5 Stars. My favorite Austen! Captain Wentworth! *sigh* Or is it *swoon*? This was a nice blend of Austen's pointed social commentary and a (bitter)sweet romance. Anne's family is just awful. They are silly, vain and entirely too class-conscious. They insist on their "inferiors" showing them the proper amount of deference and [...]
Sixteen-year-old Ethan Wate has been having nightmares for months. In his dreams, he's unsuccessfully trying to save a girl. Then Lena Duchannes, the first new girl to move into his small South Carolina town in years, shows up. He recognizes her as the girl from his dreams, and things only get more complicated from there. Wow. That's probably the most coherent, non-spoilery thing I have to say about this. I was intrigued at first, wondering what was going on, but about a hundred pages in, this hooked me and didn't let go. It was kind of like going down the rabbit hole. The more I found out, the more questions I had and the more I needed to get answers. Sometimes that kind of thing can feel a little like the author is cheating, withholding information for the sole purpose of making you read more against your will, but Garcia and Stohl got it right. Ethan tells the story, and he's just as clueless as the reader, so the way the story unfolds felt very natural. Lena was a fantastic character! I am loving these strong female characters that I'm finding in YA lately. She's stressed out, she's outcast, she never fits in, but she never gives up. It would be easy for her to wall herself off from the world, but she keeps going out there and opening herself up for more hurt, trying to have a life. She's not at all an average girl, but I think a lot of girls will relate to her. Unfortunately. We can't all be Miss Popularity at school. I also loved Link, Ethan's best friend, and Macon, Lena's eccentric uncle. Link is unquestioningly loyal to Ethan and accepting of Lena, when it would be a lot easier to drop both of them…
I'm an Appalachian mountain girl. I felt like I knew Ivy from the first sentence. She truly seemed to come to life on the pages. I came along a few generations after her time, but I felt like she could be one of my grandmothers. She talked the way I probably still talk :-) Education was important to her, and she was very smart, but she never really got a chance. I guess, really, I felt like I could have been reading family history. That says a lot about a novel. Re-read June 28, 2009 There's not all that much to add. This is a book that touches my heart and it's hard for me to write about those. Ivy Rowe is this book. She's spunky, she makes mistakes, she loves, she lives, she's stubborn, she's wrong sometimes; in short, she just feels real to me in a way that very few characters do. Oh, I write fairly often about how I love this or that character, but Ivy feels like someone I know. The novel is written in a series of letters that Ivy writes to others. You get inside her head and stay there. You follow Ivy from the time she's about 10 years old on. There's a whole progression of wide-eyed optimism to teenage carelessness and invincibility to repentance to more carelessness to acceptance and reflection. I live a whole other lifetime when I read this book. Lee Smith chose to have Ivy write in our southern Appalachian dialect and she gets it just absolutely perfect. I literally "hear" Ivy with my grandmother's voice, and I hear the the preacher Sam Russell Sage as my uncle. Ivy's sister Silvaney doesn't really speak, but she reminds me of my grandmother's sister, Sue. Do you see the connection I…
Shutter Island is off the coast of Massachusetts, housing an asylum for the criminally insane. As a nasty summer storm brews up, U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule cross over to the island to search for an escaped inmate. But Teddy knows that things are not as they seem on Shutter Island. Ho-lee crap. It's been a while since a book has messed with my head this much. Just as I thought I knew what was going on, a new revelation would come along and knock all my theories out from under me. It all ultimately made sense and brought me deeper into this world, and I have to say that I loved it. I didn't really know what was going on until the very last few pages, and I find that even after I finished it, I'm sitting here thinking, "Well, maybe it still really wasn't what it seemed..." You'll see. I bet almost everyone is surprised by this ending. The twists and turns were the big draw of this book for me, but I loved Lehane's style. This is the first book I've read of his, but it won't be my last. Shutter Island is set in 1954, and I love the way these marshals speak to each other and so quickly establish common ground through The War. Their speech, their mannerisms, it all fit together to make them feel like real people. If I say anymore, I'll give something away, so I'll leave it at that. I highly, highly recommend this if you like your thrillers gritty and unpredictable. The movie comes out today, and I think it will have to be fantastic. Great original material, great cast, great director--what's not to love?
Mattie Gokey is an intelligent high school senior living in rural New York in 1906. As this book unfolds, we are following two different, intertwined arcs of Mattie's life: the earlier months when she is desperate to get to college and the later months when she's working at a summer lake resort where a young couple has just gone missing. I have neglected writing this review for about two weeks now. I loved this book, and I know that I'm never going to do it justice. First of all, there's Mattie herself. Do all readers adore books where the main character is reader also, or is it just me? Mattie is a beautiful writer; a voracious, hungry reader; and a word collector. I just loved her. The book is written in first person, and her voice is authentic and beautiful. The edge of my book is a flurry of post-it flags marking quotes that I loved. You know I'm going to quote them at you at the end of this review, right? She's at that age when the world is open before her, but she has ties tugging her back. You know that feeling that your soul is bigger than your body and you just have to stretch your wings? Mattie describes it perfectly. A lot of the book centers around the choice that Mattie must make between what she wants and what's expected of her. She's torn and I was so worried about her, all the way through. I desperately wanted her to choose what would make her happy. I just love characters that do that to me. As Mattie is making her decision, she's reading letters left behind by the lady who is missing. These are real letters from a real crime committed in NY. The contrast between…
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief hits theaters today. I have to admit that I'm pretty excited to see it. I loved the book, the cast is amazing, and the trailer is exciting. I just wish that they had found an actor who is actually Percy's age to play Percy. He's what--12 in the book? Logan Lerman is seventeen. His voice has already broken, for crying out loud! Still, I liked Lerman in 3:10 to Yuma, and I think he'll do a good job with the part. I just don't really see him as Percy at this point. Maybe he'll change my mind. Oh, and that amazing cast makes me nervous too. It seems like a movie with too many famous names just never lives up to expectations. (I'm looking at you, The Royal Tenenbaums, my first vote for Worst Movie Ever) Anyway, without further ado, here is my review of the book. Percy Jackson tries to be good, but circumstances just don't allow it. Trouble always seems to find him. Let's not talk about what happens to his math teacher his sixth grade year.... At the end of sixth grade, Percy and his mom take off for a trip to the beach. Late in the night, it sounds like a hurricane blows up and they're running for their lives. Percy winds up at Half-Blood Hill, a summer camp for the children of...Greek gods? An evil plot is afoot and Percy needs to clear his name and unravel the mystery with the help of his two friends, Annabeth and Grover. I loved this! I've always enjoyed mythology and this was an original take on the old myths for children. But don't think it's only for children--adults will enjoy it too. Percy, Annabeth and Grover are fantastic, smart, fun…
I have waited entirely too long to write this review and gotten too deeply involved in Ken Follett's World Without End, so this review is going to suck a little. Which is a pity because I had thought of all kinds of witty things I was going to write and now I've lost them. Miss Alexia Tarabotti is soulless. When she touches supernatural beings, she neutralizes their abilities and they become human for a moment. That could be useful to the Bureau of Unnatural Registry if she weren't a lady of good breeding. She refuses to be treated as a wilting lily and goes about, wielding her tricked-out parasol and assisting in any way she can, as new vampires who appear to be entirely clueless about supernatural laws go about wreaking havoc on society. I loved the chemistry between Alexia and Lord Maccon from the moment he threatens to bring her out of a faint with something stronger than smelling salts. He's an Alpha werewolf, but Alexia has enough alpha personality to hold her own against him. Their subtle yet pointed verbal sparring made this book for me. And can you say steamy? It wasn't too graphic, but oh my gosh. *Fanning* Alexia herself was a fantastic character. At twenty-six, she's firmly on the shelf in Victorian society, but she's okay with that. Better to be on the shelf than married to some half-wit who can't keep up with her own intellect and curiosity. She gets enough of that from her family. They don't know she's soulless and put all of her quirks down to the fact that her father was Italian. But they've left her just a little insecure about her appearance and desirability. Just enough to make her feel real. And Lord Maccon. Yum. That's all there is…
My favorite book growing up was Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. It's still one of my all-time favorite books. I have to confess that the first time I tried to read it, I thought it was boring. I'd seen the movie somewhere and grabbed the book at the library, and I think the language was just a little too difficult for me at the time. I couldn't have been ten years old. But I tried once again, and that time I fell in love. I wanted to be friends with "Anne-with-an-e" and the ever-loyal Diana and share in their adventures. If I'm honest, I still want to be friends with them! They just became real to me. My family used to go to the beach every summer, and there was this one little bookstore that always had a big selection of L. M. Montgomery books. My library only had the first two Anne books, so it became a tradition for my mom to take me to that bookstore so I could get one or two more of Montgomery's books to read. I was always impatient for more, but now I'm glad I got to stretch all those books out over such a long period of time. The anticipation was delicious. One of the books, Jane of Lantern Hill, was actually out of print, so I didn't complete my collection until I was somewhere in my twenties and my husband bought that one for me online. I was thrilled! I don't have any new-to-me L. M. Montgomery books to look forward to now, but I've re-read everything she wrote countless times, and I get something new out of them every time. I'm thinking it's getting to be time to do another re-read. Synopsis from GoodReads: As soon as…
Most of you have probably already read The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, but it's my very, very favorite book right now and has been for a while. Liesel Meminger is a ten-year-old girl living in Nazi Germany and being sent to live with foster parents when her younger brother dies. This is the first time she comes to the attention of Death, our narrator. This is also the first time she steals a book. It's entitled The Grave Digger's Handbook. She learns to read using this book, and she begins to feel the power of words. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll keep the rest of this vague. She continues to steal books, she lives, she loves, she endures more loss, and she somehow manages to surround herself with shining souls in a world that is being lost to the dark. I would give this book more stars if I could. I was trying to tell my husband how fantastic this is and I was reduced to a stuttering mess of, "So good...power of words...just...you know... so good...I loved it...she just, you know...I mean...I loved Papa...did I mention that I loved this book? No, I mean, I really loved it." That's how I feel, staring at this big, empty review box, trying to find the words to say why everyone has to read this book that I loved. Just read it. Good enough? Also, this is marketed as a YA book. In all honesty, this is a book that anyone could revisit time and again at different stages in his or her life and pull something different from it every time. Don't be put off by the YA label. I promise you, you'll regret it if you dismiss this as a book for teenagers. It probably actually…
As luck would have it, the day Dashti enters the service of a lady is the very day said lady is bricked into a tower for seven years to learn obedience. Dashti goes along with her to keep her company and take care of her. Between fighting off rats, Lady Saren's torpor, and the unsettling attentions of Saren's two very different suitors, Dashti has her hands full. And that's just the beginning. I love Dashti. She grows so much in this book! She starts off a simple girl from a simple way of life, unquestioningly following the laws of the land, and she becomes a strong woman, confident in herself and her abilities. The book is really Dashti's diary, so it was interesting to see her thinking and even her writing style change as she grows into herself. Dashti's is the most obvious transformation, but Lady Saren quietly undergoes some drastic changes. She starts out a weak, irritating, ineffective girl who seems to be nothing but a chain around Dashti's neck, but sometime when you aren't looking she becomes something... more. This is my first time reading Shannon Hale, and if this is any indication of the rest of her work, it won't be my last. I sat down to get started on this before spending a little time on the computer, and the next thing I knew I was finishing it. Seriously. One sitting. There was one part that started to drag just a little bit, but somehow a book about two girls in a tower became a page turner. I enjoyed how Dashti's "voice" changed as she changed, and I'm very impressed with Hale's skill in pulling that off. I was thrilled to read a young adult book with a strong female lead and no love triangle in…