I'm kind of sad that this author never wrote any more YA books after this one, because this was fantastic. Despite being published in 2006, it really doesn't feel dated. Reviews for this one are mixed, but weirdly, people seem to be taking issue with the exact things I loved about it. HOW IT'S DONE is one of those cautionary sorts of stories, about a sheltered girl with religious trauma, who escapes from her fundie parents by running right into the arms of a sophisticated older man.
I remember reading this as a teen and thinking Michael, the college professor, seemed hot. Now, reading this as a middle-aged woman, I just thought he was gross. The way he gaslit Grace and was constantly trying to Pygmalion her into being what he wanted was so brilliantly done, but it was also really hard to read. Grace also has a toxic relationship with her friend, Liv, who is poorer and desperate to escape her abusive family situation. They were close when they were younger but their diverging paths have created rifts in their relationship that have led to resentment, jealousy, and even a little cruelty.
HOW IT'S DONE never shies from its difficult subjects, and the writing is spare and beautiful and emotional. I know some people criticized the heroine for being too naive, but a fundie girl in the 2000s with the internet still in its infancy, and her only real knowledge of relationships coming from pilfered bodice-rippers? Yeah, I think her naivete makes sense. Just like how it also made sense that her strict religious upbringing and home environment ended up creating the perfect storm of self-blame and internalized misogyny that unfortunately made her so vulnerable to a predatory older man.
This is not an easy read but it is a good one, and I loved it as a coming of age story as well as a teen girl's ultimate triumph over her own oppression.
Gen Xers read FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC when they were in middle school. I read WHITE OLEANDER when I was thirteen. Should I have? Probably not, but it was one of the first literary fiction books I read outside of school, which taught me that a book can be written for literary merit and still be fun and entertaining to read. Whenever I see one of those "list a book that defines you" lists, I really want to put this one, but I feel like people will see that and be like, "Dear god, what happened to YOU" when really, it's not so much the story or the plot that I relate to (thank god) so much as the writing, the use of art as solace, and the feeling of helplessness and loneliness.
This is one of my desert island books. Every time I read it, I get something new out of it, notice something different.
WHITE OLEANDER's writing is gorgeous and the callbacks, motifs, and metaphors are incredible, even outside of the context of the story, which is also amazing. Like, this is the sort of story that I would like to write one day: big, intense, epic, beautiful, heartbreaking, powerful, EVERYTHING. I'm always shocked when I meet someone who hasn't read it. If you can get past the trigger warnings, it feels like one of those stories that everyone could talk about, even if they didn't enjoy it. It's got a flavor. You either like it or you don't.
At its core, this is the story of a girl who is the daughter of a sociopath who commits a crime, who then wanders through the foster care system, ending up in a series of terrible homes, all awful in their own way. It's also an intimate character study and coming of age tale. Astrid is a very passive character at first, and the way that she is shaped and molded by her environment and the people she comes into contact with is subtle and well done. She is such a dynamic character, even when she lacks agency.
The child abuse is so hard to read, and I don't think there's a character outside of Jude from A LITTLE LIFE who was in such desperate need of a hug. But the story is just as amazing as I remember and these characters will haunt me for life. I love this book so much.
I read this book for the first time when I was in middle school, I think. It used to be one of my favorite stories. Maybe this is the lens of nostalgia speaking, but one of the things I love about older YA is that I feel like it was allowed to be crazier. Social media wasn't dictating trends and tropes back then, so authors could come up with the craziest concepts without worrying about how well it would do in the Goodreads Choice Awards or on TikTok.
I don't want to say too much about RUNNING OUT OF TIME, but basically, the heroine, Jessie, lives in an 19th century frontier village. A very minimal kind where they live hand to mouth, learn in a one-room schoolhouse, and forage and farm for their food. It's a hardscrabble life with the usual ups and downs until kids start getting sick, and her mother reveals to her a devastating truth that explains some of the other weird shit going on: haunted trees, strange tablets, and forbidden words that nobody else is allowed to speak.
I read this in less than a day. It holds up pretty well. Jessie is a strong and relatable female protagonist and she isn't too perfect. Sometimes, she's allowed to be mean or cowardly. I liked that nuance. There's some pretty obvious plot holes but then I remind myself that this was published in the 90s, and social media has made us all purveyors of the information super highway. Also, it was published in the 90s, so there's a lot of really random fat shaming that doesn't seem to serve any purpose. The 90s, ammirite?
CAUSE CELEB is kind of like if someone thought, I want another CATCH-22, but I want it to be about refugee camps instead of war, and also, make it chick-lit. And to that effect, it's actually a pretty decent book. In some ways, it actually ages better than BRIDGET JONES because of the author's prescience about celebrity endorsements and influencer culture. She brutally satirizes virtue-signaling and the rather callous way that people view impoverished countries (if I don't personally see the starving children on my TV set, then suffering doesn't exist to me, etc.) and people's need to be recognized for giving.
There are a couple things that date this book-- an off-the-cuff insult about lesbians and a reference to President Reagan and Michael Jackson-- but for the most part, everything the author says in this book could probably still hold true today. How sad is that?
P.S. Speaking of sad, the way I welled up when the heroine saw all those starving people huddled by the mountain was just-- brutal.
AN ITALIAN AFFAIR reminded me a lot of that episode of Sex and the City where Charlotte has to explain to Carrie why sleeping with a married man doesn't make her a girl's girl. In this memoir, Laura Fraser details her two-year-long affair with a married man, a professor of aesthetics from Paris, who she meets on vacation while in Italy after a disastrous end to her own marriage. Hashtag gatekeep, gaslight, go for another girl's man.
I remember reading this in my early twenties and enjoying it then, although I was a little more judgmental of the author's choices, I think. Now, closer to the author's own age at the time she wrote this book, some of her choices make more sense. Actually, AN ITALIAN AFFAIR is a lot like how I expected EAT, PRAY, LOVE to be like (but wasn't); it's a little smutty, it's introspective, and it's also a fun travel memoir about food, culture, and romance. But there's none of the precious pseudo-spiritualism of EPL, thank god. The author knows that she is being selfish and self-indulgent. She just doesn't care. Which, paradoxically, makes it easier to tolerate.
The nameless Bob Dylan-looking Professor is not very PC and is very clearly a product of his times. He and his wife, according to him, both have an open relationship with lots of affairs, but who the hell knows if he's lying. He definitely gives off strong daddy vibes, and the whole memoir kind of feels like a Lana Del Rey song, but, like, in real life. She definitely manages to show why he's charming and also why he feels safely emotionally unavailable, too. And as someone who reads romance novels with heroes who have this sort of coding, it's kind of a rude wake-up call as to why sometimes fantasy should stay fantasy. I mean, I knew that, but still. Rude.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with the author's personal choices, she tells a fascinating story, beautifully. I'm definitely interested in reading more of her travel writing now.
I really hate the blurb on the cover calling this an "antidote to chick lit," even though when I read this book as a teenager for the first time, I probably would have agreed with the sentiment. LIKE THE RED PANDA is a desperately unhappy book, featuring a desperately unhappy protagonist. Stella lost both her parents when they died of drug overdose (they were cocaine addicts). Despite her adversity, she lives with her foster parents in Irvine and is Princeton-bound. But then one day, something in her brain shifts. She gets the idea that nothing really matters. She cuts off her friends and family, she stops attending classes or taking care of herself; she is planning to end her life.
LIKE THE RED PANDA is a difficult book to read because when I had really bad depression as a teen, I related pretty strongly to the heroine. I think the author does a good job showing how depression kind of transcends sadness. There's a gnawing emptiness to depression, that nothing can really fill. The more you try to pour in, the worse you feel. The heroine has really dissociated from her life and the way she disconnects from herself and everything is painful to read because it's so well done.
As an adult who has my depression managed, I liked this book less. Mostly, because it made me feel so sad for the heroine, and how all the adult figures in her life failed her. LIKE THE RED PANDA doesn't romanticize suicide-- the heroine's grandfather, Donald, also seems to have depression and is also trying to end his life in his retirement home, and as the heroine struggles with her own decision she refuses her grandfather's attempts to enlist her in his own-- but it kind of feels like a cautionary tale. Privilege doesn't protect you from depression, and adult figures who are supposed to be guardians for the kids they manage can sometimes be so wrapped up in their own securities that they never really move on from their own internalized adolescence. It's a bleak, sad book with a miserable ending. I don't think it's an "antidote" to anything, except maybe that feeling of loneliness and isolation.
Is this the most amazing thing I've ever read? No. But oh my God, it is so fun. Sophie Kinsella is a hit or miss author with me because she does this thing where she writes these heroines who are super passive aggressive and borderline pathological when it comes to lying, and it's supposed to be so omg!quirky and humorous, when actually, it just comes across as super toxic and kind of awful. REMEMBER ME? is one of the few books I've read by this author that doesn't do that, and I love it all the more for it.
When the book starts out, it's 2004. Lexi has a loser boyfriend named Loser Dave, she's struggling at an entry-level position in her company as an underpaid and underappreciated sales associate, and oh, yes, her father's funeral is tomorrow. But then she gets hit by a car when she's trying to hail a taxi and when she opens her eyes, everything has changed. She has dyed hair and veneers, all of her clothes are designer, and suddenly she's the director of her whole department. WHAT.
Also, it's 2007 and she can't remember any of it. Oop.
I'm a sucker for a good amnesia story and REMEMBER ME? delivers. The only thing that would make this story better would be if it had a bit of a gothic element to it. I kept hoping Eric was into some shady shit or something, but instead he's just a posh creep with some interesting sexual kinks (I may be traumatized forever by the phrase "Mont Blanc"). It was super interesting seeing Lexi navigate her new life and try to figure out why her sweet younger sister has become a borderline klepto, why all her old friends hate her and call her the "Cobra," and why she can't seem to stomach the sight of her supposedly beloved husband, Eric, who has oh-so-helpfully created a "marriage manual" for her that details everything from her dietary habits to step-by-step instructions for foreplay. LMAO.
Someone should seriously pick this up and make it into a TV mini-series. It's a very, very light mystery that's reminiscent of other cutesy amnesiac thrillers, like SIRI, WHO AM I? (which I also loved). The heroine is actually super likable and relatable and it's got a great ending. Also, the aughts references are EVERYTHING. Brangelina, cigarette jeans, and green juice. I think I actually read this book around the time that it first came out, so it was fun to revisit and experience the same thrilling rush. I'm doing this project called "the literary sad girl canon" where I reread books I loved (or hated!) when I was young. TWENTIES GIRL didn't quite live up to that first read but I'm happy to say this one does.
This is basically Knives Out for the middle grade set. I remember reading it a long time ago and finding it a challenging but enjoyable read. One of the most fascinating things about this book is that even though it's for children, a lot of the characters are quite old (50s and 60s) but the author manages to capture their quirks in a way that children will be able to grasp and understand but that doesn't alienate or condescend to an older audience. When people trot out the "but it's for kids" defense when an adult YA reader says a book is stupid, I don't think they realize how utterly insulting that sounds. Kids are far smarter than writers sometimes give their young audiences credit for. Hence the enduring popularity of this book.
THE WESTING GAME has so many layers. A multi-millionaire dies. A bunch of randos move into a new apartment across from his estate. Only it turns out that they aren't randos after all, when every one of them is called to a will reading-cum-puzzle game. Mr. Westing is dead and he's orchestrated a game from beyond the grave to point the finger at the person responsible for ending his life. When people talk about fuck-you money, this is what they mean. Going all Willy Wonka by way of John Wick to get revenge on the people who wronged you. THAT is money.
I loved all the snide little asides and jokes in this book. So many of them flew over my head as a kid (one of the characters thinking "dastardly" means bastard, or why Mr. Hoo rolls his eyes so hard at Mrs. Wexler's microaggressions). Also, the diversity in this book is pretty incredible considering when it was published. There's a Greek family, a Black judge, a boy with a degenerative disease who uses a wheelchair (I feel like what he has is supposed to be like MS), and a Chinese family. The book discusses some pretty serious issues, such as struggling against parental expectations or making difficult moral choices, and took quite a few risks that really paid off.
Every time I read the end of this book, I get a little misty-eyed. It's perfect. The book has its flaws, but for what it does, it's pretty brilliantly done and honestly has some amazing plotting and twists. This is the sort of YA that gets better with age, that both children and their parents will enjoy. Love.
I'm doing an audit of my bookshelves as part of my New Year's Resolution and trying to read and get rid of some of my physical copies. TWENTIES GIRL is actually a reread. I read it for the first time when I was pretty young and I believe I gave it five stars because somehow it ended up in my "keepers" box. I wanted to give it a reread and see if I felt the same way about it now as I did then and... sadly I did not. It was still a good read but couldn't quite hold up to the test of time.
Sophie Kinsella does this thing I don't really like where she makes all of her heroines pathological liars. It's supposed to be cute and quirky but instead all it does is make her heroines look like little psychopaths. SHOPAHOLIC, for me, was the worst, as it portrayed someone with a very serious and concerning problem as lighthearted and fun. For years, SHOPAHOLIC put me off Kinsella because of how much I hated that heroine. That trope is present in TWENTIES GIRL as well, albeit to a slightly lesser extent and to be honest, it makes a little more sense in TWENTIES because the premise is so ridiculous.
When Lara goes to the funeral of her great aunt Sadie, whom she never met, it's a bit underwhelming. Nobody's there, there's no flowers or food or music. Everyone feels very begrudging about their wasted time, including Lara's rich uncle, a social media influencer-cum-coffee mogul who lords his wealth over the rest of the family. Just before the cremation, however, Lara is haunted by a vision of Sadie as a girl in her twenties, who screams at her to stop the ceremony because SHE NEEDS HER NECKLACE, and after lots of screaming and heckling, Lara does the only thing she can think of: lies to everyone that there's been a murder and that Sadie's nursing home must have been responsible.
With Sadie watching her every move, Lara halfheartedly does a search for the necklace, and the ghostly hijinks result in various shenanigans like mind-raping her ex-boyfriend into going out with her again and telling her he's still in love with her, sneaking into an office building and asking out a man that Sadie fancies looks like Rudolph Valentino, and going to a thrift store and buying used flapper clothes and-- cringe-- 1920s makeup for a fancy dinner date. None of this stuff aged very well and I found Lara a very hard heroine to like for most of the book (and Sadie was just as bad). But even with the weird ghost stuff, I liked the mystery of the necklace and the rom-com elements and I found myself thinking that this would make a nice movie. It also has a lovely ending that sort of made me tear up.
So I'd say that TWENTIES GIRL is an okay read. Not really Kinsella's best but not her worst either, and Lara grows from her experience and learns how to be a better person and to let people make their own choices while living life on their terms.
Oh, Sweet Valley. You were Young Me's dramatic fix, scratching an itch that wouldn't be scratched until I discovered Asian dramas and bodice-rippers years and years later. There was a point in my life where I tried to wear one purple thing every day, just like Jessica, because I wanted to be an honorary "Unicorn." And even though Jessica was the pretty, popular, fashionable one, Elizabeth was the one I wanted to be friends with, because she wanted to be a writer and loved to read-- just like me.
I recently bought books 1-12 bundled on Kindle for, like, $1.99, which is a pretty sweet deal (maybe even a Sweet Valley deal? LOL). I read a lot of the elementary and middle school-set ones, but DOUBLE LOVE was the only Sweet Valley High book I ever read, maybe because my parents thought they would be too spicy for middle grade me? This book was honestly pretty wild, like a teenage soap opera-- a dangerous older guy who takes minors for underage drinking, a family of drug addicts, and lying about sexual assault to get revenge on guys rejecting you? And people think this series is wholesome and old-fashioned. LOL.
I don't want to say too much about this book because spoilers, and there really isn't a solid plot except for drama, but the gist of this book is: Elizabeth and Todd like each other but aren't going out with each other because of misunderstandings (most of them named Jessica) and the fact that they're both spineless weasels who are afraid of confrontation and that includes confronting each other. The other main plot thread is that Jessica is a sociopath and a pathological liar who will stop at nothing to get what she wants, and those things that she wants mostly include a) whatever her sister has that she doesn't and b) boys, the more the better, especially if they are effusive in their admiration.
Compared to a lot of teen books written by middle-aged ladies, this one felt more "teen" than most, although there is an overuse of the word "terrific" and "golly-gee"-type sentiments, and I was a little surprised that this high school also has sororities (was that a thing?? do high schools have sororities and rush weeks?). I also had an "lol" moment where they go to a burger place for "clams and milkshakes." What is this, New England? Who are these teens going to the malt shop for seafood? Is this burger joint owned by Wolfgang Puck? Sweet Valley seems to be a Santa Monica-inspired town so maybe Wolfgang has a summer home there where he cooks for the Fowlers and the Patmans on weekends, I don't know. But what I do know is that this is glorious trash and it's reinforced why I liked it so much as a kid.
BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE is such a weird book. It revels in its 90s-ness the way your one hipster friend who still owns a VHS player and Instagrams their collection of Pogs does, and it's weirdly sexual in a way that I'm not sure a YA today would be allowed to be without drawing all sorts of outcry. I mean, for starters, there's ~SEDUCTION~ where one of the heroine's boyfriends is waiting for her naked under a sheet with candles all over his room lol. And also, the heroine is sixteen and in a love triangle between a human boyfriend her own age (Mr. Bedsheets and Fire Hazards) and a werewolf guy who is-- ahem-- TWENTY-FOUR. (Also it's implied that he may have banged her mom. Yum. Not.)
I can see why this book gets a lot of flak from critics. It's kind of like a gender-reversed TWILIGHT, if Edward were a girl named Vivian who was also a werewolf. (Her mom is even named Esme!) But there's so much more about it, too. It's a coming-of-age story that's about pushing boundaries and wanting to grow up but also wanting to explore and find adulthood and be your own person. Vivian has grown up under her wolf pack but she doesn't want to be wedded to convention, and she loathes how juvenile and immature the only other werewolf kids in her pack (all guys of course) are. So it's not really any wonder that she would be attracted to their total opposites: a sensitive artist type (Aiden) or a powerful and dominant man who doesn't need to make displays because he owns them (Gabriel).
The weird age gap is uncomfortable, especially since the heroine is underage. If she were seventeen it would have been better, and it would have been even better still if she were eighteen. But I also can see why the author chose to make that choice because sixteen is an age when you can start to feel like you have your whole life figured out (even if you totally don't). Also it was written in the '90s when fewer people had the means of giving a shit. I was mostly able to roll with it because of the fact that Vivian isn't human. I think my favorite parts of the book were actually the action scenes and the scenes describing the political intrigues between the pack members. Even though this is a short book, I felt like a lot of work went into fleshing out the world building and the way they changed. I'm not usually into werewolf books because they're all furry and sweaty and gross, but in this book, paired with the beautiful writing, I felt like Klause really did a great job portraying the beauty of the page.
Also, unlike THE SILVER KISS, which was about vampires (and which I usually prefer), I felt like the heroine was a lot more likable (even if she was a bitch; she was my bitch, you know?). It also has more of a romance ending than THE SILVER KISS, which I feel is more of a love story. Apparently Blood and Chocolate was made into a movie, but I have never seen it. Now I'm kind of curious to see how it compares to the book, which is pretty dark and often brutal. I'm guessing they aged up the heroine and took out a lot of the violence and sex.
So I remember reading this book a couple years ago and thinking it captured the sort of disaffected '90s youth mindset really well. I liked the plucky heroine and the brooding vampire but the book just went on FOREVER. Upon my attempt at a reread, I'm sorry to say that I feel the same way now as I did before. Con and Sunshine had good chemistry but there's so much pointless filler. The paperback is 400 pages but I don't think it needed to be. There's a lot of pointless meandering that could have been shaved off. McKinley has always been a hit or miss author for me, although I appreciate her more as an adult than I did as a teen, but I'm sorry to say that this one is more of a miss.
So I was a teenager in the aughts, and whenever I revisit chicklit from that era, I am always categorically shocked at how much toxic shit young me devoured in the form of fiction. Like, there was SO much sexism and fatphobia and internalized misogyny, you guys. I talk about this a little bit in my review of another aughts chick-lit called THE NEXT BIG THING, which is a reality TV show where fat women are supposed to lose weight and are basically treated like subhumans. This is another weight-themed chick-lit where, despite the seemingly well-meaning title, actually has some messages in it that are Not The Best.
Heather Wells, our heroine, was a pop singer (think 90s female solo artist, like Jessica Simpson or Britney) until she put on weight and discovered her fiancee and fellow teenybopper idol getting a blowie from her biggest rival. Also, she wanted to go indie and her record label, owned by her now ex-fiancee's dad, was like LOL fuck you Liz Phair, you fucking sadgirl bitch. And when he finished jerking off to his Men's Rights Activist pamphlet, he booted her ass out.
Now she works in a dorm as Assistant to the Regional Director, job duties including: checking pulses in cases of alcohol poisoning, telling those damn kids to stop elevator surfing, and answering Concerned Parental Phone Calls. Unfortunately, it's the elevator surfing that's the real doozy. A girl just fell to her death trying to hang ten on the tenth floor, or whatever. And I'm sure this is A Real Thing That Kids Actually Do Just Like Lipstick Parties and Trading Sex Favors for Jelly Bracelets(TM) and not just something Lifetime made up. Anyway, Heather is convinced that foul play is afoot because "Girls Don't Elevator Surf" (sounds like a Weezer album, tbh). And she beats this Girls Are Way Too Chill to Behave in Life-Threatening Ways drum incessantly, because TikTok hasn't been invented yet.
Also, she will remind you at every opportunity how Size 12 Is NOT Fat(TM) and how annoying skinny people are. No way is anyone naturally skinny, according to nature. The book literally opens with her comparing a girl who is a size two to a chipmunk and being like "lol what's smaller than a size zero, do you, like NOT exist?" First of all, don't dehumanize that girl, Heather, you bitch. Second of all, skinny shaming is a thing. Third of all, for a book that is allegedly supposed to be all 'yo go girl' about the way the MC looks, there is so much obsessing over how fat and disgusting everyone thinks being size twelve is. I think Heather is insulted about her weight at least ten times, and someone says that she's "let herself go" because she went from being a size eight to a size twelve.
I just think this is so toxic. Especially since, according to the MC, size twelve is the size of the average American woman (although this was pubbed almost twenty years ago, and I think the average has moved up to 14). At the time that I read this book, I was a size 12 and I remembered thinking, "Wait, am I fat?" A lot of chick-lit and romance novels do this-- I'm not just singling out Cabot-- but I think it's important to talk about how this cultural mindset was so deeply entrenched that it seeped into the psyches of so many female characters in fiction. I mean, gosh, I just read a Harlequin romance novel from the aughts where there's a throwaway line about how the heroine could stand to lose ten pounds.
Despite all that, I AM giving this book a four-star (rounded up) review because it was a lot of fun to read. I rate purely based on entertainment and sometimes problematic shit is entertaining. That doesn't excuse the fact that it is problematic, nor does it discredit the ratings of people who choose to rate based on how problematic something is, but I personally found the mystery pretty well done (although I have SERIOUS qualms about the motives and treatment of the baddie). I loved the college town vibe, the New York setting, and the author's actual attempt to make New York City diverse. Several of the students are black and Asian, the author talks about racism, several of the employees are Latinx (including her Dominican friend, Magda), and while I'm sure some of these portrayals are-- ahem-- questionable, it's way more than what I remember so many of these other authors doing.
Also, the love interest? He's a hot private detective who loved his gay grandpa and he's good with dogs. Who looks good in a tux. And has black hair and blue eyes. I probably wouldn't rec this to most people now but it's what I grew up reading and it's hard to hate it, even if I probably sort of should. YOLO!
I can't help but feel that every teen who likes dark academia secretly has a copy of this book moldering somewhere in their bookcase. MATILDA is like the OG dark academia book, and so many things about it shaped tropes I still love today: shy and bookish heroines who are quietly brave; evil schools; strong female friendships; and off the wall crazysauce. It's a scathing criticism of the cruelty of English schools, but it's also a story of female empowerment.
Every once in a while I get criticism for my middle grade reviews. People will say things like, "What do you expect, this is a book for children?" Which, if you ask me, is rather condescending, because it suggests that some authors are assuming children are too dumb to recognize inferior goods when they come across them. Which, to be fair, some don't. There's no accounting for taste. But plenty of middle grade is good and does hold up, so the "it's a book for children and adults shouldn't criticize!" remark really doesn't add up, and age group really oughtn't to be a shield against criticism for things like character development and cohesiveness of the plot. Just my two cents.
MATILDA is one of those rare books where I actually think the movie is better, just because of the casting and how the movie adds some chilling scenes (such as when they sneak into Trunchbull's house) and answers some questions that the book really didn't. I also personally like the ending of the movie better, but I won't say why outright because spoilers. It's the eponymous story of a girl named Matilda who is incredibly brilliant and is already reading things like Dickens and doing large mathematical sums in her head before she even turns five. Her parents are awful people-- the mom makes money from playing bingo and the dad is a shady used car salesman-- and neither of them like her much at all, and at worst, their behavior could be considered neglectful and emotionally abusive.
Before she goes to Crunchem Hall, all of her education was self-taught, mostly from a kindly librarian who helped her pick out famous classics despite being quietly fascinated by her intelligence. School ought to have been the place where she felt like coming home, but because of the sadistic and abusive headmistress, it is a place of terror. I think Dahl did a good job making her seeing fantastically but believably evil. The chokey was always incredibly terrifying: it's a cupboard where Trunchbull would lock up "bad" students. The walls were paved with broken glass and the door had nails in it, so if you didn't stand perfectly straight in the airtight cupboard, you'd get all lacerated. Yikes. Then there's Miss Honey's story and the implied molestation and abuse there, and it's all honestly pretty chilling.
So you can get what happens. Matilda ends up in a war with the Trunchbull. The movie is way more emotionally intense but the book does a great job too and the ending is still pretty satisfying. I loved the characters of Matilda and Miss Honey and I thought Matilda's family was believably awful because we've all met oafish jerks like that. Roald Dahl is a great children's author but this has always been one of my favorite books of his, partially because it's more believable and partially because it features a girl protagonist who is allowed to be strong and victorious, and not beaten down, which makes the story feel both timeless and incredibly progressive, all at the same time.
I own a copy of this and I remember liking it a lot. I think I need to give it a reread because I'm preeeettty sure my sister will love this too.I own a copy of this and I remember liking it a lot. I think I need to give it a reread because I'm preeeettty sure my sister will love this too....more
My sister and I have started trading books back and forth during quarantine and this is the one she wanted me to read first before giving it to her. This is one of the instances where I read the book after seeing the movie. It's a grim dystopia/post-apocalyptic book where a "blindness" plague infects an unnamed society in an unnamed city. Rather than plunging into darkness, the victims find themselves inhabiting a strange, misty whiteness-- and it's highly infectious.
The main characters are never named except for their characteristics. So we have "the first blind man," who stops traffic when he gets out of his car panicking because he is blind. We have the thief who takes him home and offers to wait for him-- and then steals his car. Then we have the blind man's wife, the ophthalmologist, a woman with dark glasses who moonlights as a prostitute, a boy with a squint, a man with an eye patch, and the doctor's wife who, miraculously, remains immune.
One of the chief complaints of this book is the punctuation style and it does make things book very hard to read. The author, for whatever reason, made the choice to not include quotation marks or normal sentences, so dialogue is marked by writing paragraphs that read like this, And then the next branch of dialogue is donated by a capital A, Even when someone else is talking, you ask? Yes, even when someone else is talking, But that sounds confusing you say, Yes, it is, and it results in paragraphs that last for multiple pages, Oh my God, you say, That sounds terrible, It is.
The story itself is equally unpalatable. The blind are shepherded into an empty mental asylum which quickly disintegrates into chaos. The conditions quickly become unsanitary. The military guards shoot up the inhabitants out of blind (if you pardon the unintended pun) fear, and then they stand by and do nothing when an opportunistic gang forms demanding first money and loot as payment and then women and sex in exchange for the food that they have immorally co-opted. Even when freed from the asylum, those who escape find themselves in a society at its very last dregs, where all humanity is lost.
I liked the book okay and thought it told a compelling albeit depressing story, but I probably wouldn't read it again. So many descriptions of vomiting and shit and human waste, and humans performing inhuman acts at the cost of their own survival. It didn't occur to me while reading this book that a dystopian epidemic might not be the best choice of reading material during COVID, but here it is and here I am. It's not a book I'd recommend, but it's a book you won't forget.
REAL WORLD is a very strange Japanese noir thriller. Apparently I read it years and years ago, but I didn't really remember it at all. The premise revolves around a murder: a boy named "Worm" (I believe his real name is Ryo) who has killed his mother and run away. He ends up drawing several high school girls into his web: Toshi, his neighbor; Yuzan, a closeted lesbian; Kirarin, a bubbly girly-girl with a dark side, and Terauchi, the depressed pragmatist.
As the story rolls on, we get to read from the POVs of each of these characters. Most of them sound pretty similar, but Yuzan and Toshi were my personal favorites. I think the title comes from the dissociation that comes from depression and having a psychotic break. These characters, because of their actions, feel like they're living in a sort of heightened reality from their peers. Murder has peeled back the skin of society to reveal a festering underside they can't escape from.
I think this book is pretty depressing. It has trigger warnings for murder, suicide, violence, sexism, bigotry, and a couple other things. Also, as with a lot of Japanese fiction, there are trans characters who are misgendered. Natsuo Kirino's books often have one or multiple of these themes, so I think it's pretty important to equip yourself before going in, because the result is usually bleak.
This is my second time reading RAMPANT and I think I actually enjoyed it just as much as I did the first time. RAMPANT is the story of a girl named Astrid Llewellyn who is descended from unicorn hunters. Her mother, Lilith, is obsessed with them and has been teaching Astrid her whole life that unicorns are evil. Astrid thinks her mom is pretty crazy until she's out in the woods with her boyfriend and the two of them are attacked by a rogue unicorn.
After that, Astrid is sent off to a special unicorn killing school in Italy that's masquerading as a religious order. Once there, she meets other girls who are descended from other lines of unicorn hunters. They even have a pet "house unicorn" named Bonegrinder. Astrid learns that there are different kinds of unicorns, ranging from the small, goat-like zhi to the Persian karkadann, which is the size of a tank. All unicorn hunters are apparently descendants of Alexander the Great, who rode to victory on a giant karkadann of his own: Bucephalus.
I loved this book so much. Sometimes the mythology didn't really make sense but most of it, I was like, okay, I can roll with this. I loved the Italian setting and the bond between the girls. This is surprisingly diverse for the time it came out: one of the girls is Black and the other is Singaporean Chinese. The way they rally together and train together and fight and protect one another was so well done. You just don't really see many YA fantasy books these days with that kind of theme of sisterhood, which made me enjoy this book even more than I did.
I think if you enjoyed VAMPIRE ACADEMY, you'll enjoy this book. It has the same themes: kick-butt girls, dangerous paranormal threats, secret magic schools abroad, forbidden love. I'm honestly surprised the reviews for RAMPANT are so mixed because it feels like the type of book so many readers are begging for. The only things that I think would put people off are a few throwaway remarks about sexuality that don't age well, rape (off-page, but the victim is gaslighted by an authority figure, although the main character stands up for her and a pretty interesting and heartfelt discussion follows), and the fact that the heroine is kind of spoiled and bratty (but in an age-appropriate way, tbh).
I LOVED this book and can't wait to read book two. Thank goodness I already own it!
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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