The Book Swap

I read one of Maiya's favourite books this month which she has reviewed here.

It's called The Vincent Boys by Abbi Glines and yeah, it was good. It's about a love triangle (because YA fiction never has one of those) in a small town and the usual "should I go for the perfect boy but I don't love him who I'm dating or the bad boy who I want with all my heart." And despite it's "new adult" label it's surprisingly has a lack of s*x scenes. Oh and to top it off, the lead "Ashton" is the daughter of a minister/vicar.

It is enjoyable. It is definitely more enjoyable than I expected as I fell out the the romance genre when I read 14 days later a year ago (did you know I am the second most disliked review on the amazon kindle edition because I insulted all of its readers?).

I liked the backdrop to the novel but I didn't love the characters. I just didn't connect to them and my empathy with the characters is essential to how much I enjoy the book. I found that Ashton was not particularly likeable because she wasn't very "honourable" in her loyalty to her boyfriend. Beau controlled himself a bit more so thumbs up for Beau. Sawyer was a bit of a douche in the third quartile of the book but otherwise I liked the characters. They were just a little bit too exaggerated for my liking as I'm a huge fan of subtlety.

There was a plot twist I didn't guess (and it's the big one) so four for you Abbi Glines you go Abbi Glines! It was entertaining and made the relationships interesting which is what a lot of romantic fiction lacks. I liked that.

Overall I gave this 3 stars. It was good. It wasn't my kind of book but that didn't stop me from enjoying reading it. If you love New Adult or YA definitely read it.

Buy this book (if you use that link it gives me commission and I would love you forever)

The Extincts by Veronica Cossanteli

When you realise that you can legally drive in 4 months you will suddenly feel a pine for your childhood. At this point, I've found, you should agree to read and review a children's book.

I was a crazily enthusiastic reader as a child. I mean, tell me about a book published before 2008 and I've probably read it. I'm not even joking. As a result I feel like I know a lot about the genre and this review is not coming from the 16 year old girl taking public exams but from my 8 year old self.

The Extincts is about a boy who goes to work on a farm that's filled with dangerous magical and extinct animals. The auther threw in a beginning, middle and an end, an evil stepmother and a grumpy teacher.

The book was enjoyable. I found it was so clearly marketed at 7-9 year old boys that it took away from the actual book. You know the type of boy, he'll love those dangerous animal programs that the BBC makes. It was full of clichées: girls are stupid and stepmothers are evil. It was well written, don't get me wrong, but it's carnivorous attitude got in the way.

Also the "bad-guy" reflects 101 Dalmatians. There's the big house on the hill, the evil woman who is extraverted and drives a fast car (Cruella) and two henchmen: a skinny, tall mastermind and the short one. Oh and here's the kicker: she kills animals for aesthetic purposes.

There is a very clear message going through the book: "let's show boys how exciting we can make the contents of the natural history museum". It was so educational that it might have well been a cleverly disguised textbook.

Overall, I enjoyed the book but didn't love the obvious marketing strategy. I think that books should be written as reflections of an author and their creativity, not their selling strategy. I believe boys should read more but not in a way that girls are compromised. Other than that, it was good. Books need to stand out and this one didn't.

It just didn't shine.

Buy this book: www.bookdepository.co.uk/Extincts-Veronica-Cossanteli/9781908435453/?a_aid=SophieCharlotte

About a Girl by Lindsey Kelk - Review

I don't read chick flick that often. I've had a couple of bad experiences in the past. But this book completely changed my perspective on the genre because it's brilliant. I probably wouldn't have read it if I hadn't been sent a free review copy by Waterstones.

Tess, the workaholic, is made redundant from her job in advertising and is desperately in love with her best friend. She realises that she has nothing going on in her life so she hijacks her flatmates job and goes to Hawaii for a week as a "professional photographer."

I found the start to be a little slow moving but the prologue really starts the book off with a bang. Admittedly until about page 100 it isn't very interesting but stick with it, the rest is fabulous. The plot twists are unexpected (apart from one but that willed me to keep reading, to lap up every word) and not clichée. The ending was... complicated. I was left feeling both satisfied and unsatisfied but mostly very happy. Literally I felt happy inside. A book hasn't done that to me in a while.

The characters are wonderful and really well thought up. You will care for these characters, whether it be Tess or Amy or Paige even Al and character development was done fantastically. You care about their relationships. It's a great thing.

Most of all it was a really enjoyable experience and if I could read it again as a new experience,  I would. Buy it, even if chick flick isn't your thing because it's great.

Buy this book. Out on the 4th July 2013

How Divergent is similar to a sickness bug.

Reading Divergent was a similar experience to vomiting. It starts with mild levels of nausea - but no, you will battle through it, I can read more. This slowly builds to waves of intense "I can't leave the loo phase" and I needed this for my goodreads challenge so I kept going. And then, the final stage, the finale. Unpleasant. But finally over.

The hype! The hype this book has received. John Green recommended it. John Green, who everyone knows is a God to me. Nina recommended it to me (though she has a less god-like status because she has never made me sob uncontrollably curled up in a ball, although she recommended Sherlock to me). My sister adored it. Tumblr and other various fangirl sources worship this book.

Beatrice Prior lives in a dystopian (what? A teen book about dystopia?) society where everyone is sorted into five personality types and live in five "factions" and can choose a new faction at 16. The five factions are Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless) and Erudite (the intelligent). Oh, and if you are thinking "I fit more than one of those boxes!" Then you are a Divergent, a threat to society.

The truth is I don't mind bad quality literature. I quite enjoy it. The thing is Divergent pretends to be good quality. It pretends that the plot twists aren't totally obvious 100 pages beforehand. It pretends you don't know his true identity and how she will fall for him and oh the language is full of bias and lack of subtlety. It just... let me down.

It was a book with a lot of potential and the beginning was really good but as it went on it lost it's way. Maybe it's not you, Divergent, it's me. Maybe I've read too much dystopia, the Hunger Games, Uglies and the like. Maybe I'm tired of it. I just feel like it could be the shining cherry on the dystopia cake and it isn't.

There's a film. This could be really good. Maybe. No, who am I kidding? The book is always better than the movie and the book was terrible. Mind you the cast is basically the TFIOS cast...

I'm not mindlessly hating this book. I do have reasons and constructive criticism for the novel, its predictability, its lack of character development, it lacks a spark that sets it apart from the rest.

So overall, I hated this book. Sorry to all the fangirls who now hate me. But it was my metaphorical sickness bug.

Buy this book: http://www.bookdepository.com/Divergent-Veronica-Roth/9780007420421/?a_aid=SophieCharlotte
Goodreads link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13335037-divergent

Every Day by David Levithan

You have to read this book.

I enjoyed Will Grayson, Will Grayson but oh sweet love of all that is pure this book makes Will Grayson, Will Grayson like quotes from one of those "teen truth" twitter accounts.

A spends his life going from one body to another when one day he meets Rhiannon and goes out of his way to meet her every day in his different bodies.

And oh it's so good! A is instantly likeable because he constantly tries not to make his inhabitants lives worse. Rhiannon is idolised by A and the obsession over her is so beautifully perfect and well written that it can't be described in writing. Then there's a second sub-plot over the Church's attitude to "demons" and religious experience so it isn't all about the idolisation of this one girl which is so wonderful after YA and adult romance (Marion Keys, I'm looking at you and your kind).

Often teen (is it teen? It could be adult literature?) romantic fiction such as this narrated by a guy includes manic pixie-girl dreams *cough John Green cough* and Every Day was refreshingly pure of this. Rhiannon is so full of love and hope that it's nice to have such a lovely character.

This books main criticism is it is a bit preachy. By that I mean Levithan tried to get his views across over many topics in society. I didn't find that; I loved every second. I liked the way it tackled more than one problem in our culture and yet it was a brilliant love story.

I loved the romance of it all.

So yes, this is my favourite book I've read all year. Maybe even one of my top 20 books of all time.


So yeah, you have to read this book.


Links: http://www.bookdepository.com/Every-Day-David-Levithan/9780449815533/?a_aid=SophieCharlotte

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13262783-every-day

How many have you read?

The BBC published this list of books and apparently most people have only read 6.

I (Sophie, if you haven't worked that out yet) have read 20 and I was thinking of reading them all but I've learned Bible quotes for RS and it's a bit heavy going.

If you're interested in what I thought about them, I've put star rating by the sides of them or look at my goodreads though I read some of them such a long time ago I was sort of guessing. OH THE ACCURACY.

By the way, no. 59 will always remain one of my favourite books though. I will revue it in the near future.

1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (****)

2. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

3. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series, JK Rowling (*****)

5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (**)

10. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

11. Little Women, Louisa M Alcott

12. Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

13. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare

15. Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

17. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger (****)

19. The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch, George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald (***)

23. Bleak House, Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (**)

31. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis

34. Emma, Jane Austen

35. Persuasion, Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, CS Lewis (***)

37. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (****)

38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières

39. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne (****) 

41. Animal Farm, George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney, John Irving

45. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery (***)

47. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies, William Golding

50. Atonement, Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi, Yann Martel

52. Dune, Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

58. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon (*****)

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck (***)

62. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (****)

65. Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

66. On The Road, Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (**)

69. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick, Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

72. Dracula, Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett (***)

74. Notes From A Small Island, Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses, James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (****)

77. Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal, Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession, AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple, Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

85. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte’s Web, EB White (****)

88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Mitch Albom (***)

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection, Enid Blyton (**)

91. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks

94. Watership Down, Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet, William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl (***)

100. Les Misérebles, Victor Hugo.

20% HIGHSCORE

How many have you read?

To buy any of these books: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/?a_aid=SophieCharlotte

The Road vs. I am Legend

I am Legend and the Road are both post-apocalyptic fiction and both are so different that I can't really portray it in writing.

I did have a favourite. A very clear favourite. I may show signs of bias in the review due to the fact I do prefer one of them, but reviews are factories where facts go in and little packets of bias come out.

I am Legend is a book where everyone has been destroyed by an illness and come back as a vampire (apparently it's very early vampire fiction and trust me it's not Twilight). The Road is about a father and son travelling to the sea in a world where we've run out of oil. And oh my is it depressing.

I am Legend is something I enjoyed reading.  Nothing much happens, I find, in post-apocalyptic fiction because books are about people and relationships, and the characters are the only ones who aren't dead. But Matheson deals with that quite well, with the vampires and all that.

The main plot is where the Robert Neville, the protagonist, tries to find a cure to the disease and spends time researching this. However, Neville gets drunk a lot of the book and is alone the rest of the time because of the trauma he went through which becomes clear through out the novel. I found the pacing a little too quick towards the end when things start to happen which I thought was a shame because overall the book is really quite good and really well pulled off.

The Road, however, is a massive juxtaposition compared to the glamourous world of the vampire. It's the most depressing book I have ever read. There are a lot of positive things about this novel. The writing style is ever so clever. There are no speech marks in the novel as there are only really two characters so if one person isn't talking the other person would be. The speech is very monosyllabic and simple and then the next sentence will be a Fitzgerald-like complicated sentence.

But the "good guys" thing was shocking, harrowing and utterly haunting. The Road is one of those books that you read but stays with you for a really long time afterwards. It's brilliantly written but it's so depressing I wouldn't recommend it. I'm sorry.

I am Legend trumps The Road. By a long way. The Road is just so depressing as a novel and I am Legend is quite enjoyable, but they're not my favourite books of the haul. Both are brilliantly written but easy to read which is unusual. If you want a beautifully written book, I'd recommend either.

I am Legend Links:

Book Depository Link: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/I-Am-Legend-Richard-Matheson/9780575079007?a_aid=SophieCharlotte

Goodreads link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14064.I_Am_Legend

The Road links:

Book Depository Link: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Road-Cormac-McCarthy/9780330447546?a_aid=SophieCharlotte

Goodreads link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6288.The_Road