Book Review | Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Series: N/A
Published: 2010
Publisher: Hodder
Format: Paperback
Pages: 344
Rating: ★★★★

This story revolves around Samantha, Sam Kingston, a popular high school student who has the dream boyfriend and goes to all the best parties – life is going extremely well for her until she dies. She dies and has to replay that day that she died over and over again, but does it affect her to see the way people can be?

The first chapter is full of all the popular high school girl clichés of being a total bitch, having a boyfriend you are about to have sex with for the first time and just thinking you are the best thing since sliced bread, so to say. I inwardly sighed upon the first chapter, hoping that it wasn’t like this the whole way through – it most definitely wasn’t, and it was nothing like I thought it would be generally either. This is a book to make you think, this is a book to make you value your life and those around you a little bit more than you did.

Throughout the book, as Sam is reliving the very day she dies, she starts seeing things in a different light to how she would be prior. She sees the beauty in things, she sees how her behaviour has affected different people. All this emotion and realisation is written in such a beautiful way that makes it hard not to take parts of it in mould it into your life – it’s just wonderfully hard-hitting, if there ever were a relevant oxymoron for the description.

First impressions: This is going to be an awful high school chick lit, I can see it. Final impressions: Absolutely brilliant and emotional. Do not judge this book on face value, or the first chapter because it gets so much better than that.

Book Review | Legend by Marie Lu

Series: Legend #1
Published: November 2011
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Format: Kindle eBook
Pages: 320
Rating: ★★★★★

What was once the Western United States is now home to the Republic, a nation perpetually at war with its neighbours. Born into an elite family in one of the Republic’s wealthiest districts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for success in the Republic’s highest military circles. Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country’s most wanted criminal. But his motives may not be as malicious as they seem. From very different worlds, June and Day have no reason to cross paths—until the day June’s brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect. Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family’s survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias’s death. But in a shocking turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sinister lengths their country will go to keep its secrets.

The story was told in alternating chapters in the view of Day and June respectively and this made the book very balanced. June was of a more privileged background to Day, and seeing the story from two different perspectives made it quite an unbiassed read as you weren’t just seeing it from the poorer perspective as is usually the case. Admittedly the book did tend to favour the poorer communities in a rich vs poor stereotypical battle a little bit more, but you do tend to get a lot of that in young adult books – this levelled out at the end when a lot of things got revealed, but for the most part it was pretty equal.

Legend was a very fast paced book and everything seemed to happen in such a short amount of time, this suited the story very well as it is technically a tale of cat and mouse. You never spent too much time on one thing, and different things happened and were revealed at exactly the right times. The revelations in this book were brilliant, and  I can honestly say that I was not expecting any single one of them – I’m usually reading a book like this and predicting everything that you would expect to happen, but in this book I was so shocked at the truths and the twists that the story had to give. Maybe it was predictable, maybe I was reading it feeling as though I was there in the characters shoes and totally missed the obvious, but that in itself is amazing, as to be so absorbed in the characters means that something is obviously going right.

I fell in love with each and every character individually – even the “bad” ones – they were very relatable and felt so real. I felt as though I was there with them going along with every hardship and good time that they went through and when I connect with characters in that way I know I’m onto a good book as characters are everything to me.

June in particular was wonderful to read about, she was so meticulous in her thoughts and calculations that it was just great to read. This was technically a “murder mystery” of sorts, and having a character that thinks about evidence in the way that June did I find to be most interesting – in these types of books I like to wonder, I like to think about what might have happened and what everything adds up to, and with June’s thorough thought processes I thought this was highlighted brilliantly.

I picked this book up due to the high praise it was being given at the time due to the imminent release of the sequel “Prodigy” (which is now out), and I thought this book would perhaps be a little too overrated and wouldn’t exceed the expectations of the hype. I was wrong. It was amazing.

 

Book Review | Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

Series: Lunar Chronicles #2
Published: February 2013
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends
Format: Kindle eBook
Pages: 464
Rating: ★★★★

Halfway around the world, Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. It turns out there are many things Scarlet doesn’t know about her grandmother and the grave danger she has lived in her whole life. When Scarlet encounters Wolf, a street fighter who may have information as to her grandmother’s whereabouts, she has no choice but to trust him, though he clearly has a few dark secrets of his own. As Scarlet and Wolf work to unravel one mystery, they find another when they cross paths with Cinder. Together, they must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen who will do anything to make Prince Kai her husband, her king, her prisoner.

Ever since I read Cinder, I have been so excited for the next instalment of the Lunar Chronicles series – Cinder was the first fairytale retelling that I had ever read, and it would definitely encourage me to read more in the future. I had extremely high expectations for Scarlet due to this, and although I still loved it, I don’t think my expectations were really met or exceeded.

This is a fairytale retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, now although it is a fairytale, it isn’t one of the most predominant ones, or one with a lot of story behind it. There are certain aspects of Little Red Riding Hood which are noticeable in Scarlet, but there was nothing remarkable and there wasn’t a lot of progression on the retelling front like there was in Cinder. The book in itself was brilliant, but I can’t see as much of a retelling of the fairytale as I would like to, as this is a retelling.

Each chapter represented a different character, and throughout the story you were mainly following two stories, with the exception of other characters slipped in every now and then. You saw our newest heroine, Scarlet Benoit, on her search for her Grandma, and Cinder where she left off, with her newest companion “Captain” Thorne. I know I’m enjoying each story on its own when I don’t want to go onto the other story, and then get hooked on the next one, and this definitely happened to me upon reading. Both points of view were very fast paced, action packed and full of surprises, and that’s exactly what I love about these books and what makes me not want to put them down. I enjoyed reading about Scarlet and getting to know her and the characters revolving around her as much as I enjoyed following on from where we left off with Cinder – there wasn’t any particular story that I favoured.

The characters were as brilliant as ever. Cinder is like a new person, she’s so much stronger than she was at the beginning of the first book, and this development hasn’t just come on suddenly, it’s come over a series of unfortunate events and I love this. She acts with purpose and knowing but at the same time with an underlying doubt, which is what makes her so realistic and relatable – she’s also got a lot more sarcastic which I absolutely love. Her and Thorne’s friendship in the book was hilarious to read, their personalities were so different but when they conversed they just bounced off of each other ever so nicely. They were like the unintentional comedy duo that lifted the dark air that sometimes shrouded the book. Scarlet on the other hand, although I loved her story, I found to be quite frustrating. She was so naive and trusting of certain things and then wouldn’t believe someone when they told her the stone hard facts about other things, she is the typical character that in my head I would be screaming at to stop being so ridiculously stupid.  She would always have these doubts in her head but would then brush them away and say something along the lines of ‘but I can see it in his eyes’ – like that makes a difference.

On the topic of Scarlet, her and Wolf’s relationship just wasn’t believable in my eyes. Although it was necessary for once to have this relationship, I can’t whole heartedly believe it happened the way it did and in such a ridiculous space of time. Scarlet was always going on about trusting people and then just jumps on the first train with a stranger to save her Grandma, that’s just not how things work in the real world. It seemed too forced from both sides and her naivety played a massive role in this.

Overall, this was a fantastic sequel that could have done with a little bit more ‘fairytale’ and a little less naivety on the character front. It’s not a better book than Cinder as such, but it’s definitely a great read.

Book Review | The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

Series: The Darkest Minds #1
Published: December 2012
Publisher: Hyperion
Format: Hard Cover
Pages: 488
Rating: ★★★

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control.

The Darkest Minds is the first in a trilogy of books that are due to be released sometime in the future and I was dying to read this book as soon as I heard about it. It only got released last year in America and was gutted when I couldn’t get it in any bookstores here in the UK so decided to nab it off of Amazon – the effort I made into getting the book was not worth the book. This book grabbed me from the get go and I found it difficult to put down, this is only, however, on a storyline basis. The premise of the book was fantastic and well thought out, it was such a dark dystopian novel plot wise in the shockfactor – the fact that children as young as 10 were being taken to concentration camps was ridiculous and the effect that that would have upon them in later life is unimaginable. Some of the writing and characters however, I found left a lot to be desired.

The story was shown in a first perspective from our main protagonist Ruby Daly and this was probably something that in this book in particular I wasn’t keen on. This one sided commentary on the action wasn’t enough for me, I wanted to know what other people felt and how other people were dealing with the situations at hand. This was especially relevant when it comes to the secondary characters of Liam, Chubs and Zu – I felt as though I didn’t know them at all, that they were quite one dimensional and I certainly (especially at the end) didn’t feel anything for them in the emotions department. You saw how they treated one another, how they felt to a certain extent but I never found that I could empathise or sympathise with them in any shape or form. 

I found the relationship between Ruby and X (I shall say x because it isn’t instantly obvious) to be quite forced as well – it went from the occasional pet name, which he would actually say to every girl, to suddenly being smitten. It wasn’t needed in the story and I don’t think every YA novel needs to have a romance in it to make it work, I’m getting quite fed up the predictability of this element in the genre. The story would have worked just as well, if not better without this element as the characters could have focussed more on the bigger problems at hand (and there were enough of them) and grown as people and as a unit as a whole. The occasional description of his hair and the way his muscles looked was just unneccesary when there were bigger things to be worrying about like not being thrown into a concentration camp again. I can understand that they need to have some time to live normal lives but at that moment in time it most definitely wasn’t the right time and place.

The best character was one of the ‘bad guys’ in the book – their lack of characterisation and quick build up didn’t matter as this person was, I found, seen as the mysterious type. The way they spoke, the things they did, just really made me love but hate them as a character which is something that I adore in a book. I really want to talk about this particular character a lot more but it would be giving away a lot of spoilers, but I’ll just leave you with the fact that this character was my favourite.

I really couldn’t put into words how I felt about this book, and it took me a little while to even write this – I just feel as though Bracken let an amazing story slip between her fingers for something quite mediocre instead.