Yes, this maple syrup is super-Canadian, but maple syrup features in the book. So nyah.
Jessie desperately wants to get over her ex-boyfriend, and can't think of any way better than spending her summer in her mother's New York City apartment with her best friend Emma. There's even a potential new love interest on the horizon for her, Ben, one of the actors in her mum's play. The only thing that seems to stand in the way of her happiness is her relationship with her mother, which has always been difficult.
Finn has two major problems. One, he is in love with Sam, his best friend's girlfriend, and two, he doesn't know how to tell his dad that he finds the idea of working in insurance utterly boring.
Coincidence after coincidence has Jessie and Finn sharing scenes - but it seems like they will never properly meet!
It took me a while to get into Jessie Hearts NYC, because it's quite succintly written and I prefer a bit more detail to draw me in, but after I got to know all the characters I was hooked. I loved that Jessie and Finn keep bumping into each other. It might be a tad unrealistic, but it's so much fun (in a frustrating kind of way) to keep seeing them come so close to
talking only to go their separate ways!
I was also really interested in Jessie's complicated relationship with her mum. They don't relate to each other very well and this has caused problems throughout Jessie's life. Emma, Jessie's best friend, was a bit of an enigma, but I'm not too bothered because she has her own book!
I finished reading Jessie Hearts NYC over a month ago and it's really stuck with me, partly because of the relationship between Jessie and her mum, but also because it's full of vividly memorable scenes, like a good film (which it could be). New York plays a really important role in the story, providing a vibrant backdrop for all of the emotional drama, and even though I've never been there, it was easy for me to imagine the locations.
I would recommend Jessie Hearts NYC to those who would like a quick, romantic read, but also to those who love reading about difficult mother/daughter relationships. I loved Della Says: OMG! so I will definitely be reading Keris' other books, and to be honest, I'm ashamed it took me so long to read this one!
Franny and Alice are two teenage girls stuck in Merrycliffe-on-Sea, a seaside town so boring that it doesn't even have real hipsters. So far, they've survived the interminable dullness by sticking together. Nothing has ever threatened their friendship, even though Alice has an unfortunate habit of pulling other girls' boyfriends and an romantic-attention-span so short that she's been dubbed "The Worst Girlfriend In The World". But now, Franny is going off to college to do a BTEC and pursue her dreams of being a fashion designer, while Alice stays at their old school, all by herself.
At least they still have the weekends, and can keep up their tradition of sneaking their own drinks into Merrycliffe's dingy, terrible little bar, The Wow, to watch Thee Desperadoes, a band that sounds so bad the girls carry earplugs, but has a gorgeous frontman, Louis. He's been the object of Franny's lust for years and she believes that if he got to know her, he would quickly realise that they're soulmates, and forget all the other girls he's surrounded with.
And then Alice decides to set her sights on Louis...
I have always loved the little glimpses of friendships that we've seen in Sarra Manning's books - Edie and Shona, Edie and Poppy, Molly and Jane, Isobel and her clique, the Fashionistas girls, etc. They've played an important role in character development and fuelled the drama, especially in Nobody's Girl and Pretty Things. But they've never been the focus of the story in this way before.
I was expecting the friendship to be a side plot, while the romance was in the spotlight, because let's be honest, it usually is, but it was actually the other way around. I was surprised and delighted to find that The Worst Girlfriend in the World is all about Franny and Alice, even when they've fallen out.
I say delighted because Franny and Alice are delightful. They're funny and quirky and believable. They know each other better than they know themselves. And they're different - Franny dreams of becoming a fashion designer and is obsessed with sixties icons. She is obsessed with being creative and finding ways to stand out from the crowd - but at the same time she's shy and has never kissed a boy. Alice is mouthy and bold, dresses to look good and attract boys, and wants to be a hairdresser though her parents are making her finish her A Levels. It's always good to have contrasting interests and personalities and it made the drama seem organic and inevitable.
I loved the other characters too - Franny's classmates at college are a diverse and interesting bunch, and I thought Thee Desperadoes were hilarious, reminding me of all the terrible bands I saw play as a teenager (luckily I didn't have a crush on any of their members so I could just leave the room while they "performed"). Franny's parents are fascinating too - Franny's mum struggles with mental illness and her dad works as a long-haul lorry driver, so is often absent for weeks and weeks.
Merrycliffe is almost a character in its own right too. I enjoyed the small-town details that made it seem like a place that is both comforting and stifling.
The plot is remarkably unpredictable for a book that's obstensibly about two girls fighting over one boy - I was never sure what Franny was going to get away with and what was going to lead to more drama, which made it realistic. The romance that develops was signposted pretty early on, but I didn't mind as there was so much else that did surprise me!
In short: Sarra Manning does friendship. Yours truly swoons.
It's not often that I finish reading a book and want to start it again straight away, but I wanted to reread The Worst Girlfriend in the World immediately. It was basically perfect.
If you were blessed with a proof copy and you haven't read this yet, what are you waiting for? If you haven't got it already preorder it now, or rush to the shops on May 1st.
Have you ever fancied the same person as one of your friends? I never had any Franny and Alice type drama as a) I didn't really fancy anyone until I was 20, and b) I have really different taste to my friends!
Many thanks to Atom for providing me with a proof.
Warning: this book is the third in a series, and will inevitably contain spoilers for the first book, French Kissand the second, Kiss and Make Up.
So Edie and Dylan are back together again and seem to have achieved some level of stability. There's no more sneaking around and kissing other people - but there's a dark spot looming on the horizon. Edie is due to head off to London for university in September while Dylan has to finish his own degree in Manchester. To make the most of the summer, they decide to blow their combined savings and go on the road trip across the USA that they've always talked about. Across the ocean, with no friends nearby to help them blow off steam, spending long days with only each other for company, their relationship becomes difficult once again. Will they work past it, or finally break up for real?
The third in the trilogy, Sealed with a Kiss brings another change of tone and atmosphere. Whereas French Kiss featured just-out-of-school Edie playing hard to get with an equally difficult Dylan, and Kiss and Make Up was all about heartbreak, fighting, and lust, Sealed with a Kiss is about adulthood and big decisions. Edie's patience is put to the test as Dylan finally starts to open up and confront his past. I think this is handled really well, and shows how both characters have developed in the last few years.
In Kiss and Make Up we saw a few of Edie and Dylan's e-mails to each other, but in Sealed with a Kiss, Edie regularly e-mails Grace, who has taken over guitarist duties in Mellowstar and has a crush of her own. This was originally the set-up for Grace to become the new diarist in the J-17 column, and you can read her diary entries in the e-novella Diary of a Grace, though I'll warn you that it ends too soon! Sealed with a Kiss also features e-mails between Dylan and Shona, which I loved. I think that their friendship is one of the best in the series, much as I love Poppy and her girl gang.
But it's not all serious business as Poppy acquires an amusingly odd
boyfriend in Jesse, the band perform in front of an audience, and D and
Eeeds see the sights of America and enjoy being young and in love. There's plenty
of fun amongst the angst, though I always find it bittersweet as I know
the end is nigh.
The spine of my copy of Sealed with a Kiss is still unbroken, and the pages are only slightly warped, whereas my copies of French Kiss and Kiss and Make Up are worn and battered-looking. I haven't read Sealed with a Kiss that often, compared with the other two books, and I think that my reluctance to reread it comes partly from wanting to avoid the end. Rereading the first two books, there's always more to come, but although Sealed with a Kiss has probably the most perfect
ending that this trilogy could have, it's still an ending.
There are glimpses of Edie and Dylan in Diary of a Grace (or at least there were in the columns!), but Edie never picks up her diarist's pen again.
However, I know I've also avoided rereading it because I read the road trip section too many times in my mid-teens. It was originally a free-gift book, American Dream,
and I adored it, despite having missed both previous books and knowing
almost nothing about Edie and Dylan's history. Seriously. I reread it
every couple of months and took it on holiday with me a couple of times
just so that I wouldn't be without it.
[I know. Wasn't
there a library in my town? There is a library in my town! It's great!
But back then contemporary teen fiction books were these tiny thin
things that you could read six of in an afternoon - not an exaggeration,
I did this every third Saturday after my library trip. American Dream was far better than any of them.]
As you might imagine, by the time I got my greedy hands on the Bite edition of the trilogy in 2004, I knew American Dream almost by heart, and despite my love, I was kind of sick of it. So I read Sealed with a Kiss hungrily up until the part where I recognised the entries and then I flicked over the rest! I've read it again since but it was quite hard to make myself do it.
What I'm trying to say is that I hope the teens of today love this series as much as I did and read it over and over until they're nearly sick of it. I then hope they stop and go read something else for a bit before they return, and that they lend their copies to their friends, and buy more copies as presents for their younger cousins! I loved it as a teen, and despite its age and change of format, I think that it stands up well today, as a fun, addictive, fast-paced and romantic trilogy (plus novella). Dylan is still the ultimate book boyfriend, and Edie the coolest fictional girl in the world.
Warning: this book is the second in a series, and will inevitably contain spoilers for the first book, French Kiss
Edie has achieved what she once thought impossible - Dylan is her boyfriend! Unfortunately it's nothing like she anticipated - he's still moody and difficult and sometimes she misses the time when they were just friends. But when her trust in him is shaken and they break up, she's heartbroken. Just when Edie thinks she's over it all, she meets Dylan's beautiful, controlling new girlfriend Veronique, and becomes determined to get him back again - until Veronique's sly, brother Carter takes an interest in her... Kiss and Make Up is my favourite of the series to re-read; French Kiss' darker, deeper and naughtier elder sister. The college drama is replaced with personal angst as Edie tries to make up her mind about what she wants from Dylan. Yet again, Edie tries to date somebody else, but she struggles to stop cheating on the standoffish, smug Carter with Dylan, and lets Dylan cheat on Veronique with her. In most stories, I can't stand cheating, but Veronique and Carter are both such fantastically horrible people that I don't mind. There are few bad book boyfriends (although he refuses to let Edie call him her boyfriend) as secretively vicious as Carter, and his sister Veronique is an extraordinarily evil drama queen. They make excellent antagonists, and I just love reading about the havoc they wreak.
I don't think that it's quite as fast-paced as French Kiss, and the relationship drama does spin in circles for a while, eventually reaching an uncomfortable plateau right before the music festival, when of course it all kicks off again. Some of the secondary characters from the previous novel take on a more minor role (Nat, Trent, and to some degree Shona), but Edie finds a new best friend in wannabe-rock-goddess Poppy, whose entourage includes boy-mad bandmates Darby and Atsuko and shy, sidelined little-sister Grace (the girl who has a diary novella of her own).
If you loved French Kiss, you'll probably love Kiss and Make Up - it's got more angst, more lust, nastier villains and some undeniably hilarious moments. What Edie writes after meeting Veronique makes me burst out laughing every time!
There should be more books set at music festivals. I've only read two, ever - this and Festival, but it makes a great setting and a convenient method of getting parents out of the way!
This review is based on the 2004 edition - there may be minor changes in the 2013 release.
Edie Wheeler has just moved to Manchester with her parents and cat and is starting college for the first time. Everyone else there seems to know each other and she feels left out of everything. Spotting Dylan, a gorgeous art student, the boy of her dreams, only seems to make things worse as she feels sure she'll never get to know him. Frustrated with her lack of friends, Edie signs up for a photography class, where she is forced to work with Dylan, but she can barely speak in his presence and she doesn't have any good ideas. Dylan and his friend Shona just seem so much cooler than Edie could ever be. Then she starts talking to Mia, who is dating Dylan's friend Paul. It's a relief to finally have a friend, but Mia isn't at all helpful when it comes to her crush and when Dylan kisses Edie, then ignores her afterwards, she doesn't know what to do.
I've read this book so many times before that I've lost count, but when I received a copy of the cute new edition published by Atom Books I decided to read it and see how it holds up. I still found Edie to be a witty and engaging diarist. I like how she doesn't shy away from sharing the embarrassing things she does, and how self aware she is after she does something silly like throw a stereotypical teenage strop. Although she begins the diary as a nervous, self-conscious narrator, she stands up for herself when she needs to, even if it takes a long time for her to build up her resolve sometimes.
Of course I loved Dylan, as usual, but this time around he seemed more awkward, which actually made him more endearing in a strange kind of way. Edie knows what she wants, it's Dylan who is confused and flighty, and both of them act like inconsiderate fools when they're in the mood. I also still loved all the other characters - Shona still seems like a paragon of hipness, Nat and Trent are adorable (I always miss them in the following books, where they fade into the background). Josh, Edie's Dylan-substitute-boyfriend is endearingly deluded - I just wanted to take the poor boy aside and tell him to lavish his affections somewhere else. Villianous Mia's personal delusions are not so sweet, but I do feel sorry for her, and suspect that she wouldn't be playing games for attention if she had any friends.
The story is very fast paced, because Edie only writes when something has happened or to complain when something's on her mind. There are only 205 pages, and there is so much friendship and relationship drama in the first half of the novel that the pages fly by, and before long I was on the ferry with Edie, on the way to Paris for the photography trip!
Having read a previous edition, I was interested to see what changes would be made. Apart from the inclusion of an author's afterword, all of them are quite superficial - cultural references updated, sentences cut to improve the flow of the text - but it was quite weird to me to imagine Edie and Dylan walking around in 2013! Because I've been reading the 2004 edition about once a year since it came out, in my head I had them frozen in that time, wearing clothes that I thought were cool when I was a teenager. Art boys were better dressed back then, I'm afraid to say. Nowadays they all seem to wear the same checked shirts and skinny jeans and beanie hats (as described at one point in the novel) - I kind of preferred them in baggier jeans!
I would recommend French Kiss to fans of books featuring moody boys, friendship drama, and amazing kissing scenes. I've read hundreds of books since I read this for the first time, and I still think that French Kiss has some of the best kissing scenes of all time. The Louvre. The discotheque. The hotel room...
Our heroine, Jeane Smith, is a seventeen-year-old borderline-professional blogger.
Jeane has a fair bit in common with real-live fashion bloggers Tavi and
Gala Darling, especially when it comes to the activities she gets paid
for, but she's older than Tavi and younger than Gala and she's British.
Really British. She loves all things dorky, writing very opinionated posts, eating Haribo, and watching cute videos of dogs on YouTube. Although Jeane's career star is on the rise, her parents
fund the flat she lives in and she still goes to school, where
although it seems everyone follows her blog, they don't spend any time with her outside of class.
Her only friend at school is her boyfriend, Barney, though their
relationship isn't the most romantic - to say the least.
Our hero is Michael Lee, eighteen and toeing the line of
conformity with his faux-hawk and Converse shoes. He's popular and
conventionally successful for a teenage boy - good at school and at sports. He lives with his parents and two little sisters and dates the
popular and beautiful Scarlett. Everything changes when he starts to suspect
that Barney and Scarlett might be having an affair, and decides to tell Jeane.She doesn't believe him until Barney and
Scarlett make their affections obvious and several dramas later,
somehow, Jeane and Michael end up kissing. And they just can't stay away from each other after that...
I'd been excited about this book ever since Sarra first described it, years ago, and as soon as it was announced that it would be published this year, my excitement went into overdrive. Every time I opened a jiffy bag and didn't find my copy of Adorkable within, I was a little bit disappointed. And then, on the glorious day when it actually arrived, I squealed and did a victory dance. I'm not sure how getting a book you were expecting anyway is a victory, but yeah. It was not much like this. But it was joyful.
I had no idea until I recieved my copy that there would be two narrators. At first I was a bit disappointed, because I often find books written from alternating perspectives to be missing some magic. Either one narrator is a lot more convincing than the other, or the alternating perspective means that I can't really get into the head of either character properly. However, neither of these issues plagued Adorkable. I liked both Jeane and Michael's voices and I felt that it switched between them at just the right moments. I also thought that they both developed equally over the course of the novel, so it was well balanced.
I loved Jeane and Michael's characters - neither of them are immediately nice but I thought that was realistic. Teenagers are not very nice! I was fairly nice and thoughtful for a teenager and I was still a bit of a knobhead 70% of the time. There's no instalove in Adorkable, as they bicker and fight and bicker some more. I really liked that they were both quite arrogant characters. Jeane is a breath of fresh air in a genre filled with girls in with faltering self-esteem. Both Jeane and Michael's families feature in the story but their influence is not overdramaticised, which I really liked. Jeane's family history is sad but she's not traumatised, it's just something she has to deal with.
I also adored the secondary characters - especially Barney and Scarlett.
I liked that the story was kind to Scarlett - it would have been easy
for it to be mean and it wasn't. There is also a cameo appearance from a couple of Guitar Girl characters. Complete tangent - Guitar Girl characters have cameoed in at least three other books now. When are we going to get some Diary of a Crush cameos? I know Edie or Dylan is extremely unlikely, but how about Poppy? Mellowstar are mentioned in Guitar Girl but she never appears. Or her boyfriend from Sealed With A Kiss, Jesse, because he's hilarious. Or maybe Darby and/or Atsuko, boy-chasing? ANYWAY...
Twitter plays a pretty important role in Adorkable and I was really pleased with the way it's presented. It's not used in a gimmicky way at all, it's completely realistic in my opinion, and that's quite refreshing. There were quite a few novelty books published in the early '00s using text messaging and/or e-mail to tell the stories and happily Adorkable is nothing like those.
Other things I loved in Adorkable include: the dialogue (I heart Sarra Manning's dialogue, forever and ever and ever), the feminism (particularly in relation to matters of the physical nature, ahem), the descriptions of Jeane's outfits, and Michael Lee! Although I have enjoyed every book Sarra Manning has had published, no love interest has ever matched the standards of the first. Dylan is still the original and the best fictional boyfriend, but Michael Lee isn't a bad number two (on the Sarra Manning only list of course, on the All Books list he's number three, behind Noel DuBoise, obviously). He's funny and a bit conceited but also down to earth and he's not afraid to take action. Cue girlish sigh.
It took me about six days to read Adorkable and I have to admit that at times I
was trying not to read it so fast as I didn't want it to be over! Adorkable surpassed my hopeful expectations and is a book I'm sure I'll read over and over again. I've run out of other things to say so I'll just finish by saying: if you have the vaguest notion that you might enjoy Adorkable, buy it or borrow it, and read it ASAP!
This is my sixth Top Ten Tuesday post. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is "Top Ten Books I'd Recommend To Someone Who Doesn't Read X", and I decided to entitle my list:
Top Ten Books I'd Recommend To Someone Who Doesn't Read British YA
I wasn't sure at first what to choose as my 'X'. I don't consider myself expert enough on the subject of YA in general to pick ten books out for someone who isn't a fan already, but then I remembered that I have a much longer history with British YA than with just YA in general - going all the way back to when I was an actual teenager!
As much as I love reading about all the things they have in the USA that we don't have here, like alternative high schools and proms and New York, British YA (or 'teen fiction' as it is more commonly known here) is my favourite. Opening up a book in which young people spell colour with an 'u', go charity shopping (not thrifting), heap scorn upon (or secretly love) The X Factor, and/or drink tea more often than coffee feels like coming home. Fictional British teenagers are also much more likely than fictional American teenagers to go to house parties/sneak into nightclubs and get drunk. FACT. Plus (mostly thanks to Sarra Manning) we have the hottest hot indie/art boys!
So if you like bad behaviour and British slang, read on, and read more British YA/teen fiction! Most of these are contemporary, because that's what I read (and write) most of the time, but I've tried really hard to pick out a couple that aren't.
1. Let's Get Lost, by Sarra Manning
Isabel is the Queen of Mean at her school, and is determined to stay at the top, even after her mother dies. Then one night at a party, she meets Smith, a ridiculously drunk student who mistakes her for his friend, and everything starts to change. I am planning to re-read and review this book soon, I keep thinking about it. (Okay, now I have retrieved it from its usual shelf and put it on my TBR, hehe)
2. Della Says: OMG, by Keris Stainton
Della gets asked out by her crush, but then the next day, she discovers that her diary (in which she was constantly writing about how much she fancied him) is missing. She gets a Facebook message with a photo of one of the most embarrassing pages, but she doesn't know who's got it. I enjoyed this so much, and am considering re-reading it soon as well!
3. Hard Cash/Moving Out, by Kate Cann
Kate Cann is really, really good at writing convincing teenage boys. Moving Out, originally titled Hard Cash,is the first in a trilogy told from the point of view of Rich, a broke art student, who is fed up of living with his similarly-poor parents and is in lust with posh Portia. Kate Cann is also well known for the Coll and Art trilogy, and Fiesta is a great summer book, I've read it several times. I also enjoyed Leader of the Pack.
4. French Letters and French Leave, by Eileen Fairweather
Okay, if you're not British or know nothing about the Eighties you may not understand half of the references in this pair of novels. But that's okay, because there are SO MANY jokes that there will still be plenty left for you. Maxine Harrison is a girl who decides that it's a good idea to tell her French penpal that her dad is the Head of London Transport, when actually he's a bus conductor. Then he announces that he's coming to visit.
5. Noughts & Crosses, by Malorie Blackman
In a world dominated by the dark-skinned Crosses, a rich Cross girl and a poor pale-skinned Nought boy dare to be best friends and maybe fall in love. A gripping and devastating thriller.
6. Extreme Kissing, by Luisa Plaja
I read this a couple of years ago, and I don't know why I haven't reviewed it yet! It's a really fun story about best friends Bethany and Carlotta, and a madcap day out in London that changes everything. The twist at the end I did not see coming, and I keep remembering it and thinking how genius it was.
7. The Diary Of A Crush Trilogy, by Sarra Manning
Because although, objectively, they're not as good as Let's Get Lost, or Nobody's Girl, once you fall in love with Dylan you will never be the same again. Art boys forever!
8. Girl Meets Cake, by Susie Day
Another one with loads of cute boys, Girl Meets Cake is a light-hearted read about a girl who invents an imaginary boyfriend to make herself seem cooler. All goes well until her friends start sending him messages, and she starts getting e-mails from someone calling himself Mysterious E.
9. Witch Child, by Celia Rees
This was a bestseller when I was a teen. It's about a girl in the 17th Century called Mary who has to leave her home after her grandmother is found guilty of witchcraft. She goes to America with the Puritans, but finds herself in trouble when people in her new town start accusing her of being a witch.
10. Night School, by C. J. Daughterty
This is cheating somewhat as it's the last book I read! Middle-class miscreant Allie is sent to a posh British boarding school, where at first everything seems very elegant and proper, but secrets abound.
Interview with Malorie Blackman at the Cheltenham Literature Festival 2011.
Callum and Sephy have been best friends ever since they were small children. Callum is a light-skinned Nought, poor, underprivileged, living in a small house with his parents and elder brother and sister. Sephy is a dark-skinned Cross, the daughter of a wealthy politician, living in an enormous mansion with her parents and sister. Their mothers were friends once, yet now they're not supposed to see each other, and so for the last few years, Sephy and Callum have been meeting in secret.
Now Callum has won a place at Sephy's school, with a few other Noughts, and Sephy is delighted. She doesn't understand why Callum might be nervous, why he gets angry when she talks to him in public, even when she gets in trouble. Callum is worried, not only because the other Noughts at school are dropping out, but because his brother might be getting involved with terrorists. Will Callum and Sephy ever understand each other? Will they even survive long enough to be happy?
The first thing I have to say about Noughts & Crosses is that it's definitely a thriller. I was gripped right from the start and I barely put it down in the couple of days it took me to read it, but then it took me several more days to recover from the ending, I was so shaken and generally depressed by it. Needless to say, if you like uplifting reads, this might not be for you. If you like to be absorbed by a book and to spend time figuring out how you feel about the characters and their choices, then I think you should pick up Noughts & Crosses.
Being a thriller, it's fairly light on the description, but we still get to know the two central characters well as they narrate alternating chapters. Most of the other characters remain quite enigmatic, but I don't think that's a problem. Sephy and Callum are children/teenagers so their parents, siblings, and teachers wouldn't explain things to them all the time, or talk to them about what's troubling them.
I really liked that the differences between Sephy and Callum weren't as simple as one being a rich Cross, and the other being a poor Nought. Although Sephy is immature and spoilt, like everyone assumes she is, her parents marriage is falling apart, and she isn't close to any of her family members. Callum, on the other hand, starts off as a member of a tight-knit family group, and it's his family loyalties that lead him to make bad decisions.
The one thing that bothered me about Noughts & Crosses is that the culture is exactly the same as our present one in the UK. An alternate history was hinted at a few times, to explain why Crosses were dominant. In this history, Africans, rather than Europeans, had spread out across the world, pillaging and colonising, and if this had happened, the unnamed country in Noughts & Crosses probably wouldn't have the same political system as the UK with the Queen and Prime Minister, people probably wouldn't be spending pounds, important people probably wouldn't wear suits, black probably wouldn't be worn to funerals and so on. Maybe the author thought that flipping black and white was enough of a change and that altering the world of the story too much would alienate readers, and she didn't want to get bogged down in the details that an alternate history novel would demand, but a few imaginative changes could have made the world much more vivid and interesting for me.
I wouldn't recommend Noughts & Crosses if you're looking for a detailed alternate history, but I would recommend it generally to anyone looking for an absorbing read. It's a novel about racism, seeing things from both sides, the fact that things are far from black and white (expressed beautifully as we see how different characters interpret and react to the same situation), and most interestingly, growing up.
Who grows up the most in the novel? I actually think it's Sephy, though she's by far the most immature character for most of the story. Callum only goes so far in maturing, and then he sort of abandons the notion of seeing the world in its true complexity, though he never goes as far as his brother Jude. If you've read Noughts & Crosses, what do you think?
Noughts & Crosses is the first in a four-part series of novels. The edition I read also included the short story 'An Eye for an Eye', which is set after the events in Noughts & Crosses, but before the sequel, Knife Edge. The other two books are Checkmate and Double Cross.
See also: Get Writing with Malorie Blackman - a video recorded for BBC Blast filmed in one of my local libraries and on the high street! (I got so excited over this, because I am a nerd)
Joe's whole world changes when he meets Candy outside King's Cross station. She's so beautiful and charismatic, and he becomes happily obsessed straight away. Even when he meets the terrifying Iggy, who easily intimidates them both, he doesn't want to believe that there's something strange going on. He doesn't care that she could be dangerous, that dangerous things could be happening to her. All he wants is to spend more time with her, but she's already made a big commitment to something else: heroin.
I found Candy to be extremely easy to read. That's the thing that struck me the most about it. Sometimes, when I'm reading a book, I feel the urge to take a break from it, to get my entertainment in other forms - listen to music or watch a film. Not so with Candy. The writing just flows. I don't think the book would work if it didn't have this quality, making it compulsively readable - Joe knows his relationship with Candy is doomed, we know it's doomed, but we still want to know how it all comes to an end.
The characters are vivid, if not especially original - Joe lives a pretty quiet life in the suburbs with his father and older sister, Gina. He plays in a band, The Katies, although he lacks the passion of the other band members. Candy ran away from the same town, making a few naive and sad mistakes that lead to her downfall.
The story is quite simplistic, there aren't many twists and turns, and I think it's Joe's style of thinking that drives the story. He acts impulsively, going against good judgement, but we can understand why he does it, although I don't think Joe loves Candy as much as he loves the idea of her - they barely get to know each other.
I enjoyed reading Candy, though I don't think I'll read it again. I would recommend it, and I would like to read more books by Kevin Brooks in the future, but the world of Candy isn't a place I can see myself wanting to return to.
I can't think of a better way to summarise this short thriller than its opening line: 'Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm night in early June, when one of the colleges in Oxford was holding its summer ball.' Chris is a seventeen-year old boy, working for Barry Miller and his company, Oxford Entertainment Systems. He is between childhood and adulthood, planning on going to university, and still dealing with the break up of his parents' marriage. The girl who becomes the catalyst that changes everything is Jenny, a few years older, more mature, but with a much more unstable life, living in a squat and taking odd jobs. When they find each other, everything becomes sweeter for both of them, but only for a little while, before Barry Miller confides in Chris that there is a man called Carson after him, and asks him to help him build a hideout near the canal.
Chris is a character who rushes into everything. From his romance with Jenny, to the conclusions he jumps to about Barry, he barely takes a moment to question what he is doing, to question himself. He decides to see the world as black and white, even when it makes no sense, even when everything in his own life is about shades of grey. He is the sort of person that I find very frustrating, but that makes a good character. Jenny is more sympathetic, wiser, but more tragic, especially as Chris gives her hope that her life can get better. The reader knows how the story will end at the start and I think this gives the book a strange kind of energy. I knew the two young protagonists were hurtling towards certain doom, even during the happy times, and that made me want to jump into the book and change things (a bit like a Brecht play).
I enjoyed reading The Butterfly Tattoo, but I was glad that it was such a short book. There was far too much telling, and not enough showing, and it was based around the dreaded insta-love, at least on Chris' part. I thought it was pretty clear that Chris was in lust rather than in love because he was infatuated with Jenny from the start, without knowing anything about her. Jenny doesn't get as obsessed as quickly so there is a good contrast there, but I would have liked to have seen him realise that he wasn't really in love with her, or to at least have the author acknowledge it. As for the ending, I predicted what would happen a few pages before it did, but it was still quite creepy and poignant.
The Butterfly Tattoo is the only book I have read by Philip Pullman that isn't part of the His Dark Materials trilogy, and I was a bit disappointed by it. I think that as it is far shorter than any of those books, it's intended for a much more reluctant reader than I have ever been. I can see it appealing to teenagers who don't read a lot, with its dark subject matter and tight plot. However, The Butterfly Tattoo was originally published in 1992 (as The White Mercedes), reissued in 2005. Nobody in the story has a mobile phone, and if there had been mobile phones, all the disasters in the plot could have been easily averted. I found this distracting enough! The film adaptation was produced in 2008, and I haven't seen it, but I would like to find out how they dealt with this issue.
Introduction to the book by Lennie Goodings, Publisher at Virago.
When I opened the First Look jiffy bag from Virago last month to find a copy of Living Dolls, by Natasha Walter, I was really excited. I had read quite a few reviews of this book online, and was intrigued. I was also pleased to see that the Virago Book Club would be including non-fiction titles, it's great to see such a variety of works chosen for the group so far.
Living Dolls is a book that argues that society in the UK is moving backwards, actually becoming more and more sexist, as suggested by the subtitle 'The Return of Sexism'. It is divided into two sections. The first, 'The New Sexism', looks at the impact of the sexist aspects of our culture on girls and women, and the second, 'The New Determinism', examines the so-called science used to justify maintaining the status quo.
I found the first section the most interesting as Natasha Walter spoke to many different people to find out what they thought about the increasingly sexualised culture, and what impact it has on had on them. The descriptions of the way in which the marketing of toys and clothes to little girls has changed recently really resonated with me. I remember that I, growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s, practically lived in jeans until the age of 18. The Disney store didn't arrive until my sister and I were already too tall for the princess costumes. As a small child, I used to stare enviously at the racks of velvet or chiffon dresses hanging on racks in the formal corner of the children's departments in shops, but I knew full well that I'd rarely wear them, they just weren't practical, whether I was running about the garden, climbing at the playground, or curling up with books. I didn't want to confine my everyday movements to activities that would keep my clothes nice. It's not as if I were a rebel either, there were very few ostentatiously girlie girls that I knew, jeans were cool. Yet girls today seem obsessed with pink. It's rare that I see a girl wearing jeans and no pink whatsoever, and I suspect that if I were growing up today I'd probably be as pink and frilly as the next wannabe-princess.
The second section is drier, as Walter questions the scientific method behind various psychological studies which have been held up in the press as proof of enduring and natural differences between the sexes. I was a bit shocked that I, who only did A Level Psychology, could easily pick out the flaws with the described studies before she did so in the text, and yet the press take the conclusions of the research at face value. One thing she did describe that I hadn't really thought of before, is the way that when female politicians are criticised for being unfeminine, or not attractive enough, it makes them seem less human, like they're breaking the rules of nature by having unperfect hair. I'd noticed this type of criticism before, and struggled to ignore it, but I'd never thought about it as making them seem inhuman, so that was interesting.
I do have a couple of criticisms of Living Dolls. Firstly, I thought that in the first section she devoted too much time to other people's opinions, and neglected to include as many of her own thoughts. I was often nervous, waiting to find out where the author herself stood, as she'd bring in an argument and quote various sources, but wouldn't say how she felt about it until several pages later. Although I don't agree with Melanie Newman's suggestion that Natasha Walter contradicts herself (I thought that it was perfectly reasonable for her to criticise mainstream pornography whilst acknowledging that there are alternatives to it) I can see where's she's coming from, as Walter gives so much space to general critique and doesn't discuss explicit sexual materials outside the mainstream, all she does is mention that they exist.
I also had trouble with (and this is where I do agree with Melanie Newman's review for the f word) Walter's idea that promiscuity is now seen as as an acceptable choice for teenage girls, and is even celebrated to the extent that it makes girls feel like they have to act that way. It doesn't ring true for me, I think the reality is much more complicated. It would have been interesting if Walter could have spoken to the girls she met in smaller groups, and asked them what they thought of the different possibilities, rather than just about what choices they had made for themselves. I would expect that some of those girls that proclaimed their desire for short-term flings and nothing serious would be (probably cruelly) critical of the girls that wanted long term relationships, and vice versa. Also, although the promiscuity of young women may be tolerated by society in the short term, they are still expected to start chasing the ring, the big white dress and the cradle, eventually. Let us not forget that 3 out of the 4 central women in Sex and the City, which is apparently a inspiration for the teenage girls quoted in Living Dolls, got married in the end, and that the whole series (and two films) revolved around their relationships, no matter how casual, with men.
It's a relatively minor issue, but I found the cover to be a bit strange - it looks slick and modern but it kind of contradicts the text with its image of a slim white woman's body, and the pink banner. I know book blog readers love to debate covers, so feel free to comment even if you've never heard of this book before!
I have to admit that it's difficult for me to judge how convincing Natasha Walter's argument is, because if she were so inclined as to find a choir to preach to, I would be in that choir. I agreed automatically with almost all her points as I studied media and cultural studies at university and have already read about a lot of the things she mentions in greater depth. However, I'm glad that this book has been published and promoted so well, as it is vitally important that people in general, outside academia, consider these issues that impact so much on all our lives. I read Living Dolls really quickly - I was done within a few days, which is unusual for non-fiction - so I expect that most readers would find it quite accessible and easy to read.
I'm going to do a related reading post because quite a few other interesting books were referenced by the author in this one, and there are also other books that I can think of just off the top of my head that are relevant, so watch this space!
6ft 3in 16-year-old Medve lives in a decrepit old hotel on an island in Devon, with her father and her younger sister and brother. Her mother and two elder siblings are elsewhere in the world, and Medve appears to be quite happily running things back at home, as much as they can be run with minimum effort, until a red-haired South African stranger, going by the name of La Roux, appears to disrupt things and drive Medve to frustration and humiliation.
Five Miles from Outer Hopeis a weird book. I quite often really like weird books, but ultimately there was too much that seemed to be missing from this one for me to rate it as anything above 'okay'. I enjoyed it for the most part, I didn't get bored, but I found it unsatisfying in the end, even a little bit irritating.
It's literary fiction, and the blurb is completely ridiculous. 'An instant classic of teenage self-discovery' it says, of a book I'd never heard of before and only read because I happened to pick it up in a shop! So when I turned the first page I was anticipating a certain level of pretentiousness, but happily, it's not all that pretentious. It is quite funny, in places, although some of the humour is of the gross out, vulgar variety, and I didn't really laugh more than once at the quirks of the different family members.
Unusually for literary fiction, I found the teenage voice to be really strong. Medve's character comes across really well in her narration. But there were far too many italics. Italics, in my opinion, should be used for occasional emphasis, but in Five Miles they were used so frequently they became pointless very quickly. Maybe the author was trying to make it look like Medve herself, thinking it was a cool thing to do or something, had written it down like that, but I just found it annoying. Otherwise I liked the style of the writing, it was well balanced between description, interior monologue, and dialogue, and there were some really great descriptive sentences.
I know why Medve was chosen to narrate the story - it's about her growing up and possibly falling in love - but to be honest, I found her to be the least interesting of the bunch. She's vindictive, has issues with her older sister Poodle/Christabel, and wants to be the queen bee in the family, as much as she refuses to admit it to the reader. Yet I was more intrigued by the almost-intellectual, devious, Patch, who Medve initially writes off as being needy. La Roux had a whole history that was continuously hinted at, sometimes briefly delved into, but never fully explored. I also wanted Big, Medve's father, to have a bigger part in the story. I didn't feel like I got enough of an idea of what he was actually like as a parent most of the time.
I was about to accept that this book was an overgrown snapshot-style short story (the kind I generally don't get on with), until I got to the italic section in the last few pages, which jumps into the future like an epilogue. It places the rest of the novel into the context of Medve's whole life, and raises more questions than it answers. This part just made the whole thing seem ever more odd and unsatisfying as a novel. A lot that I would have quite liked to read in more detail was just skipped over.
I don't think I'll be rushing out to try another book by this author, but other readers might really like it. If you do like what I call snapshot short stories, those that focus on tiny segments of characters' lives, then you might enjoy Five Miles From Outer Hope, especially as you do get to find out what happens afterwards in this one. It is a short novel with less than 200 pages, so if you're a fast reader you won't be risking much time.
We Had it So Good is a novel that has several main characters, but is focused on Stephen, an American who comes as a postgraduate student to Oxford in the Sixties. There he meets his future wife, Andrea, and her friends Grace and Ivan, and although he is scientifically-minded, he joins their hippie group and even starts to use his skills to manufacture LSD. It all goes well until he gets sent down (that’s Oxbridge for ‘expelled’) for tearing a page out of a library book, and is conscripted into the US army. Luckily for Stephen, Andrea is willing to marry him so that he can stay in the UK and avoid the draft, and so the novel follows this quartet as they grow up and move through life, finding careers, having children, and dealing with their family histories. Stephen and Ivan seem to find life the easiest, with families that are happy to look after them, whereas psychotherapist Andrea is trying to move on from her difficult childhood, and the glamorous, self-centred Grace is attempting to run away from her own past. The novel also features Marianne and Max, Stephen and Andrea’s children, as they begin adulthood in the present day.
I only have one real criticism. The story is told in slightly-disconnected scenes, which is a very concise method of storytelling, but I didn’t really feel like I had a full sense of what family life was like for any of the characters. Stephen’s story pretty much begins when he leaves home to go to Oxford, and Marianne and Max don’t get much childhood in the novel, just a couple of scenes. This may just be a matter of personal taste, but I like to see how characters interact, and learn how they feel about each other that way. They all have definite opinions of each other – Stephen can barely stand Grace, Grace can barely stand everyone else, Marianne is afraid that her mother will make her analyse things she believes just are, Max finds his father too loud – and you do get to see Stephen and Grace’s irritation in action, but not very much of Marianne negotiating conversations with her mother, or Max enduring his father’s loudness. My favourite scenes were those that involved interactions between Stephen and his father, Si. I liked that Si was even more straightforward than Stephen felt himself to be, and that this made Stephen feel and act slightly awkward around him. I would have liked to know more about Stephen’s mother and his sisters, but to be fair, Stephen is on the other side of the Atlantic to them for most of the novel.
A much more minor thing that bothered me was the repetitive reminders of certain things. I hadn’t forgotten that Stephen had tried on Marilyn Monroe’s mink stole as a child 100 pages, or even 200 pages later. I hadn’t forgotten that Andrea had only ever gone to bed with Stephen either, yet that fact was repeated over and over as well. I guess that I was supposed to feel that these things were playing on the characters’ minds but the reminders weren’t accompanied by much in the way of contemplation.
We Had It So Good was the first title to be selected for the new Virago Book Club, and I received a copy to review through the First Look programme. If I’d never heard of Linda Grant, and was looking at bookshop or library shelves to choose something to read, I wouldn’t normally be interested enough in the subject matter and time period to take it home. However, I have read good reviews of some of Linda Grant’s other books, and I have a copy of The Clothes on Their Backs on my TBR, so I probably would have read We Had It So Good eventually. I am glad to have been sent a copy to review as I got to read it much sooner!
I usually find books in which the heroine Keeps Getting It Wrong a bit annoying, but I really enjoyed Girl Meets Cake. It’s got enough quirk to compensate for the more predictable consequences, and when, about halfway through the book, Heidi starts getting e-mails from Mysterious E, I spent ages trying to guess who he might be. I wasn’t quite happy with who he turned out to be in the end, but I can’t discuss that here without spoiling the book!
I liked the character details. Heidi’s obsession with Mycroft Christie, a Doctor Who-esque time-travelling detective, was quite funny. I really enjoyed the conversations she had with him in her head. I liked that although Ludo was quite over the top, being one of those constantly energetic people, nobody described her as annoying. I wished that we got to see more of the friends interacting before they fell out, I felt that I just had to take Heidi’s word for it that they were really close, as they were all quite secretive throughout the novel, and spent much more time with their boyfriends than with each other. I also felt that the characters moved in and out of relationships a bit easily – I would have been exhausted by it!
I have to confess that I'm not a fan of the UK edition's cover. I think it's a bit young, I tend to associate covers of this style with books for 9-12 year olds (you can tell I've worked in a bookshop, right?) more than with teenagers. I think Girl Meets Cake is intended for younger teens rather than older teens, but still. Then again, I used to read Ros Asquith's books when I was in secondary school, and I had to visit the library almost daily to make sure I could get hold of the next one I wanted before someone else did, they were so popular - probably because of the bright colours and cartoons on their covers rather than in spite of them. That was the early noughties though.
However, in my opinion, the worst thing about the cover is the blurb. Which is far too short in any decade. I don't think it does enough justice to all the action that goes on in the book and the fabulous settings and range of characters. Girl Meets Cake has only 215 pages of story (although the typeface is quite small), but an enormous amount happens in that space, and it’s all a lot of fun. I would recommend this novel to everybody looking for a quirky, warm-hearted read, especially if you ever considered making up an imaginary boyfriend of your own. Did you? I did, but only for one second or two, before I realised that I'd have to deal with even more questions from the gossipy-girls who wanted to know all about my non-existent love life.
Festival follows four different people and their friends before and during Glastonbury Festival. 16 year old Leila has to beg her mum to be allowed to go, whilst 14 year old Holly reluctantly goes with her parents and little brother. Wilf has to sell his ticket, so he decides to jump the fence, as does Jake, who is supposed to be performing at the festival, but can't get in contact with his manager. The book is written in third person and switches the character it is following every couple of pages or so. At first the characters interact only with the groups they arrived with, but after a while the stories start to intertwine.
I really liked the way the stories all joined together in the end. It didn't seem contrived at all, which was refreshing, as sometimes novels with this format can seem more like a short story collection that's been awkwardly spliced together. The plots were believable as well, although I thought that Wilf and Jake had much more exciting storylines than the girls.
I did find it to be a bit of a slow read. I think this is because the characterisation is quite simplistic. It is not a very long book, and perhaps it suffers from the frequently changing viewpoints. I felt that there wasn't enough back story for the characters, and that they didn't have enough individual quirks. I also thought that the male characters were more interesting than the female characters, they seemed to have more developed personalities, whereas Holly always seemed to be stuck on the cusp of doing something exciting, and Leila switched between cautious and bold a little too easily.
This book has dated quite badly. It was published in 2001, and was probably written in 2000 because the line-up is from that year, and as you might imagine, the musical references are now a little off. Only a little though, the authors guessed quite well which artists would still be around in the years after the book was published, I'd actually heard of all of the performers mentioned. However, in 2000, mobile phones were a newer invention. Security at Glastonbury was much more lax than it is these days. Nobody takes a digital photograph in the novel. Leila mentions being born in 1984, making her three years older than me! I was expecting that it would have dated a bit, but I was reminded quite clearly of how much things have changed since I was 13. If this book is ever republished, it will probably have to be quite drastically rewritten first, which is, in a strange way, a bit of a shame.
I would recommend Festival to younger teenagers looking for a quick beach read. I don't think I'll read it again, but it was entertaining and helped me forget the January cold for a little while.
I used to set myself a challenge to read 50 books every year. This didn't work very well. The first year I didn't read enough. In 2009 I read over 90. Last year I sort of set myself the same challenge again, but having read over 90 in the previous year the pressure was off. I knew that as it was no longer my official 'job' to read and write books all day long (in 2009 I completed my MA), I had no chance of beating my previous total. I read 44 books in 2010. Well, if I counted all the picture books that I read whilst checking for scribbles and torn-out flaps (one of the perks of volunteering in a charity shop), I'd probably have read over 60. But I'm not counting picture books.
I'm not concerned by the drastic drop in numbers. I'm just bored with the 50-book thing. It's vague, but at the same time, too restrictive. For one, I always end up trying to find really short novellas and poetry books and graphic novels to read in the last 6 days of December. This used to work, but last time I found that I didn't have any left in my TBR, having used them all up in the previous years!
This year, I have decided to do several reading challenges instead, to make it all a bit more exciting. Not that reading books isn't exciting on its own, kids! I signed up for one challenge last year, the POC Reading Challenge. And I failed. I only read two out of the four books that I planned to read. So it will not be surprising to see that I am signing up for it again. All the challenges except for the POC Challenge, the GLBT Challenge and the British Books Challenge, were found via A Novel Challenge (though I'm sure the others are on there anyway), so the blogs that host them are new to me as well. Lots of new reading for the new year, yay!1
I am signing up for Level 2 again, but am going to try to read the maximum six books.
Entering in the Home Grown category - 12 novels, one a month ideally. This should be the easiest challenge ever because I have 27 to choose from already on my TBR, plus I find novels by British authors slightly easier to read than all other books. I will probably read more than 12 though, may even go for that 50 books Crown...what am I saying? No more 50 books goals! The books I currently plan to read are:
You can set your own goal for this challenge, so I am planning to finish Swordspoint and read the four books (I think? There may be more lurking subtly) I have on my TBR that qualify, which are:
Not strictly a challenge, described as a 'project' by the creators, this is a good excuse for me to read the feminist books that I have lurking on my shelves. I've already read A Room of One's Own (it's awesome, by the way, and really short), and I don't think I'll be able to read all of the others, but I own copies of three of them, and should be able to get another three from my local library.
I am going to aim for level 1 - Curious, and read three books. This should not be difficult as I have 27 fantasy novels on my TBR to choose from!
I am actually going to aim to complete the "Fun Size" YA Reading Challenge (20 books), because although I only have 15 YA books on my TBR, there is, of course, the library, and re-reads count for this challenge. There are a few YA books that I read in 2009 and haven't gotten around to reviewing because, although I remember that I thought they were really good books, I can hardly remember anything else about them. These include Love and Other Four Letter Words, by Carolyn Mackler, and Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta. I remember thinking that Saving Francesca, in particular, was really amazing, but I can't remember anything about it that I wasn't reminded of by looking at the blurb or flicking through my copy!
This should be another easy challenge, most of the books on my TBR are by authors I haven't read before. Authors I have read before I tend to get more excited about, so they're less likely to languish on my TBR piles. I am planning to read 15 new authors, but I will hopefully manage more than that!
My method for choosing challenges for this year involved going through the A Novel Challenge blog, opening the pages for challenges that sounded interesting in tabs, and then going onto Goodreads and working out whether I had enough books - or almost enough books - on my TBR to complete them. This one was actually one of the quickest to check, because all I had to do was read through the list of titles, no fiddling around with tags or shelves was involved. I am signing up for Level I - to read five books from the list. Although I only own 4 books that are on the list, I can get one of the others from the library. Plus, the books I have are:
and I read most of Swordspoint last year. I've actually finished the novel now, but I still have two short stories in the edition I have to read, and I don't count a book as read until I've read everything except the blurb, and the copyright page. Sometimes I read those too, but usually not. If it's a novel by a celebrity, I usually only read the copyright page. ;)
1 I've taken to reminding myself regularly of all the books I don't want to read, so that I feel less overwhelmed. Legal thrillers. Amish romance. Mills and Boons. New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. Anything by Todd McCaffrey.
