Review - "Eyes Like Those"

Eyes Like Those, Seven Shores #1
by Melissa Brayden
rating: ☆☆☆ 1/2
published: 1st October 2017
spoilers? vague ones

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

More like 3.5

If there's one thing I struggle to find, it's good wlw lit. Melissa Brayden may well be the solution to all of my problems. This is the first book I've read by her and, while I wasn't overly impressed with the writing (it's good and readable, which is impressive in the genre to begin with, but nothing special), the plot and the characters were more than enough to make up for it.

The book tells the story of Isabel, a promising scriptwriter who has been working in a restaurant while trying to find script work, as she moves to Hollywood to take up a job writing on a popular TV show. There, she meets Taylor, a captivating and unattainable woman, who is also her boss - the showrunner.

The best part of this book was the relationships. Isabel moves into her friend's apartment, and meets three other women - Autumn, Hadley, and Gia. Her friendship with these three was my absolute favourite part of the book. They're always building each other up, and supporting each other, and that's something you really don't see enough of in lit. Similarly with Isabel and Taylor's relationship. They actually became friends before anything started, and I feel like that doesn't happen all that often in NA lit.

If there was one little complaint I did have about their relationship, it's that, while the slowburn was good and appreciated, it lacked some tension. Mariana Zapata is a very good example of someone who writes the most excellent tension, and that's what this book lacked. Sure, we see that they're attracted to one another, but the tension, either romantic or sexual, is just not quite there.

I also didn't really like how the narrative refused to explicitly frame Taylor's past relationship, with Aspen - the lead actress on the show, as abusive. Because that's what it was. Aspen manipulated Taylor, got violent and threw plates around, and cheated on Taylor, and once Taylor's broken up with her, she conveniently forgets all that and tries to get her back. But it's never mentioned as being abusive, not even when, once Aspen realises she won't get her own way, she aims to ruin Taylor's whole life. If that doesn't smack of manipulative and abusive, I don't know what does.

Overall, this was one of the best wlw NA books I've read (I know that's not saying a lot, but trust me here), and Melissa Brayden is definitely a writer I'll be coming back to.

Review - "Invictus"

Invictus
by Ryan Graudin
rating: ☆☆☆☆
published: 26th September 2017
spoilers? nope

Goodreads

He was a hero spurned. No, it felt worse than that. He'd become a bystander in someone else's story.

Galley provided by publisher

Invictus tells the story of Farway McCarthy, a cadet kicked out of the time travelling corps after he fails his final exam, who takes up black market missions so he can travel back in time to find out what happened to his mother. He captains the crew of the TM Invictus - Priya, Gram, Imogen, and Saffron the red panda. On a mission to retrieve a priceless book from the Titanic as it sinks, he encounters another time traveller, but one who's story does not ring true.

From the start, the world building in this book is epic and so unique. It's like nothing I've read before, which is always a good start. But despite the promising opening, the plot builds slowly. Incredibly slowly, that is. It was a good 70% into the book before I got to the point where I couldn't put it down.

Part of that came from the fact that it was overwhelmingly heterosexual. There are two relationships: Far and Priya, and Imogen and Gram. Of the two, I much preferred Imogen and Gram, because you got to see some development of that relationship. When it came to Far and Priya, what you got was them as acquaintances in one part, then a skip-ahead to a few months later and they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Which, honestly, was just tedious. There were even parts of the book I marked as insert heterosexual interlude because it was that boring a relationship. I love Priya and, to a lesser extent, Far, but together they just didn't do anything for me. Both romances felt entirely unnecessary.

Not to mention that Far is an absolute arsehole (I say this even though I love him), and I just couldn't really sympathise with him. He genuinely reminds me of the Brooding YA Hero twitter account. In fact, scrolling through that, I found a number of tweets that actually reminded me of Far. He's arrogant and quite selfish and always trying to do ""heroic"" things and it just grinds on you. He was okay to start with but it quickly got a little boring to read from his point of view.

Another aspect of the plot dragging was that it seemed to have a kind of pattern where it went slow for a bit, then fast for a couple of chapters, then back to slow, and then fast, and so on. And the slow parts were so much longer than the fast parts, which meant that, while several moments had me going HOLY CRAP, they were overwhelmed by the slight boringness of the slower sections.

That all being said, I did really like this book overall. And I think that's because, for me, the dragging in the plot was made up for by the characters and the ending. I loved each and every person in this - especially Eliot, even though at times she bordered on being the ~mysterious girl~ trope personified. And the last 130 pages or so? If only the rest of the book had been so good.

In the end, I just wish it had fully lived up to Blood for Blood.

Review - "Circe"

Circe
by Madeline Miller
rating: ☆☆☆☆
published: 10th April 2018
spoilers? some

Goodreads

"How do you bear it?" he said
[...]
"We bear it as best we can," I said.

Galley provided by publisher

Circe is perhaps one of my most anticipated books for the next year and, while I have been wavering on how to rate it, it definitely did not disappoint. I would say I perhaps didn't like it so much as I did The Song of Achilles when I read that, but that's always going to be a hard book to top.

The novel tells the story of the nymph, Circe, from her birth up until she is released from exile. Circe is the daughter of the sun god, Helios, although by all accounts she is a strange child, lacking in the powers that her father and siblings all possess. The first quarter or so of the book is taken up with Circe living in her father's palace, ignored by most of her family and his courtesans. Then, she discovers the ability to do witchcraft, at which point she is exiled to live alone on an island, Aiaia. It was at this point that I really got into the story.

That's not to say it was boring up until that point - Madeline Miller's gorgeous writing was plenty enough for me to maintain interest - but after the exile happens, Circe really comes into her own. That was my favourite aspect of this book, seeing Circe develop from being someone who's eager to please her father, even as he tells her she's the least of his children, into someone with the power to challenge Athena herself.

My favourite part of the book comes when Circe meets Telemachus and Penelope. I loved how Miller wrote the growth of the relationship between Penelope and Circe. Initially, Circe believes that Penelope and Telemachus wish vengeance on Telegonus, her son (for reasons which Wikipedia will happily tell you), but they get to know each other and become friends. There are too many books where two women, in love with the same man, will be framed as nemeses so I appreciated that they became close instead.

If there was one thing I found pretty awkward about this book, it's that it ends with Telemachus and Circe implied as being in a relationship. The awkwardness comes from the fact that Circe had previously had a relationship with Odysseus (Telemachus' father), which had spawned a son, Telegonus. So Circe ends up in a relationship with her own son's half brother... It just felt weird.

That's probably why I can't rate this five stars, though I originally did so immediately after finishing. I was wavering between four and five for a while, but that is enough to tip my review to a four.

NB. non-graphic rape TW just before halfway through, and implied incest TW throughout.

Review - "Strange The Dreamer"

Strange the Dreamer, Strange the Dreamer #1
by Laini Taylor
rating: ☆☆☆
published: 28th March 2017
spoilers? some pretty major ones

Goodreads

"You’re a storyteller. Dream up something wild and improbable," she pleaded. "Something beautiful and full of monsters." "Beautiful and full of monsters?" "All the best stories are."

There's really only one word to describe how I felt about this book. Disappointed. Because I loved Daughter of Smoke and Bone when I read it, and this book started off like it could reach similar heights. Unfortunately, it did not.

For the first say, 40% of the book, I was in love. The writing was gorgeous, as usual, the characters mysterious and interesting enough that I was captivated, and the plot maybe going slowly, but still with enough happening that I was interested. And then the instalove happened.

In young adult lit, I find there's instalove, and then there's Instalove. The former, I can just about deal with (it's clearly there, but there's also enough of a connection between the characters that I can about forgive it). The latter is the real killer, and that's what happened here. There is quite honestly nothing between Lazlo and Sarai, and yet they meet each other in a dream and are shoved together, and within about two meetings, they're in love. And from that point on, I was just bored of the whole book. Because Sarai is also a manic pixie dream girl kind of character, and to top it off, gets killed, and then resurrected so that the evil character can control Lazlo by controlling Sarai. Because why not. It's honestly depressing that this is the main female character.

On top of all that, the plot twist, that Lazlo is the son of a god, is one that you can see coming a goddamn mile off. It wasn't even a surprise. And not just because of the (slightly shoddily employed) foreshadowing. Genuinely because of the fact that there was not going to be another outcome to the story. I mean, boy who doesn't know his own origins, but feels a visceral pull towards a mysterious city that no outsiders have visited for over 200 years? Um. Can we get more obvious?

Perhaps what disappointed me most though, was the sheer amount of potential there was for a hate-to-love relationship between Lazlo and Thyon. And if we're going to go with instalove between Sarai and someone else, why couldn't it have been Calixte, a confirmed wlw? (I say confirmed, but in true Laini Taylor fashion, we get a 2 second glimpse of her relationship with another woman and then she doesn't appear further in the story.) And yet, what we end up with, is yet another heterosexual instalove tale. But I honestly don't know what else I expected. I mean, after all, we all know LGBT characters are hardly ever central to mainstream YA authors' plots unless it's to kill them.

Review - "Battle Royale"

Battle Royale
by Koushun Takami
rating: ☆
published: April 1999
spoilers? no

Goodreads

How to I explain how much I despised this book? Let's just say that if I could rate a book zero stars on this site, this book would be one I would give that honour to.

I started this book way back in June. I picked it up just before I headed back home from uni, but I only read one chapter before I realised that I just wasn't in the mood for a dystopia like this. It sat on my desk, unread, for a good month, before I packed it to go on holiday because I just really wanted to get it read finally.

Good Lord, do I wish I hadn't.

The writing in this is terrible, and I don't know if that's because this was a clunky translation or if the writing is genuinely that bad. Either way, it was so cringeworthy I just couldn't take any of it seriously. Every time I read a bit out to my parents (we were all stuck in a tent and it was raining), I got a round of groans or snorts of laughter, depending on whether the particular part I'd chosen was bad, or so-bad-you-really-have-to-laugh. And don't even get me started on the song lyrics that were thrown in at random, because the main character loves rock music. The goddamn book literally ended with the lyrics of 'Born to Run' by Bruce Springsteen! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Then there's the characters. There were so many of them, I genuinely lost track. And none of them seem to have any personality. You can sum each of them up using one, maybe two (if they're lucky), words and there, you're done. Not to mention I just wanted to slap the main character around a bit to, one, get rid of his naivety ("oh no, we all just want to work together," he says, as everyone starts killing everyone else), and two, to get him to shut up with that lowkey misogynism. He genuinely says at one point, that the girl would make a good wife. Miss me with that, thanks.

So yeah. Christ do I wish I hadn't bothered.

Review - "Pride and Prejudice"

Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
published: 28th January 1813
spoilers? some

Goodreads

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

I first read Pride and Prejudice in Year 9, aged 13, as one of that year's set texts for English Lit. I, quite frankly, despised English Lit, so it's honestly a surprise that I actually enjoyed reading and analysing this book. Especially since I never got an iota of the same enjoyment out of analysing any other book in my five years of classes. Jane Austen's novel also has the (lofty or dubious, you decide) honour of being the first classic I can ever remember liking (and still one of the few I do).

It took me another 7 years to actually get round to rereading Pride and Prejudice, at which point, I came to my senses and realised that my original four star rating was way too low. If I could give this book more than five stars, I would. I love every single aspect of this book (besides some of the adaptations it has, and will (fuck you, ITV), spawned).

If I'm really honest, Lizzie Bennet is second only to Anne Elliott in my list of favourite Austen heroines, but that's a really really marginal second. Lizzie Bennet is definitely one of my favourite characters in lit, and I'd forgotten how much I loved her until I reread this book. I had also forgotten just how much I love Mr. Darcy too. He may not be my favourite Austen love interest (Henry Tilney took that title just recently), but he has one of the best character developments I've read in Austen's work, if not the best.

Probably the best thing (or worst, depending how you look at it) about rereading this, was picking out all the parts that didn't foreshadow as such, but were precursors to the big events of the story. Wickham telling Lizzie his whole life story on their first meeting (Lizzie. Lizzie my girl. What trustworthy man tells you his whole life story the moment you meet him? No one, that's who), "Will the shades of Pemberley be thus polluted?", "You are the last man I could be prevailed upon to marry." Knowing what's going to happen later only enhanced my enjoyment of the novel.

Really, one of the reasons this, and other Austen novels, are among my favourite classics (when I will admit I rarely enjoy classics) is because of the writing. It's always lighthearted and vaguely mocking (Northanger Abbey more than most, I've found), and as far as classics go, it's very easy to read. And one of the major reasons I don't read a huge number of classics is because I have trouble with the writing (The Brothers Karamazov is case in point. It's taken me about 10 months to get 170 pages in). So it's really refreshing to read Austen's writing.

So, in case it wasn't already clear, I love Pride and Prejudice with all my heart. So much so that I'm currently trying to stave off the desire to reread right now, only two weeks after I read it last.

Review - "Permanent Ink"

Permanent Ink, Art & Soul #1
by Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn
rating: ☆☆☆
published: 7th August 2017
spoilers? no

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

You know those books which you liked, but you don't really have any clear-cut opinions on them? This is one of those for me. It was good, and I enjoyed it, but it's not one that's got me really hyped, or has me really angry. It's just. Good. I don't know how else to put it.

One great thing I did note was that there's no relationship based angst going on (the bane of my existence when it comes to new adult lit). I had three predictions for what the inevitable angst would be based on: "I'm your employer", "I'm 17 years older than you", or "I'm your dad's best friend". While these topics did come up, the true source of the angst was, in fact, none of these - which I am grateful for, because they're all overdone - and not only that, they didn't just sit and let misunderstandings fester. They talked them through like adults, and solved their problems that way. That happens in so few new adult books, and it was great to see.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of these characters (especially Blue *cough cough* book 2 maybe?), even though the daddy kink is... uh... definitely not my thing.