Everless by Sara Holland

4.75 Stars

I AM SHOOK. PLOT TWISTS GALORE

Book Rating:  High PG

Language:  G

Sex:  PG  (Jules does make-out with a person whose name shall remain anonymous).

Violence:  High PG  (There’s a lot of blood, someone is stabbed in the chest, another’s neck is cut open. I’d consider it more like Narnia-esque violence).

Drug/Alcohol Use/Abuse:  G

            

            This book is so good. And not just good in the sense that the plot and characters are interesting, but good in the way that makes you feel like you’re somewhere else—like you’re only a visitor in your own world because the one from the book has totally and completely immersed you.

            

            The story takes place in a land called Sempera where seventeen-year-old Jules lives with her weakening father. It’s a world where time is considered a precious commodity to the elite few who are willing to pay for more. For most in Sempera, however, time is merely an idea, a few drops of blood that can be sold to see them through the next week. When Jules gets the opportunity to work at Everless, the palace she and her father were forced to flee ten years earlier, she jumps at it, despite her fears and hatred for the elite Gerling family.

            

            There are so many great things about this story, but what really hooked me was Jules’ character. It’s difficult now in YA to find that perfect balance between a total “Mary-Sue” character and a character whose only qualities are her toughness and emotional detachment. Sara Holland seems to achieve this balance. Jules is a tough character. She had to work hard for everything she got and it showed in her actions. This wasn’t all of her character though. Jules was also friendly and personable. She cared deeply about other people and how those people viewed her. She was hard-headed, a bit naïve at times, but never claimed she was all-knowing. There was one scene at the end of the book where Jules was witness to a death, a sudden death, and she reacted to it like a normal human being—by screaming. (Honestly, most people would probably either be too shocked to say anything or let out a cry/scream like our girl Jules did). She was an all around believable character who maintained a sense of purpose up through the very last page.

While on the subject of character, I thought Liam and Roan Gerling were both done well. I think what I like most about the brothers were their realistic relationships with Jules. Growing up, the three of them had been childhood playmates. Roan had always been the energetic and personable one whereas Liam was cold and withdrawn. I ADORED how Holland portrayed Jules’ infatuation with Roan. It was childlike and dreamy. Many authors would fall into the trap of making this childhood love the main romance from the very beginning, but I had a list of three people Jules could have ended up with and each pairing was given relatively the same amount of build-up. (This book is romance-lite™ which I appreciate more than you know). Additionally, I enjoyed the development of Liam’s character and development of Liam through Jules’ eyes. He went from “If you ever seen Liam Gerling, run” to a guy with redemptive qualities.

This isn’t a very happy story, but if you know me you’ll know I’m a sucker for that sort of thing. It made me think about what I would do in a situation where I could “bleed” my own time in order to afford my next meal. Would I do it? Would I die slower from starvation or would I give up the last year of my life for one last meager meal? How could you decide? I adore novels that represent a stark contrast between the classes because at times it seems all too real. It’s just you average girl-finds-her-courage-in-an-oppressive-world kind of story. (But one that’s done really well).

Adding to the reality of it all, I really enjoyed the relationships that were built throughout the story, I’ve read a lot of poorly written books lately and the relationships are always focused on the main character and her love interest(s). I always think of Bella Swan in this scenario. Her relationships were strictly isolated to Edward and Jacob. Her friends from school were practically non-existent because Stephenie Meyer didn’t build the friendships that would have made Bella an infinitely more compelling character. What I loved about Everless was that Sara Holland didn’t just build the relationships with Jules’ potential love interests, but she also gave her friends in Ina Gold, Alma, and Laura, and gave her mentors such as Caro (Forgive me if I butcher the spelling of names. I listened to the book and didn’t read it). Jules was able to connect with all sorts. Not only this, but the relationships were built realistically and they took their time to build from wobbly first impressions into trusting friendships and mutual understanding. PLUS, JULES WASN’T CONTINUOUSLY LUSTING AFTER ANY OF THE BOYS. (Except for Roan, but he was her childhood love, so can you really blame her)?

The only thing wrong with the story, if I were to be nitpicky, was the fact that the first several chapters fell into the unfortunate circumstance of info-dump. It took me a good while to truly understand the world and the whole concept of “bleeding time.” I suppose it was a difficult concept to explain in the first place, such as how it came to be, so I’m not entirely sure if an info-dump was avoidable in the first place.

I listened to this on Audible because sometimes they decide they love me and give me a free book and month. I didn’t enjoy the narration but felt like the story was all that really mattered. I’ll definitely be trying to get my hands on a hard copy within the next few months. I enjoyed the story enormously.

"The memory of our expulsion from Everless comes back to me in scattered images, bursts of sound and heat. I remember Liam shoving Roan toward the hearth, a moment of stillness like the space between lightning and thunder.”

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Hail and farewell,
Lauren

The A.B.C. Murders

4 Stars

Book Rating:  PG

Language:  G

Violence:  PG (The most grisly of murders was the second one where we get a description of the dead body. Two of the murders are committed by blunt force trauma).

Sex:  G

Drugs/Alcohol:  G

            Boy, was this book a trip. I actually picked this book up because 1. There was a first edition copy sitting in my parents’ basement, and 2. I was required to read a book by a British author for my Brit Lit class—so really it was destined to be.

            I really enjoyed this story because of the enigmatic yet engaging characters. This story was driven by character and dialogue which I believe is what makes it so unique for a story written in the first half of the 20^th century. I’ve read a lot of stories written in the early to mid 1900s and what comes to mind are authors like William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Jack London all of who heavily rely on symbols and motifs to tell their stories. The thing about Agatha Christie is that her stories are told through hearing rather than seeing. The dialogue is what drives the story forward which is incredible considering the amount of characters that are used as valuable players in the plot.

            

            The premise for the story was exquisite. I love a good psychological tale that makes you question who the murderer is, what the murderer’s motive is, and how the murderer was able to let him or herself get to the point where they were able to kill without any sense of remorse. Agatha Christie was so ahead of her time as far as delving into the mind of a madman. The only real reference she had for serial killings was Jack the Ripper in the 1800s. The notes from the killer to Poirot were reminiscent of the killers of the 70s like The Zodiac Killer or BTK. She was writing about a killer’s signature before it was even a common term. The novel explored the mind of a serial killer before the name was introduced.

I went to see Murder on the Orient Express last year and loved it. Other people didn’t like it because it seemed to drag on. The fun part about Agatha Christie’s stories though are that despite surrounding murder and mayhem they are not grisly but instead are conscientious of minor details and building relationships before cracking the cases wide open in the final few chapters. The A.B.C. Murders was exactly that. What was interesting was that the murderer was brought into close contact with Poirot and Poirot even learned to trust him. I never suspected the true killer until it was revealed in the end. Christie does such a marvelous job with her reveals. They’re lengthy, but everything is explained before being tied up with a nice little bow. Sometimes mystery authors have trouble tying down their big reveals without it being a total information dump. Agatha Christie’s novels should be used as a point of reference for writing really satisfying reveals. I didn’t feel like it was too much, it managed to stay casual, and it completely took me by surprise. (I somehow fall for the Agatha Christies plotlines all the time).

      

      Plus Poirot in and of himself is entertaining. He and Captain Hastings are just like a modern Sherlock and Doctor Watson.

“To say a man is mad is merely unintelligent and stupid. A madman is as logical and reasoned in his actions as a sane man—given his peculiar biased point of view.”

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Into That Forest by Louis Nowra

2 Stars

Book Rating:  PG-13

Language:  PG-13 (Multiple uses of sh*t and b*tch, the only two that really stood out)

Sex:  PG (The girls witness a man doing “something rude” to himself. They witness the tigers mating. A man exposes himself to a young girl several times over)

Violence:  PG-13 (Grisly descriptions of killing animals and blood lust as the tigers and girls tore into carcasses. Whaling descriptions)

Drugs/Alcohol:  G

            

            I wanted to like this book. I really did. I spent money on it even when I told myself I couldn’t buy anymore books. It was an interesting premise and the cover is gorgeous, how could I resist? I’m weak, okay? It just didn’t do anything for me. It was difficult to get into, it was difficult to keep going, in fact, it was difficult to finish. I debated putting it down and never picking it up again at 50% through. 

         

            I have a lot of beef with this book, but I didn’t hate it. The problem is, I can’t decide what exactly made it redeemable. It might have been the fact that it wasn’t afraid to talk about touchier subjects? I don’t really know; I’m just spitballing. Maybe I just feel like being generous.

          

            My first issue with the book was the dialect. The dialect was ridiculous. I hated it from the moment I started the book. The whole premise of the book was that when this woman, Hannah, was younger she lived with tigers in the wild and lost her language. Sure, that’s happened in other stories. Children are lost in jungles and found again, they have to relearn the norms and language of society. I just felt like Hannah definitely had enough years to learn how to speak properly. She was found again when she was about ten. She wrote down her story when she was in her seventies. Sixty years is plenty of time to relearn a language. She was around people speaking properly for years. She was around whalers in a city; she lived with a man, Ernie, until he died. These were all people who could speak. My problem with this was that she was talking about not having good grammar and language but the only bad things about her language were when she used me instead of my and were in place of was. AND THIS WAS THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE BOOK. It was constant and annoying.

            

            I get that this story was supposed to be an honest and realistic, but there’s a line. This book made me sick. The descriptions of the girls as they tore into their fresh kills were sickening. I usually have a pretty strong stomach, but I was disgusted. The girls would shove their faces into the bloody necks on the animals and tear out their throats and then the tigers would have their turn. I hate books and movies where all the animals die so this was a really difficult book for me to finish, especially because of how grisly the deaths were in nature.

            

            On top of the animalistic nature of the story, I wasn’t able to connect with any of the characters. They annoyed me more than anything. Hannah’s narration was draining and it just felt fake. I didn’t like her in the beginning when she was normal and I didn’t like her when she was feral. I felt like she was forcing Becky into doing the things she didn’t want to do time and time again. I didn’t like Ernie or Mr. Carsons. Becky was alright. I just wasn’t attached to any of them and really had no sympathy for any of them either.

           

            Lastly, the lack of chapters drove me nuts. I felt like I was forcing myself to get through something I didn’t want to get through. There were no definitive breaks in the story. I get that this is supposed to be a stream of consciousness type of thing and I’m cool with that as long as it’s a short story. But with this, a book that is less than two-hundred pages felt like it was twice that. It was just not a fun read altogether.

            

            ALSO. It took Hannah so little time to become feral. It was like two weeks and she was running around on all fours and tearing into the throats of animals. After the flood that strands the girls, Hannah automatically adopts the two tigers as her ‘parents’ and doesn’t even give a second thought to the issue that she and Becky are stranded in the jungle. The timeline for Hannah and Becky turning feral just doesn’t make sense.

           

            I feel like this is such a mess of a review, but this was a mess of the book.

“The lean-to were filled with tiger skins all nailed to the walls of hanging from the beams—all in different stages of curing, so it stank like a swap filled with rotting animals. I think I lost most of me language there. I mean, where are the word to explain what I saw?”

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Lauren

I Was a Snob...I'm a Little More Chill Now

              

              Recently, I had a conversation in my British Literature class that really ticked me off. We were talking about book to movie adaptations. If I were talking to these people five, maybe six years ago I would have vehemently agreed with them that movies desperately need to stick to the books and there is no room for interpretation. It should be the book in movie form and nothing else.

           

              Here’s where I disagree as my twenty-three-year-old self. I enjoy movies. A LOT. Films are made for entertainment. When I go to a movie, based off a book or not, I ask myself, “did I enjoy this movie?” If the answer is yes, then I say the producers succeeded in a job well done. For instance, superhero movies are a BIG thing right now. I’m not a huge fan because it seems like many of them are just constant streams of battle. (This isn’t true for all superhero movies, because Wonder Woman was lit and I will stick with that opinion until I die. I might even post a love letter to it). The point is, not all popular movies are enjoyable to me.

            

              Now, you might be asking yourself, why was Lauren so ticked off in British literature? What made her feel so passionately that she had to sit down at her computer and write up a blog post that no one may ever read?

           

              THE FREAKING HOBBIT MOVIES.

            

              As I stated earlier, I wasn’t upset because the people were talking about how good the movies were like most would assume. No, I was irritated because everyone hated them with a passion I didn’t know existed. I’m just gonna come out and say it. English literature majors are snobs. I’m two years away from getting my literature degree, I WOULD KNOW. People are entitled to their opinions and I support that wholeheartedly. You can hate The Hobbit movies, that’s fine. I happen to love them. Just give me valid arguments as to why you hate them. All my fellow classmates could come up with was that they didn’t follow the book as closely as they should have. That’s not a good enough reason.

            

              I could seriously write an entire post that would probably end up being five or six pages in standard MLA 8 format on why The Hobbit movies are great (I still might), but this isn’t what this post is about. Take a movie for what it is—a form of entertainment. How was the characterization? How did you feel about the acting? Was the movie split up well enough into action, comedy, and emotional response? How did you feel after it was over?

              I’m not saying that all movies based off of books should be more than just how accurately they portray that book, but other aspects need to be taken into account. For example, I find The Hobbit movies forgivable because the book literally had no characterization whatsoever and there was no real suspense. The movies added that. Then you look at Eragon which could have easily stayed in line with all the plot twists of the books, but instead the movie took an entirely new

direction that made it impossible for the events of the second book to occur. I still enjoyed the movie, I still watch it every once in awhile because it’s entertaining. Alternately, I love The Maze Runner movies. To be honest, the books bored me a bit. The movies get so much flak for not following the books, but I think they do just fine. It’s all about context, I suppose. (Plz don't come for me).

            

              I still think that movies should follow the books, but if the book itself is seriously lacking in characterization, action, and even the basic adventure structure, then I feel like it’s alright if aspects are added here and there. I enjoy movies. I enjoy books. I enjoy movies based off of books. I just feel like I’ve become more relaxed when it comes to movie adaptations because if they are enjoyable, who am I to judge? I can still read the book if I’m not satisfied in the end.

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Lauren

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

5 Stars

GET READY FOR MY FAVORITE CLASSIC

Rating:  PG

Language:  G

Sex:  G (Pretty blase. There are stolen kisses but it's all innocent)

Violence:  PG (I wouldn't say it's necessarily violent, I would say it's more intense than anything else. It deals with dark themes and has instances of physical and emotional abuse).

Drugs/Alcohol: G      

           Wuthering Heights has been my favorite classic for years so it’s very strange that I haven’t been able to sit down and write a review detailing everything I love about it.

           

            It surprises me that when the novel was first released it was ravaged by unconstructive criticism. For instance, in a review for the newspaper Atlas, an anonymous reviewer stated that it “casts a gloom over the mind not easily to be dispelled. It does not soften; it harasses, it extenerates….” (Extenerate, I just learned, is a term that means to eviscerate—which is also a term for disembowelment. This reviewer was ruthless). My only explanation as to why the book received so much hate in its early years was because the novel explored themes of darkness that they were not used to. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë’s novel, received praise upon praise. Though it still dealt with a serious subject matter and had its good dose of darkness, it was a book the people could still relate to. Wuthering Heights seemed to drip with darkness and despair and the people of the mid-1800s did not appreciate it in the slightest.

            

            See, I fell in love with this book because of its dark intonations. I loved Heathcliff as the dark, brooding, anti-hero; I loved the setting on the British moors with the wind and the rain; I loved Cathy for how much I despised her. Mostly I loved the forbidden, yet toxic, love between Heathcliff and Cathy. It was a consuming love that drove them both to madness. Logically, they could never be together. Cathy decided to marry for status and Heathcliff married for revenge, but their tragic love attempted to transcend these borders.

            

            This book is not nice. It does not detail the lives of the upper class living in nice sunshiny homes with servants at their beck and call. The Earnshaws have money, yes, but they are separated from society. Mr. Earnshaw adopted a young Gypsy boy and let his daughter run wild through the moors without supervision. These people are so removed from society that they have no real notion of how they should act. I could feel the distance by the treks made between The Heights and the town and between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. There’s rain, grit, mud…all sorts of unpleasantries that make the book feel so much more real. It’s not a happy story, but life isn’t happy either.

         

            Adding to that theme of unhappiness, I don’t quite like the way Heathcliff is portrayed in popular culture. Oftentimes he’s depicted as the brooding, handsome hero who just had all the wrong hands dealt to him in life. He is not this at all. We see Heathcliff as a child, growing up in a family where kindness was hard to come by after Mr. Earnshaw’s passing. The only kindness he received was from Cathy, a spoiled and at times indignant child. We see him grow into a man, in love with the girl he grew up with. We see Cathy marry Edgar Linton because of his social status and we see Heathcliff, heartbroken, fade into the background. In the end of the novel, we’re able to see how Heathcliff became the abusive and angry person he is. He hated Hindley Earnshaw who gave him nothing but years of belittlement and abuse. In the end, Heathcliff ultimately becomes the person he hated. Heathcliff was not created to be a person to be loved and sympathized with. Emily Brontë does something so clever with his character because she helps her audience see a man without any positive relationships for what he is. He’s broken, abused, and has no outlet for his repressed feelings that have only grown over the years. It’s heartbreaking, but did Heathcliff actually stand a chance growing up with Hindley and Cathy?

               

            Cathy and Heathcliff were interesting choices for main characters. They practically have no redeeming qualities, but I’m drawn to them nonetheless because of their horridness. It makes me wonder how two people, so entirely terrible, can find a love in each other. It kept me reading because despite not actually liking Heathcliff or Cathy all that much, I still loved them. It’s such a dichotomy. I hate them because they are both self-absorbed, vengeful, and completely disillusioned, but at the same time, I want to read their story because they’re interesting. They’re captivating characters.

          

              The contrast in this book is what makes it so entirely enchanting. There’s the contrast between the unpredictable moors and tumultuous Cathy (I still believe the moors are in direct relation to Cathy’s character. It’s as if she is the moors). There’s the contrast between Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship that offers no hope in the end and Hareton and Catherine’s relationship which offers recompense for the tragedy that is Cathy and Heathcliff. There’s always hope in the end that the next generation will do better than their parents. Catherine and Hareton are that hope.  

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