tell her what the “hard time” is. The plot from that point on is the conflict between Lara Jean and Peter introduced by the now love square (is that a thing?), and the mystery of Genevieve’s personal struggles.

Yet I’m already reading book 3 in the series… so despite the long passages about minutiae, I’m still hooked. So, 4.5 stars?

My rating: **** 1/2

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An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew, by Michele Hutchison

Today’s review comes from this blog post, a review of An American Princess. 

Check out this episode!

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To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

Today’s review comes from this blog post, Review of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before. 

Check out this episode!

The post To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han appeared first on C.A. Gray.

Review of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before

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This was so much fun–I can’t wait to watch the movie now!

The story follow Lara Jean Song Covey (she goes by all four names at various parts of the story), the middle child in a family of three sisters who lost her mother when she was young. She’s sixteen, and she’s never dated before… but every time she falls in love and realizes it won’t work out, she writes the boy a “goodbye” letter just for her own closure, telling him all the things she never had the courage to say in person. This helps her to let go… and then she keeps the letters in a hat box in her closet that her mother gave her. The part that kind of stretched belief for me a bit was that she actually addressed the letters (talk about tempting fate!) So you can guess what happens: someone finds and mails the letters–all five of them. It’s a teenage girl’s worst nightmare.

But what ensues shows that Lara Jean has a lot more spunk than one might expect from a self-proclaimed goody two-shoes who never had the courage to mail said letters. In order to conceal her feelings for one of the five whom she’s recently discovered she still has feelings for (and who also happens to be best friends with their family, and her older sister’s very recent ex-boyfriend, Josh), she invents a fake relationship with another of the five, Peter. Peter happens to be the most popular boy in school, and the most popular girl in school recently dumped him–so to make his ex jealous, he goes along with the fake relationship too. They even draw up a contract, outlining the duties each is expected to perform. …But Lara Jean doesn’t count on Josh sharing her feelings after all. Or on falling for Peter. Or on her sister Margo coming home from college abroad, and getting blindsided by the whole thing.

What I love most about the story is how believable the characters are. Lara Jean is quirky and lovable, but not quite predictable. Peter is in some ways your stereotypical “cool” boy, with all the attendant imperfections–but he’s more than that too. Josh is the literal boy-next-door. Lara Jean’s insecurities make perfect sense with her history. Nobody is perfect, and the scenarios aren’t air-brushed to feel as romantic as possible: it feels like a story that might have really happened. Also, I didn’t predict how it was going to end until about 3/4 of the way through… but once I realized where it was headed, that’s exactly how I wanted it to go. I immediately bought the sequel, because even though this one does “end,” there’s clearly more to the story, and I had to know what happened next!

My rating: *****

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Review of An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew

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This is a biography, as the title suggests, of an historical figure I’d never heard of before, but who had apparently rubbed elbows with a number of illustrious people of her day. While the story reads very much like dry history, Allene undoubtedly had quite the colorful life.

Born in Jamestown in the late 1800s, Allene gained wealth and prestige through marriage: five of them, in total. Her first two husbands were ne’er-do-well gamblers, though she became a fabulously wealthy heiress from her first husband, by whom she also had three children. She buried all three of them in her youth, one of whom died in the first World War. Her third husband, Anson Wood Burchard, was the chairman of General Electric, and the love of her life. Then she buried him too.

But what stands out most about Allene’s character is her optimism and determination to make the best of whatever life threw at her. She became a princess in her 60s by her fourth husband, a German prince, who had been impoverished after the first World War and more or less went after her for her money. She knew this, too, but she may have hoped to act as mother to his two children. (One of the children allowed this, and the other did not.) Meanwhile, Prince Heinrich supported Hitler and attempted to get into the Nazi party’s good graces, but he was never important enough to warrant attention. Allene later divorced him, but remained close to his son Heinrich throughout the rest of her life, and considered him her own son, even leaving him a large portion of her estate. Also, through her connection to German aristocracy, Allene helped to arrange the marriage between German Prince Bernhard and Princess Juliana of the Netherlands–the latter had a very hard time finding suitors, because she was apparently quite plain and also extremely religious, so most suitors did not meet the standards of the family. The couple named Allene godmother to their daughter, Princess Beatrix.

Allene’s fifth and final husband was twelve years her junior (and with him she rubbed elbows with Edward VIII of England and Wallis Simpson, after the former’s abdication of the throne of England.) She was friends with President Eisenhower. When she died, Elizabeth Taylor was among those who expressed interest in purchasing her property (but she was refused, because her career was considered too “frivolous.”)

All in all, Allene’s life story is terribly sad (to consider what she lost), but it reads almost like a Who’s Who among the aristocracy of the day. I think the account of it suffered only from the narrative style: if it had read more like a novel, I think it would have been fantastic.

My rating: ***

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