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Preloved
If you had a second chance at love, would you do it all over again?
Amy has enough to deal with for one lifetime. A superstitious Chinese mother. A best friend whose mood changes as dramatically as her hair colour. A reputation for being strange. The last thing she needs is to be haunted by someone only she can see.
Logan is a ghost from the Eighties. He could be dangerous. He's certainly annoying.
He might also be Amy's dream boy.
Amy has enough to deal with for one lifetime. A superstitious Chinese mother. A best friend whose mood changes as dramatically as her hair colour. A reputation for being strange. The last thing she needs is to be haunted by someone only she can see.
Logan is a ghost from the Eighties. He could be dangerous. He's certainly annoying.
He might also be Amy's dream boy.
272 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2012
8 people are currently reading
2,952 people want to read
About the author
Shirley Marr
8books420followersShirley Marr is a multi-award winning children's and YA author and a first generation Chinese-Australian living in sunny Perth. Her titles areFury, Preloved, Little Jiang and All Four Quarters of the Moon and the CBCA Book of the Year for Younger Readers A Glasshouse of Stars
She describes herself as having a Western Mind and an Eastern Heart and writes in the middle where both collide. She takes milk and sugar with her tea much to the dismay of her oolong drinking friends and eats chicken feet much to the disgust of her Aussie friends. Her passion is to distil her cultural heritage through the lens of resilient young women.
She describes herself as having a Western Mind and an Eastern Heart and writes in the middle where both collide. She takes milk and sugar with her tea much to the dismay of her oolong drinking friends and eats chicken feet much to the disgust of her Aussie friends. Her passion is to distil her cultural heritage through the lens of resilient young women.
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July 17, 2012
Join us on the blog today for a with the adorable ! We have three copies of PRELOVED to give away, along with a beautiful sterling silver locket necklace just like the one in the book.
***
I had a horrible sensation in my stomach only because, like, a billion things could go wrong when you try to tell a girl that her Eighties-flavoured boyfriend from a past life was trying to hook back up with her.
Preloved is the story of 16-year-old Amy Lee, a girl who lives in the fictional Australian town of Middlemore with her Chinese mother. On her school's Eighties Theme Day, she's dressed up as Buttercup from The Princess Bride and battling her love/hate relationship with her best friend Rebecca when she accidentally stumbles upon a silver locket with a picture of a boy from the 80s inside. Her life gets complicated when the boy's ghost appears and begins to haunt her--but not for the usual reasons you might expect. First of all, Logan wears his collar popped. And he's persistent. And he's annoying. But as Amy grows closer to her ghostly companion, her heart begins to yearn for the things it cannot have. Because Amy wasn't meant to pick up the locket at all...Rebecca was.
Distilling the essence of what this book is about doesn't even begin to hint at the reading experience, however. Written with fast and funny prose that is bubbling over with good humor, this is a ghost story that doesn't happen to be scary and a love story that doesn't happen to be about dating. Amy has a lot going on in her life even before Logan appears, since she feels overshadowed by nearly everyone in her life, even though she deals with it with amusing offhandedness. She describes herself as Rebecca's "short, awkward, Asian best friend. Which did have its advantages, because everyone instantly believed I was O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill, with martial arts skills." She's also trying to figure out who she is, since she doesn't quite fit in with the nerdy Asian kids at school, but also chafes at her mother's superstitious adages and old-fashioned beliefs.
While Preloved is chock-full of 's trademark humor and moves along at an entertaining clip, it is admittedly very different from her first novel , which had a darker, more subversive edge. The plot is a little looser and more free-form as well, and the madcap zaniness of many of the scenes seem more suited to younger YA readers. There are also so many 80s pop culture references that it will be interesting to see if most 13 - 18 year olds will respond to that.
Still, adult readers will likely appreciate the flashback to a more innocent time and the trip down memory lane, and it's hard not to be won over by the author's writing style. Her sharp observations about human behavior and quick character sketches are right on target, such as when Amy observes that her nemesis Nancy "Fancy Pants" Soo is "stereotypically good at maths" and "exactly the sort my Chinese mum would love to have as a daughter. Me? Until recently, I thought an algorithm was a type of dance move."
I would love to see the author delve a little more into emotional themes in her next novel, however. There are so many flashes of deep feeling in Fury and we skate around the edges of some serious emotions in Preloved, but I'm convinced there are even more depths to be plumbed that the author hasn't shown us quite yet.
"I see you, this girl who lives inside herself, invisible to everyone, even to herself. You're hungry for your mother's touch, hungry for your missing father. You're hungry for life and you're hungry to be a proper character in your own story."
There is an appealing sweetness and sadness in Amy and in this book, and there is also an additional love story that I didn't expect--specifically, the one between Amy and her mom, which is actually my favorite part of the story. I've known a lot of Asian mothers and the loving exasperation with which Amy deals with her rings very true. What may seem a bit of an exaggerated cultural caricature isn't really exaggerated at all, nor are the occasional emotional blackmail, Amy's consciousness of her potential unladylike behavior, her expectations for her daughter, etc. It's a pleasure to see the wry closeness between the two of them, as well as how the relationship changes and develops as the two of them learn more about each other.
I thought about Mum's vintage shop. How she believed that if she found something broken and lovingly put it back together, that someone would come along and love it again.
Isn't that a lovely way to look at things? And it makes the title of the book, as well as Logan's situation, all the more poignant. Amy is a very different character than Eliza from Fury, but she too embraces what life throws at her, even if they both do a little kicking and screaming at first. When it comes to smart, flawed, memorable characters and vivacious prose, Shirley Marr's flux capacitor is totally functioning at full throttle--and I can't wait to strap in for the next ride.
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
This review also appears in . An advance copy was provided by the publisher. Recommended for fans of Meg Cabot's series, , , , , and for younger YA readers.
**
About the Book
This Aussie YA title is available in Australia and New Zealand, as well as through . Check back with us next week, however, because Shirley Marr is stopping by our blog as part of the Preloved Blog Tour! We have an autographed copy of the book to give away as well as a beautiful prize for one of our lucky readers.
Check out my Preloved Inspiration Board on , too! It might give you a little feel for the mood of the book.
Make Amy's Preloved Snack!
I was very intrigued when I read about a popular Australian snack that Amy likes to munch while she's watching The Princess Bride: popcorn with icing sugar! After much with my GoodReads pals, especially the helpful Taneika, I decided to make a batch, except I thought it'd be fun to make the the popcorn pink and give it a little subtle flavor as well. Since Amy drinks strawberry milk in the story, it seemed like a no-brainer to make strawberry popcorn.
If you'd like to try it out yourself, download the 4 x 6 recipe card for Preloved Strawberry Powdered Sugar Popcorn .
**
***
I had a horrible sensation in my stomach only because, like, a billion things could go wrong when you try to tell a girl that her Eighties-flavoured boyfriend from a past life was trying to hook back up with her.
Preloved is the story of 16-year-old Amy Lee, a girl who lives in the fictional Australian town of Middlemore with her Chinese mother. On her school's Eighties Theme Day, she's dressed up as Buttercup from The Princess Bride and battling her love/hate relationship with her best friend Rebecca when she accidentally stumbles upon a silver locket with a picture of a boy from the 80s inside. Her life gets complicated when the boy's ghost appears and begins to haunt her--but not for the usual reasons you might expect. First of all, Logan wears his collar popped. And he's persistent. And he's annoying. But as Amy grows closer to her ghostly companion, her heart begins to yearn for the things it cannot have. Because Amy wasn't meant to pick up the locket at all...Rebecca was.
Distilling the essence of what this book is about doesn't even begin to hint at the reading experience, however. Written with fast and funny prose that is bubbling over with good humor, this is a ghost story that doesn't happen to be scary and a love story that doesn't happen to be about dating. Amy has a lot going on in her life even before Logan appears, since she feels overshadowed by nearly everyone in her life, even though she deals with it with amusing offhandedness. She describes herself as Rebecca's "short, awkward, Asian best friend. Which did have its advantages, because everyone instantly believed I was O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill, with martial arts skills." She's also trying to figure out who she is, since she doesn't quite fit in with the nerdy Asian kids at school, but also chafes at her mother's superstitious adages and old-fashioned beliefs.
While Preloved is chock-full of 's trademark humor and moves along at an entertaining clip, it is admittedly very different from her first novel , which had a darker, more subversive edge. The plot is a little looser and more free-form as well, and the madcap zaniness of many of the scenes seem more suited to younger YA readers. There are also so many 80s pop culture references that it will be interesting to see if most 13 - 18 year olds will respond to that.
Still, adult readers will likely appreciate the flashback to a more innocent time and the trip down memory lane, and it's hard not to be won over by the author's writing style. Her sharp observations about human behavior and quick character sketches are right on target, such as when Amy observes that her nemesis Nancy "Fancy Pants" Soo is "stereotypically good at maths" and "exactly the sort my Chinese mum would love to have as a daughter. Me? Until recently, I thought an algorithm was a type of dance move."
I would love to see the author delve a little more into emotional themes in her next novel, however. There are so many flashes of deep feeling in Fury and we skate around the edges of some serious emotions in Preloved, but I'm convinced there are even more depths to be plumbed that the author hasn't shown us quite yet.
"I see you, this girl who lives inside herself, invisible to everyone, even to herself. You're hungry for your mother's touch, hungry for your missing father. You're hungry for life and you're hungry to be a proper character in your own story."
There is an appealing sweetness and sadness in Amy and in this book, and there is also an additional love story that I didn't expect--specifically, the one between Amy and her mom, which is actually my favorite part of the story. I've known a lot of Asian mothers and the loving exasperation with which Amy deals with her rings very true. What may seem a bit of an exaggerated cultural caricature isn't really exaggerated at all, nor are the occasional emotional blackmail, Amy's consciousness of her potential unladylike behavior, her expectations for her daughter, etc. It's a pleasure to see the wry closeness between the two of them, as well as how the relationship changes and develops as the two of them learn more about each other.
I thought about Mum's vintage shop. How she believed that if she found something broken and lovingly put it back together, that someone would come along and love it again.
Isn't that a lovely way to look at things? And it makes the title of the book, as well as Logan's situation, all the more poignant. Amy is a very different character than Eliza from Fury, but she too embraces what life throws at her, even if they both do a little kicking and screaming at first. When it comes to smart, flawed, memorable characters and vivacious prose, Shirley Marr's flux capacitor is totally functioning at full throttle--and I can't wait to strap in for the next ride.
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
This review also appears in . An advance copy was provided by the publisher. Recommended for fans of Meg Cabot's series, , , , , and for younger YA readers.
**
About the Book
This Aussie YA title is available in Australia and New Zealand, as well as through . Check back with us next week, however, because Shirley Marr is stopping by our blog as part of the Preloved Blog Tour! We have an autographed copy of the book to give away as well as a beautiful prize for one of our lucky readers.
Check out my Preloved Inspiration Board on , too! It might give you a little feel for the mood of the book.
Make Amy's Preloved Snack!
I was very intrigued when I read about a popular Australian snack that Amy likes to munch while she's watching The Princess Bride: popcorn with icing sugar! After much with my GoodReads pals, especially the helpful Taneika, I decided to make a batch, except I thought it'd be fun to make the the popcorn pink and give it a little subtle flavor as well. Since Amy drinks strawberry milk in the story, it seemed like a no-brainer to make strawberry popcorn.
If you'd like to try it out yourself, download the 4 x 6 recipe card for Preloved Strawberry Powdered Sugar Popcorn .
**
Shelved as 'written-by-me'
July 3, 2012What did you think? asks ŷ. I'm the author! I wrote this book! It's as awesome as this book...
I lie.
Nothing can be more awesome than that book.
My book has an 80's flavour, but it's never going to be as rad as that blond dude's haircut and his grey+grey colour scheme.
In my own words...
Preloved is a ghost story. It involves past lives. It's about a modern teen girl and a dead teen boy from the 80s. It's more a bad romance, less of a love story. And it's more abnormal than paranormal! Since it references the 80s, it might also have stonewash denim and a Choose Life t shirt in there somewhere too. I hope it's funny and dark and sweet in its own indie way.
I hope you, well, love Preloved and please be as honest as you like in your reviews. My rules you already know - I don't give stars to my own book (cos it's up to you, not me). I try and read each and every review (thank you). But not the threads that start under them (I consider those personal spaces, who wants an author and their ruddy 2 cents worth there huh?)
As per tradition� here is some trivia :)
Cos I love trivia.
14 Things to Prelove about Preloved
1. The cover is designed by Gayna Murphy, who also designed the Australian cover of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief.
2. One of the working titles for Preloved was Excellent Used Condition (if you’re an eBay Bunny like me, it’d make perfect sense).
3. At the Melbourne Writers Festival I was asked if I would write a paranormal book. I jokingly said that I would write one about Chinese Vampires.
[image error]
I wasn’t serious about the vampire part, but I became obsessed afterwards about the “paranormal� and “Chinese� part. That’s how I started writing Preloved.
Considering that it was Twilight that led to Fury being written (in a completely wholesome non-50-Shades-of-Grey manner, ), I sometimes wonder what is happening inside my head.
PS - if you've ever seen the cult Hong Kong movie Mr Vampire � there's a scene I wrote in the book which is a sort of homage.
4. My editor for Fury, Melissa Keil, wanted me to write a “romance� because she said she had “read a lot of online comments (for Fury) that suggest you should write a romance�. If you are that culprit, please own up.
5. Preloved’s unofficial tag-line is “Less Paranomal, more Abnormal� courtesy of .
6. The suburb Amy lives in might sound familiar because someone you know likes to badmouth it. See if you can spot the one sentence that connects Eliza to Amy.
7. Belle from won a cameo to be in this novel. See if you can spot her!
8. All the Chinese superstitions in this book really exist (I didn't make any of them up!) and they come from my mum.
9. To write Logan, my research consisted of spending hours watching videos of Kylie Mole and other great 80s Aussie slang “users� like Alf Stewart.
10. Rebecca is named after Kylie Mole’s best friend Rebecca (who incidentally, was played by Kylie Minogue). This makes sense in context of the novel (or maybe not).
11. Stacey and Logan are both named after characters from my favourite 80s childhood series, The Babysitter’s Club. I chose Logan because he’s Marianne Spier’s boyfriend in the series and my editor is called Maryann.
12. For the edits of the final draft, I returned back to my mother’s home to work at the kitchen bench while she cooked, so that I could feel the connection that Amy and her mother share in the novel.
13. I am an accountant in real life. I have never seen any YA featuring a scene in Accounting (bah to English and Biology class) so I wrote one.
14. I swear this is a genuine spoiler. I mean it!
Let me leave you with this article I found in the local paper while I was doing the final edits of Preloved in Augusta in the south of Western Australia. I love how Augusta is kinda stuck in the 80s and still has a video store, I mean that in the utmost of affection (that's why I went there to do my final edits). HAHAHA - CAR'N Cowaramup!
[image error]
...
Earlier on the ranch...
I’m running a for Preloved! Up for grabs are two signed copies.
Look, Empress Shirley has even stamped the books with her Imperial Chop (yes, I am so Chinese I own a personal chop)
[image error]
If you’re wondering what the characters say (and what my Chinese name is), it’s Sher-Li Mah :) So I’m Just Shirley in any language.
If you’re wondering what shade of nail polish I’m wearing, it’s called “Legs Up to There� by Australian-made, cruelty-free brand Chi Chi. Note that the name, when applied to my own stature, is 100% false.
And of course the giveaway is opened internationally.
You know you want it. So go forth!
...
The very first copy of Preloved has arrived. I put on a tutu to celebrate.
[image error]
I lie.
Nothing can be more awesome than that book.
My book has an 80's flavour, but it's never going to be as rad as that blond dude's haircut and his grey+grey colour scheme.
In my own words...
Preloved is a ghost story. It involves past lives. It's about a modern teen girl and a dead teen boy from the 80s. It's more a bad romance, less of a love story. And it's more abnormal than paranormal! Since it references the 80s, it might also have stonewash denim and a Choose Life t shirt in there somewhere too. I hope it's funny and dark and sweet in its own indie way.
I hope you, well, love Preloved and please be as honest as you like in your reviews. My rules you already know - I don't give stars to my own book (cos it's up to you, not me). I try and read each and every review (thank you). But not the threads that start under them (I consider those personal spaces, who wants an author and their ruddy 2 cents worth there huh?)
As per tradition� here is some trivia :)
Cos I love trivia.
14 Things to Prelove about Preloved
1. The cover is designed by Gayna Murphy, who also designed the Australian cover of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief.
2. One of the working titles for Preloved was Excellent Used Condition (if you’re an eBay Bunny like me, it’d make perfect sense).
3. At the Melbourne Writers Festival I was asked if I would write a paranormal book. I jokingly said that I would write one about Chinese Vampires.
[image error]
I wasn’t serious about the vampire part, but I became obsessed afterwards about the “paranormal� and “Chinese� part. That’s how I started writing Preloved.
Considering that it was Twilight that led to Fury being written (in a completely wholesome non-50-Shades-of-Grey manner, ), I sometimes wonder what is happening inside my head.
PS - if you've ever seen the cult Hong Kong movie Mr Vampire � there's a scene I wrote in the book which is a sort of homage.
4. My editor for Fury, Melissa Keil, wanted me to write a “romance� because she said she had “read a lot of online comments (for Fury) that suggest you should write a romance�. If you are that culprit, please own up.
5. Preloved’s unofficial tag-line is “Less Paranomal, more Abnormal� courtesy of .
6. The suburb Amy lives in might sound familiar because someone you know likes to badmouth it. See if you can spot the one sentence that connects Eliza to Amy.
7. Belle from won a cameo to be in this novel. See if you can spot her!
8. All the Chinese superstitions in this book really exist (I didn't make any of them up!) and they come from my mum.
9. To write Logan, my research consisted of spending hours watching videos of Kylie Mole and other great 80s Aussie slang “users� like Alf Stewart.
10. Rebecca is named after Kylie Mole’s best friend Rebecca (who incidentally, was played by Kylie Minogue). This makes sense in context of the novel (or maybe not).
11. Stacey and Logan are both named after characters from my favourite 80s childhood series, The Babysitter’s Club. I chose Logan because he’s Marianne Spier’s boyfriend in the series and my editor is called Maryann.
12. For the edits of the final draft, I returned back to my mother’s home to work at the kitchen bench while she cooked, so that I could feel the connection that Amy and her mother share in the novel.
13. I am an accountant in real life. I have never seen any YA featuring a scene in Accounting (bah to English and Biology class) so I wrote one.
14. I swear this is a genuine spoiler. I mean it!
Let me leave you with this article I found in the local paper while I was doing the final edits of Preloved in Augusta in the south of Western Australia. I love how Augusta is kinda stuck in the 80s and still has a video store, I mean that in the utmost of affection (that's why I went there to do my final edits). HAHAHA - CAR'N Cowaramup!
[image error]
...
Earlier on the ranch...
I’m running a for Preloved! Up for grabs are two signed copies.
Look, Empress Shirley has even stamped the books with her Imperial Chop (yes, I am so Chinese I own a personal chop)
[image error]
If you’re wondering what the characters say (and what my Chinese name is), it’s Sher-Li Mah :) So I’m Just Shirley in any language.
If you’re wondering what shade of nail polish I’m wearing, it’s called “Legs Up to There� by Australian-made, cruelty-free brand Chi Chi. Note that the name, when applied to my own stature, is 100% false.
And of course the giveaway is opened internationally.
You know you want it. So go forth!
...
The very first copy of Preloved has arrived. I put on a tutu to celebrate.
[image error]
June 23, 2020
i am sneaking this one in in the middle of my readventurer challenge - shhhh...
wow, i seem to be on a roll with reading sweet sweet books lately. and i don't mean this to be disparaging, but this book is truly a sweetie-pie almost-love-story.
and at first, i wasn't into it, i must confess. blame my need for the darkness and the edginess, but this one was so fast-paced, and was reading like the younger-range of YA, and i kept peering at it, trying to make out some of the bitchiness from fury. my bad.
this is not fury. this is its own thing. and it is a good thing.
shirley marr has created a great character in amy - her best friend rebecca is the siren, the untouchable, calculatedly aloof and apart, fostering her own image of being cooler-than-you, making all the boys fall for her and all the girls jealous. except amy. amy knows she is not in the same league as rebecca, and she doesn't really want to be. she doesn't care about boys, or clothes, or trends, she is busy just being who she is, dealing with the indifference of her father after her parent's divorce, and her mother's encyclopediac knowledge of chinese superstitions; mostly involving ghosts, helping out in her mother's vintage rummage store, and dealing with being stuck at that age where you want to be a kid but also recognize that your mother's eccentricities are not helping out the finances so hot, so you gotta step up. holy run-on sentence. sorry, kids!
so, when she accidentally releases a ghost from a locket intended for rebecca, and finds herself in the middle of a mystery involving star-crossed lovers, reincarnation, and a whole lot of 80's pop culture and slang, she is more comfortable than your average teenager with the idea of a ghost suddenly popping into her life. and she starts to understand what all those 80's crush movies are talking about.
it is a great personal-journey book. amy starts off as a pretty emotionally closed-off, independent character, not judging herself based on her appearance, or trying too hard to make friends other than rebecca, but the reality of the independent character is that it is a lonely road. having a crush on a ghost really only makes the loneliness more apparent. but her realization of this, and her blossoming into a more solid amy are fantastic, and it is hard not to fall in love with her, especially when all the backdrop is feel-good 80's pop music that makes you automatically root for the girl in glasses.
nothing like fury at all, but unlike that one, you will feel pretty good when you finish it, full of the flowering of possibilities.
quick, though - what is a cheesymite scroll??? i GIS'd it, and i got this:
and i am told it is filled with cheese and vegemite?? and amy eats this with strawberry milk?? i havesurvived eaten vegemite, and i suppose it is one of those acquired tastes, but i cannot even picture eating vegemite with cheese, let alone the deliciously cloying hyper-sweetness of strawberry milk. but maybe it is an australian delicacy...but a note on the food in this book - holy cow, i gotta get me to australia. popcorn with icing sugar? yes, please, even though i don't know what the heck icing sugar is. but i know i want it.
and i also want someone to call me miss matey someday.
if i thought i could exist in the heat of that place, i would be there already. but there's no way. i wouldn't even make it one step out of the plane before i would erupt into a fireball, without even getting to taste icing sugar. sad.
at least i will have the books. and these amazing candy bars shirley sent me.
thank you, wonderful ladyface!
wow, i seem to be on a roll with reading sweet sweet books lately. and i don't mean this to be disparaging, but this book is truly a sweetie-pie almost-love-story.
and at first, i wasn't into it, i must confess. blame my need for the darkness and the edginess, but this one was so fast-paced, and was reading like the younger-range of YA, and i kept peering at it, trying to make out some of the bitchiness from fury. my bad.
this is not fury. this is its own thing. and it is a good thing.
shirley marr has created a great character in amy - her best friend rebecca is the siren, the untouchable, calculatedly aloof and apart, fostering her own image of being cooler-than-you, making all the boys fall for her and all the girls jealous. except amy. amy knows she is not in the same league as rebecca, and she doesn't really want to be. she doesn't care about boys, or clothes, or trends, she is busy just being who she is, dealing with the indifference of her father after her parent's divorce, and her mother's encyclopediac knowledge of chinese superstitions; mostly involving ghosts, helping out in her mother's vintage rummage store, and dealing with being stuck at that age where you want to be a kid but also recognize that your mother's eccentricities are not helping out the finances so hot, so you gotta step up. holy run-on sentence. sorry, kids!
so, when she accidentally releases a ghost from a locket intended for rebecca, and finds herself in the middle of a mystery involving star-crossed lovers, reincarnation, and a whole lot of 80's pop culture and slang, she is more comfortable than your average teenager with the idea of a ghost suddenly popping into her life. and she starts to understand what all those 80's crush movies are talking about.
it is a great personal-journey book. amy starts off as a pretty emotionally closed-off, independent character, not judging herself based on her appearance, or trying too hard to make friends other than rebecca, but the reality of the independent character is that it is a lonely road. having a crush on a ghost really only makes the loneliness more apparent. but her realization of this, and her blossoming into a more solid amy are fantastic, and it is hard not to fall in love with her, especially when all the backdrop is feel-good 80's pop music that makes you automatically root for the girl in glasses.
nothing like fury at all, but unlike that one, you will feel pretty good when you finish it, full of the flowering of possibilities.
quick, though - what is a cheesymite scroll??? i GIS'd it, and i got this:
and i am told it is filled with cheese and vegemite?? and amy eats this with strawberry milk?? i have
and i also want someone to call me miss matey someday.
if i thought i could exist in the heat of that place, i would be there already. but there's no way. i wouldn't even make it one step out of the plane before i would erupt into a fireball, without even getting to taste icing sugar. sad.
at least i will have the books. and these amazing candy bars shirley sent me.
thank you, wonderful ladyface!
June 5, 2012
I have to admit, Preloved truly surprised me. After finally getting a hold of Fury, I wasn't entirely sure how Preloved and I would get along because Paranormal Romances with ghosts usually make me want to roll my eyes. However, in Preloved's case it worked really well for me. In fact, there is something really special about Shirley Marr's sophomore novel because while the blurb sounds strictly PNR, it gives off a very strong contemporary feel at the same time. I actually found myself enjoying Preloved more than Fury at times. You have your relatable characters, familiar setting, and a pinch of abnormal. What more could you ask for?
The 80's was an interesting time in history. It taught us all to "kick off our Sunday shoes," that anyone can become a "dirty dancer," how we shouldn't fear the "Thriller," how it felt to feel "Like a Virgin, touched for the very first time," and that you aren't truly a boss until you can pull this number off in leg warmers:
I'm still working on it.
Confession: I internally groaned when I saw this book had a heavy focus on the 80's. I mean, it's the 80's! Mullets, leg-warmers, bad perms, leotards! Need I say more? Thankfully, it didn't happen like that. Logan is a ghost from the 80's who happens to show up after Amy, a very lonely girl, acquires an old locket. Except the locket wasn't meant for her, but instead her beautiful, hipster, best-friend Rebecca, who Logan just happens to love. She initially sets out to help him connect with Rebecca, who bares a shocking resemblance to Logan's old girlfriend, but it turns out to be much more than she bargained for.
If I were to describe Preloved in two words it would be sugary sweet. I love self-discovery novels. They have a way of reminding me of times when I was naive, innocent, and unsure of myself. Amy is the kind of protagonist that is entirely relatable because she's a broken, teen girl searching for her identity in the world. I could easily connect and sympathize with her and not once did I grow impatient with her character. She's the kind of main character that continues to grow on you as the novel progress until you realize it's time to let her go, but your aren't quite ready yet. The supporting cast fell a little short for me mainly because I just didn't care for Rebecca and Nancy wasn't around long enough for me to properly form an opinion. However, I did like both Logan and Amy's mom, both important plot points on Amy's every shifting graph.
The romance wasn't something I was expecting to enjoy since it does contain a love triangle. But this one was unique since it was, but it wasn't. While most of the novel Logan expresses interest only in Rebecca, she never felt like a real contender in the race for his heart. I didn't feel the same "Oh, who are they gonna pick?" urge that I normally feel for say, a novel like Unearthy. But the relationship between Logan and Amy is one I couldn't help but cheer for. The way he affectionately called her Ms. Matey and blushed in his ghostly form really was the icing on the cake.
So if you are on the market for a lighter Paranormal Romance that is fun, relaxing, and sugary sweet Preloved may be just what you're looking for. And don't worry, I promise there is none of this going on:
Aren't you glad those days are over?
Many thanks to Flannery from for hosting a for Preloved!
More reviews and fantastical things at .
May 12, 2020
You know what it’s like when you have a conversation with one of your bffs and you think “Oh mate, I wish someone was filming this because we are so ridiculously hilarious�? That’s how I feel when I talk to Shirley Ms Marr. If I could bottle ’s Ms Marr’s personality and put it in a super soaker so I could spray passing gloomy people I would do it in a heartbeat.
Preloved read like a transcript of one of our conversations.
But instead of it being one of those private joke conversations that you feel like you’d have absolutely no idea how you’d jump in� Preloved is one that welcomes everyone as opposed to excluding them. And it welcomes you with colourful cocktails and delicious treats. Also, it would encourage you to be as silly as possible. And talk about Jason Donovan all the live long day.
Shirley Ms Marr� actually, OK� I know as an OFFICAL BOOK BLOGGER [OBB] I should be polite and refer to the author as Ms Marr but I never said I was a OBB and it makes me uncomfortable so I’m just gonna call her Shirley. Because that is her name.
And believe you me, normally I call her Twirley Shirley, Shirley Tuesday or SHIR-LEY* (to the tune of Blondie’s Call Me) so just calling her Shirley is actually me being an OBB and professional and the like.
Բɲ�
I really enjoyed this book. I have to admit that I wasn’t the biggest fan of Fury because even though I loved the actual story, I pretty much hated every single character and it kind of put me off. Thankfully Preloved was stuffed to the brim with wonderful, wonderful characters that I would like to best friends with. Except Rebecca, but we’ll talk about her later.
As much as I loved Logan, and I really did, my favourite relationship in Preloved was between Amy and her mum. It’s so brilliant to see parents get a role in YA fiction. I know I always seem to rabbit on about how I want to see sibling relationships in YA books, but I also want to see more parent relationships. Sometimes I feel that authors kinda get stuck when they’re faced with the prospect of portraying parents and decide to just shove them away or send them on holiday, but luckily Shirley didn’t and she the relationship she created between Amy and her mum was just lovely to read.
Also, I’ve got to give out a shout out to my man Michael because I adored him. But that’s all I’m saying on that.
And, I really loved that Amy lived and worked in a vintage shop. Yes please! I love love love vintage clothing and I could (and have) spent hour upon hour trawling through racks of second hand dresses and wishing I could afford to buy them all.
As with books, my favourite type of clothing is the ones that have been worn before. The ones that have been�. Preloved.
Like Amy, I also have a locket that my big sis gave to me for my 18th birthday. It’s not only my favourite piece of jewellery but it’s also become my good luck charm. Unfortunately (or kinda luckily!), when I opened the locket, I wasn’t met by a dashing ghost�. But there was a fingerprint in it.
A FINGERPRINT FROM THE PAST.
Another thing that both surprised me about this book was how much I learnt about the Chinese culture. Admittedly I don’t know much about the Chinese culture except from what I’ve learnt from talking to Shirley and the Gok Wan documentary that was on a couple of weeks ago.* I just loved all the snippets that Shirley wove into the story. Obviously the culture and the history means a great deal to her and it’s an important part of her life. But it never felt like it was just shoved in because Shirley knows about it and wants the reader to know that she knows about it. It felt natural and seamless and I adored it.
OK, I’m going to start off my quibbles with a confession. And it’s going to be shocking and people are going to recoil in fear.
I’m not that fussed about the 80s.
I know� I know. What kind of sick individual doesn’t like the 80s?!
Well.. um me.
When my friends and I play the “If you could wake up in any era, which would it be?� everyone tends to get giddy and yells THE 80S! really loudly and then start to sing Journey.
But I’m the kid that mutters �50s America� and starts to hum ‘I Walk the Line�. So even though I’m not completely opposed to the 80s and I did find myself laughing at certain bits (My name is Jo and I am in love with Kylie’s poodle perm), I can’t help but think that a lot of the well-researched references were lost on me.
And I know we weren’t necessarily supposed to like her (were we?!), but I really disliked Rebecca and I wished she would just do one. I always root for the underdog and I just had no time for her.
Also, I really wished we’d spent more time with Amy and her emotions. I know that’s weird because if you’ve ever read any of my reviews before I am more than likely to partake in some book flinging if the heroine/hero gets all wrapped up in a duvet of SAD FEELINGS and wallows but I really wanted to see Amy do that� just a little. There were so many moments where I thought that this book would have been spectacular if it had just delved a little bit deeper into the emotions. Amy was very quick to make a joke out of things and move swiftly on� which is fine because that’s pretty much exactly what I do but I think I would have connected a bit more with both her and the book if we’d dwelled.
Just a bit.
But other than just those three minor things, I really loved this book. It was tinged with nostalgia, full of humour and served a well-needed jolt to the supernatural genre.
*And those are just the names I want to admit to in public.
**Actually, if you watched said documentary� remember that bit where he goes into that shop and buys all of those paper items? Like a paper iPad? And then burns it in the graveyard? Amy and her mum do that too! I got so excited because I knew what that was for! It’s such a lovely tradition� unless you burn it wrong and have to get your Chinese translator to help you out to stop you burning down the whole of China. Man, I love Gok Wan so much.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
Preloved read like a transcript of one of our conversations.
But instead of it being one of those private joke conversations that you feel like you’d have absolutely no idea how you’d jump in� Preloved is one that welcomes everyone as opposed to excluding them. And it welcomes you with colourful cocktails and delicious treats. Also, it would encourage you to be as silly as possible. And talk about Jason Donovan all the live long day.
And believe you me, normally I call her Twirley Shirley, Shirley Tuesday or SHIR-LEY* (to the tune of Blondie’s Call Me) so just calling her Shirley is actually me being an OBB and professional and the like.
Բɲ�
I really enjoyed this book. I have to admit that I wasn’t the biggest fan of Fury because even though I loved the actual story, I pretty much hated every single character and it kind of put me off. Thankfully Preloved was stuffed to the brim with wonderful, wonderful characters that I would like to best friends with. Except Rebecca, but we’ll talk about her later.
As much as I loved Logan, and I really did, my favourite relationship in Preloved was between Amy and her mum. It’s so brilliant to see parents get a role in YA fiction. I know I always seem to rabbit on about how I want to see sibling relationships in YA books, but I also want to see more parent relationships. Sometimes I feel that authors kinda get stuck when they’re faced with the prospect of portraying parents and decide to just shove them away or send them on holiday, but luckily Shirley didn’t and she the relationship she created between Amy and her mum was just lovely to read.
Also, I’ve got to give out a shout out to my man Michael because I adored him. But that’s all I’m saying on that.
And, I really loved that Amy lived and worked in a vintage shop. Yes please! I love love love vintage clothing and I could (and have) spent hour upon hour trawling through racks of second hand dresses and wishing I could afford to buy them all.
As with books, my favourite type of clothing is the ones that have been worn before. The ones that have been�. Preloved.
Like Amy, I also have a locket that my big sis gave to me for my 18th birthday. It’s not only my favourite piece of jewellery but it’s also become my good luck charm. Unfortunately (or kinda luckily!), when I opened the locket, I wasn’t met by a dashing ghost�. But there was a fingerprint in it.
A FINGERPRINT FROM THE PAST.
Another thing that both surprised me about this book was how much I learnt about the Chinese culture. Admittedly I don’t know much about the Chinese culture except from what I’ve learnt from talking to Shirley and the Gok Wan documentary that was on a couple of weeks ago.* I just loved all the snippets that Shirley wove into the story. Obviously the culture and the history means a great deal to her and it’s an important part of her life. But it never felt like it was just shoved in because Shirley knows about it and wants the reader to know that she knows about it. It felt natural and seamless and I adored it.
OK, I’m going to start off my quibbles with a confession. And it’s going to be shocking and people are going to recoil in fear.
I’m not that fussed about the 80s.
I know� I know. What kind of sick individual doesn’t like the 80s?!
Well.. um me.
When my friends and I play the “If you could wake up in any era, which would it be?� everyone tends to get giddy and yells THE 80S! really loudly and then start to sing Journey.
But I’m the kid that mutters �50s America� and starts to hum ‘I Walk the Line�. So even though I’m not completely opposed to the 80s and I did find myself laughing at certain bits (My name is Jo and I am in love with Kylie’s poodle perm), I can’t help but think that a lot of the well-researched references were lost on me.
And I know we weren’t necessarily supposed to like her (were we?!), but I really disliked Rebecca and I wished she would just do one. I always root for the underdog and I just had no time for her.
Also, I really wished we’d spent more time with Amy and her emotions. I know that’s weird because if you’ve ever read any of my reviews before I am more than likely to partake in some book flinging if the heroine/hero gets all wrapped up in a duvet of SAD FEELINGS and wallows but I really wanted to see Amy do that� just a little. There were so many moments where I thought that this book would have been spectacular if it had just delved a little bit deeper into the emotions. Amy was very quick to make a joke out of things and move swiftly on� which is fine because that’s pretty much exactly what I do but I think I would have connected a bit more with both her and the book if we’d dwelled.
Just a bit.
But other than just those three minor things, I really loved this book. It was tinged with nostalgia, full of humour and served a well-needed jolt to the supernatural genre.
*And those are just the names I want to admit to in public.
**Actually, if you watched said documentary� remember that bit where he goes into that shop and buys all of those paper items? Like a paper iPad? And then burns it in the graveyard? Amy and her mum do that too! I got so excited because I knew what that was for! It’s such a lovely tradition� unless you burn it wrong and have to get your Chinese translator to help you out to stop you burning down the whole of China. Man, I love Gok Wan so much.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
January 16, 2015
See more reviews at
4.5 stars
Amy hasn't had the easiest life. She lives with her superstitious single Chinese mother with barely enough money to feed themselves. Her 'best friend', Rebecca doesn't exactly help either; her mood changes as rapidly as her hair colour. Rebecca seems to attract all the boys, and Amy has always just been that nameless girl who follows Rebecca around at school. Yet, when Amy finds and opens a locket in the middle of nowhere, her life seems to look a little brighter. Because who pops out of the locket is a ghost boy named Logan, who died in 1988; and despite the weirdness of it all, Amy and Logan have more in common than they thought and find comfort with each other's company.
What makes this book so much fun are the pop-culture references. The school Amy attends, Middlemore High School, likes to have dress up days in the middle of the week, and the theme they had most recently was the eighties. So Rebecca dresses up as Kylie Minogue (and of course a bunch of the guys dressed up has Jason Donovan, seeing as they are oh-so in love with Rebecca), and Amy dresses as Princess Buttercup from The Princess Bride. HOW AWESOME IS THAT? I wish my school would have such random dress up days. Because one of the main characters is from the eighties (Logan), we are introduced to a lot of the slang back then, as well as the music--and even the ads that used to play on the TV back in those days. It just made this book even more engaging.
Amy is such a brilliant character. She's different, a little strange but such a fun character to read about. She's never thought much of herself, and being stuck with Rebecca who apparently looks beautiful doesn't help either. She's not even an Asian stereotype, and sometimes she worries that her mother wishes she was just like Nancy, who is basically THE Asian stereotype. I didn't like Rebecca at all, for that matter. She's so up herself--she knows she's beautiful and tries to act superior from everyone else, and that is one of my biggest pet peeves ever so MUCH RAGE TO YOU, REBECCA. But, that didn't shake my love for this book at all, because it was probably the author's intention to do that.
Guys, we have a mother who is actually present in the book. HURRAH! I absolutely loved Amy's mother. She wasn't treated as some plot device in the story, and gosh, she's such a sweet and intelligent mother. No shame in saying that she was one of my favourite characters in the book. Amy's mother is quite important here, and I really appreciate the author for creating such a realistic dynamic between the two. EXTRA POINTS FOR YOU, MS. MARR!
In all, if you love the eighties, you'll love this book. If you love pop-culture references, you'll love this book. If you love Aussie YA, you'll love this book. I'M 99.99% SURE EVERYONE WILL ENJOY THIS BOOK. NOW GO GET YERSELVES AT COPY.
4.5 stars
"There is no ending to this story because, as I've realised, stories don't have endings, only beginnings."
Amy hasn't had the easiest life. She lives with her superstitious single Chinese mother with barely enough money to feed themselves. Her 'best friend', Rebecca doesn't exactly help either; her mood changes as rapidly as her hair colour. Rebecca seems to attract all the boys, and Amy has always just been that nameless girl who follows Rebecca around at school. Yet, when Amy finds and opens a locket in the middle of nowhere, her life seems to look a little brighter. Because who pops out of the locket is a ghost boy named Logan, who died in 1988; and despite the weirdness of it all, Amy and Logan have more in common than they thought and find comfort with each other's company.
What makes this book so much fun are the pop-culture references. The school Amy attends, Middlemore High School, likes to have dress up days in the middle of the week, and the theme they had most recently was the eighties. So Rebecca dresses up as Kylie Minogue (and of course a bunch of the guys dressed up has Jason Donovan, seeing as they are oh-so in love with Rebecca), and Amy dresses as Princess Buttercup from The Princess Bride. HOW AWESOME IS THAT? I wish my school would have such random dress up days. Because one of the main characters is from the eighties (Logan), we are introduced to a lot of the slang back then, as well as the music--and even the ads that used to play on the TV back in those days. It just made this book even more engaging.
Amy is such a brilliant character. She's different, a little strange but such a fun character to read about. She's never thought much of herself, and being stuck with Rebecca who apparently looks beautiful doesn't help either. She's not even an Asian stereotype, and sometimes she worries that her mother wishes she was just like Nancy, who is basically THE Asian stereotype. I didn't like Rebecca at all, for that matter. She's so up herself--she knows she's beautiful and tries to act superior from everyone else, and that is one of my biggest pet peeves ever so MUCH RAGE TO YOU, REBECCA. But, that didn't shake my love for this book at all, because it was probably the author's intention to do that.
Guys, we have a mother who is actually present in the book. HURRAH! I absolutely loved Amy's mother. She wasn't treated as some plot device in the story, and gosh, she's such a sweet and intelligent mother. No shame in saying that she was one of my favourite characters in the book. Amy's mother is quite important here, and I really appreciate the author for creating such a realistic dynamic between the two. EXTRA POINTS FOR YOU, MS. MARR!
In all, if you love the eighties, you'll love this book. If you love pop-culture references, you'll love this book. If you love Aussie YA, you'll love this book. I'M 99.99% SURE EVERYONE WILL ENJOY THIS BOOK. NOW GO GET YERSELVES AT COPY.
~Thank you Shirley Marr for gifting me this copy~
May 22, 2012
This book defines the word adorable, brings a new definition to the word contemporary, and manages to mix hilarious and heartwarming scenes with the perfect degree of effectiveness! In other words, Preloved stole my heart and I'm not demanding it back anytime soon.
Preloved revolves around Amy, your classic sidekick girl. She's in love with The Princess Bride, has an amusingly superstitious Chinese mother, and has best friend that she believes will be the heroine of a story someday. Except instead � by some fluke chance � Amy is the one who ends up with the ghost-inhabited locket. Thus beginning her hilarious journey!
I couldn't have loved Amy more than I already did if you paid me to! She was quirky, and funny, and strange, and absolutely the kind of girl I'd admire in school. When she meets Logan (the swoon-worthy ghost from the 80s from the locket �) her world is turned upside down. Yet she deals with it exactly how any girl would! First she questions her sanity. Then she tries to help him out, because who wouldn't try to aid the sweet albeit slightly infuriating ghost?
Shirley said, "It's more a bad romance, less of a love story." And that's so true! When the boy is a ghost and the girl isn't, you can't expect a happily ever after � although I was craving one anyways because of how attached I became to the characters. But HEA or not, the ending is bittersweet and perfect in its own way. I turned the last page with a smile with my tears.
Adorably sweet, funny, and heartwarming all the same, Preloved is a book I loved with all my heart! I loved all the characters, from Amy to her best friend to Logan and more; I loved the way it dealt with family as well as the difficulty of being friends with a diva.
This book is a contemporary read with a touch of ghostly romance. Would I recommend it? Absolutely and completely and totally, I would! :)
BUY or BORROW?: Do yourself a favour and buy this book ASAP! It will definitely bring a smile to your face, and it will give all sidekick girls hope that they'll be the main character of their own story soon as well! :)
(Original review at )
Preloved revolves around Amy, your classic sidekick girl. She's in love with The Princess Bride, has an amusingly superstitious Chinese mother, and has best friend that she believes will be the heroine of a story someday. Except instead � by some fluke chance � Amy is the one who ends up with the ghost-inhabited locket. Thus beginning her hilarious journey!
I couldn't have loved Amy more than I already did if you paid me to! She was quirky, and funny, and strange, and absolutely the kind of girl I'd admire in school. When she meets Logan (the swoon-worthy ghost from the 80s from the locket �) her world is turned upside down. Yet she deals with it exactly how any girl would! First she questions her sanity. Then she tries to help him out, because who wouldn't try to aid the sweet albeit slightly infuriating ghost?
Shirley said, "It's more a bad romance, less of a love story." And that's so true! When the boy is a ghost and the girl isn't, you can't expect a happily ever after � although I was craving one anyways because of how attached I became to the characters. But HEA or not, the ending is bittersweet and perfect in its own way. I turned the last page with a smile with my tears.
Adorably sweet, funny, and heartwarming all the same, Preloved is a book I loved with all my heart! I loved all the characters, from Amy to her best friend to Logan and more; I loved the way it dealt with family as well as the difficulty of being friends with a diva.
This book is a contemporary read with a touch of ghostly romance. Would I recommend it? Absolutely and completely and totally, I would! :)
BUY or BORROW?: Do yourself a favour and buy this book ASAP! It will definitely bring a smile to your face, and it will give all sidekick girls hope that they'll be the main character of their own story soon as well! :)
(Original review at )
May 2, 2012
Shirley Marr always manages to surprise me.
4 stars and review to come.
**
So I'm reading Preloved and incidentally I see Kylie Minogue on the paper today:
Look closer... she's wearing these:
Another detail:
Apparently, the shoes spit fire.
She really is stuck. In the 80s, I mean.
4 stars and review to come.
**
So I'm reading Preloved and incidentally I see Kylie Minogue on the paper today:
Look closer... she's wearing these:
Another detail:
Apparently, the shoes spit fire.
She really is stuck. In the 80s, I mean.
May 17, 2012
3.5 stars. *** You might come across something you consider as spoilers reading my review.***
"Amy, remember that if you get lost in a forest and the ghosts trick you into thinking every direction looks the same � take your undies off, put them over your head and spin around in a circle. Then your path will be clear."
's second novel, , is thoroughly peppered with indispensable pieces of wisdom like this endearing warning the heroine's mother sends her daughter off to school with. states at the end of the book that she has all these sayings from her own mum, who may or may not resemble Ivy Lee, a tiny Australian woman of Chinese descent, who operates on a very fixed believe system rooted in ghosts, good and evil spirits, reincarnation and consequently the repercussions of what you do in your present life on what or where you will be in your next one and the time in between. In addition she is a bit forgetful, easily distracted, slightly wacky in general and not the kind of person who cuddles and coddles relatives and friends, which is her case is obviously a culture thing. In spite of that I could seamlessly relate: Although my equally strange and distractible mother - who I am by the way very grateful to for putting so much effort into trying to raise me and my siblings right � pulled her various rules and wild convictions out of a Christian hat. I used to cover my ears and hum to myself, for instance, when other kids started to recite horoscopes from a teen magazine, because "attempting to look into your future will have bad consequences" - and I admit that I still feel kind of queasy today when someone insists on learning my zodiac sign. My mum and I reintroduced hugging into our relationship when I left for university and did not spend so much time with her anymore. I was never called by anything else than my five-syllables-long name (which I do not really mind, but which I noticed when other parents called their little girls "snail" or "bunny" or "treasure" or shorted versions of their given names), and I always resented her tendency to add each and every knick-knack somebody gave to her to the dust-gathering clutter on bookshelves and cupboards and grinded my teeth to dust because of her very annoying habit to tell me exactly what to do and what to change - when all I had wanted was letting her know how things went for or against me in my world. Maybe that is the reason why I feel particularly attracted to mother-daughter stories � in all likelihood you know my huge adoration for by - and I instantly liked both generations of Lee women in . For inherited wackiness nonewithstanding Amy is unquestionably sweet and funny and warm. She connocts very interesting daydreams and she fantasizes a little about making out with a nice and nerdy gamer boy. (I especially appreciated that this potential love interest is described � by himself � as being rather chubby and not so quick on his feet, and that his being overweight does not render him unfit to star in the heroine's romantic fantasies). Amy is very reluctant to act upon her attraction and I understood that her hesitation derives from witnessing her father's excessive alcohol consumption and the desctruction of her parents' marriage laced with ugly fights and unresolved financial matters. But as the remainder of Amy's off-putting behavior, her self-fabricated state of one-weird-friend-only-loneliness, is concerned, I have to say I did not get that at all and the feeble hints at a possible cause at the end did not convince me or help me understand: Why again did she put her friendship with kindergarten buddy Nancy Soo, who is still caring and clever and snarky, wonderful to talk to and solid enough to lean on, on ice? Why does she spend her time with self-centered boy-magnet Rebecca, who every girl despises for a reason, when there is no benefit in the form of confiding in and relying on each other included in that friendship? Why does she almost revel in her outsider status and utters strange and incomprehensive things when she is obviously on the brink of being suffocated by her physical and mental loneliness? 's dedication at the beginning of the novel - "For everyone who preferes abnormal to paranormal and a bad romance to a love story" - certainly rings true: Amy Lee's spiritual episode in is no ghost-and-girl-love-story, 80s ghost boy Logan Feldmann is no , and Amy's haunted moments just make the lonely parts in her ache with a longing for touch and laughter, for closeness and romance. The exclusive relationship with someone only she can see beckons strongly to her, because Rebecca's attention is only available as long as no potential admirer claims it. Logan's attention wanders, too, but only Amy can hear and help him, and and his demeanor shows that her well-being and her future matter to him, as well. His questions according to his own past make Amy, who is into preloved films and music and clothes anyway, suddenly want to unravel the knots that hinder herself to live freely, as well. Still, to find my way as a reader through the glittering prism of Amy's far-flung motivations and actions and puzzling school events like an 80s week was quite difficult and occasionally exhausting. The plot jittered and jumped, and I, I tagged along � because in some way Amy's fate had become important to me. Before I end my musings I need to say something about the language and something else about the cover:
As a non-native speaker, who during the 80s experienced the English language solely in the form of textbooks designed in the 70s, I am not really able to sort slang words used by fictional characters according to era, social standing or even an author's creativity. Therefore my impression that Logan's constantly "spewing" of especially fitting vocabulary left a rather forced/artificial bytaste might be the result of being a foreigner with a limited grasp of a multi-facetted language. I even sometimes fear that my own colloquial German is still too saturated with expressions of the decade I started my school career, which outs me automatically as a pretty dated person. As far as the rest of the book's style is concerned I need to stress how much I enjoyed that 's unique brand of humor haunted every single paragraph. For someone like me, who loves her comments and reviews here on ŷ.com, 270 pages of her "abnormally" good writing in one go is definitely a treat to savor. This review of is actually meant to be a recommendation.
The cover of
is one of the most beautiful and alluring ones I have come across this year. I fiercely love it and already tried out the dots-of-light-effect on some of the pictures stored on my phone. It also looks more magical than the cute but rather dully colored cover of the modern Cinderella retelling .
.
That � apart from the 43 long days between dispatch and deliverey � makes it a tiny bit hard to part with the copy again.
... But I am determined to go though with my plan to pass the book to someone else � although I am not sure exactly how. Maybe someone is willing to swap it � internationally � for something on my wishlist or my want-to-own shelf? I guess if nobody contacts me within a week or so I will decide on a Giveaway or an preloved-books-offer at Amazon Germany.
"Amy, remember that if you get lost in a forest and the ghosts trick you into thinking every direction looks the same � take your undies off, put them over your head and spin around in a circle. Then your path will be clear."
's second novel, , is thoroughly peppered with indispensable pieces of wisdom like this endearing warning the heroine's mother sends her daughter off to school with. states at the end of the book that she has all these sayings from her own mum, who may or may not resemble Ivy Lee, a tiny Australian woman of Chinese descent, who operates on a very fixed believe system rooted in ghosts, good and evil spirits, reincarnation and consequently the repercussions of what you do in your present life on what or where you will be in your next one and the time in between. In addition she is a bit forgetful, easily distracted, slightly wacky in general and not the kind of person who cuddles and coddles relatives and friends, which is her case is obviously a culture thing. In spite of that I could seamlessly relate: Although my equally strange and distractible mother - who I am by the way very grateful to for putting so much effort into trying to raise me and my siblings right � pulled her various rules and wild convictions out of a Christian hat. I used to cover my ears and hum to myself, for instance, when other kids started to recite horoscopes from a teen magazine, because "attempting to look into your future will have bad consequences" - and I admit that I still feel kind of queasy today when someone insists on learning my zodiac sign. My mum and I reintroduced hugging into our relationship when I left for university and did not spend so much time with her anymore. I was never called by anything else than my five-syllables-long name (which I do not really mind, but which I noticed when other parents called their little girls "snail" or "bunny" or "treasure" or shorted versions of their given names), and I always resented her tendency to add each and every knick-knack somebody gave to her to the dust-gathering clutter on bookshelves and cupboards and grinded my teeth to dust because of her very annoying habit to tell me exactly what to do and what to change - when all I had wanted was letting her know how things went for or against me in my world. Maybe that is the reason why I feel particularly attracted to mother-daughter stories � in all likelihood you know my huge adoration for by - and I instantly liked both generations of Lee women in . For inherited wackiness nonewithstanding Amy is unquestionably sweet and funny and warm. She connocts very interesting daydreams and she fantasizes a little about making out with a nice and nerdy gamer boy. (I especially appreciated that this potential love interest is described � by himself � as being rather chubby and not so quick on his feet, and that his being overweight does not render him unfit to star in the heroine's romantic fantasies). Amy is very reluctant to act upon her attraction and I understood that her hesitation derives from witnessing her father's excessive alcohol consumption and the desctruction of her parents' marriage laced with ugly fights and unresolved financial matters. But as the remainder of Amy's off-putting behavior, her self-fabricated state of one-weird-friend-only-loneliness, is concerned, I have to say I did not get that at all and the feeble hints at a possible cause at the end did not convince me or help me understand: Why again did she put her friendship with kindergarten buddy Nancy Soo, who is still caring and clever and snarky, wonderful to talk to and solid enough to lean on, on ice? Why does she spend her time with self-centered boy-magnet Rebecca, who every girl despises for a reason, when there is no benefit in the form of confiding in and relying on each other included in that friendship? Why does she almost revel in her outsider status and utters strange and incomprehensive things when she is obviously on the brink of being suffocated by her physical and mental loneliness? 's dedication at the beginning of the novel - "For everyone who preferes abnormal to paranormal and a bad romance to a love story" - certainly rings true: Amy Lee's spiritual episode in is no ghost-and-girl-love-story, 80s ghost boy Logan Feldmann is no , and Amy's haunted moments just make the lonely parts in her ache with a longing for touch and laughter, for closeness and romance. The exclusive relationship with someone only she can see beckons strongly to her, because Rebecca's attention is only available as long as no potential admirer claims it. Logan's attention wanders, too, but only Amy can hear and help him, and and his demeanor shows that her well-being and her future matter to him, as well. His questions according to his own past make Amy, who is into preloved films and music and clothes anyway, suddenly want to unravel the knots that hinder herself to live freely, as well. Still, to find my way as a reader through the glittering prism of Amy's far-flung motivations and actions and puzzling school events like an 80s week was quite difficult and occasionally exhausting. The plot jittered and jumped, and I, I tagged along � because in some way Amy's fate had become important to me. Before I end my musings I need to say something about the language and something else about the cover:
As a non-native speaker, who during the 80s experienced the English language solely in the form of textbooks designed in the 70s, I am not really able to sort slang words used by fictional characters according to era, social standing or even an author's creativity. Therefore my impression that Logan's constantly "spewing" of especially fitting vocabulary left a rather forced/artificial bytaste might be the result of being a foreigner with a limited grasp of a multi-facetted language. I even sometimes fear that my own colloquial German is still too saturated with expressions of the decade I started my school career, which outs me automatically as a pretty dated person. As far as the rest of the book's style is concerned I need to stress how much I enjoyed that 's unique brand of humor haunted every single paragraph. For someone like me, who loves her comments and reviews here on ŷ.com, 270 pages of her "abnormally" good writing in one go is definitely a treat to savor. This review of is actually meant to be a recommendation.
The cover of
is one of the most beautiful and alluring ones I have come across this year. I fiercely love it and already tried out the dots-of-light-effect on some of the pictures stored on my phone. It also looks more magical than the cute but rather dully colored cover of the modern Cinderella retelling .
.
That � apart from the 43 long days between dispatch and deliverey � makes it a tiny bit hard to part with the copy again.
... But I am determined to go though with my plan to pass the book to someone else � although I am not sure exactly how. Maybe someone is willing to swap it � internationally � for something on my wishlist or my want-to-own shelf? I guess if nobody contacts me within a week or so I will decide on a Giveaway or an preloved-books-offer at Amazon Germany.
May 17, 2012
I don't usually bother with the paranormal YA reads most of the time as I'm more of a lover of the contemporary YA stuff and I have more than enough of that at the moment to keep me busy for the next, oh, several decades, I reckon. BUT, when I read a few lovely bits about this one over at Wear The Old Coat, Vegan YA Nerds and The Readventurer, my interest was well and truly caught in it's ghostly looking literary net.
A contemporary/paranormal/possibly slightly historical (?) YA. And an Aussie one to boot. Exciting times, indeed.
I say, 'historical', because there is a very strong 1980s theme (and this was 25 years ago, or thereabouts) (ok, that thought just made me feel ANCIENT, so lets just pretend the 1980s was only like 10 years ago, yeah?) - Amy's dead companion, Logan is from the Eighties. All the teenagers here, particularly Amy, seem to be obsessed with that decade. Amy's mum runs a vintage store which stocks many an Eighties garm. Cheesy slang is spouted on nearly every page. So if you're not that fussed about the Eighties, well, you might get a bit miffed after a few chapters.
This theme is a bit of a blessing and a curse for the book. Yes, if offers a strong hook for much of the action and the retro factor taps in to all the current love for electro and batwing jumpers. I was a little kid back then, a huge Kylie and Jason fan, and I saw The Princess Bride when it was in the cinema the first time around, so this brought a hint of nostalgia for me, personally. But, are teenagers today really THAT much into 1980s culture, to the extent that they have an 80s themed day and prom within the space of a week? That boys would have knowledge on the Jason Donovan mullet-styling circa 1988? I really don't know. Maybe they are. I'm genuinely interested, so someone this age, please tell me whether you know all the words off by heart to Too Many Broken Hearts. I could buy the fact that Amy loved the decade, but all of them? Mmmm.
Let's say something positive now - I adored Amy. She was a brilliant main character - self-depricating without being annoying, she had very realistic thoughts and fears that I think will ring true for many an 16 year old girl. Always feeling consigned to the best friend shadow role, with lots of angry, bad burny feelings, but not really sure quite what to do about them, using humour as a defence mechanism. All brilliant. And this was made all the better for the exchanges with her mum. A lovely balance of humour, sarcasm and genuine affection. My favourite Mum line -
"Oooh, old age." Mum grimaced. "No way can I do a go-go dancer squat these days."
May be it was the fact these two were so well developed that the rest of the characters felt half-baked and confusing. Logan, for example. He spouts some cringy retro sayings and annoys her a bit, and all of a sudden she's in love with him and I wasn't quite sure how that happened. And therefore not particularly convinced by it. Also, Rebecca? What, just... what? That's it. Was she a bitch and were we supposed to forgive her? Was she popular or not? Would EVERY boy really fancy her if she was such a cow? Or was she a cow? I'm really not sure. Just such a bloody confusing character that did not ring true in the slightest.
I really liked the plot twist in the end - very intriguing (if a bit rushed) and I was really happy that Amy and her mum's beliefs were not mocked - their attempts to overcome Amy's haunting were very moving. But for a book that contains ghosts and vintage shops, it was oddly lacking it atmosphere. I would imagine that sort of setting would be ripe for some descriptive, atmospheric writing, but a lot of it felt very flat.
So, mixed feelings about this one. Great mother and daughter relationship. Brilliant main character, but lacking a certain something. BUT, it does have a reference to Mr. Matey bubble bath, so I can forgive some of it's shortcomings.
Oh, and I love a great YA book cover. And this one has to be one of my favourites. It is so lovely I just want to eat it right up.
This book was sent to me for review by Viewpoint Magazine.
A contemporary/paranormal/possibly slightly historical (?) YA. And an Aussie one to boot. Exciting times, indeed.
I say, 'historical', because there is a very strong 1980s theme (and this was 25 years ago, or thereabouts) (ok, that thought just made me feel ANCIENT, so lets just pretend the 1980s was only like 10 years ago, yeah?) - Amy's dead companion, Logan is from the Eighties. All the teenagers here, particularly Amy, seem to be obsessed with that decade. Amy's mum runs a vintage store which stocks many an Eighties garm. Cheesy slang is spouted on nearly every page. So if you're not that fussed about the Eighties, well, you might get a bit miffed after a few chapters.
This theme is a bit of a blessing and a curse for the book. Yes, if offers a strong hook for much of the action and the retro factor taps in to all the current love for electro and batwing jumpers. I was a little kid back then, a huge Kylie and Jason fan, and I saw The Princess Bride when it was in the cinema the first time around, so this brought a hint of nostalgia for me, personally. But, are teenagers today really THAT much into 1980s culture, to the extent that they have an 80s themed day and prom within the space of a week? That boys would have knowledge on the Jason Donovan mullet-styling circa 1988? I really don't know. Maybe they are. I'm genuinely interested, so someone this age, please tell me whether you know all the words off by heart to Too Many Broken Hearts. I could buy the fact that Amy loved the decade, but all of them? Mmmm.
Let's say something positive now - I adored Amy. She was a brilliant main character - self-depricating without being annoying, she had very realistic thoughts and fears that I think will ring true for many an 16 year old girl. Always feeling consigned to the best friend shadow role, with lots of angry, bad burny feelings, but not really sure quite what to do about them, using humour as a defence mechanism. All brilliant. And this was made all the better for the exchanges with her mum. A lovely balance of humour, sarcasm and genuine affection. My favourite Mum line -
"Oooh, old age." Mum grimaced. "No way can I do a go-go dancer squat these days."
May be it was the fact these two were so well developed that the rest of the characters felt half-baked and confusing. Logan, for example. He spouts some cringy retro sayings and annoys her a bit, and all of a sudden she's in love with him and I wasn't quite sure how that happened. And therefore not particularly convinced by it. Also, Rebecca? What, just... what? That's it. Was she a bitch and were we supposed to forgive her? Was she popular or not? Would EVERY boy really fancy her if she was such a cow? Or was she a cow? I'm really not sure. Just such a bloody confusing character that did not ring true in the slightest.
I really liked the plot twist in the end - very intriguing (if a bit rushed) and I was really happy that Amy and her mum's beliefs were not mocked - their attempts to overcome Amy's haunting were very moving. But for a book that contains ghosts and vintage shops, it was oddly lacking it atmosphere. I would imagine that sort of setting would be ripe for some descriptive, atmospheric writing, but a lot of it felt very flat.
So, mixed feelings about this one. Great mother and daughter relationship. Brilliant main character, but lacking a certain something. BUT, it does have a reference to Mr. Matey bubble bath, so I can forgive some of it's shortcomings.
Oh, and I love a great YA book cover. And this one has to be one of my favourites. It is so lovely I just want to eat it right up.
This book was sent to me for review by Viewpoint Magazine.
December 30, 2015
Delightful mix of sweetness and sadness.
Thank you book, for pulling me from the one-day-and-a-half reading slump, caused by Charm & Strange (fortunately I bounced right back up)!
“I unwrapped the fresh flowers left on the front mat and arranged it in the basket of the vintage bicycle that Mum kept out the front. I wasn’t even sure the bike even worked; it’s only ever served as a glorified vase. Like most of the things in Mum’s shop, Buy Gones, it was old or unwanted or broken or all of the above.
And pre-owned.
Or as Mum preferred to call it, preloved�
Amy Lee is a 16 year-old from (fictional) Middlemore, Australia, and she (as it usually goes in this kind of book) hasn't had it easy lately. After her parents divorce she moves out with her superstitious, quirky, Chinese mom. They made a life for themselves above their vintage store... and they do their best to move on. One the day her school organizes the "'80s dress-up day", Amy leaves her home dressed as Buttercup, from the '80s movie The Princess Bride. There is a scuffle involving her friend Rebecca (dressed as Kylie Minogue) and a bunch of her admirers (all dressed as clones of Jason Donovan) ... Amy offers (unwanted) assistance to her (a little obnoxious)nbestie ... they land in the square's fountain ... Amy founds a locket, and the rest is destiny.
“Whenever my mum decided to give me advice, it often sounded like this:
“Amy, don’t bring an open umbrella into the house, because a ghost might be hiding under it.�
“Amy, don’t touch the sleep on a cat’s eyes and then touch your own eyes, because you will see ghosts.�
“Amy, never tweeze the hairs off the tops of your toes, or you will see ghosts.�
If only I had listened to Mum.�
Rating 3.5
This book was what it promised to be .... a delightful, light YA coming-of-age story with a likable female protagonist (Amy Lee), an adorable superstitious mother (Ivy), with a sprinkle of young paranormal romance, in the form of a teen ghost from the '80s (Logan), complete with not-so-relevant supporting cast of friends (Rebecca, Nancy and Michael), a ghost pet dog (Mister Fozziebum), a haunted locket, a mystery of long missing teenagers ... and a very price-y stuffed owl named Ollie.
“Looking for someone?� said a voice behind me, making me jump.
It was the boy. “How did you get here so fast? You were just–�
I turned back around and started walking away from him quickly.
“Hey, take a chill pill, right?�
Chill pill? What was with the awful Eighties slang? The next thing I knew, he’d be cracking out a “grouse� and an “ace�. And Eighties dress-up day was supposed to be over.�
Maybe I expected a different kind of book after reading Fury .... more of this....
“I ran because it was the only thing I could do.
I left a trail of invisible red footprints.
I knew they were red because they were made from my blood, as the contents of my heart dribbled out.�
and less of this....
“The white light is over there.� I stabbed my finger towards the door of the dining room, trying to convey to Logan as violently as possible to get the heck out of here. “I’m now guiding the spirit towards the light.�
Mum watched me with her mouth still open, fascination on her face.�
... but in the end it was a cute mix of both. I'll sure keep an eye out for Shirley Marr.
“My mother had told me stories about hanged ghosts with long red tongues lolling out of their heads, wandering ghosts looking for their murderers, water ghosts looking for someone to drown in their place. All of them lost and aimless. But what she should have scared me with was a story about a shut down, defensive and sarcastic girl who couldn’t move ahead with her life because she was dead on the inside.�
“Back in my day,� said Logan, “music had two sides. The first side was the one that contained all the hits, all the popular tracks. Then you had the B-side, which was where the musicians could be creative, even experimental. Life had a nice symmetry, back then.�
.... and then, that *swoon* ending...
Lovely book, on second thought maybe deserving of a higher rating, like rounding it up to four stars ... done.
Oh, P.S.
Did I say I loved Amy's mom?
“Usually, I would run out as fast as I could, but today I found myself pausing in the kitchen doorframe, waiting for Mum to leave me with one of her ghost warnings.
“Amy, remember that if you get lost in a forest and the ghosts trick you into thinking every direction looks the same � take your undies off, put them over your head and spin around in a circle. Then your path will be clear.�
“Thanks not so much,� I said. Yes. I could scare away the ghosts. Along with every bushwalker and picnicker in sight. I wasn’t sure what the penalty for public indecency was these days, but I’m sure it involved incarceration.
“Your mum is cool,� said Logan as he followed me out to the front.
“My mum is weird,� I said�
Thank you book, for pulling me from the one-day-and-a-half reading slump, caused by Charm & Strange (fortunately I bounced right back up)!
“I unwrapped the fresh flowers left on the front mat and arranged it in the basket of the vintage bicycle that Mum kept out the front. I wasn’t even sure the bike even worked; it’s only ever served as a glorified vase. Like most of the things in Mum’s shop, Buy Gones, it was old or unwanted or broken or all of the above.
And pre-owned.
Or as Mum preferred to call it, preloved�
Amy Lee is a 16 year-old from (fictional) Middlemore, Australia, and she (as it usually goes in this kind of book) hasn't had it easy lately. After her parents divorce she moves out with her superstitious, quirky, Chinese mom. They made a life for themselves above their vintage store... and they do their best to move on. One the day her school organizes the "'80s dress-up day", Amy leaves her home dressed as Buttercup, from the '80s movie The Princess Bride. There is a scuffle involving her friend Rebecca (dressed as Kylie Minogue) and a bunch of her admirers (all dressed as clones of Jason Donovan) ... Amy offers (unwanted) assistance to her (a little obnoxious)nbestie ... they land in the square's fountain ... Amy founds a locket, and the rest is destiny.
“Whenever my mum decided to give me advice, it often sounded like this:
“Amy, don’t bring an open umbrella into the house, because a ghost might be hiding under it.�
“Amy, don’t touch the sleep on a cat’s eyes and then touch your own eyes, because you will see ghosts.�
“Amy, never tweeze the hairs off the tops of your toes, or you will see ghosts.�
If only I had listened to Mum.�
Rating 3.5
This book was what it promised to be .... a delightful, light YA coming-of-age story with a likable female protagonist (Amy Lee), an adorable superstitious mother (Ivy), with a sprinkle of young paranormal romance, in the form of a teen ghost from the '80s (Logan), complete with not-so-relevant supporting cast of friends (Rebecca, Nancy and Michael), a ghost pet dog (Mister Fozziebum), a haunted locket, a mystery of long missing teenagers ... and a very price-y stuffed owl named Ollie.
“Looking for someone?� said a voice behind me, making me jump.
It was the boy. “How did you get here so fast? You were just–�
I turned back around and started walking away from him quickly.
“Hey, take a chill pill, right?�
Chill pill? What was with the awful Eighties slang? The next thing I knew, he’d be cracking out a “grouse� and an “ace�. And Eighties dress-up day was supposed to be over.�
Maybe I expected a different kind of book after reading Fury .... more of this....
“I ran because it was the only thing I could do.
I left a trail of invisible red footprints.
I knew they were red because they were made from my blood, as the contents of my heart dribbled out.�
and less of this....
“The white light is over there.� I stabbed my finger towards the door of the dining room, trying to convey to Logan as violently as possible to get the heck out of here. “I’m now guiding the spirit towards the light.�
Mum watched me with her mouth still open, fascination on her face.�
... but in the end it was a cute mix of both. I'll sure keep an eye out for Shirley Marr.
“My mother had told me stories about hanged ghosts with long red tongues lolling out of their heads, wandering ghosts looking for their murderers, water ghosts looking for someone to drown in their place. All of them lost and aimless. But what she should have scared me with was a story about a shut down, defensive and sarcastic girl who couldn’t move ahead with her life because she was dead on the inside.�
“Back in my day,� said Logan, “music had two sides. The first side was the one that contained all the hits, all the popular tracks. Then you had the B-side, which was where the musicians could be creative, even experimental. Life had a nice symmetry, back then.�
.... and then, that *swoon* ending...
Lovely book, on second thought maybe deserving of a higher rating, like rounding it up to four stars ... done.
Oh, P.S.
Did I say I loved Amy's mom?
“Usually, I would run out as fast as I could, but today I found myself pausing in the kitchen doorframe, waiting for Mum to leave me with one of her ghost warnings.
“Amy, remember that if you get lost in a forest and the ghosts trick you into thinking every direction looks the same � take your undies off, put them over your head and spin around in a circle. Then your path will be clear.�
“Thanks not so much,� I said. Yes. I could scare away the ghosts. Along with every bushwalker and picnicker in sight. I wasn’t sure what the penalty for public indecency was these days, but I’m sure it involved incarceration.
“Your mum is cool,� said Logan as he followed me out to the front.
“My mum is weird,� I said�
August 26, 2012
I am back! With a review! Oh, the wonderful things I have in store for you, internet-people who like reading my words!
I was dreading reading Preloved. I find this happens pretty often to me. I find out an author I love has a new book coming out, and I am excited! I read the blurb and see the cover, and I am even more excited because it sounds like exactly the kind of book I would love! I get my hands on aforementioned book! And then I stop.
It's the same when books are incredibly hyped - I expect a book to be awesome, and the odds of it not measuring up are much greater than if I'd just randomly selected a title off the shelf, for which I only have average expectations. (I am very serious about this, considering it is just a novel. I think I should probably do less thinking and more reading.)
To my relief, Preloved is brilliant. Funny and honest and all kinds of awesome. It felt a whole lot more like a contemporary novel than a paranormal one, filled with endearing characters and witty dialogue. I don't know how she does it, but it felt to me as if it were full of in-jokes, all of which I was in on. Amy, while she does the usual insecure YA heroine thing, is very endearing. (And I think her best friend is more of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl than a Mary Sue.)
As much as I enjoyed Fury, Marr's debut novel, Preloved is definitely my favourite of the two, for a couple of reasons. One being that while I think it's fantastic that there's lots of dark novels for teenagers to read (it's a dark time in their lives! etc, etc), my personal tastes seem to be evolving away from that (I don't know, I think my brain may have reached capacity on books read about murderous teenagers). Preloved does have its darker points and its serious subject matter (like, super-super-serious subject matter), but there are a lot more funny scenes and heaps of fabulous snappy dialogue and on the whole, it's a lighter read than Fury is. It's very well-balanced.
I did love the subtle reference to Fury at one point in the dialogue, though. I like the idea of all of an author's creations existing in the same world, like Amy might run into Eliza at any moment! Though they have very different social circles, so it's quite unlikely they'd be at the same parties. (And what even is Eliza up to, now? I think there ought to be a sequel to that book!)
Other things I loved:
I loved how meta the entire novel was. References to YA novels while inside a YA novel are hilarious.
I loved the hilarious Australian 80s slang, and all the references to 80s pop culture. (The Princess Bride is indeed the best film ever.)
I loved that it was 'more abnormal than paranormal'.
As I read it, I imagined it as an eighties teen rom-com the entire time in my head. And it was great. The novel was, too. Big-time Hollywood film producers, who I know are definitely for sure reading my blog, take note. I'm thinking about the casting at the moment.
The issues I had with Fury - mainly some clunky dialogue in the first third of the book and some plot twists that were a bit incredible - weren't issues here. I don't know whether that's the different genre or not - one tends to be more forgiving if we're involving fantasy stuff, I find. I think the dialogue works better in this novel, it's more consistent overall, and perhaps that's a result of the author having a more definite style. (Writing a second book is certainly a very different process to the first.) I think the explanation of what had happened to cause the ghost showing up was slightly lacking for me, since it was building up to that revelation for most of the book, but it worked in its own simple way. (I really do like the idea of past lives.)
Just as suitable for younger YA readers as older ones - the writing is unassuming and straightforward and nothing is particularly inappropriate, though there are some heavier themes (well, someone had to die in order to become a ghost). Very much recommended if you like paranormal novels and/or 80s nostalgia. Don't let the paranormal aspects scare you off, though - it's a very lovely ghost story.
(I also just read Love Notes from Vinegar House by Karen Tayleur - review coming shortly - also published by Black Dog Books, which is now an imprint of Walker Books, and also a ghost story. Did they do this on purpose? Is it ghost season? If it isn't, publishers should definitely have a ghost season. I would buy all the books. Even though I do that already.)
In other news, if rambling were an Olympic sport, I like to think I would at least make the finals. END REVIEW.
I was dreading reading Preloved. I find this happens pretty often to me. I find out an author I love has a new book coming out, and I am excited! I read the blurb and see the cover, and I am even more excited because it sounds like exactly the kind of book I would love! I get my hands on aforementioned book! And then I stop.
It's the same when books are incredibly hyped - I expect a book to be awesome, and the odds of it not measuring up are much greater than if I'd just randomly selected a title off the shelf, for which I only have average expectations. (I am very serious about this, considering it is just a novel. I think I should probably do less thinking and more reading.)
To my relief, Preloved is brilliant. Funny and honest and all kinds of awesome. It felt a whole lot more like a contemporary novel than a paranormal one, filled with endearing characters and witty dialogue. I don't know how she does it, but it felt to me as if it were full of in-jokes, all of which I was in on. Amy, while she does the usual insecure YA heroine thing, is very endearing. (And I think her best friend is more of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl than a Mary Sue.)
As much as I enjoyed Fury, Marr's debut novel, Preloved is definitely my favourite of the two, for a couple of reasons. One being that while I think it's fantastic that there's lots of dark novels for teenagers to read (it's a dark time in their lives! etc, etc), my personal tastes seem to be evolving away from that (I don't know, I think my brain may have reached capacity on books read about murderous teenagers). Preloved does have its darker points and its serious subject matter (like, super-super-serious subject matter), but there are a lot more funny scenes and heaps of fabulous snappy dialogue and on the whole, it's a lighter read than Fury is. It's very well-balanced.
I did love the subtle reference to Fury at one point in the dialogue, though. I like the idea of all of an author's creations existing in the same world, like Amy might run into Eliza at any moment! Though they have very different social circles, so it's quite unlikely they'd be at the same parties. (And what even is Eliza up to, now? I think there ought to be a sequel to that book!)
Other things I loved:
I loved how meta the entire novel was. References to YA novels while inside a YA novel are hilarious.
I loved the hilarious Australian 80s slang, and all the references to 80s pop culture. (The Princess Bride is indeed the best film ever.)
I loved that it was 'more abnormal than paranormal'.
As I read it, I imagined it as an eighties teen rom-com the entire time in my head. And it was great. The novel was, too. Big-time Hollywood film producers, who I know are definitely for sure reading my blog, take note. I'm thinking about the casting at the moment.
The issues I had with Fury - mainly some clunky dialogue in the first third of the book and some plot twists that were a bit incredible - weren't issues here. I don't know whether that's the different genre or not - one tends to be more forgiving if we're involving fantasy stuff, I find. I think the dialogue works better in this novel, it's more consistent overall, and perhaps that's a result of the author having a more definite style. (Writing a second book is certainly a very different process to the first.) I think the explanation of what had happened to cause the ghost showing up was slightly lacking for me, since it was building up to that revelation for most of the book, but it worked in its own simple way. (I really do like the idea of past lives.)
Just as suitable for younger YA readers as older ones - the writing is unassuming and straightforward and nothing is particularly inappropriate, though there are some heavier themes (well, someone had to die in order to become a ghost). Very much recommended if you like paranormal novels and/or 80s nostalgia. Don't let the paranormal aspects scare you off, though - it's a very lovely ghost story.
(I also just read Love Notes from Vinegar House by Karen Tayleur - review coming shortly - also published by Black Dog Books, which is now an imprint of Walker Books, and also a ghost story. Did they do this on purpose? Is it ghost season? If it isn't, publishers should definitely have a ghost season. I would buy all the books. Even though I do that already.)
In other news, if rambling were an Olympic sport, I like to think I would at least make the finals. END REVIEW.
July 20, 2012
2.5 STARS!
Okay, I don't usually give half stars, but today is an exception for this book. I want to be straight - this is not a supremely negative review. I did not hate the book. In fact there were some really nice things about it. But it just doesn't quite make it to 3 stars for me. The main reason?
I think it was the writing style and language used. You know, there are some YA books that really work across the age board, but I feel this one in particular was aimed directly at young teens. It was like I was reading directly from my diary from when I was 13-14 - which is fine, except I would no longer want to read those diaries except to laugh at my over-dramatic, boy-obsessed past self. Marr was able to really capture the language and thought processes of a teenager, but it was too much for me. Give me a 16-year-old like Katniss Everdeen and I will digest the story much better!
Some positives! Love that it was set in Australia. You never get to read about vegemite or milo in a YA novel. The characters were fairly endearing, if not a little irritating (especially Amy's best friend - what an awful person!). Logan particularly was well written and lovable. Marr also captured Amy's insecurities & shyness with a kind of uncomfortable truth. Amy is not like Bella Swan, who manages to be shy and awkward and simultaneously adored by the entire school. This was more like real life, where you kind of cling to the one person who gives you attention, despite how they treat you, and when a boy notices you? That's all you think about. Props to Marr for being able to portray her main character like this.
The story did feel a little too unrealistic to me, with characters accepting strange things too quickly and exploring past lives etc without too much question - however it was a nice little book, an easy read and a recommendation to younger readers.
Okay, I don't usually give half stars, but today is an exception for this book. I want to be straight - this is not a supremely negative review. I did not hate the book. In fact there were some really nice things about it. But it just doesn't quite make it to 3 stars for me. The main reason?
I think it was the writing style and language used. You know, there are some YA books that really work across the age board, but I feel this one in particular was aimed directly at young teens. It was like I was reading directly from my diary from when I was 13-14 - which is fine, except I would no longer want to read those diaries except to laugh at my over-dramatic, boy-obsessed past self. Marr was able to really capture the language and thought processes of a teenager, but it was too much for me. Give me a 16-year-old like Katniss Everdeen and I will digest the story much better!
Some positives! Love that it was set in Australia. You never get to read about vegemite or milo in a YA novel. The characters were fairly endearing, if not a little irritating (especially Amy's best friend - what an awful person!). Logan particularly was well written and lovable. Marr also captured Amy's insecurities & shyness with a kind of uncomfortable truth. Amy is not like Bella Swan, who manages to be shy and awkward and simultaneously adored by the entire school. This was more like real life, where you kind of cling to the one person who gives you attention, despite how they treat you, and when a boy notices you? That's all you think about. Props to Marr for being able to portray her main character like this.
The story did feel a little too unrealistic to me, with characters accepting strange things too quickly and exploring past lives etc without too much question - however it was a nice little book, an easy read and a recommendation to younger readers.
August 20, 2012
Amy’s always been the sidekick to her best friend Rebecca, and she likes it that way. She doesn’t have to worry about all the guys loving her, and all the girls hating her; she can focus all of her energy into being Rebecca’s go-to gal and dealing with her superstitious Chinese mother. Amy certainly wouldn’t have planned to find a locket containing the ghost of a boy from the 80s that only she could see–especially not when that locket was meant for someone else. Now Amy has to deal with Logan, who see just might want to kill if he weren’t already dead, but just might love a little too.
Preloved was a cute and surprisingly touching story about connecting with one’s identity. I expected a light hearted paranormal romance, a story where the sidekick finally got a taste of the limelight, but instead I got a story about a girl learning to embrace her culture, her family, and a life outside of the bubble she’d been happily living in so long. Preloved was certainly light hearted, but not in a completely fluffy way, and I found the incorporation of Chinese mythology both unique and fascinatingly fun.
Sadly for me, Amy was one of those characters I was never really able to love. She’s too abrasive when it’s not wanted, too convinced that it’s her lifelong role to be someone else’s second, and she never really gets out of the mentality that Rebecca has it all and that’s how life should be. Rebecca was just a horrid friend, and I was disappointed that while Amy moves beyond being the moon that revolves around Rebecca’s world, she doesn’t wake up and realize Rebecca’s pretty terrible. Rebecca is one of those girls who cares immensely about looking like she doesn’t care at all, and very carefully cultivates a personality of intrigue and mystery, constantly placing Amy in a secondary roll with no idea that this girl deserves her own story.
I pictured Rebecca and Amy kind of like this:
Only if Rory was a terrible self-absorbed friend all of the time (rather than just some of it) who always had a crazy hair color and Lane was Chinese instead of Korean and her mother was super Chinese traditional instead of Christian. Amy’s mom totally has the crazy vintage store and single mom thing down, which isn’t too far from antiques and a father that stops being mentioned after season one!
So it should come as no surprise that despite all physical descriptions, I pictured Logan and Stacey like this:
But since it was Amy who was awesome enough to dress up as O-Ren Ishi while Rory Gilmore dressed up as Gogo Yurabi (also awesome), I feel the Gilmore references have to stop here lest things get too muddled.
ANYWAY the whole concept of Preloved is pretty cute. Amy’s mom owns a vintage shop, where she likes to refer to the items she sells as preloved rather than pre-owned. The term takes on all sorts of new meanings as the story unfolds and Logan appears from a locket that used to belong to his girlfriend Stacey who just happens to look exactly like Amy’s bestie Rebecca. So where does Amy fit into this mess, especially when she’s pretty sure she’s falling for this non-corporeal being?
Well of course Amy’s Chinese mother has spent a lifetime warning her about all of the things she shouldn’t do lest she attract a ghost…she just never told her about that one. And Logan isn’t a vengeful ghost or a hungry ghost, he’s just a [gorgeous] teenaged boy looking to get his girl back. Which brings us to the whole concept of reincarnation and the possibility that Rebecca really is somehow this Stacey girl that Logan’s so hung up on.
I really loved Preloved‘s take on reincarnation, and honestly hadn’t heard many of the beliefs about it before. In Amy’s culture, the idea of reincarnation is partly a coping mechanism, but it’s also this really sweet belief that everyone gets a second chance, and that in each lifetime we have the opportunity to make our own decisions about who will be in our lives and who we will be as people–each lifetime is a fresh opportunity, or the chance to make up for your past.
Preloved became very much about Amy connecting with her mom, and others in the Chinese community through their beliefs and sayings, as well as a look at the reality that so many of us idealize another time. Amy looked back at the 80s as a perfect and quaint time, whereas Logan looked at the present and was shocked that the problems of his day hadn’t yet been solved.
I do have to say that Preloved is the first YA book that has ever made me feel really old. I found the way Amy talked about the 80s to be pretty annoying, but a large part of that is the reality that I was around for a lot of that first hand. In the end I found Preloved to be both fun and well crafted, but not quite the perfect book for me.
Here's one of my favorite bits from the beginning:
I learned a few things that day.
One: if I hadn’t scared bloody Michael Limawan and his two Lord of the Rings super geeks away, they would have told me that Frodo would tell you never put on a cursed piece of jewellery.
Two: there was a reason why that necklace mysteriously appeared on Rebecca and not me. Because it was intended for her. Rebecca was supposed to be the star of this story, not me. In the correct circumstances I would have been regulated to the sidekick status Rebecca said belonged to me, and I would have been happy with that. I’m cool with the stereotype.
Three: most importantly, I wish my mum had told me something like this: “Amy, do not pick up old lockets and put them around your neck, even if you are distracted and not thinking straight because you’d just been attacked by three Jason Donovans and your best friend was on the verge of possibly breaking up with you forever. You don’t put on an old locket, because it might just have a ghost inside.�
Preloved was a cute and surprisingly touching story about connecting with one’s identity. I expected a light hearted paranormal romance, a story where the sidekick finally got a taste of the limelight, but instead I got a story about a girl learning to embrace her culture, her family, and a life outside of the bubble she’d been happily living in so long. Preloved was certainly light hearted, but not in a completely fluffy way, and I found the incorporation of Chinese mythology both unique and fascinatingly fun.
Sadly for me, Amy was one of those characters I was never really able to love. She’s too abrasive when it’s not wanted, too convinced that it’s her lifelong role to be someone else’s second, and she never really gets out of the mentality that Rebecca has it all and that’s how life should be. Rebecca was just a horrid friend, and I was disappointed that while Amy moves beyond being the moon that revolves around Rebecca’s world, she doesn’t wake up and realize Rebecca’s pretty terrible. Rebecca is one of those girls who cares immensely about looking like she doesn’t care at all, and very carefully cultivates a personality of intrigue and mystery, constantly placing Amy in a secondary roll with no idea that this girl deserves her own story.
I pictured Rebecca and Amy kind of like this:
Only if Rory was a terrible self-absorbed friend all of the time (rather than just some of it) who always had a crazy hair color and Lane was Chinese instead of Korean and her mother was super Chinese traditional instead of Christian. Amy’s mom totally has the crazy vintage store and single mom thing down, which isn’t too far from antiques and a father that stops being mentioned after season one!
So it should come as no surprise that despite all physical descriptions, I pictured Logan and Stacey like this:
But since it was Amy who was awesome enough to dress up as O-Ren Ishi while Rory Gilmore dressed up as Gogo Yurabi (also awesome), I feel the Gilmore references have to stop here lest things get too muddled.
ANYWAY the whole concept of Preloved is pretty cute. Amy’s mom owns a vintage shop, where she likes to refer to the items she sells as preloved rather than pre-owned. The term takes on all sorts of new meanings as the story unfolds and Logan appears from a locket that used to belong to his girlfriend Stacey who just happens to look exactly like Amy’s bestie Rebecca. So where does Amy fit into this mess, especially when she’s pretty sure she’s falling for this non-corporeal being?
Well of course Amy’s Chinese mother has spent a lifetime warning her about all of the things she shouldn’t do lest she attract a ghost…she just never told her about that one. And Logan isn’t a vengeful ghost or a hungry ghost, he’s just a [gorgeous] teenaged boy looking to get his girl back. Which brings us to the whole concept of reincarnation and the possibility that Rebecca really is somehow this Stacey girl that Logan’s so hung up on.
I really loved Preloved‘s take on reincarnation, and honestly hadn’t heard many of the beliefs about it before. In Amy’s culture, the idea of reincarnation is partly a coping mechanism, but it’s also this really sweet belief that everyone gets a second chance, and that in each lifetime we have the opportunity to make our own decisions about who will be in our lives and who we will be as people–each lifetime is a fresh opportunity, or the chance to make up for your past.
Preloved became very much about Amy connecting with her mom, and others in the Chinese community through their beliefs and sayings, as well as a look at the reality that so many of us idealize another time. Amy looked back at the 80s as a perfect and quaint time, whereas Logan looked at the present and was shocked that the problems of his day hadn’t yet been solved.
I do have to say that Preloved is the first YA book that has ever made me feel really old. I found the way Amy talked about the 80s to be pretty annoying, but a large part of that is the reality that I was around for a lot of that first hand. In the end I found Preloved to be both fun and well crafted, but not quite the perfect book for me.
Here's one of my favorite bits from the beginning:
I learned a few things that day.
One: if I hadn’t scared bloody Michael Limawan and his two Lord of the Rings super geeks away, they would have told me that Frodo would tell you never put on a cursed piece of jewellery.
Two: there was a reason why that necklace mysteriously appeared on Rebecca and not me. Because it was intended for her. Rebecca was supposed to be the star of this story, not me. In the correct circumstances I would have been regulated to the sidekick status Rebecca said belonged to me, and I would have been happy with that. I’m cool with the stereotype.
Three: most importantly, I wish my mum had told me something like this: “Amy, do not pick up old lockets and put them around your neck, even if you are distracted and not thinking straight because you’d just been attacked by three Jason Donovans and your best friend was on the verge of possibly breaking up with you forever. You don’t put on an old locket, because it might just have a ghost inside.�
August 2, 2012
3.25/5
i love eating cold watermelon slices and licking off the juice that dribbles on my fingers. preloved pretty much is that equivalent. there for a good time.
tags:
mom-daughter relationship � sisterhood � ghosts � 80s � pop culture references � single parent � snarky � underdogs � sidekicks � asians � teen � dressing up � mystery � haunting
i love eating cold watermelon slices and licking off the juice that dribbles on my fingers. preloved pretty much is that equivalent. there for a good time.
tags:
mom-daughter relationship � sisterhood � ghosts � 80s � pop culture references � single parent � snarky � underdogs � sidekicks � asians � teen � dressing up � mystery � haunting
May 14, 2012
I think the best way to sum up Shirley Marr's Preloved is to say, whatever you are expecting? It isn't that. Not exactly, anyway. I read tons of reviews that try to explain. Marr says it herself when she describes it as "more a bad romance, less of a love story. And it's more abnormal than paranormal," but still, I went in thinking I knew what it would be. I was wrong, and I was blown away. I tore open my manila mailer, seated myself on the couch, and started reading. I sort of grunted incoherently at my husband as he thrust a glass of tea and a sandwich in my hand somewhere around dinner time, only to finally surface hours later to a quietly sleeping house.
I went in expecting a book that would extol the awesomeness of the 80s -- The Cure, Labyrinth, Princess Bride, Rainbows on everything. And they were all there; but so was the Challenger, Chernobyl and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I expected a little gratuitous nostalgia or the 80s used as an "exotic" backdrop (Hah! Now I know why my mom would get twitchy when we talked about how long ago the 60s were!) Marr was able to display the 80s in all their fab-glam glory while still showing that everyday people were living out their lives -- just as they are today.
I went in expecting a love story. And, boy does it deliver! Only, it's not of the teen romance variety (yep, there's a bit of bad romance there). Instead, it is about familial love. Amy and her mother have hands down one of the best mother/daughter relationships I have ever read. Marr helps you feel everything between them: the push and pull, the frustration, the suffocating clingyness, and the all-encompassing, ever-abiding love.
It was interesting as an American to explore the evolution of slang and trends not only between the 1980s and now, but also America and Australia. I think most Americans would, unlike Amy, still recognize and use the word "spaz" (my little brother calls me this on a regular basis), but I had no clue what was going on with this Mr. Matey thing until I it. (We had ; just as creepy but at least no talking of taking off clothes!) I also completely love the way Marr incorporated Chinese culture. I was fascinated by all the different superstitions, traditions and rituals. It made my day when I found out that ALL of them are true, told straight to Marr from her mother.
I also think it is incredible that in amongst all the 80s camp and ghostly shenanigans, Marr was able to write a wonderfully compelling and relatable story about a young girl coming of age and coming to terms with who those around her really are, and what they mean to her. It will be worth the extra work to get my own copy.
This review also appears on ; my review copy was part of the .
I went in expecting a book that would extol the awesomeness of the 80s -- The Cure, Labyrinth, Princess Bride, Rainbows on everything. And they were all there; but so was the Challenger, Chernobyl and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I expected a little gratuitous nostalgia or the 80s used as an "exotic" backdrop (Hah! Now I know why my mom would get twitchy when we talked about how long ago the 60s were!) Marr was able to display the 80s in all their fab-glam glory while still showing that everyday people were living out their lives -- just as they are today.
I went in expecting a love story. And, boy does it deliver! Only, it's not of the teen romance variety (yep, there's a bit of bad romance there). Instead, it is about familial love. Amy and her mother have hands down one of the best mother/daughter relationships I have ever read. Marr helps you feel everything between them: the push and pull, the frustration, the suffocating clingyness, and the all-encompassing, ever-abiding love.
It was interesting as an American to explore the evolution of slang and trends not only between the 1980s and now, but also America and Australia. I think most Americans would, unlike Amy, still recognize and use the word "spaz" (my little brother calls me this on a regular basis), but I had no clue what was going on with this Mr. Matey thing until I it. (We had ; just as creepy but at least no talking of taking off clothes!) I also completely love the way Marr incorporated Chinese culture. I was fascinated by all the different superstitions, traditions and rituals. It made my day when I found out that ALL of them are true, told straight to Marr from her mother.
I also think it is incredible that in amongst all the 80s camp and ghostly shenanigans, Marr was able to write a wonderfully compelling and relatable story about a young girl coming of age and coming to terms with who those around her really are, and what they mean to her. It will be worth the extra work to get my own copy.
This review also appears on ; my review copy was part of the .
June 18, 2015
Actual rating- 3.5
If you are going to read this review or if you are not going to read it, especially if you are not going to read it, at least check this book () out!
You know those books, which aren't that popular but ought to be popular? is one such book.
Amy Lee is a sixteen year old girl, who finds a locket and with it an 18th century ghost, Logan, who wants Amy's help to reconcile with his sweetheart Stacey which is Amy's friend Rebecca. Or is that his aim?
I could connect with Amy so much!
She feels lost and shadowed by her best friend. She deals with being the side kick in a cool manner but she wants her own story as well. She lives with her Mum above their vintage shop called 'Buy Gones.'
Talking about Amy's mum, let me tell you I found her really cool. She is chinese with chinese superstitions.
Which is why when Amy tells her mum about being stalked by a ghost, her mum is almost pretty cool about it.
The book is loads of fun yet it is so beautiful and heart-touching.
I have heard a little about Chinese folklore and superstitions but reading this book made me very interested in it. If you know any book that contains chinese superstitions and folklore then do recommend!
I would recommend this book to everyone who likes reading a good story.
If you are going to read this review or if you are not going to read it, especially if you are not going to read it, at least check this book () out!
You know those books, which aren't that popular but ought to be popular? is one such book.
Amy Lee is a sixteen year old girl, who finds a locket and with it an 18th century ghost, Logan, who wants Amy's help to reconcile with his sweetheart Stacey which is Amy's friend Rebecca. Or is that his aim?
I could connect with Amy so much!
"It was weird, but it seemed like I didn't know who I was. I know that everyone feels that way sometimes, but for me, it was like that all the time."
She feels lost and shadowed by her best friend. She deals with being the side kick in a cool manner but she wants her own story as well. She lives with her Mum above their vintage shop called 'Buy Gones.'
Talking about Amy's mum, let me tell you I found her really cool. She is chinese with chinese superstitions.
Whenever my mum decided to give me advice, it often sounded like this:
"Amy, don't bring an open umbrella into the house, because a ghost might be hiding under it"
"Amy, don't touch the sleep on a cat's eyes and then touch your own eyes, because you will see ghosts."
"Amy, never tweeze the hairs off the tops of your toes, or you will see ghosts."
Which is why when Amy tells her mum about being stalked by a ghost, her mum is almost pretty cool about it.
"Tell me Amy, is the spirit a woman in a red dress?"
"Um. No."
"Oh, thank goodness!" exclaimed Mum. "It's not a vengeful ghost. Your ah ma taught me that if someone was murdered, they used to dress the deceased in red so they could come back as a ghost to wreck vengeance. How do you think this ghost became attached to you?"
The book is loads of fun yet it is so beautiful and heart-touching.
I thought about Mum's vintage shop. How she believed that if she found something broken and lovingly put it back together, that someone would come along and love it again.
I have heard a little about Chinese folklore and superstitions but reading this book made me very interested in it. If you know any book that contains chinese superstitions and folklore then do recommend!
I would recommend this book to everyone who likes reading a good story.
“There is no ending to this story because, as I've realised, stories don't have endings, only beginnings.�
August 23, 2012
See and more on !
Preloved has one of the coolest concepts on the block (a ghost from the Eighties? It was only the so-daggy-it's-cool era), and add to that major bonus points for a YA heroine who's Chinese.
However the startling brevity in which this tale was told left me breathless and a little disappointed. The book could have easily been twice as long with a little description added.
Perhaps it was the narrative style itself that didn't gel with me, but I didn't see Amy's relationships at all. All the other characters besides her mother were just people she interacted with. Even her best friend was stand-offish and vague.
Where this novel soars is living in Amy's mind: the mind of a lonely Chinese-Australian teenager who just wants to connect with her somewhat prickly but caring mum. Amy is realistic to the point of being painful, although I did find her resignation to the sidekick role an interesting take on her friendship with Rebecca. In my reading she wasn't jealous, just incredibly lonely. She was bound to fall in love with the only guy who can interact with her. Poor soul.
I'm not sure I fully grasped the concept that wrapped up the climax , and due to that I will re-read the book one day.
Preloved has one of the coolest concepts on the block (a ghost from the Eighties? It was only the so-daggy-it's-cool era), and add to that major bonus points for a YA heroine who's Chinese.
However the startling brevity in which this tale was told left me breathless and a little disappointed. The book could have easily been twice as long with a little description added.
Perhaps it was the narrative style itself that didn't gel with me, but I didn't see Amy's relationships at all. All the other characters besides her mother were just people she interacted with. Even her best friend was stand-offish and vague.
Where this novel soars is living in Amy's mind: the mind of a lonely Chinese-Australian teenager who just wants to connect with her somewhat prickly but caring mum. Amy is realistic to the point of being painful, although I did find her resignation to the sidekick role an interesting take on her friendship with Rebecca. In my reading she wasn't jealous, just incredibly lonely. She was bound to fall in love with the only guy who can interact with her. Poor soul.
I'm not sure I fully grasped the concept that wrapped up the climax , and due to that I will re-read the book one day.
May 28, 2012
This is three and a half stars. It's really a delightful way to spend a few hours. It tells the story of sixteen year old Amy Lee. She is the self described sidekick of the beautiful Rebecca. A petite Asian girl who doesn't really fit in, not with the other Asian kids at her school, not with anyone. Even Amy and Rebecca don't really fit together even though they are BFF's. Amy finds a locket a silver heart with the picture of a boy in it. Unfortunately the locket was really meant for Rebecca. But Amy finds it and starts wearing it and starts being followed by a ghost. The ghost of the boy in the picture (a dish named Logan). Through her interactions with Logan (at first he frightens then annoys her, gradually she begins to love him) she discovers where she came from, develops a new closeness with her mother, let's go of her bitterness towards her absent father and finds some new friends and a sense of belonging. Amy is a fun character bitter and funny and snarky, Logan is wiser than he seemed at first and I loved her mother, a very superstitious but loving Chinese mother ( not a " tiger mom", she even points this out at one point in the book). I loved the pop culture references in this book and I loved her mother's little vintage store. Now I just need to find out what a Milo is!!
June 20, 2012
Four stars: A coming of age story with a sweet ghostly romance and eighties flashbacks!
Amy heads to school with her best pal Rebecca. It is an eighties themed dress up day at school. Amy is dressed as Buttercup from her favorite movie,The Princess Bride, while the lovely Rebecca with her blue hair looks stunning as pop star Kylie Minogue. Amy is used to being in Rebecca's shadow. Rebecca with her striking looks, turns all the boys' heads. Today is no different as they reach the fountain that is overgrown with algae and rather nasty, they meet a pack of Rebecca admirers in their eighties gear. An inadvertent shove lands Rebecca and Amy into the murky water. As the pair sputters out of the fountain, Amy notices something caught in Rebecca's hair. It is a cheap plastic heart locket with a rainbow on the back. Amy tugs it out of Rebecca's hair and offers it to her, but she refuses it, so Amy keeps the locket. Despite the repeated warnings from her mother never to open something you find for fear of attracting a ghost, Amy manages to finally get the locket open. Shortly thereafter, she starts seeing a mysterious new boy dressed up for eighties day. When she sees him later that night in her room, Amy begins to suspect she had indeed attracted a ghost. Will this strange ghost from the eighties bring her harm or worse steal her heart?
What I Liked:
*I adored Amy's Chinese mother. She retains some of the typical qualities you would expect from a Chinese mother but she also goes against tradition, so you end up with a single mother who is somewhat strict, emotionally distant, eccentric and extremely superstitious. I loved all the advice she gives Amy regarding ghosts. Some of her antidotes are downright hilarious like putting your underwear on your head to confuse the ghost. Truly, these fun quips were my favorite part of the book. Yet, Amy's mother is so much more. She went against the expected norms and left Amy's ridiculous father and fights daily to make it on her own. She is such an interesting and unique character!
*I had so much fun with the throwback to the eighties. Ms. Marr brings back of flood of memories from this decade, especially since the majority of my childhood and teenage years occurred during this time period. I especially enjoyed the use of eighties slang and phrases when they were uttered to a modern day teenage. The subsequent interpretation of these catch phrases was funny. If you are a child of the eighties you will enjoy the stroll down memory lane and even you aren't it is loads of fun. Don't worry the references aren't overly abundant, just the right touch.
*At the heart of the story is a bittersweet little romance between Amy and the ghostly eighties boy, Logan. Of course, a romance between a girl and a ghost can only have a sad outcome, but the journey was sweet and fun and ultimately it ended up being something more as Amy learns a few things along the way about herself. In the end she lets go of some loose baggage, learns to accept some things, appreciate and love her mother even more and finally to allow herself to open up to other people. At the end of the book I had high hopes for Amy, that she was just beginning to blossom.
*I think one other aspect of this book that really spoke to me was the relationship between Amy and her mother. Sure she loves and appreciates her mom, but as the story unfolds they bond in new ways and at the end there is a deep new appreciation and she learns it is okay to hug your mom. I loved this part of the story.
And The Not So Much:
*I enjoyed Logan and the ghost aspect of the story but I was left confused about why Logan resurfaced after all these years and how the locket came to be in the fountain. Was Logan looking for redemption, closure or something else? I never felt like I had a true understanding of why he was haunting Amy. At the end, I wanted more details on the circumstances of his demise as well.
*Toward the end of the book the concept of reincarnation was introduced. For me it felt a little jarring and I just didn't feel that it integrated seamlessly into the overall story.
Preloved, Ms. Marr's sophomore novel is nothing like its predecessor, Fury. This book relies on a nostalgic look back at the eighties as a young girl grapples with her own identity all while she falls in love with a ghost. It is a simple, sweet coming of age story that will make you smile. The romance is bittersweet and fun. I enjoyed Amy, she is a character with a great sense of humor and spunk. Preloved reminds you to appreciate the good things in life, even the stuff that is handed down to you and comes already preloved.
Favorite Quotations:
“If you're hoping to party like it's 1999 because Prince told you the world was going to end in 2000, then I'm sorry to disappoint you. We're still here.”�
"I see you, this girl who lives inside herself, invisible to everyone, even to herself. You're hungry for your mother's touch, hungry for your missing father. You're hungry for life and you're hungry to be a proper character in your own story."
“I thought about Mum's vintage shop. How she believed that if she found something broken and lovingly put it back together, that someone would come along and love it again.�
“Amy, don’t bring an open umbrella into the house, because a ghost might be hiding under it.�
“Amy, don’t touch the sleep on a cat’s eyes and then touch your own eyes, because you will see ghosts.�
“Amy, never tweeze the hairs off the tops of your toes, or you will see ghosts.�
“I could feel my eyelids drooping. In that space that exists between wake and sleep, I thought about how this should be the moment when we stare up at a ceiling decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars and have one of those “spend the night, but no sex� scenes out of a YA romance.�
“Amy, remember that if you get lost in a forest and the ghosts trick you into thinking every direction looks the same- take your undies off, put them over your head and spin around in a circle. Then your path will be clear.�
“There is no ending to this story because, as I’ve realised, stories don’t have endings, only beginnings.�
A big thanks to Flannery over at the Readaventurer for putting this book on tour and sharing her copy with me.
Orginally posted @
Amy heads to school with her best pal Rebecca. It is an eighties themed dress up day at school. Amy is dressed as Buttercup from her favorite movie,The Princess Bride, while the lovely Rebecca with her blue hair looks stunning as pop star Kylie Minogue. Amy is used to being in Rebecca's shadow. Rebecca with her striking looks, turns all the boys' heads. Today is no different as they reach the fountain that is overgrown with algae and rather nasty, they meet a pack of Rebecca admirers in their eighties gear. An inadvertent shove lands Rebecca and Amy into the murky water. As the pair sputters out of the fountain, Amy notices something caught in Rebecca's hair. It is a cheap plastic heart locket with a rainbow on the back. Amy tugs it out of Rebecca's hair and offers it to her, but she refuses it, so Amy keeps the locket. Despite the repeated warnings from her mother never to open something you find for fear of attracting a ghost, Amy manages to finally get the locket open. Shortly thereafter, she starts seeing a mysterious new boy dressed up for eighties day. When she sees him later that night in her room, Amy begins to suspect she had indeed attracted a ghost. Will this strange ghost from the eighties bring her harm or worse steal her heart?
What I Liked:
*I adored Amy's Chinese mother. She retains some of the typical qualities you would expect from a Chinese mother but she also goes against tradition, so you end up with a single mother who is somewhat strict, emotionally distant, eccentric and extremely superstitious. I loved all the advice she gives Amy regarding ghosts. Some of her antidotes are downright hilarious like putting your underwear on your head to confuse the ghost. Truly, these fun quips were my favorite part of the book. Yet, Amy's mother is so much more. She went against the expected norms and left Amy's ridiculous father and fights daily to make it on her own. She is such an interesting and unique character!
*I had so much fun with the throwback to the eighties. Ms. Marr brings back of flood of memories from this decade, especially since the majority of my childhood and teenage years occurred during this time period. I especially enjoyed the use of eighties slang and phrases when they were uttered to a modern day teenage. The subsequent interpretation of these catch phrases was funny. If you are a child of the eighties you will enjoy the stroll down memory lane and even you aren't it is loads of fun. Don't worry the references aren't overly abundant, just the right touch.
*At the heart of the story is a bittersweet little romance between Amy and the ghostly eighties boy, Logan. Of course, a romance between a girl and a ghost can only have a sad outcome, but the journey was sweet and fun and ultimately it ended up being something more as Amy learns a few things along the way about herself. In the end she lets go of some loose baggage, learns to accept some things, appreciate and love her mother even more and finally to allow herself to open up to other people. At the end of the book I had high hopes for Amy, that she was just beginning to blossom.
*I think one other aspect of this book that really spoke to me was the relationship between Amy and her mother. Sure she loves and appreciates her mom, but as the story unfolds they bond in new ways and at the end there is a deep new appreciation and she learns it is okay to hug your mom. I loved this part of the story.
And The Not So Much:
*I enjoyed Logan and the ghost aspect of the story but I was left confused about why Logan resurfaced after all these years and how the locket came to be in the fountain. Was Logan looking for redemption, closure or something else? I never felt like I had a true understanding of why he was haunting Amy. At the end, I wanted more details on the circumstances of his demise as well.
*Toward the end of the book the concept of reincarnation was introduced. For me it felt a little jarring and I just didn't feel that it integrated seamlessly into the overall story.
Preloved, Ms. Marr's sophomore novel is nothing like its predecessor, Fury. This book relies on a nostalgic look back at the eighties as a young girl grapples with her own identity all while she falls in love with a ghost. It is a simple, sweet coming of age story that will make you smile. The romance is bittersweet and fun. I enjoyed Amy, she is a character with a great sense of humor and spunk. Preloved reminds you to appreciate the good things in life, even the stuff that is handed down to you and comes already preloved.
Favorite Quotations:
“If you're hoping to party like it's 1999 because Prince told you the world was going to end in 2000, then I'm sorry to disappoint you. We're still here.”�
"I see you, this girl who lives inside herself, invisible to everyone, even to herself. You're hungry for your mother's touch, hungry for your missing father. You're hungry for life and you're hungry to be a proper character in your own story."
“I thought about Mum's vintage shop. How she believed that if she found something broken and lovingly put it back together, that someone would come along and love it again.�
“Amy, don’t bring an open umbrella into the house, because a ghost might be hiding under it.�
“Amy, don’t touch the sleep on a cat’s eyes and then touch your own eyes, because you will see ghosts.�
“Amy, never tweeze the hairs off the tops of your toes, or you will see ghosts.�
“I could feel my eyelids drooping. In that space that exists between wake and sleep, I thought about how this should be the moment when we stare up at a ceiling decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars and have one of those “spend the night, but no sex� scenes out of a YA romance.�
“Amy, remember that if you get lost in a forest and the ghosts trick you into thinking every direction looks the same- take your undies off, put them over your head and spin around in a circle. Then your path will be clear.�
“There is no ending to this story because, as I’ve realised, stories don’t have endings, only beginnings.�
A big thanks to Flannery over at the Readaventurer for putting this book on tour and sharing her copy with me.
Orginally posted @
January 13, 2014
That rating is pretty much shorthand for a lot of wavering, mind-changing and the like, but if you're not interested in the rambling description of my reading experience to follow, you can just have the short version: it grew on me greatly.
I think I saw this book first when Wendy Darling added it - and made it sound well worth reading and was enthusiastic enough to have Marr visit The Midnight Garden. (And, I believe, to give away copies of the book, although I was already too late to benefit from that.) So, of course, I thought I'd just snap up a copy, no problem. Right? Not right. Over the many months spent waiting for a copy I considered reasonably-priced-just-about-justifiable (maybe), I started following Shirley Marr's reviews, and found a lot of what she wrote very interesting. And then the blurb, of course, sounded so appealing.
So by the time I got the book (sale at ABEbooks), I was well and truly impatient to read it, while also aware that it wouldn't do to have overly high expectations just because it was hard to get hold of a copy. (And yes, I am actually going to start talking about the book, finally!)
I don't know if anyone else will immediately get what I mean when I say that the writing seemed very 'imprecise' at the beginning. It's not bad prose, and it's not ungrammatical or anything like that, but it just seems not to hit a scene cleanly. The set-up scene in the first chapter, in which Amy discovers the locket that causes her to be haunted by Logan, is a good example. Up until then things were going well enough, with Amy's life with her single mother, Ivy, neatly drawn in a few pages, and her belief that in their 'movie' she was just her friend Rebecca's 'short, awkward, Asian best friend'. It all goes a bit silly and didn't quite work, though, when Amy and Rebecca are 'ambushed' by three guys from their school, all dressed as Jason Donovan (it's Eighties Day in their school, and Rebecca is early Kylie Minogue). First of all, someone so invested in her own ironic image as Rebecca seemed a bit unlikely to have *all* the guys at school madly in love with her, and *all* the girls (except Amy) hating her for it. More importantly, there was no reason for Amy to fake-threaten the guys with (utterly non-existent but apparently terrifying to the guys, just because she's Asian) martial arts skills, just for standing there in their way, ready to sing 80s pop songs. Even though she admits that she doesn't know what came over her, her grabbing the cassette out of the boom-box and throwing it in Michael's face seemed excessive, and the way she and Rebecca landed in the fountain far too slapstick to set off the action of the book. Imprecise? How it feels to me, anyway.
The reason I'm saying this rather than just admitting the book was younger, fluffier and sillier than I'd expected, is because it isn't. It just took a while for the emotionally meaty stuff to work its way clear of the rest. One thing that may be worth mentioning is that my initial unease about the portrayal of Ivy as a 'Chinese mother' - unable to show affection openly to her daughter, and very superstitious - wasn't justified. Ivy is wonderful, and certainly isn't just a stereotype. I had managed to forget (or hadn't known) that Marr's mother is Chinese, and she says in her own write-up on GR that all the superstitions in the book really exist. This, I think, is one of the things I found very interesting about Preloved; its genre appears at first sight to be straightforwardly fantasy (paranormal, at that), and yet it becomes more complex. There's the possibility that Amy isn't really being haunted by Logan at all, but imagining him, and she herself is not quite a fully-realised person. And then there's the way that Ivy doesn't really believe all the superstitions about which she warns Amy, but does, of course, believe in ghosts and reincarnation, which gives more emotional depth to her relationship with Amy (the bit about the birthmark I found especially moving), and to Amy's with Logan. And with Rebecca, who very gradually became a character you could actually see as a friend for Amy, rather than just a pain with an incredibly irritating self-centred fondness for herself. If some of the details of the eventual reveal about who Logan was and how he was connected to Amy seemed a bit fuzzy, by that time their relationship, which clearly was not going to have a HEA, was engaging enough that I didn't much care. Amy doesn't get a HEA romance, but she does get friends, a closer relationship with her mother, closure about her father's abandonment, and just a sense of herself as an interesting, worthwhile person.
All in all, not a perfect read, but one that both grew on me and stayed with me. If anyone (of friends) has read this far and would also like to try this, I'd be more than happy to send my copy across the water again. I'm sure there are plenty of superstitions about ghosts and water and return journeys that are relevant here!
I think I saw this book first when Wendy Darling added it - and made it sound well worth reading and was enthusiastic enough to have Marr visit The Midnight Garden. (And, I believe, to give away copies of the book, although I was already too late to benefit from that.) So, of course, I thought I'd just snap up a copy, no problem. Right? Not right. Over the many months spent waiting for a copy I considered reasonably-priced-just-about-justifiable (maybe), I started following Shirley Marr's reviews, and found a lot of what she wrote very interesting. And then the blurb, of course, sounded so appealing.
So by the time I got the book (sale at ABEbooks), I was well and truly impatient to read it, while also aware that it wouldn't do to have overly high expectations just because it was hard to get hold of a copy. (And yes, I am actually going to start talking about the book, finally!)
I don't know if anyone else will immediately get what I mean when I say that the writing seemed very 'imprecise' at the beginning. It's not bad prose, and it's not ungrammatical or anything like that, but it just seems not to hit a scene cleanly. The set-up scene in the first chapter, in which Amy discovers the locket that causes her to be haunted by Logan, is a good example. Up until then things were going well enough, with Amy's life with her single mother, Ivy, neatly drawn in a few pages, and her belief that in their 'movie' she was just her friend Rebecca's 'short, awkward, Asian best friend'. It all goes a bit silly and didn't quite work, though, when Amy and Rebecca are 'ambushed' by three guys from their school, all dressed as Jason Donovan (it's Eighties Day in their school, and Rebecca is early Kylie Minogue). First of all, someone so invested in her own ironic image as Rebecca seemed a bit unlikely to have *all* the guys at school madly in love with her, and *all* the girls (except Amy) hating her for it. More importantly, there was no reason for Amy to fake-threaten the guys with (utterly non-existent but apparently terrifying to the guys, just because she's Asian) martial arts skills, just for standing there in their way, ready to sing 80s pop songs. Even though she admits that she doesn't know what came over her, her grabbing the cassette out of the boom-box and throwing it in Michael's face seemed excessive, and the way she and Rebecca landed in the fountain far too slapstick to set off the action of the book. Imprecise? How it feels to me, anyway.
The reason I'm saying this rather than just admitting the book was younger, fluffier and sillier than I'd expected, is because it isn't. It just took a while for the emotionally meaty stuff to work its way clear of the rest. One thing that may be worth mentioning is that my initial unease about the portrayal of Ivy as a 'Chinese mother' - unable to show affection openly to her daughter, and very superstitious - wasn't justified. Ivy is wonderful, and certainly isn't just a stereotype. I had managed to forget (or hadn't known) that Marr's mother is Chinese, and she says in her own write-up on GR that all the superstitions in the book really exist. This, I think, is one of the things I found very interesting about Preloved; its genre appears at first sight to be straightforwardly fantasy (paranormal, at that), and yet it becomes more complex. There's the possibility that Amy isn't really being haunted by Logan at all, but imagining him, and she herself is not quite a fully-realised person. And then there's the way that Ivy doesn't really believe all the superstitions about which she warns Amy, but does, of course, believe in ghosts and reincarnation, which gives more emotional depth to her relationship with Amy (the bit about the birthmark I found especially moving), and to Amy's with Logan. And with Rebecca, who very gradually became a character you could actually see as a friend for Amy, rather than just a pain with an incredibly irritating self-centred fondness for herself. If some of the details of the eventual reveal about who Logan was and how he was connected to Amy seemed a bit fuzzy, by that time their relationship, which clearly was not going to have a HEA, was engaging enough that I didn't much care. Amy doesn't get a HEA romance, but she does get friends, a closer relationship with her mother, closure about her father's abandonment, and just a sense of herself as an interesting, worthwhile person.
All in all, not a perfect read, but one that both grew on me and stayed with me. If anyone (of friends) has read this far and would also like to try this, I'd be more than happy to send my copy across the water again. I'm sure there are plenty of superstitions about ghosts and water and return journeys that are relevant here!
January 21, 2019
I really enjoyed Preloved. Think teen girl obsessed with the 1980s, add in a highly superstitious Chinese mum with a vintage shop and a hunky ghost, and boy, do we have a great story. I love the Chinese cultural references and the mystery surrounding the hunky ghost. Amy is a highly relatable, insecure protagonist who can’t seem to avoid trouble. She has questionable taste in friends and a really lovely relationship with her mum. This was an easy and entertaining read. Highly recommended for all teens, but especially those who think the 1980s was cool. A great second book from Shirley Marr.
May 26, 2012
I feel like this review is a bit sloppy and doesn't adequately convey how much I loved Preloved. It's more like a high 4.5 stars than a full 5, though, and I'll get to why eventually. But first I'd like to share with you the that plays such a pivotal part in this novel. I'll wait.
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Did you see it? I feel very cheated for being an American with only Mr. Bubble to remember from my youth. I mean, is all we got here. What is with all the singing? Why is no one yelling that they want their pants off?
Anyway, now that's out of the way--the review! I found out about Shirley Marr through some good reviews from of her first book, Fury. When I went to buy it on Fishpond, I found out Shirley had a newer, shinier book just come out, so I ordered that one first. And waited impatiently for two weeks for it to arrive. When it did finally get here, my mother buried it under a huge stack of other, less important mail, so I had to wait a whole 'nother day until it resurfaced. And now here we are.
First, the bad: I initially found the plot very confusing. For the first two chapters or so, I felt like I'd jumped in at the middle of the beginning. I was a bit disappointed because I had been anticipating reading this book for so long and was worried it was a bust, but soon I got caught up in the story and all was right with my world again.
Now for the good: Everything else. There are BSC (Babysitters Club, for those of you not in know) references, a sweetly romantic prom night, "you remind me of the babe" and "as you wish" exchanges, and homages to John Hughes. There is a solid mother-daughter relationship that made me want to hug my own mum and have girly movie nights with her, even though she made me have to wait an extra 24 hours to read Preloved. There's reincarnation, superstitious warnings about ghosts, awkward high school moments, and friends who make it hard to love them. I appreciated how realistic Amy and her life were (how her parents' divorce plays out and the hangups it gives her, making new friends, keeping old ones) while also being magical (ghosts, exorcisms, reincarnations). And I loved, loved, loved Logan. He is very high up on my Leading Men I Have Loved list, let me tell you.
Oh, and there are lines like this:
I am a big softy and it doesn't take much to make me tear up. Once I read that, I was gone. I started sniffling and pretending I had something in my eye and didn't stop until ten minutes after I read the last page.
The ending wasn't what I expected, perhaps because I'm used to paranormal romances where the authors drag the relationships on forever, highlighting all the complexities and reasons the couple can never be together, only to magically resolve everything in the fifth or tenth book in the series. Shirley Marr doesn't do that, not quite. The ending of Preloved was bittersweet, light but deeply moving in the same way the rest of the story was.
This an amazing book. You can't get it in the US yet (hint, hint, publishers!) but it is totally worth the wait to have it shipped from the other side of the world. Due to financial constraints, I rarely buy books anymore without having flipped through them first or knowing I already like the author. I got this one completely blind and I am so glad I did. Fury is shipping out to me soon. I can't wait to read it!
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Did you see it? I feel very cheated for being an American with only Mr. Bubble to remember from my youth. I mean, is all we got here. What is with all the singing? Why is no one yelling that they want their pants off?
Anyway, now that's out of the way--the review! I found out about Shirley Marr through some good reviews from of her first book, Fury. When I went to buy it on Fishpond, I found out Shirley had a newer, shinier book just come out, so I ordered that one first. And waited impatiently for two weeks for it to arrive. When it did finally get here, my mother buried it under a huge stack of other, less important mail, so I had to wait a whole 'nother day until it resurfaced. And now here we are.
First, the bad: I initially found the plot very confusing. For the first two chapters or so, I felt like I'd jumped in at the middle of the beginning. I was a bit disappointed because I had been anticipating reading this book for so long and was worried it was a bust, but soon I got caught up in the story and all was right with my world again.
Now for the good: Everything else. There are BSC (Babysitters Club, for those of you not in know) references, a sweetly romantic prom night, "you remind me of the babe" and "as you wish" exchanges, and homages to John Hughes. There is a solid mother-daughter relationship that made me want to hug my own mum and have girly movie nights with her, even though she made me have to wait an extra 24 hours to read Preloved. There's reincarnation, superstitious warnings about ghosts, awkward high school moments, and friends who make it hard to love them. I appreciated how realistic Amy and her life were (how her parents' divorce plays out and the hangups it gives her, making new friends, keeping old ones) while also being magical (ghosts, exorcisms, reincarnations). And I loved, loved, loved Logan. He is very high up on my Leading Men I Have Loved list, let me tell you.
Oh, and there are lines like this:
"You know, if I was Andie from Pretty in Pink, I would never have chosen Blane. I would have without a doubt chosen Duckie, my best friend who had always loved me."
I am a big softy and it doesn't take much to make me tear up. Once I read that, I was gone. I started sniffling and pretending I had something in my eye and didn't stop until ten minutes after I read the last page.
The ending wasn't what I expected, perhaps because I'm used to paranormal romances where the authors drag the relationships on forever, highlighting all the complexities and reasons the couple can never be together, only to magically resolve everything in the fifth or tenth book in the series. Shirley Marr doesn't do that, not quite. The ending of Preloved was bittersweet, light but deeply moving in the same way the rest of the story was.
This an amazing book. You can't get it in the US yet (hint, hint, publishers!) but it is totally worth the wait to have it shipped from the other side of the world. Due to financial constraints, I rarely buy books anymore without having flipped through them first or knowing I already like the author. I got this one completely blind and I am so glad I did. Fury is shipping out to me soon. I can't wait to read it!
August 5, 2012
If you were ever a fan of Ghost Whisperer or Gilmore Girls, you're going to be very fond of Preloved. It's a mash-up of 80's pop culture and Chinese superstition all rolled into one!
Poor Amy is a little bored with her high school routine. She simply cannot see how amazing her life is right now. Her days are filled with helping out at her mothers antique store while also suffering through the old wives tales she offers up as advice to almost any willing ear. Then there are the longing stares from Michael, the utmost perfect boyfriend waiting in the wings for Amy yet she still feels utterly lonely and totally oblivious.
That is, until Amy finds a locket on her way to school one day and as a result is stalked by a ghost named Logan. Logan becomes her love interest from afar and keeps her company when the days are a bore. Yet Logan has his own agenda for tagging along, he adores Amy's BFF, Rebecca as she is almost identical in looks to his 80's high school sweetheart.
It's obvious Shirley Marr adores the 80s era and at some point in her life has held or hopes to host an 80s themed dress-up party. Personally, I never experienced this time period but can totally relate to reminiscing about the years of your youth.
Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed by the major turning point in the novel, I felt I had been waiting and wishing for a great outcome for the most-part of the novel and for it all to come down to pure imagination and mental illness was not as fulfilling as I'd hoped. I would've liked to see the mystery evolve possibly with the assistance of Michael as he was an excellent character I feel we didn't see enough of.
In one word, I would describe Preloved as simply adorkable. I loved Amy's pop culture references and the many mentions of old wives tales, some I had never heard of before but loved trying to figure out the meaning behind them all. Overall, it was a light and enjoyable Aussie YA novel for those of us who have always questioned the possibility of reincarnation.
July 7, 2012
if you're wanting a gripping, edge of your seat, passionate romantic thriller, this book is not that. This book is more lounging, feet propped up on the table, read casually as you're listening Come On Eileen. And honestly I find that very refreshing! I find Shirley Marr has certain knack for capturing the teen voice very well. You think that would be a given, seeing as she's a YA author, but in all the YA I've devoured in my short life it's more of a rarity than you'd think. The writing, overall, has a very current and relevant feel to it. (I especially like the joked Amy's mother had about slapping a lace bow on a cheap locket and selling it on Etsy for a billion dollars. Ha! I laughed at that one.) It was light and bubbly with just enough darkness thrown in to give it a bit of an edge. That being said, I personally like my books with a lot more of an edge, but that doesn't mean I didn't still find this book enjoyable. It left me with such a hopeful, lighthearted feeling, like an 80s movie played out in book form. It had all the proper 80s-esque formula for storytelling going on (the awkward main character, the unattainable boy, the gossipy girls, the pretentious geek boy who is actually a sweet prince, the totally trippendicular tunes), I'm guessing Marr did that purposefully, in any case I thought it was quite clever.
If I had to pinpoint one major thing I didn't like about this book it would probably be Logan. For most of the book, I pretty much didn't get his appeal at all. He was just there, for me. It didn't make any sense to me why Amy was so infatuated with him. Well, I mean, besides the fact that he was a cute ghost that only she could see and hear. I thought he was mostly annoying up until the last 1/4 of the book, in which he started preaching all swoonily about mixtapes and finding yourself and it was very Casper and sickeningly sweet. I loved it!
The main thing I really loved about this book was the relationship between Amy and her mother. It was so funny, and sad, and awful, and sweet, and heartbreaking all at once. Like most mother-daughter relationships tend to be. I loved the way Marr was able to portray that, even though it was told through a very specific point of view, I think any young girl would be able to relate. She's got the magic touch, I swear! Like, if this book had been written by anyone else, I don't really think I would have enjoyed it as much as I did. You can tell Marr doesn't just write for something to do, or thrown in cheesy metaphors because they sound good, she's got a real talent in my humble opinion and I can't wait to read many more books from her!
All in all, I think this book will resonate more with the younger side of YA readers (13-16) but if you're like me and just an old creeper who can't get enough of good old fashioned well written contemporary YA fiction, give Preloved a try! If you're wanting something a little darker and more dramatic, you might want to try Shirley Marr's other novel, Fury, which is one of my favorite books! I want to end this with a fun little catch-phrase, like on Reading Rainbow when they'd enthusiastically shout "But you don't have to take my word for it!" except that doesn't even make sense because you are sort of having to take my word for it, so instead here's a picture of Geordi from Star Trek.
If I had to pinpoint one major thing I didn't like about this book it would probably be Logan. For most of the book, I pretty much didn't get his appeal at all. He was just there, for me. It didn't make any sense to me why Amy was so infatuated with him. Well, I mean, besides the fact that he was a cute ghost that only she could see and hear. I thought he was mostly annoying up until the last 1/4 of the book, in which he started preaching all swoonily about mixtapes and finding yourself and it was very Casper and sickeningly sweet. I loved it!
The main thing I really loved about this book was the relationship between Amy and her mother. It was so funny, and sad, and awful, and sweet, and heartbreaking all at once. Like most mother-daughter relationships tend to be. I loved the way Marr was able to portray that, even though it was told through a very specific point of view, I think any young girl would be able to relate. She's got the magic touch, I swear! Like, if this book had been written by anyone else, I don't really think I would have enjoyed it as much as I did. You can tell Marr doesn't just write for something to do, or thrown in cheesy metaphors because they sound good, she's got a real talent in my humble opinion and I can't wait to read many more books from her!
All in all, I think this book will resonate more with the younger side of YA readers (13-16) but if you're like me and just an old creeper who can't get enough of good old fashioned well written contemporary YA fiction, give Preloved a try! If you're wanting something a little darker and more dramatic, you might want to try Shirley Marr's other novel, Fury, which is one of my favorite books! I want to end this with a fun little catch-phrase, like on Reading Rainbow when they'd enthusiastically shout "But you don't have to take my word for it!" except that doesn't even make sense because you are sort of having to take my word for it, so instead here's a picture of Geordi from Star Trek.
July 2, 2012
I was excited to take part in my first ever blog tour and the lucky book for me was: Preloved, by Shirley Marr. Thanks to the lovely ladies at for including me!
Now of course, Shirley is a delightful person, and I would expect her books to be just as charming.
And it was.
Preloved is a lighthearted look at reincarnation, crushes, the Awesome 80's, circle's of friends and Chinese mothers who are not exactly Tiger Moms, but more like Professor Trelawney if she ran a 2nd hand store, but not as clueless. (Note: I adore Prof. Trelawney in Harry Potter .. she wasn't always right, but by-golly she was right when it really mattered!)Everything is an ominous portent of something!! And she's right, ya know?
Just so you know, I am a child of the 80's. I had the big bangs, rolled up jeans cuffs, popped collars, Ked's, neon everything, the best spate of comedy movies ever (thank you, John Candy RIP), and I could go on and on. The point is, the 80's could kick the 2000's butt.
I loved that about Preloved. Logan would be just the type of guy to spring from the best years of the late 20th century.
My one complaint, and it took me awhile to articulate this, is that it is very Australian. NOT that that's bad, mind you. But I've been reading Aussie for a while and watched Aussie movies, and let's face it: Australia has some weird slang words. No, it's cool though because after you've used them for a few years they make their way up here in the USA and then we think they're REALLY COOL. So, there's a good portion of the conversations with slang that might put off some readers who don't get it. For those readers, here you go:
All in all, I enjoyed reading Preloved and would recommend to readers who like a little mix of contemporary with the nostalgic.
Favorite quote:
Now of course, Shirley is a delightful person, and I would expect her books to be just as charming.
And it was.
Preloved is a lighthearted look at reincarnation, crushes, the Awesome 80's, circle's of friends and Chinese mothers who are not exactly Tiger Moms, but more like Professor Trelawney if she ran a 2nd hand store, but not as clueless. (Note: I adore Prof. Trelawney in Harry Potter .. she wasn't always right, but by-golly she was right when it really mattered!)Everything is an ominous portent of something!! And she's right, ya know?
Just so you know, I am a child of the 80's. I had the big bangs, rolled up jeans cuffs, popped collars, Ked's, neon everything, the best spate of comedy movies ever (thank you, John Candy RIP), and I could go on and on. The point is, the 80's could kick the 2000's butt.
I loved that about Preloved. Logan would be just the type of guy to spring from the best years of the late 20th century.
My one complaint, and it took me awhile to articulate this, is that it is very Australian. NOT that that's bad, mind you. But I've been reading Aussie for a while and watched Aussie movies, and let's face it: Australia has some weird slang words. No, it's cool though because after you've used them for a few years they make their way up here in the USA and then we think they're REALLY COOL. So, there's a good portion of the conversations with slang that might put off some readers who don't get it. For those readers, here you go:
All in all, I enjoyed reading Preloved and would recommend to readers who like a little mix of contemporary with the nostalgic.
Favorite quote:
My white dress streamed behind me. Our roles had been reversed. Logan was a boy traveling through the city and I was the ghost that had come drifting down from the empty sky and landed without a sound behind him.
July 13, 2012
I absolutely LOVED this book to pieces. I want to read it again and again! And I suck for not reviewing it sooner, but I finished it just before I moved house and all the packing and unpacking kind of took over my world :( So now I'm sadly a little vaguer than I'd like to be on all the many things that made me love it. Oh well, means I really do have to read it again!
I LOVED that it was Australian, first of all. And I loved Amy's crazy superstitious Chinese mother. I loved their house and their shop and just the whole gorgeous setting. It was all so wonderfully realistic :) And I loved how Amy had the whole Chinese-Australian background going on, that was really interesting and not something you come across that often, or not that I've found in the books I've read. In my high school, we had a lot of Asian students and I hung around in their group more often than not, so I understood well that "Chinese minority". I loved as well the thread running through the book about Amy's relationship with her mother, that was beautifully done.
And I loved that Logan was from 1988, when I was 6, a time I know if I was a bit young to remember in as much detail as he had. BUT OH MY GOD I'M STILL NOT OVER THE WHOLE MR. MATEY/MISS MATEY THING. I think the first time he called her Miss Matey, I squealed and fell in love with Shirley Marr a little. And I still want to have a bubble bath. Oh my god, the memories!!!! (And a cheeseymite scroll. I want one too now.)
Sigh, I wish I could say more about this but I really left it too long for small details :( The only other thing I can specifically remember now is how much I adored Nancy Pants! :D Her and Amy made such a fun pair to read about, and I totally thought Nancy had a crush on her there. Hee.
I LOVED that it was Australian, first of all. And I loved Amy's crazy superstitious Chinese mother. I loved their house and their shop and just the whole gorgeous setting. It was all so wonderfully realistic :) And I loved how Amy had the whole Chinese-Australian background going on, that was really interesting and not something you come across that often, or not that I've found in the books I've read. In my high school, we had a lot of Asian students and I hung around in their group more often than not, so I understood well that "Chinese minority". I loved as well the thread running through the book about Amy's relationship with her mother, that was beautifully done.
And I loved that Logan was from 1988, when I was 6, a time I know if I was a bit young to remember in as much detail as he had. BUT OH MY GOD I'M STILL NOT OVER THE WHOLE MR. MATEY/MISS MATEY THING. I think the first time he called her Miss Matey, I squealed and fell in love with Shirley Marr a little. And I still want to have a bubble bath. Oh my god, the memories!!!! (And a cheeseymite scroll. I want one too now.)
Sigh, I wish I could say more about this but I really left it too long for small details :( The only other thing I can specifically remember now is how much I adored Nancy Pants! :D Her and Amy made such a fun pair to read about, and I totally thought Nancy had a crush on her there. Hee.
May 22, 2012
I was so uber lucky to be apart of a book tour. So grateful to for hosting it!!
This book is a ghost story, filled with some contemporary and tons of 80's nostalgia.
Amy is your typical loner. She has a best friend in Rebecca who gets all the attention from the guys. The kind of girl that is the 'fantasy girl' of a teenage guys dream. So naturally, Amy falls into the role of side-kick and is always in the shadows.
Amy's mother is a little quirky. She's Chinese and always has a superstition for every occasion. So of course when Amy and Rebecca stumble across a locked locket, Amy feels compelled to make it hers and discover it's secrets. She never expected it to contain the image of a blue eyed dream from the 80's.
This book will filled with a really cute story. The 80's slang was really nostalgic, but I don't think it'll be for everyone. Some people just simply won't make all the connections. There is a slight contemporary feel to the personal themes in this novel. I only wished that Marr had fleshed these out more. Gotten deeper into the emotions. This restraint made the book seem like it would be suited to a younger YA audience. It reminded me of the more innocent times of adolescence.
The paranormal twist really tied the book together. It was really cute and the ending gave me a bittersweet feeling. A story about love, loss and the ability to learn when to let go.
This book is a ghost story, filled with some contemporary and tons of 80's nostalgia.
Amy is your typical loner. She has a best friend in Rebecca who gets all the attention from the guys. The kind of girl that is the 'fantasy girl' of a teenage guys dream. So naturally, Amy falls into the role of side-kick and is always in the shadows.
Amy's mother is a little quirky. She's Chinese and always has a superstition for every occasion. So of course when Amy and Rebecca stumble across a locked locket, Amy feels compelled to make it hers and discover it's secrets. She never expected it to contain the image of a blue eyed dream from the 80's.
This book will filled with a really cute story. The 80's slang was really nostalgic, but I don't think it'll be for everyone. Some people just simply won't make all the connections. There is a slight contemporary feel to the personal themes in this novel. I only wished that Marr had fleshed these out more. Gotten deeper into the emotions. This restraint made the book seem like it would be suited to a younger YA audience. It reminded me of the more innocent times of adolescence.
The paranormal twist really tied the book together. It was really cute and the ending gave me a bittersweet feeling. A story about love, loss and the ability to learn when to let go.
May 13, 2012
The Good: A great modern Chinese-Australian YA ghost story that's also a homage - almost a love letter - to the 80s! Great for all us YA readers in our forties *whistles*
The Bad: The lack of Valley Girl references. The weird five-minute counsellor appointment - this was not believable, and I'm not sure what the point of it was.
The Ugly (but no different to most other YA, and hot damn I wish this would change real soon now): Multiple (and unchallenged) references to "spazzing out".
The Bonus: Labyrinth dialogue. *hearts* Lots of other eighties Easter Eggs.
My Question: Is the ghost's last name a homage to a Corey, by any chance?
The Bad: The lack of Valley Girl references. The weird five-minute counsellor appointment - this was not believable, and I'm not sure what the point of it was.
The Ugly (but no different to most other YA, and hot damn I wish this would change real soon now): Multiple (and unchallenged) references to "spazzing out".
The Bonus: Labyrinth dialogue. *hearts* Lots of other eighties Easter Eggs.
My Question: Is the ghost's last name a homage to a Corey, by any chance?
April 13, 2012
4 1/2 stars. I loved the humour in this book. Really interesting story with fabulous characters that were quite different to many found in young adult books - Chinese mother with many superstitious beliefs about ghosts, a best friend who is over the top and a ghost from the 80's.
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