Khanh, first of her name, mother of bunnies
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Books:
romance
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| 0992278902
| 9780992278908
| B00G137JB8
| 4.01
| 332
| Oct 18, 2013
| Oct 21, 2013
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did not like it
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In the midst of a bad streak of books, I often turn back to a good old comfort read. For me, that is the time-tested genre of Historical Romance. But
In the midst of a bad streak of books, I often turn back to a good old comfort read. For me, that is the time-tested genre of Historical Romance. But here is where I made a crucial error---I should have stuck to the Regency era instead of going back to Medieval. It's kind of hard to fuck up a good old-fashioned love story...but apparently, it's not impossible. Not when the story is set in the Medieval Era. Regency romances are familiar, soothing, like a warm cup of apple cider on a crisp fall day. Medieval romance are as comforting as choking down an ice-cold kale, spinach, and lemon colon cleanse on a frigid winter morning. This book also deals with sexual abuse in a way that completely pisses me off. We have always known that Eloise has been sexually tortured by her first husband. Let's get one thing straight: the way to earn a woman's trust after sexual trauma is not to screw her silly. Alaun thinks that's the way things should go, he knows of Eloise's pain, her previous experience with abuse, her shame, her horror. Yet, he seems to think that the way to earn Eloise's trust and ease her mental scars is to fuck it out of her. And Eloise lets him. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. Eloise is not "half a woman" because she has been abused. Fuck you, Alaun. To be fair, this book is considerably less aggravating than other Medieval romances I've read. At least there's no justification of attempted rape on the part of the love interest. At least the Needless to say, when one of the best thing I can say about this book is "At least the main character doesn't get raped by her true love," it's not a terribly good sign. We first meet Eloise when she is little more than a child, on the eve of her wedding to a brute, de Cannar. Nine years later, she is blissfully widowed, and living on her father's estate, ruling the roost as its intelligent, capable chatelaine. After her mercifully short marriage, Eloise is now satisfied with her life. She has her own money, her own estate, she is happy living with her father's household, running things like clockwork. She is beautiful, smart, everyone wants to marry her, but Eloise has vowed to never marry again (and with good reason). Naturally, the men in her life don't give a fuck about what she wants. Lord Henry is her creeptastic father. He looks at his busy, competent daughter who is running his household like a dream and decides that's she's unhappy. Eloise is an awesome daughter. He loves her so very much. She was a daughter an old warrior could be proud of, with her matchless beauty and indomitable pride.So of course, the only reasonable decision to make is to give her away because Lord Henry wants the prestige of the famous Alaun de Montisfrey brings to his festive tournament. It's for bragging rights. Henry couldn’t hide his exasperation. “Name your prize,� he growled, “and if it’s within my power, it’ll be yours for the taking.�Father knows best? Fuck you, Lord Henry. I called Lord Henry creeptastic, and I meant it. He watches his daughter suck face in an alley with Alaun and just chuckles because his plans are coming to fruition. He overhears his daughter moaning with pleasure as Alaun fucks her from behind and continues eating his dinner. I have a newfound appreciation for my own father after this book. I see Eloise as a mostly-smart woman turned generic by her acquiescence of Alaun's brand of love, which is not so much love as a brand, much like one would put on a horse or a cow, to demonstrate ownership. I pity Eloise, despite her occasional stupidity at times, because it is a difficult thing to be a woman at this time. Despite her independence, despite her widowhood, she is still more or less owned by her father, and then, owned by Alaun. Eloise is not so much a woman as she is chattel, the property of the men in her life. She is a moron sometimes. She goes off skinny dipping in a frigid lake in the middle of a freezing night and ends up getting seduced. She thinks, oh, Alaun is soooooooooo different because instead of wanting to marry her, he just wants her body! ...he was not, nor had he ever been, interested in marrying her. It was her body he sought—he had made that abundantly clear from the first; he was the first man to approach her with no interest in her hand and the fortune that went with it. It was a novel situation—she wasn’t sure what she thought of it.I'll tell you what you should think, Eloise, you should think he's a douchewad. Alaun is a typical Medieval leading man, which is to say, he is a fucking douche. Yet, he is physical perfection, so naturally it makes it perfectly good to go weak in the knees for him. Eloise, please, you are so much better than that. Alaun is built like a 300-muscle-packed-pound linebacker with the grace of a ballet dancer, with the agility of a man half his size. He defeats all his opponents, wins every impossible test in order to win Eloise. He is a physical anomaly. He is Gary Stu at its finest. Alaun does not talk like a normal human being. He growls. He snarls. He roars. He scowls. He needs to take a course on anger management. Alaun is completely astounded by the fact that Eloise (the "damned witch," the "virago," the "fire-witch") is not completely soaking wet in her panties for him despite the fact that he goes out of his way to win the tournament so she can become, more or less, his property. After their visual duel, let alone the little matter of his prize, she should have been quivering with reaction, uncertain, vulnerable to a subtle, more gentle assault. He’d expected to find a woman primed for seduction.Alaun is not a gentle lover, he does not want an equal partner in Eloise. He wants to conquer her. He wants to "break her". His declaration of love is ever so romantic. “You are not a burden!�So fucking romantic. The Sex: If you wanted a bodice-ripper, you've got it. Rest assured, Eloise and Alaun rut like a couple of horses in heat in this book. “Nay, lord.� She turned to come up on her knees before him. “Come—plant your seed deeply, as do your stallions.� She glanced over her shoulder; her eyes gleamed. “Long, strong—and very slow.�Despite her widowhood, despite her sexual abuse, Eloise is still a virgin. That pisses me off. Is there such a need for virginity in a romance novel that you would actually contrive to have an abused WIDOW who is a virgin as well? And to have her come to orgasm when she loses her virginity. Despite the fact that Alaun is hung like a particularly well-endowed horse? Oh, and of course it's ok to have sex twice on the night you lose your virginity. OF COURSE IT DOESN'T HURT. “Will it hurt?�Fuck you, Alaun. You lying liar. Reach for a Regency romance instead. This book was so much more trouble than it was worth. Merged review: In the midst of a bad streak of books, I often turn back to a good old comfort read. For me, that is the time-tested genre of Historical Romance. But here is where I made a crucial error---I should have stuck to the Regency era instead of going back to Medieval. It's kind of hard to fuck up a good old-fashioned love story...but apparently, it's not impossible. Not when the story is set in the Medieval Era. Regency romances are familiar, soothing, like a warm cup of apple cider on a crisp fall day. Medieval romance are as comforting as choking down an ice-cold kale, spinach, and lemon colon cleanse on a frigid winter morning. This book also deals with sexual abuse in a way that completely pisses me off. We have always known that Eloise has been sexually tortured by her first husband. Let's get one thing straight: the way to earn a woman's trust after sexual trauma is not to screw her silly. Alaun thinks that's the way things should go, he knows of Eloise's pain, her previous experience with abuse, her shame, her horror. Yet, he seems to think that the way to earn Eloise's trust and ease her mental scars is to fuck it out of her. And Eloise lets him. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. Eloise is not "half a woman" because she has been abused. Fuck you, Alaun. To be fair, this book is considerably less aggravating than other Medieval romances I've read. At least there's no justification of attempted rape on the part of the love interest. At least the Needless to say, when one of the best thing I can say about this book is "At least the main character doesn't get raped by her true love," it's not a terribly good sign. We first meet Eloise when she is little more than a child, on the eve of her wedding to a brute, de Cannar. Nine years later, she is blissfully widowed, and living on her father's estate, ruling the roost as its intelligent, capable chatelaine. After her mercifully short marriage, Eloise is now satisfied with her life. She has her own money, her own estate, she is happy living with her father's household, running things like clockwork. She is beautiful, smart, everyone wants to marry her, but Eloise has vowed to never marry again (and with good reason). Naturally, the men in her life don't give a fuck about what she wants. Lord Henry is her creeptastic father. He looks at his busy, competent daughter who is running his household like a dream and decides that's she's unhappy. Eloise is an awesome daughter. He loves her so very much. She was a daughter an old warrior could be proud of, with her matchless beauty and indomitable pride.So of course, the only reasonable decision to make is to give her away because Lord Henry wants the prestige of the famous Alaun de Montisfrey brings to his festive tournament. It's for bragging rights. Henry couldn’t hide his exasperation. “Name your prize,� he growled, “and if it’s within my power, it’ll be yours for the taking.�Father knows best? Fuck you, Lord Henry. I called Lord Henry creeptastic, and I meant it. He watches his daughter suck face in an alley with Alaun and just chuckles because his plans are coming to fruition. He overhears his daughter moaning with pleasure as Alaun fucks her from behind and continues eating his dinner. I have a newfound appreciation for my own father after this book. I see Eloise as a mostly-smart woman turned generic by her acquiescence of Alaun's brand of love, which is not so much love as a brand, much like one would put on a horse or a cow, to demonstrate ownership. I pity Eloise, despite her occasional stupidity at times, because it is a difficult thing to be a woman at this time. Despite her independence, despite her widowhood, she is still more or less owned by her father, and then, owned by Alaun. Eloise is not so much a woman as she is chattel, the property of the men in her life. She is a moron sometimes. She goes off skinny dipping in a frigid lake in the middle of a freezing night and ends up getting seduced. She thinks, oh, Alaun is soooooooooo different because instead of wanting to marry her, he just wants her body! ...he was not, nor had he ever been, interested in marrying her. It was her body he sought—he had made that abundantly clear from the first; he was the first man to approach her with no interest in her hand and the fortune that went with it. It was a novel situation—she wasn’t sure what she thought of it.I'll tell you what you should think, Eloise, you should think he's a douchewad. Alaun is a typical Medieval leading man, which is to say, he is a fucking douche. Yet, he is physical perfection, so naturally it makes it perfectly good to go weak in the knees for him. Eloise, please, you are so much better than that. Alaun is built like a 300-muscle-packed-pound linebacker with the grace of a ballet dancer, with the agility of a man half his size. He defeats all his opponents, wins every impossible test in order to win Eloise. He is a physical anomaly. He is Gary Stu at its finest. Alaun does not talk like a normal human being. He growls. He snarls. He roars. He scowls. He needs to take a course on anger management. Alaun is completely astounded by the fact that Eloise (the "damned witch," the "virago," the "fire-witch") is not completely soaking wet in her panties for him despite the fact that he goes out of his way to win the tournament so she can become, more or less, his property. After their visual duel, let alone the little matter of his prize, she should have been quivering with reaction, uncertain, vulnerable to a subtle, more gentle assault. He’d expected to find a woman primed for seduction.Alaun is not a gentle lover, he does not want an equal partner in Eloise. He wants to conquer her. He wants to "break her". His declaration of love is ever so romantic. “You are not a burden!�So fucking romantic. The Sex: If you wanted a bodice-ripper, you've got it. Rest assured, Eloise and Alaun rut like a couple of horses in heat in this book. “Nay, lord.� She turned to come up on her knees before him. “Come—plant your seed deeply, as do your stallions.� She glanced over her shoulder; her eyes gleamed. “Long, strong—and very slow.�Despite her widowhood, despite her sexual abuse, Eloise is still a virgin. That pisses me off. Is there such a need for virginity in a romance novel that you would actually contrive to have an abused WIDOW who is a virgin as well? And to have her come to orgasm when she loses her virginity. Despite the fact that Alaun is hung like a particularly well-endowed horse? Oh, and of course it's ok to have sex twice on the night you lose your virginity. OF COURSE IT DOESN'T HURT. “Will it hurt?�Fuck you, Alaun. You lying liar. Reach for a Regency romance instead. This book was so much more trouble than it was worth. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Oct 31, 2013
not set
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Nov 05, 2013
not set
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Sep 27, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 3.64
| 1,292
| Jun 10, 2014
| Jun 10, 2014
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did not like it
| Aren’t ghosts supposed to have some sort of agenda? I really hope mine isn’t to haunt my boyfriend’s bedroom. That is way too clichéd. Aren’t ghosts supposed to have some sort of agenda? I really hope mine isn’t to haunt my boyfriend’s bedroom. That is way too clichéd.Sure, you could compare this to The Lovely Bones, in the same way that you could compare Twilight to Bram Stoker's Dracula. It's pretty much the same thing, really, with a few minor differences. The "few minor differences" being: 1. Red tunas. Ok, fine, the technical term for a misleading clue ia a "red herring" but the clues in this book are so fucking obvious and dumb and loud that I've coined a new term for it. Hence, red tuna 2. This ghost is even more of a vapid idiot than the one in The Lovely Bones 3. This ghost gets into one bloody painful mess of a love triangle between the most wonderfulest boyfriend ever who just doesn't geeeeeeeeeet her, maaaaaan and a pothead stoner with a heart of gold 4. Family? Lol. Family? Screw family, it's all about friends, y'all. She has a sister? A brother? A family. Oh, yeah, yeah, she does. She mentions them sometimes. Mostly the fact that her mom is a huge, raging psychotic bitch 5. The dumbest friends ever, in fact, the most vapid group of high schoolers who ever existed 6. There is not a single truly likeable character in the book. I'm dead fucking serious. Her classmates are morons without sympathy. Her family pretty much ignore one another when, if, they're mentioned at all Really, there's not much introspection. There's no literary value. There is an idiot of a girl who gets to spend time with her boyfriend, while fighting off the feelings for another guy...while she's a ghost. Don't. Just don't. The Summary: I think I’m supposed to do something while I’m here. It doesn’t make any sense that I’d be given a free pass to haunt about and chill with my boyfriend.17-year old Cassidy is dead. How does everyone think she died? “Well, I heard some guys saying she tried to go skinny-dipping in the river and froze, which is downright ignorant to suggest. Then Kristy London started telling everyone she saw Cassidy throw up at dance once because she was bulimic and that’s why she committed suicide.�Cassidy was found dead under a bridge, after a night of inebriation. Everyone seems to think her death was a suicide, even her own family. Even the police, since they seem to think she killed herself after, oh, roughyl 5 seconds of investigations. So realistic. So nobody knows how Cassidy died, since nobody was there. Hell, not even Cassidy knows how she died, because she was drunk as fuck. I was definitely drinking at the party, but was I drunk enough to forget everything that happened?But all hope is not lost! Cassidy may be dead, but she's not yet "moved on." She is still here, on earth, as a ghost. Nobody can see her, until, miraculously, her boyfriend, Ethan could! She's been left here on earth with a purpose! How shall Cassidy spent this one wondrous chance?! I cast away that dangerously hopeful thought and look up at Ethan, deciding to take advantage of what time I have left with him.Will she use that time to discover how she died? Not exactly. I’m momentarily distracted by Ethan’s navy blue boxer-briefs. They’re the only thing he’s wearing.Is she going to spend her remaining time on earth observing her family extensively, seeing that they're her family, who have raised her and loved her for 17 years? Um... He exhales, long and loud. I lean forward, hoping for a whiff of his breath even if it’s sour, morning scented, but there’s nothing. I frown.Is she going to spend that time going back to the scene of her death, seeing if there are any clues to be picked up, any memories she can glean from going back to such a pivotal place? Weeeeell... I’m sure my afterlife mission isn’t to hook up with my boyfriend—especially after what I just remembered about Caleb—but I can’t ignore the allure of his touches.Ok, fine. This is a teenaged girl, after all. It's only fair that she spends a quarter of the book, or half the book thinking about her boyfriend. But what about the remaining half? How will she spend the rest of her time on earth?! Clearly, she has been put here for a purpose. Ghosts don't just wander around after death pointlessly. Surely there is a bigger picture here. Yeah, there is. His name is Caleb, andOH BOY, CASSIDY IS GOING TO INVESTIGATE THE ROLE THAT HE PLAYED IN HER DEATH. I bend down right in front of him, meaning to study his face for some proof of guilt, maybe attempt a ghostly trick to will a writing sample out of his obnoxious orange backpack, but the only thing I can think about is his mouth closed around mine. My eyes wander to his lips.Or, you know, just think about kissing him. Investigation. Kissing. Same thing, if you think about it. Cassi-die now plz: I squared my shoulders and inched up my chin as if I was above his affection. I wasn’t, but I was so mad I wanted him to think I was, to feel bad about it.The word vapid is actually spelled "C-A-S-S-I-D-Y." The definition of her name is Captain Obvious since she has the uncommon knack for stating the fucking obvious. She sets a pad of monogrammed stationery on top of her notes from last week and adds Mica’s name to a short list of classmates, all of whom attended the party.Her grief is of the woe-is-me everything is about me me me. OK, she's dead. I know that. I should be able to empathize with that, but her sadness...the way it is written, so very much self-centered, just makes me laugh. Sadness rolls over me, knowing that I’ll never again be the person she turns to for comfort.She is the equivalent of a mentally-challenged ghost. She knows she can't be heard, yet she insists on talking VERY LOUDLY and ENUNCIATING VERY CLEARLY in the hopes that someone will be able to hear her. “Aimée,� I say very slowly as if overenunciating will allow her to hear me, “look under that binder.�It is the equivalent of talking VERY LOUDLY INTO THE EARS OF A DEAF PERSON. It just makes you look like a motherfucking moron. Her investigation into her death can be best summed up in one hyphenated word: "half-assed". She withholds clues, she ignores clues, she ignores uncomfortable flashbacks, like her memories of flirting and kissing another boy who is not her boyfriend. She lies. She omits information that would help the one person who is able to see her investigate her death. If I tell him I think I was with Caleb he’ll definitely ask why. I’m not ready to go there with him. It’ll ruin the small piece of us we’ve recaptured, and I can’t bear losing that again.Almost all her memories are of emotional conflicts between her love triangle. They are frustrating, they are foolish, they give me no respect for Cassidy whatsoever. The Side Characters: After he leaves, the cafeteria clears out, but conversations still echo off the walls. She was totally drunk � I heard she froze to death � Who kills herself over a breakup? I mean, really?Seriously, there is not one single likeable character in the entire fucking book. Her family are portrayed as idiots. Her father is a doormat. Her mother is a psycho with a midlife crisis who pretty much has no reaction over her daughter's death besides for the fact that it might give her something to do. Cassidy has a tremendous amount of contempt for her mom, and her entire family is portrayed so briefly, so poorly, that there is absolutely no sense of familial love whatsoever. Instead, we are focused on her friends, and man, they are motherfucking idiots. Cassidy may be vapid, but she appears to be a product of her school, because her entire fucking school is filled with brainless teenagers without an ounce of sympathy. Literally nobody gives a fuck about her death but her friend, Aimée. The entire student body doesn't need counseling, they use her death as an opportunity to gossip, to make small-talk, to talk shit about Cassidy now that she's dead. It would have appeared like Cassidy had no friends at all after her death, and it is so strange, considering we don't get a sense of that at all from the flashbacks of her life before death. Truly, the side characters in this book, the entire fucking cast, doesn't seem realistic at all. There is no emotional connection to anyone, anything. The Motherfucking Love Triangle: Aimée rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe he was high at eight-thirty in the morning. I’ll never get what Cassidy saw in him.�DING DING DING. We have a love triangle here. And it's not an obvious type. It's the I-will-keep-you-guessing-until-the-bitter-fucking-end type. Ethan is the nicest boy in the world. He was her first kiss. He was her first love. They have been dating for three years. He took my hand, and I was certain, in that moment, that I would never kiss anyone else for as long as I lived.Until, inexplicably, she falls for Caleb, a stoner who pops pills under the guise of Tic-Tacs. Caleb, who is never NOT stoned. Caleb opens his eyes in a lazy, delayed reaction that tips me off that he’s high. Again.Caleb, who is a bad boy with a Tragic Past who totally deserves our sympathy, right "...you had changed when your parents split up and you started getting high all the time..."Caleb, who gives her a special Brownie laced with marijuana. Such a fucking gentleman. How could a girl ever resist? “Speaking of, I made you a little somethin� somethin�.� He reached into his bright orange backpack and pulled out a brownie wrapped in pink cellophane and about ten different colors of ribbon.And she cheated on Ethan with THIS loser? No, thank you. Sure, Ethan is so fucking effeminate that he barely even counts as a boyfriend, but he's still a far better catch than Caleb. And we're left wondering until the very end who she will choose. I do not tolerate cheating. There are books in which cheating is really, really well done, in which I feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for the cheaters. This is not one of those books. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 03, 2014
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Jul 04, 2014
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Jul 03, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 006219237X
| 9780062192370
| 006219237X
| 3.33
| 982
| Jun 10, 2014
| Jun 10, 2014
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really liked it
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Usually, I'm the one person who hates a book that everyone else has loved. For once, that's not the case. I seem to be the only person who loved this
Usually, I'm the one person who hates a book that everyone else has loved. For once, that's not the case. I seem to be the only person who loved this book, and I can't understand why. This book is awesome. And for some reason, the reviews have been like 1-1-1-1-2-1-1 across the board. Huh. One of my friends who have read this book described it as watching a train wreck. Yep, that's exactly it. It's watching a psychological train wreck as it unfolds, and I love every moment of it. The main character in this book is a psycho bitch. She really, truly is. There's no kind way to put it. She's insane, she should be on medication, but surprise, surprise, like so many mentally ill people, she refuses to take her meds. The result is a psychological wreck from which you cannot look away. I've worked in a mental hospital before. I've worked in an emergency room in downtown LA before, and so trust me when I tell you that the craziest people I know are neither hospitalized nor institutionalized. They live and walk among us. They're the sociopaths. Manipulative lovers, friends, those who will simply take things too far. Those who will take advantage of us. Those who will wring every ounce of sympathy out of a situation. Those who I like to call "emotional vampires" because they will suck the life out of you. This is a book about one such person. It has: 1. An amazing, realistic portrayal of mental illness. The emotional manipulation. The lies. The self-hate. The sense of knowing that one is sick, but not being able to control yourself or your thoughts. The sense of wrongness. 2. An excellent depiction of cheating. It deals with cheating in a manner that I felt was sensitive, that made me, who hates the matter, supportive of the people involved. 3. A nice guy. Seriously. I felt like the love interest within this book was awesome. He struggles a lot, dealing with a girlfriend who is mentally ill, and I supported him despite everything. 4. No slut shaming. The teens in this book sleep with each other. They cheat. I never got the sense of shame, of self-hate, of recrimination by others that there is something shameful in sexuality. If you like psycho characters, if you revel in other people's suffering, this is the book for you. The Summary: “You haven’t gone off your meds or whatever, have you?� he asked quietly.Once upon a time, Carter and Lilah were a fairytale. They have been dating since 9th grade, one of those rare couples who have stayed together throughout high school, supporting each other through thick and thin. Once upon a time, Lilah was a bright, sparkling young woman, filled with joy and life. “You’ve got a spark in you. Like a drive, you know what I mean? I’m always so worried about doing the right thing that I wouldn’t have dared do that without you.�Once upon a time, Lilah was normal. It is now their senior year of high school, and the fairy tale looks more like a fever dream. you haven’t gone off your meds or whatever, have you?� he asked quietly.Lilah is sick. She is mentally ill. She needs to take her medications. She is self-destructive, she is paranoid. She has few friends, because slowly, she has driven them away through harassment and paranoia. A once-promising swimmer, Lilah has since been kicked off the team. In her manic exhaustion, she searched down the phone numbers not only of Melissa, but also of the Coral Gables coach and the principal of the school. She’d called them so many times that they’d reported her to Coach Randolph and Lilah had been kicked off the team.Carter still loves her, he still cares about her, but it seems like he's staying together more out of duty than love. She quickly covered her cuts with her hand. “I thought you were going to leave me. After what I did,� she said.Lilah has slowly withdrawn into herself, but Carter manages to gently talk her into attending a party thrown by one of his best friends. The party was a disaster. Lilah has a tendency to blow up minor events, and this party was no different. She knew he wasn’t criticizing her—he was just trying to be funny, or cute or something. But she couldn’t help but feel like he should have just said thank you.Small things add up, and before she knows it, Lilah has gone down on one of her downward spirals. So she took another swig of rum and Coke. She couldn’t get drunk fast enough. It was the only way she knew how to escape the feeling that everyone here was laughing at her behind her back.Before long, Lilah ends up on a roof, drunk, almost fallen to her death before she is rescued by Carter. Lilah's friends volunteer to take her home, leaving Carter there, wondering what the hell just happened. Exhausted and frightened as fuck, but finally able to relax. Whether or not he wanted to admit it to himself, it was the first time he breathed all night.But he's not alone in his contemplation. A girl is there, Jules. They start talking, and before they know it, Carter realizes that this girl is funny, she's smart, she's beautiful. She is normal. And despite himself, Carter can't help feeling the attraction. He relaxed a tick. He couldn’t help it. She was so comfortable with herself—you could see it in her posture, in her easy conversation, in the way she was able to look at the things outside herself without worrying about how they related to her—that she put him at ease.Then he gets a text from Lilah. “WHYD U MAKE ME GO TO THAT PARTY?� it said.Really, was it any contest? This story is about Lilah, and Carter, and Jules. It is about a young man struggling to do the right thing, a young woman who just wants to be with him, knowing the challenges. “It’s okay. I don’t expect you to all of a sudden be my boyfriend. I understand. You’ve been with her forever. I don’t want to be the girl who broke up the class couple.�And the trouble girl standing in between them. What she felt was fear. And rage. And a despair so huge and heavy she felt like it might smother her, weigh her down, pull her into the ground, where she’d be buried forever.Lilah: She struggled with all her might to stop the tears from falling down her cheeks. She understood that he felt he had been wronged. But didn’t he understand that she’d been wronged, too? She ached all over from how badly she’d been wronged.Lilah is the mentally ill, emotionally manipulative main character, and I thought her character was brilliantly portrayed. She is not without sympathy. Lilah is seriously sick, she needs her medication, but she cannot be relied upon to take them. Lilah knows that there's something wrong with her. She is completely understanding of the fact that she is not right. She has reason, she sees reason, it's just that often, her brain overrides common sense. She regretted every single thing she’d done, and her regret made her hate herself and her self-hatred filled her with an uncontrollable need to hear Carter tell her that everything was okay.She has been with Carter for so long that he has become her life. He has become her identity, and she will stop at nothing to get him back. I thought her hurt and anger and lack of self-control was well-written. “No. You don’t get to decide when I calm down.� Another surge of rage and she went at him with all the strength she contained. When he held her off with a stiff arm, she clamped her fingers into his arm and dug into his skin with her nails. He’d hurt her; why shouldn’t she hurt him back?Carter: She’s so anxious, though. She needs me so much.� He furrowed his eyebrows. “And she holds on so tightly that she doesn’t realize she’s...killing us.�I bloody loved Carter. Yes, he cheats on Lilah, but there is so much guilt within him. I know it's a stupid thing to say about a guy who cheats on his girlfriend, but I felt like Carter has so much integrity. I don't think it's a stretch to say that a lot of guys would just dump a troublesome girlfriend, particularly one during the volatile years of high school. Carter doesn't do that. He remains with Lilah. He feels a responsibility for her. He watches over her. He is more of a babysitter than a boyfriend at times, and he bears his tasks with such earnestness. I truly felt bad for him. The thing with cheating is that you have to make the cheaters to be likeable, deeply sympathetic people and I felt like this book did that exceptionally well. “So, look. Things with Lilah are—I don’t even know what they are. We’re going to talk later this afternoon. So, we’ll see. I need to figure things out in my head . . . and . . .� He blushed. “I mean, I should get my shit together before I start messing with yours. It’s not fair. It’s not fair to you and it’s not fair to Lilah. You know what I mean? I shouldn’t be starting new things with new people when I’m in the middle of a great big confusing thing already.�There are a lot of insecurities, a lot of moral struggles, a lot of guilt. and I was wholly in support of Carter the entire time. Jules: Oh, sure, she's a drama hipster, but I liked her a lot despite the fact. Maybe it's because she, in her own way, is damaged. She, too, is insecure. She is so refreshingly normal in contrast. Jules knows that Carter and Delilah are complicated. She didn't want to get caught up in the middle, but her attraction for Carter overreaches that common sense. Still, Jules is not clingy. She is reasonable. She gives Carter space to deal. She is not desperate to be loved. “I get it. Hey, I don’t want to get involved in some crazy cheating thing, either.�And have I mentioned that she has an awesome, awesome mother? “Did you hear me?� she said. “It’s not your fault. You don’t have to own problems he’s created for himself. Okay?�...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 23, 2014
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Jun 24, 2014
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Jun 23, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0062231952
| 9780062231956
| 0062231952
| 3.03
| 665
| Jun 03, 2014
| Jun 03, 2014
|
did not like it
| A line pops into my head, one I repeated dozens of times to get the right balance of hope and desperation that the Zombie Killer is known for. All A line pops into my head, one I repeated dozens of times to get the right balance of hope and desperation that the Zombie Killer is known for. All that stands between me and the end of the world...is a bobby pin.I have two, motherfuckers. [image] Vaya con dios, mi amigo.No, that's not a quote from the book. It's my advice to you, it means "go with god, my friend," and you're going to need that advice should you insist upon reading this book. It's one of those so-bad-it's-almost-good books. It's insta-love, and that's pretty much it. We have omg HE'S SUCH AN ASSHOLE and YOU ARE A FUCKING MORONIC PRINCESS and then 5 seconds later I LOVE HIM. What the fuck. Ok, so here's kind of a spoiler, but not really. The book is entitled Vivian Divine is Dead. I know that this is huge news. Shocking. Absolutely flabbergasting, jaw-dropping, and all of that good shit but Vivian Divine doesn't die. I wish she had. The book might have been more interesting otherwise. The Summary: I try not to think about the day Pierre and I first fell in love. It was a year ago, when we were wrapping up Zombie Killer, my blockbuster about an orphan who saves the human race.Sure, Vivian Divine may be a famous Hollywood movie star, Oscar-nominated by age 16, with a famous director father and the 3rd most beautiful (and very dead) mother (as chosen by Time magazine), but as far as she's concerned, everything in her life has been about the movie Zombie Killer, in which she has acted. Remember that movie. But no really, her life kind of sucks right now because: 1. Mommy is dead, from MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES 2. Daddy tried to kill himself from ZE PAIN 3. Her boyfriend, Pierre, just cheated on her with her much skinner best friend, Sparrow (not much of a best friend anymore!). Her heart is totally, irretrievably broken. Pierre was the only one who could make me feel better, and the only boy who ever whispered, This is forever.Oh yeah, and um. 4. Someone's sending her death threats. Hence the title of the book. Vivian Divine really, really thinks she's going to die. And apparently, shit, it's true! People are trying to kill her! What's the poor Vivian Divine to do? She's never attended school, she's never done a single fucking thing for herself. I hate asking for help. Luckily, I never have to. A team of specialists is paid to take care of my every need, to anticipate what I might want and have it prepared ahead of time. If they don’t have the right brand of mango lip balm ready for me after a shoot, they’re done.So Vivian Divine is totally fucked when her only way of escaping CERTAIN DOOM is to escape to Mexico! Ay, caramba! (I know there's supposed to be another exclamation mark before the Ay, but I'm too tired to look it up in Character Map, ok?) So with a mysterious, awesome new disguise---you know how when you go incognito, you're supposed to look plain and all that good shit so that you don't attract attention? I’m normally cute: big blue eyes, pouty lips, long copper curls. But this is gorgeous. My short black hair falls straight and glossy as a waterfall; my eyes are melting chocolate.Someone forgot to tell Vivian Divine. But it's ok, because the instant she meets trouble...Vivian Divine falls into insta-love. Standing in front of me is the sexiest guy I’ve ever seen. His eyes are a rugged green, his black hair shaggy on his shoulders. His cargo pants hang off his slim hips, and a white undershirt clings to his chest. My personal trainer would kill for his body.Nick is instantly contemptuous of her. This spoiled little princess who is clearly out of her league in the wilds of México. Such a fool. What could this toughened, experienced, battle-weary boy ever see in Hollywood Royalty Vivian Divine? “You’re a spoiled brat. You have no problems,� Nick says. “You think your life’s so tough, but your rich mommy and daddy take care of everything for you.� He snatches my orange soda from my hand, takes the last sip, and tosses it into the trash. “You don’t know what real pain is.�Uh huh! YOU TELL HER, NICK! Don't let that prissy little princess worm her way into her heart. And true to his words, Nick holds steady for all of 5 seconds. “When I met you on the bus, I thought you were just another rich American,� he continues. “But you’re not. You’re...different.�OH, NO, NOT THE D WORD!!!!!!!! But the romance aside, THERE'S STILL PEOPLE TRYING TO KILL VIVIAN DIVINE. Even in Mexico! But it's all good, Vivian Divine was in Zombie Killer, remember? Her experience from Zombie Killer not only helps her endure wearing contacts when she's donning her disguise... [She] finds me a pair of brown contacts, which I’m used to wearing, thanks to my months of demon-red contacts in Zombie Killer.And helps her tolerate hunger during her days on the run in Mexico. I’ve never been this hungry before (except for all-night shoots for Zombie Killer.But it helps Vivian to prove herself to Nick when he's being an asshat to her. Anger races through me, and I remember the judo move I learned for the all-night shoot of Zombie Killer. I’ll show you petty problems.And it helps her to protect herself against the BAD BAD GUYS. Vivian is trapped in a moving car? It's all good. She can jump out of the car if she needs to, thanks to her experience with Zombie Killer. I’ve done it before. I jumped out of a moving car for a stunt in Zombie Killer.If someone tries to attack her, it's all good, because she's learned judo on the set of Zombie Killer. What if someone jumps out and attacks me? What do I do? I try to recall the judo moves I learned for Zombie Killer.If she needs encouragement...Vivian can just remember her mother's words of advice...for acting in Zombie Killer. I remember my mom telling me the day before she disappeared, when I was filming the fight scene for Zombie Killer. In that scene, when the zombies had me almost beaten, the Zombie Killer realized that sometimes not fighting is as powerful as fighting.MEXICO JA JA JA: The Mexico portrayed in this book can best be described in one word: stupid. People can eat rodents if they need to. There are fucking mariachi bands everywhere. They eat tacos every meal of the day. They eat cricket tacos. They speak in complete English sentences...but certain words have to constantly be in Spanish. A guy can speak for an entire paragraph in fluent English, but when he refers to his mother, it's always mi madre . Come on, now. Divinely Insipid: Hiding from a killer with an armed stranger in Mexico? Am I crazy?Yes, yes you are. Vivian Divine is Hollywood Royalty, which is the synonym for I have no common sense whatsoever outside of what I learned in movies. She has spent her entire life as an actor. She has never been to school. Her parents are famous and wealthy. She has always been waited on hand and foot. She doesn't know what it's like to be in the real world, so when she gets immersed into it, into the wilds of Mexico, of all things, she drowns. It takes a big, strong man to protect her, because Vivian Divine can't do jack shit. All her experience is gleaned from movies. She sees a fucking house. It looks like a house in [insert movie here] that she's been in. It happens repeatedly. To Vivian, Mexico looks like a movie set. I’ve seen this church before, I realize, on the studio’s back lot. It’s the “Traditional Mafia Church� set.To Vivian, everything that happens is the equivalent of a movie scene. It feels like my story’s ending. It’s a story with a tragic ending, one where the heroine starves to death on the side of a mountain, all alone, with only a lamb to keep her company.And I must be frank, there's no other way to put it. Vivian Divine, by rights, should have died because she is a fucking moron who wouldn't last 1.5 seconds in downtown LA, much less Mexico. The Romance: For someone who falls into insta-love so quickly, Vivian Divine can't forget about her ex-boyfriend, Pierre. His eyes seem to breathe me in, all of me, not just little useful pieces like Pierre’s used to do. But maybe I’m just imagining it. I expect Nick to look confused, like Pierre did when I told him, but he’s nodding like he understands. If Pierre was here, he’d pretend he knew how to do it, burn himself, and then make me start the fire. It’s the complete opposite of Pierre’s bathroom, which is stuffed with expensive colognes and hair gel, but then again, Pierre has more beauty products than I do. I know all about sleeping pills. Pierre takes them to get a few hours of sleep before his shoots so that he won’t have bags under his eyes. All this happens throughout the book. She is constantly thinking about Pierre and comparing/contrasting them. Enough already. And then not a few days passes before Vivian Divine realizes... I see your soul, I want to say, but I bite my tongue, and hope he sees mine.The insta-love is terrible. Nick hated her in the beginning, and then for no reason at all, they start to fall in love right after she tells him the equivalent of I'M NOT AS SHALLOW AS YOU THINK I AM, without any proof, without any character development whatsoever. And before you know it, this happens. “Nobody knows,� Nick says. “But when the locals look at them, they see angels.�God won't help you. Watch a telenovela instead. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 21, 2014
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Jun 21, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0312569033
| 9780312569037
| 0312569033
| 3.90
| 24,561
| Jun 05, 2012
| Jun 05, 2012
|
did not like it
| It was possible that Sahalia hadn’t realized she was pretty much sticking her butt in our faces. And maybe she hadn’t known just how sheer that shi It was possible that Sahalia hadn’t realized she was pretty much sticking her butt in our faces. And maybe she hadn’t known just how sheer that shirt would get.Just by the weakness of the storyline and the nonexistent/unexplained setting alone and the extremely feminine and unconvincingly male narrator, this book is pretty fucking bad and best described as a "clusterfuck." When you add in slut shaming of a 13-year old girl, who almost gets raped because her would-be-rapist thought she was asking for it, that's when I fucking see red. But it's ok when the entire group, which has been slut-shaming her for her provocative dress for the entire fucking book suddenly tell her "it's not your fault you were almost raped." No, that's not forgivable. It doesn't justify drawing the poor girl as a character to be reviled for the entire fucking book. Fuck that shit. There is so much female hate in this book. It is a survival scenario in which the competent females in the book are portrayed as maternal nurturers instead of people who can actually hold their own. Josie was a natural.The girls are meek. They do what they're told. It doesn't fucking matter if they're competent. A girl is going to be a babysitter while the boys take care of business. “Alex, help Jake. Figure it out. Astrid, keep the little kids out of the way.�The girliest boy in the group, naturally, is relegated to the role of cook, no matter how atrocious he is at it. The leadership roles are taken over by those who happen to have an Y in their chromosome, no matter if they're jealous, drunk, high, or future rapists. And then there's the slut shaming of the 13-year old girl, Sahalia. Sahalia is a 13-going on 30-year old, who dresses like a "hooker." She had on a giant pair of men’s overalls, cut off at the knee. Under them she was wearing very little. A lace bra and matching lace panties. You could see the bra through them because the sides of overalls are totally open. You could also see the lace cutting over her hip. You could almost see where it connected with the thong part in the back.It doesn't matter if the entire world is collapsing. Sahalia was wearing what I can best describe as a costume. A sexy carpenter costume. Maybe a sexy farmer.Sahalia will always manage to find the skimpiest possible outfit to wear. Now her behind is facing us, and they are short shorts she is wearing. So we can see � too much. We can see skin under the leg of her shorts. The creamy skin of her inner, inner thigh.Sahalia has an attitude. She doesn't like authority until a guy yells at her and tells her what to do. “I can carry a stupid sledgehammer,� she sassed.Other girls slut shame her because to them, Sahalia is a little slut who dresses the way she does so she can attract male attention. “Enough!� Josie said. “We get it, okay? You’re sexy and you want to have sex with these guys. We get it. But, honey, it’s not going to happen because you are thirteen. Thir. Teen. Do you understand what I’m saying?�So it's just the final fucking straw that Sahalia almost gets raped, and her would-be rapist tries to blame her for it. “She’s crazy, that girl,� Robbie said. “She kept talking about how none of you think she’s a grown-up but how she is, and she wanted to prove it to you, and honestly, I was trying to get her to put back her nightgown on when that other crazy girl came with the gun.�In the end, Sahalia's group believes her and supports her, but that support feels entirely forced when the entire fucking book, they've been criticizing her behavior, her dress, her desperation, and her rampant flirtation. Fuck that shit. Now for the actual plot. It's fucking horrible. This book is a YA novel with characters straight out of a Middle Grade book, and that's actually an insult to Middle Grade books because of how fucking poorly-drawn, clichéd, and one-dimensional the characters are. The Premise: Let's take all the fucking apocalyptic scenarios in the entire fucking world and throw them together. Hail the size of a bucket? Yep! Hail in all different sizes from little to that-can’t-be-hail was pelting the street.An earthquake? Sure! A foreshock, even! And here’s the hilarious part—it was a FORESHOCK. Apparently, that’s what happens when you’re about to experience an 8.2. It’s an earthquake so big it sends messengers ahead.A volcano?! Yeah! A superfuckingvolcano that would make Mt. Krakatoa tremble (no pun intended). The western face of the entire island had exploded with the eruption of the volcano. Five hundred billion tons of rock and lava had avalanched into the ocean.Five hundred billion tons! How the fuck did they measure that, I wonder? A tsunami? You got it! The explosion had created a “megatsunami.�A chemical mushroom cloud? Sure, why not! We have breaking news. There are reports coming in of a leak. A chemical leak. Chemical warfare compounds.And while we're at it, let's just throw in some pseudo-science paranormal shit, too. “The compounds attack based on blood type. People with blood type A will develop severe blisters on all exposed skin. After prolonged exposure, the internal organs will begin to hemorrhage, leading to organ failure and death.�What the fuck is this? That's just...not plausible at all. Blood types have played a minor role in disease, but it's mostly concerning diseases like malaria and dengue fever...it's not that far in the future. Concerning all the clusterfuck of disasters that have been thrown at us, this seems to be too much of a stretch. The entire premise is pretty unbelievable, too. It's 2024. Some years in the future. I know we can't prevent volcanic explosions, or earthquakes, but wouldn't we have an inclination if such a massively disastrous event would be happening? In this book, it all happened out of the blue, and everyone is shocked. The background is completely unexplained, and for some reason the government runs the internet airwaves. We have enough trouble getting people to use Microsoft and Apple Cloud technologies, and enough trouble getting all the internet providers to participate. The idea of a state-run internet is completely absurd, so close to the present. Super Wal-Mart: The kids are trapped in the book's equivalent of a Super Wal-Mart, which is a store in which you can buy baby diapers, drugs, clothing, guns, and tractor parts all in one store. It's massive. It's the size of a football stadium, and really, a bunch of kids can live there in years if electricity holds up. And that's the problem, the power seems to work. The store has everything, and the kids are just a bunch of stupid brats running around inside a store, arguing with each other, getting drunk, and holding largely pointless elections. “Guys, I am the QB,� he said. “That means quarterback! The quarterback is the guy on the team who calls the shots and makes sure everyone plays their best. And I’m gonna be a great QB for this team. Us. That’s why you should elect me the leader!�Lord of the Flies, this ain't. It's such a juvenile story, slapdashed together, without a sense of urgency and danger, despite the millions and billions of death happening outside. There is hardly any mourning for the dead, hardly any thoughts to parents and siblings and dead loved ones, or maybe living loved ones who may be suffering. The narrator is only focused on the present, and the present involves romance and sex, the apocalypse is just a convenient event to get close to a crush. The Characters: Oh, the fucking tropes. The main character is a guy, Dean, but nicknamed "Geraldine" by his bullies. I can see why they did, Dean is one of the most unconvinging male narrators I've ever read, I mean what kind of teenaged boy worries about a CNN reporter's makeup when she's reporting about a volcano destroying the world? Her eye makeup was all smeared around her eyes and I wondered why nobody fixed her makeup. It was CNN, for God’s sake.There's the jock, Jake. The All-American girl and object of desire, Astrid, bad-boy jock Brayden, boy-scout and survivalist, Niko. They hunted for their own food and had no electricity and used wild mushrooms for toilet paper. That kind of thing. People called Niko “Brave Hunter ManThe whore, Saharia, the Sainted-Mary Josie, the dull as hell "good guy" main character, Dean, his all-book-smarts and no common sense little brother, Alex, and a bunch of the most unbelievable, annoying little grade school fuckers that I've ever met. I've never been a fan of children in survival scenarios, and this book is no exception. There's the 7-year old evangelist, Batista, who never, ever stops preaching the word of God. I had already overheard him reprimand Brayden for cursing (“Taking the Lord’s name in vain is a sin!�), tattle on Chloe for pushing Ulysses (“Shoving is a sin!�), and inform the other little kids that not saying grace before eating was a sin (“Before we eat, God wants us sinners to give thanks!�).5-year old Chloe, who never fucking stops whining. “Turn it to Tabi-Teens,� Chloe whined. “This is bo-ring!�And 5-year old Max, that fucking Max can recite passages from any fucking conversation he's overheard. “My mom once took me in the ladies� room,� Max volunteered. “And there was this lady in there crying and she had a ice cube and she was rubbing it on her eye and she said, ‘If Harry hits me one more time, I don’t know what I’ll do,� and then this other lady came out of a stall and she said, ‘If Harry hits you one more time, you give him the end of this to suck on!� And she puts a real, actual gun down on the sink. Made of metal, I am not even kidding. And then my momma turns to me and goes, ‘Tell your daddy to bring you to the men’s room.’�The Romance: “Oh man, getting laid is so awesome,� Jake said, scratching his head. “It’s just absolutely the best thing ever. Once you get it, all you can think of is getting it again. Sometimes I’m having sex and I’m worried about the next time I’m gonna have sex!�This book reads like a Middle Grade novel, which is why it's so fucking weird when all the sexual content start popping up. There's the episode when Sahalia almost got raped. There's the incident where Astrid takes her top off for a boy. There's all the sexual discussions that would be laughable if it weren't so out of place. And then there's Dean's FEEEEEEEEEELINGS for Astrid. The perfect Astrid. His observations about her are so obsessive and feminine it's like nothing but Astrid exists. Apocalypse? Whatever. Astrid. Kids are freaking out because they were just involved in a bus accident? Astrid's hair! Astrid looked beautiful talking to them, hearing about their favorite kinds of pizza, with the wind picking up the tendrils of her hair and bringing a flush to her cheeks.He dreams about Astrid in his darkest moments. What I wanted was Astrid. She looked so good to me I wanted to take her, in a dark and terrible way.He stalked her and watches her while she undressed. Astrid’s body was so beautiful my throat closed up.She's hurt? Doesn't matter! Still beautiful! And there she was. So beautiful, laid out on my knees. She had her eyes closed, and for a moment, I just looked at her. Dirty face. Lips drawn together, chapped and rosy. Eyes red rimmed. The rise of her cheekbones. Eyebrows and lashes golden honey–colored. Some brown, dried freckle-dots that could be blood on her jawline.*gag* You expect me to LIKE a main character who stalks his crush, who watches her undressing without her knowledge, who gives little thought to anyone BUT the beauteous Astrid as the world explodes in flames? Fuck this book. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 29, 2014
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May 29, 2014
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385740166
| 9780385740166
| 0385740166
| 3.53
| 11,234
| Aug 09, 2011
| Sep 13, 2011
|
did not like it
| I’ll have to decide: join Romeo or let the specter of my soul take me. I know I should be afraid for my future, but all I can think about is Ben.T I’ll have to decide: join Romeo or let the specter of my soul take me. I know I should be afraid for my future, but all I can think about is Ben.This book mocks the original Juliet's weakness, only to have the newly improved Juliet just as fucking dumb as the original. [image] So the original Shakespeare version, Juliet met Romeo, fell in love, and died for love within three days. In this retelling of Juliet's story, before this book starts, Juliet still ran away with Romeo, and then said Romeo stabbed her and ate her like a zombie. Flesh and blood dripping from his mouth and everything. It was pretty neat. Flash forward 700 years in which Juliet is older, wiser, more wary of the perils of insta-love? Fucking nope! One would think a reimagined, powerful, supernatural Juliet would have learned a fucking lesson or two: nope! This book was terrible. Here is why: - A stupid, stupid main character who makes the same mistake as the original Juliet, made worse by the fact that she was KILLED the first time. She's ruled by her passions, there is no reason in her behavior. - Insta-love, a love triangle between the new, improved zombie Romeo and new boy Ben Luna. Ben. Ben. GEE, I WONDER WHO BEN COULD BE?! It's not like he has a character with a similar name in Romeo and Juliet or anything!!!11 - Terrible side characters: basically, the stars of the book are Juliet and Ben. Nobody else need apply. - Poor setting: The whole we're gonna give you renewed life so you can play Cupid? No. - Poor female characters: Her best friend, her "mother," both uncaring, cruel, callous bitches, depicted as inferior to Juliet (insta-love Juliet) in every way. - The premise: weak as Ben and Juliet's insta-love. The idea of a love ambassador is pretty bloody and neat until you take into consideration the fact that it doesn't make any sense at all, and I'm not talking about the suspension of disbelief and the supernatural element. I'm talking about the fact that the reasoning behind the soul mate thing makes no fucking sense. The Summary: He turns and our eyes meet, and that sense of knowing him hits, catching me in my empty gut. For a moment, the sadness and pain in his eyes is my pain, and I desperately want to make it better. I want to reach for him, hold him, whisper into the warm crook of his neck that everything is going to be okay, that I’ll make it that way.(Psst, that's the first time they meet) Day 0.5 (because it takes place when the day's practically over): Juliet is awake! Well, kind of. This ain't Shakespeare's Juliet...well, she's the inspiration for it, but the Shakespearean version was a falsehood, told to the dude by the sneaky, conniving son of a bitch that's Romeo. The real Juliet died at age 14, in 1304 Verona. Killed by the man she loved. And now Romeo is kind of a zombie. He reincarnates from one life to another, living constantly on earth as an immortal Mercenary, whereas Juliet only gets to come back to earth once in awhile, as an Ambassador. Think of her as Cupid, she makes sure that a pair of true lovers end up together, or else they will fall prey to the forces of darkness and one of them will die a horrible death like she did. At the hands of Romeo. Did I say that Romeo is a zombie? He's a total zombie. ...flesh in his teeth, blood dripping down his chin.So now Juliet has been given an assignment, she's given the body of Ariel Dragland, a stunningly beautiful, extremely thin platinum-blonde high school outcast with self-esteem issues and mommy problems. Yeah, an outcast, because she's a little bit scarred from being burned as a child. So here's Juliet/Ariel. On earth. Almost dead from a car accident, and OH CRAP THERE'S ROMEO, now in the body of a boy named Dylan. Juliet/Ariel runs like fuck, Romeo is chasing after her (he's a fast zombie), and OMG YAY A CAR. She runs into the car, and is struck down by insta-love. The rescuer is a high school boy named Ben Luna. The attraction is immediate. I’m suddenly very aware of him, as well, of his front warming my back, his thighs shifting beneath mine. I clear my throat, blushing for the first time in so long the strangeness of hot cheeks makes me blink.Ben is Mexican-American. He likes to uses randomly inserted Spanish words. “Then this really isn’t your lucky night, chica."I almost typed "Mexican words" for a moment before I caught myself. Lol. We all have our brain farts. So crazy zombie Romeo/Dylan is after Ariel/Juliet. They go to the same high school. Hooray! Doesn't matter. What's important is BEN. BEN. She feels such...familiarity with him, she feels an intense longing for him, despite knowing Ben that night for all of 1 hour.She wants to kiss him as he drops her off. I stay and let him come closer, closer, until I can feel the heat of his lips and imagine just how perfect they’ll feel, how perfect he’ll taste, how�She can't stop thinking about him for the rest of the night. I fist the damp wipe in my hand, reining in the part of me that aches for this boy with the big brown eyes.Famous last words. Ben is Mexican. "Dulces sueños, Mermaid.�Day 2: So Juliet's still got a job to do, right? She's got to find the designated couple of soulmates and make them fall in love or else one of them will die a horrible horrible death. Nobody wants that, except for Romeo. Awesome. So where are they? As it turned out, one of the couple is Gemma, Juliet/Ariel's best friend since second grade. The one girl who has befriended Ariel despite the entire class neglecting and making fun of her. There's an aura over her head. Gemma is 1/2 of the soulmate. And then I turn back to Gemma...lost in the rosy glow surrounding her chest.And the other 1/2 of the soulmates? Ben. Something in my gut twists and for a moment I’m dizzy, weightless, as if the floor has been ripped from beneath me, but I don’t know which way to fall.Well, awesome! Best friend in love and designated to be soulmates with the guy who saved her the other night. What could be better? Well, for starters, JULIET CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT BEN. I shake my head. This has to stop. I can’t go to pieces every time I see his face. I have to pull it together, be a good influence, make sure he commits to the love of his life and lives happily ever after.But it doesn't. Juliet can't stop thinking about him. Romeo is on her ass. And Ben is still determined to prove to us that he's Mexican. Ben laughs. “Dios mio. Fine, crazy woman.�Day 3: GEMMA. THAT BITCH. SHE'S SO NOT WORTHY OF BEN. I'M NOT GOING TO GIVE HER TO BEN. Gemma’s thoughtless at best, mean-spirited and selfish at worst, and I want so much better for Ben.What?! Where the fuck did that come from?! Ok, so Juliet's in love with Ben. Romeo's still there declaring his undying (that was a zombie joke) love for Juliet if only she'd give him another chance. And Ben? After three (ok, 2.2?) days of knowing her, this is how he feels. “I’m not doing this right, and I know I sound crazy, but...I love you. I could see myself loving you for a long time.�Well, that escalated quickly. Three days. Three motherfucking days. “I love you. I want to do everything with you. I want to marry you and have kids with you and get old with you. And then I want to die the day before you do, so I never have to live without you.�[image] NOOOOOOOOOOO. WHYYYYYYYYYYYY. Do your fucking job, Juliet. Need I remind you of what would happen if you don't unite the soulmates? These two are my job, and if I don’t do it, one of them will die. Either they commit to each other or one of them commits murder and becomes a Mercenary. That’s the way it goes. Every. Single. Time.Fuck you, Juliet, you stupid bitch. YOU HAD ONE JOB. Ben is still Mexican. “Dios mio,� Ben says.Juliet: How can I think of loving someone again? How have I let this happen? Even if it weren’t forbidden, haven’t I learned my lesson?Apparently not. Juliet is a motherfucking moron. She's techniaclly over 700 years old, but she hasn't spent all that time on Earth. I’ve seen centuries pass, but I died when I was fourteen and have spent less than twenty conscious years on earth.20 years. That's a long time as an adult. Time spent being Cupid, making soulmates meet. She's been betrayed by love. She's seen the harm love can do. She knows the consequences of destined soulmates NOT falling in love, and she doesn't learn a motherfucking thing. She fell into insta-love with Romeo and elopes. He kills her. One would think she would know better not to fall into insta-love again. After THREE MOTHERFUCKING DAYS. She knows that the soulmates who aren't together will end up in a horrible death. SHE IGNORES THAT FOR HER OWN MOTHERFUCKING INSTA-LOVE. Gemma doesn't deserve him, says Juliet, the worst fucking Cupid ever. Not only that, she's determined to destroy the only friendship thar her borrowed body, Ariel, has. Gemma is her only friend. Ariel suffers from crippling shyness. Ariel has no other friends. And yet Juliet as Ariel sees fit to steal away her best friend's soulmate. She and Gemma are so different. It’s amazing they’ve stayed friends for as long as they have.That would be such a fucking cute sentiment if Juliet didn't steal away Ben under poor Gemma's nose. Oh my god, the love. THE LOVE. Juliet is so fucking purple-prosey-lovey-dovey. She can't contain her fucking emotions for Ben, a boy whom, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but SHE'S KNOWN HIM FOR LESS THAN THREE DAYS. By the end of day 2, she's ready to declare her love. It's pure insta-love. There is no emotion behind it. She feels the familiarity, the desire, that's it. One little word from him is like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH MOTHERFUCKING CHERUBS SINGING FROM HEAVEN. Juliet is easily impressed. Romeo might have praised my loveliness with lyrical poetry, but he never made me feel as beautiful as Ben did when he said four simple words.Puh-please. Is that all it takes to get her to drop her panties? Be a little better than that. Have more fucking depths than that. Am I to believe that Juliet is a motherfucking Immortal Warrior? Fucking no. The Girl Hate: "You’re the one who messed up when you got pregnant when you were nineteen."Way to be a bitch to your own mother. Well, to Ariel's mother, but it's Ariel who's going to have to live with the consequences. This book hates women. Juliet/Ariel's mother is a careless person. Unfeeling about her daughter's feelings. Terrible at showing her love, even if Juliet acknowledges that she does love her daughter. She means that she cares, no matter how bad she is at showing it.Her best friend Gemma, is also another careless person. The hard light in Gemma’s eyes fades, and for a second I can see that she cares. Or that she wants to care.So none of the female side characters in this book is careing and loving and nice at all. To be fair, none of the guys in this book are any good, either, but the female characters are prominent, and I hate the female hate in this book. Gemma is a bitch. She doesn't deserve the angelic Ben. Gemma is a vindictive, selfish, spoiled girl who doesn’t deserve Ariel and certainly doesn’t deserve Ben’s love.Every attempt is made in this book to paint Gemma in a bad light, including making her the beautiful outcast rich girl, to making her a slutty character who plays around with boys like they were toys (and therefore deserves her heartbreak). Ben! The Abusive Romantic!: “He was only protecting her.�Oh, I'm sorry, did I accidentally read a New Adult novel? Ben is violent. He's beaten up people before. He's gotten arrested for it. But it's ok, because Ben was doing it for the sake of other people. He only beats up the bad guys ~_~ Therefore his violence is TOTALLY justified. Ben flirts with Juliet/Ariel while dating her best friend. I would almost swear that Ben is flirting. With me. Right in front of his soul mate. Which is so bad that bad can’t even begin to describe it.Uh, yah, you took the words right out of my mouth. Ben, who speaks with the eloquence of a thousand John Mayers. “I know you,� he says, with a quiet assurance that threatens to make my tears start all over again. “I know you’re strong and as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside. I know you like to eat and hate Shakespeare—at least the love stories—and would do anything for a friend. I know you’re an artist, and you made a wall of bricks look like it should be hanging in a museum."Ben, who is Mexican. “Olvida la escuela,� he says, anger in his eyes....more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 22, 2014
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May 22, 2014
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May 22, 2014
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1442423730
| 9781442423732
| 1442423730
| 3.80
| 6,394
| Sep 13, 2011
| Sep 13, 2011
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it was amazing
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Actual rating: 4.5 stars and a unicorn. “Kind of funny when you think about it, us believing we had to protect a dude from you,� Tall said. “In a feActual rating: 4.5 stars and a unicorn. “Kind of funny when you think about it, us believing we had to protect a dude from you,� Tall said. “In a few weeks we can all grab a cheeseburger together and laugh about this. A hot chick like you couldn’t possibly be a vampire. Seriously, though, you might want to cut down on the black garb.�Any book with a stalker unicorn and an alpha-female vampire with a sadistic streak is bound to be a fucking winner. This book is fa-bu-lous. *snaps fingers* It's got: - A motherfucking sparkly twinkly stabbing stalker unicorn, HELLO?! - A strong female vampire lead who slowly discovers her humanity (who's a master at power plays) - A Mafia-like vampiric society - A sweet love interest who's a decent human being, and a love triangle that doesn't hurt because it's not really much of one - A hilarious portrayal of high school that points out the clichés within the cliques - A tongue-in-cheek style of writing, chock full of deadpan humor (no pun intended) - Actual female friendship! Hallelujah! The Summary: The unicorn stood between the dumpsters. He sparkled like a horse-shaped disco ball. His traditional spiral horn beamed like a toy light saber.Pearl is a vampire. She is merciless (and in The Family, she's got to be). She drinks blood, she's even got a favorite drink. His name's Brad. He works at the ice cream shop. He tastes best after he's had mint-flavored ice cream. “Shh,� she said. “Nearly dawn. No time for talking.� Snuggling against him, she continued to feed him ice cream. He swallowed mechanically, as if her proximity erased all brain function. Pearl pressed closer and pushed his straggly hair back away from his neck.But all that was before she got stabbed by an unicorn. A motherfucking unicorn. They're not supposed to even exist! Naturally, nobody believes her. Her family (The Family) just laughs at her. Pearl's Family is like a vampire Mafia. Her mother is cold (as well as cold-blooded). Her father is a "businessman." But all in all, it's a fairly normal family...just a little deadlier than most. She's got a fussy aunt. She's got an idiot cousin. She's got a crazy uncle. ...his propensity to chew off birds� heads was much more unsettling than the puckering on his cheeks.But the family has more to worry about that the possible sighting of an unicorn, the King of the vampires is coming to town, and her family is their host. So yeah, bigger things to worry about here. But then, weird things start happening...Pearl starts feeling empathy for her food (aka Brad the ice cream boy). I should release him, she thought. Let the puppy run free.She sees her own reflection---and my fucking god...she can step into the sun without dying in a blaze of fire. Colored light tinted her pale skin, and Pearl raised her arm and turned it over to watch the stained-glass light dance over her blue veins and bring hints of color into the whiteness, as if her skin were Formica.The Family isn't too happy to find out about this, but there's the problem with The King coming to town. They have to provide the entertainment. They have to provide the food (aka HUMANS OM NOM NOM). And now their daughter, Pearl, can step into sunlight and not die a fiery death. Hm. HMMMMMMMMMMM. This may be useful. “You want me to find the king’s dinner in daylight?� Pearl guessed.Because there's nothing more delicious than a schoolful of teenagers ^_^ So Pearl's going to go to high school for the first time in her life, huzzah! She already knows a couple of kids, too, there's sweet, friendly Bethany, and super nice guy with a hero complex, Evan. He’d chosen a chair by the window. Sunlight streamed in, illuminating the dust to create distinct rays so it appeared as if he were highlighted by a halo of angelic light. If he’d been trying to stage it to catch her eye, he couldn’t have planned it better.The school is...interesting, and for a vampire used to dominance and power play within the vampiric hierarchy...it's a piece of cake. There's your usual cliques, there's the Queen Bee...of whom Pearl isn't the least bit scared. She watched as Ashlyn strode across the cafetorium with all the confidence of a vampire...and Pearl wondered if that was it, if it was the confidence that she radiated that was the source of her power.Pearl is fucking awesome. She's got the strength. She's got the looks. She's got the swagger. She's got the confidence. Within the first day, she's insulted and upstaged an aggressive teacher, she's scratched Queen Bee's car, and Greenbridge High School doesn't know what hit it. “Are you kidding?� Bethany said. “She’s, like, a hero!� With shining eyes, she turned to Pearl. “You are exactly what this school needs.�Everything would be perfect if she's starting to...feel things for the pesky fucking humans. Everything would be perfect if she weren't so busy that she doesn't have time to eat (drink, rather), or sleep. Everything would be perfect if SHE WEREN'T BEING STALKED BY A FUCKING UNICORN. As the sun sank into the horizon, Pearl trudged home without having seen a single sparkly hoofprint or rainbowed poop pile. It wasn’t as if she’d expected unicorn wuz here graffiti...Okay, yes, that would have been nice.Pearl's hunger soon gets the better of her...and in the midst of gaining control, Pearl makes a mistake. And now, it seems like her meals---aka, her human friends---are the only ones to whom she can turn. Hating herself for what she was about to say, Pearl blurted out the words: “I need help.�In the end, who will Pearl become? The bloodsucking, cold-hearted creature of vampire lore...or someone who's only too human? She swallowed hard and tried to force the achy feeling to stop. No matter how lovely the words were, these people didn’t understand, and she couldn’t stay.The Setting: Upstairs was the perfect suburban home: couches and TV in the living room, marble counters and stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, and color-coordinated lacy bedrooms. Downstairs, hidden from human view, was a catacomb of tunnels and rooms that included sleeping chambers, training rooms, torture rooms, a few storage areas, and the treasury.This is a modern US setting in which vampires exist unbeknownst to humans (and so do other supernatural creatures, like zombies, but they're rare. Unicorns, naturally, are just imaginary, duh!). This vampiric society is dominated by powerful families, Pearl's family, the Sanges, are dominant in their region. Their clan was rising in prominence. Daddy owned real estate throughout western Connecticut, including multiple businesses in Hartford, and Mother had a head for business that rivaled any CEO’s.Her father is a "shark." Her mother is ruthless. You didn’t sit down to tea with someone you were about to punish, but then she’d once seen Mother wait an entire week before slicing off the toe of a distant relative who had crossed into their territory without permission.And their entire family, however eccentric some members, are to be feared. Of course, they're not without their sense of humor. Like family dinner nights, in which the food...is human. Their dinner had been presented on a bed of lettuce. Carrots had been stuck in candelabras on either side of the boy’s torso, and his hands had been positioned to hold a decorative cabbage as if it were a bride’s bouquet. He wore a bellhop uniform.Their society is dominated by power, power play, and mind games of dominance...which makes Pearl's personality so much more interesting. Pearl: Pearl didn’t want to adjust. She wanted humans to revert to being merely meals again. She wanted to stop pretending to fit in. She wanted to return to being the ordinary child she was born to be, not a special miracle charged with this impossible task.I fucking loved Pearl. She has such a strong personality, without weakness as a vampire who sees humans purely as food, which makes her all the more realistic when she finally...due to the stupid unicorn...starts feeling emotions. Pearl is exceedingly intelligent, you don't get to be an idiot being raised in a family in which survival of the fittest is the motto, and therefore, Pearl is so, so tough and cold initially. She's been raised that way, and she can read people like a book. Which is how she knows to interpret the cliques and power structure at her high school. Others around her nodded wisely, and a few laughed outright. Pearl realized what she was seeing: a shift in power. Ashlyn had shown weakness, and others were jockeying for her position. She wondered how malleable the social hierarchy was and how far Ashlyn would tumble.Pearl is confident. She is strong, she is beautiful, she is powerful, and she knows it. When a girl threatens her relationship with Pearl's vampire boyfriend, Jadrien...well, Pearl knows how to stake her territory without saying a word (no pun intended). ...She elected to simply wait the girl out.And just like that, the power structure is shifted. Pearl is so confident and strong in her identity, that I loved seeing her finally expose her vulnerability when she realizes that humans, unlike her vampire compatriots...are not going to stab her in the back. She doesn't have to constantly watch herserlf. Pearl left the office feeling dazed. Mrs. Kerry at the front desk waved at her as she half walked and half stumbled back toward class. Glancing over her shoulder multiple times, she watched for an attack that never came.The Romance: “What’s wrong with me?� Pearl asked. How would she ever undo what she’d done?There is a love triangle in this book, and it doesn't hurt. The romance is so light that it's barely there at all, in the context of an YA book. Pearl is "betrothed" but not formally, to a vampire boy named Jadrien. They have fun together, he is a smooth talker, they're not best friends. Jadrien and Pearl have a playful, flirtatious relationship, they train and fight together. “Surrender?� she said.Their relationship---like most in the vampire community---is fraught with tension, power plays, and mind games. “I’m tired of games, Jadrien,� she said. “I play them all night and now all day. But you know what?� She stepped closer to him. “If I have to play...I play to win. You should know that about me by now.�And it's just Jadrien who will be her future until she meets Evan. The human boy who is unexpectedly kind. Who understands Pearl more than she expected. “How about you?� she asked. “You seem to have everything under control. What are your issues?�Their relationship is well-built, well-drawn. There is no insta-love. There is distrust in the beginning (he is food, after all). The romance is not overwhelming in the least. Overall: Such a lovely book, the humor is spectacular. I had a blast reading it. There are imperfections in the book, but overall, I enjoyed it so much that nothing else mattered. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 24, 2014
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May 24, 2014
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May 21, 2014
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0399257454
| 9780399257452
| 0399257454
| 3.91
| 17,753
| Jan 25, 2012
| Feb 07, 2012
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liked it
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Actual rating: 3.5. Rounded down for the pointless motherfucking love triangle. Mother didn’t trust Father to fight for us. Truth be told, she didn�Actual rating: 3.5. Rounded down for the pointless motherfucking love triangle. Mother didn’t trust Father to fight for us. Truth be told, she didn’t do a very good job of it herself. She left me with a diary full of cryptic warnings and a responsibility that should have been hers.I'm an idiot. This is what I get for not reading the summary. For some fucking reason, I thought this was an adult novel. It's not. I thought it was magical realism. It's not, it's about witches. I thought it takes place in the modern US. It doesn't. Then I thought it took place in 18th century US. That ended quickly when I encountered a family named the Ishidas (there weren't a whole lot of Japanese people in the US in the 18th century, ok?). This book is an alternate history of the US with a Puritan-like religious sect called "The Brotherhood" in charge, in which witches existed and are persecuted. So now that we've finished discussing how dumb I am for not paying attention to the summary, let's discuss the book itself: The not-so-good: - Completely fucking pointless love triangle: what's better than one awesome guy?! Two of them! WHY?! - I-don't-want-to-be-a-witch syndrone: the main character suffers from it. - The length: It's a long book, and there is a decided lack of action. This is an alternate history of the 1900s US, expect plenty of courtship and tea parties with your witchcraft. The good: - Surprisingly feminist: there's a big message about female empowerment, education, and oppression in this book. - A likeable main character who doesn't feel like a Mary Sue: she is not a pretty pretty pretty girl like the summary tells you. She's dowdy, she's awkward, and she's more a mother hen than a peacock. - An interesting, if initially confusing-as-fuck alternate history: once you get that figured out, we're golden. - Diversity: people of color. Lesbians. A tongue-in-cheek reference to how liberal the alternate Middle-Eastern countries are in comparison. The witches themselves are believed and abhorred by the Brotherhood for being women who live with other women, and it's implied that they're lesbians. They're not, but it's the prejudice. - Interesting and unexpected side characters: you think a character is a stupid trope? Nope! - A well-drawn sisterly relationship: this is a book about sisters, and it shows. The Summary: You must watch over your sisters for me. Keep them safe. There’s so much I wanted to tell you. And now I haven’t time.Contrary to the fucking summary, 16-year-old Cate Cahill isn't "too pretty." She's the rather dowdy oldest sister to her younger siblings, Tess, 12, and Maura, 15. Her mother passed away when she was 13, leaving her with a cryptic message and a mission to watch over her sisters. It's a pretty important mission, because the Cahill sisters have a secret: they're witches. Not even their despondent, grieving shadow of a father knows. It's a secret that could kill them because they live in an alternate version of circa 1900 United States. This US is ruled by The Brotherhood, a fanatical religious sect that doesn't believe in the rights of women. This is because over 100 years ago, they defeated the witches, women said to be powerful, wicked, evil, lustful. They are kept controlled, regardless of their lack of magic. The Brothers are afraid the witches will rise up again someday, Mother said, so they loathe the idea of powerful women. We are not permitted to study and go to university as men do, or to take up professions.Since then, the Brotherhood has led a reign of purity, chastity, where women are subdued and submissive. The message is clear: women who are too opinionated or too educated, too odd or too curious, are punished. They deserve whatever fate they get.Women are evil. Magic is reviled. The Cahill sisters are witches who must practice their witchcraft in secret, and they hate it. Spirited Tessa cannot help using spells where she shouldn't. Fiery Maura wants the freedom to practice her witchcraft---she doesn't feel like magic is something of which they should be ashamed. “We’re witches, Cate. We were born that way. Magic isn’t shameful, no matter what the Brothers would have us believe. It’s a gift. I wish you would accept that.�Whereas Cate worries all the time, and wishes she weren't a witch. I frown at my reflection in the pond, wishing with every fiber of my being that I weren’t a witch.Cate and her sisters are of marrying age, and a conniving neighbor with the aspiration of being the next Mrs. Cahill has convinced their dad to get them a governess---a dour Sister. A convent-like organization for women who don't marry. Cate and her sisters aren't fond of the idea...that's one more person they have to keep their secret from, but this governess isn't the plain sourpuss of a nun they expected. She is young, she is beautiful, she is fashiomable... Sister Elena is pretty—no, beautiful—with smooth brown skin and black ringlets peeking out from beneath her hood. And she’s fashionable—as fashionable as the Brothers� strictures will allow. Her dress has a wide bell skirt in a soft pink that reminds me of Mother’s peonies.And she may just be the ally that they need. Cate has more on her mind than just the secrecy of her magic, she's of an age to marry, and for girls like her, there are only two choices once she turns 17: marry, or become a sister. Will she be marrying her childhood sweetheart, Paul...who understands her. “A life with you will never be dull, will it, and that’s just what I want. Think about it, Cate. That’s all I ask. Can you do that?�Or the mysterious Finn. Finn squares his shoulders—which have gotten a good deal sturdier since the last time I saw him. Or paid attention, at any rate. How long has it been since I actually looked? He’s gotten awfully handsome; it can’t have happened overnight.Adding to her headaches is her mother's mysterious message, it seems like Cate and her sister are in danger. There is a prophecy---will they be the one to fulfil it? Hell, will they live long enough to see it? ...if the Brothers found out, they would kill me. Immediately and without trial. Perhaps they’d make an example of all three of us—burn us at the stake, or hang us in the town square, the way they did in Great-Grandmother’s day.The Setting: Whaaa?! This book was really, really confusing at first. I thought it was historical US, it's not. It's an alternate version of the US, where witchcraft exists and is stifled for fear. Around 100 years ago, the Brotherhood gained power. They killed all the witches, they set up a Puritan-like regime under which women aren't allowed access to higher education (some Brethren don't believe women should read at all) and should be submissive to men at all times. They use the witches' power to justify suppressing young women and making them subservient. They cared nothing for protecting girls� virtue. They would have women aping men� dressing immodestly, running businesses, even forgoing marriage to live in unnatural unions with other women.�This book has a lot of diversity. There are Japanese families and side characters. The governess has "brown skin." There are lesbians, it is implied that some of the witches are lesbians. Furthermore, with the Middle Eastern circumstance these days where women are denied access to education---this book makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to the liberalness of the Middle Eastern countries compared to the US in this alternate universe. I hold back a sigh. What I wouldn’t give to share in the freedoms of Arab girls. They’re allowed to inherit property and go to university; they’ve even been given the right to vote.Overall, I felt like the world building was very well-done, if confusing at first. Cate: I hate that I’ve taken this small happiness away from her. When I was her age, I liked to run through the gardens, and I suppose I was careless with my magic, too. Now I have to play mother for Tess and Maura, and ignore the wild girl that still bangs in my heart, begging to be let out.A really sympathetic character. She is a girl who is forced to grow old before her time. She has to play disciplinarian to her two contrary, wilder, free-spirited sister, and it sucks the life out of her to do so. There is no question that the sisters love one another, and Cate feels her responsibility heavy on her shoulders. She is prepared to give up her own happiness to keep them safe. It’s been years since I’ve let myself consider what I want. It hardly matters. I didn’t want Mother to die; I didn’t want Father to turn into a shadow of his old self; I didn’t want the responsibility of policing my sisters. I certainly never wanted to be a witch in the first place.I love her occasional moments of anger and resentment at having been forced to grow up so fast, so soon. It’s rare that I’ve let myself feel angry with Mother. She’s dead; she can’t defend herself. But now I’m shaking with it. How could she? How could she die and leave me here to deal with all of this alone?What I didn't like about Cate was her hatred of her own powers. She has an unique power, and no, she doesn't feel like a Mary Sue. Cate believes her witchcraft wicked, she hates her powers, she thinks herself evil. I don't like that. If I had powers, even if they were presecuted, I'd revel in it. Find a way to work it to my advantage. Don't be a motherfucking pussy. EMBRACE THE POWER. Cate sometimes feel week because of her own denial, and I didn't appreciate that character flaw, especially when power is something I would so embrace.The Romance: I want to chase right after Finn. I don’t care how big a fool I’d look.Why?! Fucking why?! Paul is PERFECT. Here we have a case of a completely needless love triangle. She has her childhood best friend, Paul, with whom she has an understanding, which means that everyone in the 'hood knows they will get married one day, and she knows it, and Paul knows it, except BOOM, OUT OF THE BLUE COMES FUCKING FINN. Who takes all the Funn out of things. Sorry, couldn't resist. Paul is so nice. He understands Cate so well. They get along so well. “Because we’re alike, you and I. We want adventures, not quiet nights at home by the fire. I think I could make you happy if you’d let me.� Paul’s voice goes gravelly, and he takes both my hands in his.Which is why I don't fucking understand the need for a love triangle at all. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 21, 2014
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May 21, 2014
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0062135317
| 9780062135315
| 0062135317
| 3.61
| 13,207
| Feb 19, 2013
| Dec 03, 2013
|
did not like it
| I can’t lose Annie because I wanted to dance and kiss James. How could I have been so stupid and selfish? Everything was already screwed up; we wer I can’t lose Annie because I wanted to dance and kiss James. How could I have been so stupid and selfish? Everything was already screwed up; we were already in trouble. I can’t believe I did this. I did this. Again. How many times will Annie have to see her own death because of me?[image] So there are these two stupid sisters, I want to call them Dumb and Dumber, but for the purposes of this book, they're named Annabelle (Annie) and Sofia (Fia). At the beginning of the story, we know that Fia is an assassin, a 17-year old assassin. A really pretty, skinny, girl-next-door-wholesome, charming assassin who's given a task to kill someone, a boy named Adam. Supposedly she's been a killer before, it doesn't matter because as soon as we meet her, the first paragraph of the book tells us that she's a motherfucking moron who can't kill anything if it has big, soulful motherfucking eyes. Fia has to kill this dude. There are people holding her beloved sister, Annie, hostage. If she doesn't kill this guy whom she's never known before, whom she's never met before, they're gonna probably kill or hurt her sister (who's blind, and by implication, pretty helpless). So what does Fia do? She doesn't fucking kill the guy. I know I won’t be able to kill him.Because he motherfucking helped a puppy. He’s still helping the puppy, untangling the leash from a tree outside the bar. And he’s not only setting it free, he’s talking to it.He's setting the little puppy free from where its leash got tangled, and by doing so, Dumber, I mean, Fia, can't bring it in her cold steel assassin motherfucking heart to kill him. He's ruined her plans because he helped a motherfucking puppy. What in the actual fucking name of incompetent moronic idiocy is this shit? And need I remind you of what's going to happen if she doesn't kill him? Her sister is going to get fucking killed by the organization holding her hostage. His long fingers deftly untwist and unwind and undo my entire day, my entire life. Because if he doesn’t die today, Annie will, and that is one death I cannot have on my conscience.[image] So in case I haven't made it clear, Annie is Fia's sister. She is blind. She is helpless. She will get killed if Fia doesn't do her job as an assassin and kill this henceforth unknown boy. And Fia is going to let her beloved 19-year old big sister, whom she has to protect, die because she can't bear to kill a boy who shows kindness to a motherfucking puppy. She doesn't know the boy. She doesn't know who she is. She's never fucking met him before. He's a cute boy. It doesn't fucking matter. He could have been a serial killer. She doesn't know why she has to kill him, but he's her assignment. Ted Bundy was handsome, too, he was wholesome-looking, too. [image] And look where that got all his 30 victims. That dumb dog has killed us all.No, it hasn't. You've killed "us all," Fia. You had one fucking job, to kill that boy, and you couldn't do it because of a cute motherfucking dog. [image] So instead of doing her job and just making it simple, and you know, killing the guy, Fia ends up incapacitating some random thugs instead and saves mysterious boy, named Adam, a 19-year old "doctor," by which I think he means he's a Ph.D and not an actual doctor, because no doctor would be so incompetent and overdose their patient unless they graduated from a cut-rate medical school in Guatemala that would admit a student from an non-biological science major who spent her entire college career playing Worlf of Warcraft every night and cramming for her exams the hours before. Meaning they'd take me. No offense to actual Guatemalan doctors everywhere. I'm sure you guys are amazing compared to the "board certified plastic surgeons" working out of garages in Las Vegas who use motor engine lubricant/WD-40 for butt injections. I kid. I kid. Not really. Anyways! Despite the fact that fucking child-savant-19-year-old-"doctor" Adam fucking drugged her without her consent, Fia still trusts him. Because she's the most idiotic assassin in the history of YA literature with the exception of perhaps, Celaena Sardothien. He shifts uncomfortably, eyes on the road. “I might have overdosed you. Just a little. I needed to think.�Clearly, along with her inability to do her fucking job, Fia has to get her priorities straight. Here is a girl who's been raised in a psychic school who's been trained to be deadly for years, who's had her sister taken hostage, whose parents died under mysterious circumstances, who knows better than to trust anyone, suddenly fucking trusts a guy who: 1. She's been assigned to kill, obvious there has to be a reason if he's seen as a threat 2. DRUGS HER WITHOUT HER CONSENT How fucking dumb is that? So now she hasn't killed the boy, she's faked his death at the risk of having her sister killed because she can't complete her assignment, she lets him go, she TELLS him that she's been assigned to kill him, he believes her and they part with a hug, because it's just totally natural that she tell a guy that there's a hit on his head, that he has to abandon his family and friends and go into hiding, and she's going to pretend she's killed him. And now she's going to return to the agency and pretend that everything is normal, singing Justin Bieber while she goes. I should be terrified. I should turn around and go anywhere else. I should curl up in a ball and cry. Instead, I think about everything in the whole entire world that makes me angry—there is a lot, oh, there is a lot—and I start singing Justin Bieber at the top of my lungs.Clearly, she just needs somebody to love (I need somebody, I, I need somebody...). I do like that song, by the way. So Fia's angry. Really really angry. She takes out that anger by imagining killing people in her head (while believing that killing is wrong and hating herserlf because she kills. Yay! Hypocrisy!). She hates everyone, she hates everything. She dances. And Fia—oh, Fia, you are so beautiful it makes my heart hurt—is in the middle of it all, slamming her body, moving and swaying and dancing to the beat in a way that no one else can. Her eyes are closed and her arm is raised.She sings. “Drugs, drugs, drugs, I want some drugs,� I sing, dancing out of the bathroom and into my living room.There could be terrorists threatening her life, it doesn't really matter because if Fia dances and sings, they'll all go away. Dance dance. Sing. Sing. Sing. So just forget about Adam now, really, forget about him. He's a projected love interest, but you're not gonna see him again for a long time. Because now we meet another love interest instead, handsome, powerful James. And cue love triangle. Apparently, for all the sisterly love that Annie and Fia supposedly share, they hate each other pretty easily. Because right now (we're like, 1 hour from the Adam-rescuing-puppy event) Fia goes back to super secret special agency headquarter and finds out that Annie is the one who ordered the kill on Adam. And instead of, like, actually ASKING Annie why she wanted to fucking kill Adam in the first place ---you know, trusting your beloved sister whom you've sworn to protect and all--- Fia gets all fucking upset that Annie sent her to kill. And now Fia feels that Annie has betrayed her because of a fucking boy whom she's known for all of a fucking hour. How could she want him dead? Did she want me to do it? How could she set me up for that?And instead of trusting her sister and telling her the reason (and it's a legit reason) why she wanted Adam dead: Hint: he's dangerous! Annie just keeps it all to herself and allows her sister to think that she's just a vindictive bitch who just wanted to kill a cute sad-eyed boy for fun. Adam was a threat. A huge, massive, all-consuming threat.Such communication. What love. Much wow. Sisters much? This book was a mess. The ending. Fuck that ending. Why did I even read this book? [image] The Narrative: Drove me absolutely bonkers. - Half the book are composed of flashbacks - It is narrated from alternating POVs, Fia and Annie (and THEIR flashbacks! Yay!) - Nothing fucking happens: seriously, after the beginning Adam excitement, nothing happens in this book. Why? Oh, right. BECAUSE HALF THE BOOK ARE FLASHBACKS. - Stream-of-consciousness style narrative from Fia. And man, she is motherfucking annoying. Repetitions. Fia fucking loves them. Something is wrong.Did I mention she loves repetitions? (Control, control, control. Control got Clarice killed.)Yep. She loves repetition. Annie is safe.I GET THE FUCKING POINT. The Anger: I like an angry heroine. I don't like a bratty one. Fia is angry, but her anger is the sort of the kind of tantrum that a 5-year old throws, and I just had enough of her bullshit. I absolutely hated her. I wanted to strangle her, or at least remove her voice box so she would just fucking shut up because I don't want to hear it. I know she has a lot to be upset about. I should have been able to empathize with her. I can't because she's so "WAH OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGMG SHUT UP YOU ARE ALL BITCHES AND I HATE YOU!!!!!!!!!!! DIIIIIIIIE!" all the fucking time. Fia is crazy. She is fucking nuts. She's not the cold, sociopathic kind of crazy or the entertaining kind of crazy like Penryn's mother in Angelfall, but the sort that one day is going to turn into the scary bag lady in the corner, shouting at passersby, brandishing an umbrella, screaming "I'M COMING FOR YOU IN YOUR SLEEP, YOU LITTLE FUCKS." as concerned mothers cover their children's ears. It is batshit, annoying crazy, and I can't take it. Sister, Sister: The love between sisters in this book is all telling and no showing. Oh, we know that Fia really loves her sister because she says so all the time. Except for the fact that practically every time she sees Annie, Fia's resenting her for getting her stuck in this situation in the first place. We know that Fia really loves Annie because she thinks that Annie's betraying her without giving her a chance to explain. We know that Annie and Fia love each other because they never. ever. fucking. communicate. with each other. Sharing emotions. Sharing your troubles. Sharing your stories. Leaning on each other for support? Is that too much to motherfucking ask? I just wanted the sister to show some genuine love for one another. The Romance: Surprisingly little, despite the fucking insta-love. The book doesn't tie anything together. There are roughly 93889758934329 loose ends, and the romance is but one of them. There attempts to be a love triangle, and it's just completely laughable because it's so completely fucking pointless. The only person I liked in the book is the sadistic love interest, James. He was the only one with any sort of depth to his personality. There was just no point to this book. Why did I even bother? Nothing ever got resolved. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 26, 2014
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May 26, 2014
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May 21, 2014
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0062281356
| 9780062281357
| 0062281356
| 3.72
| 3,875
| Jun 17, 2014
| Jun 17, 2014
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did not like it
| "If you were the one dating him and she was the one who couldn’t stop thinking about him, you’d want her to stay away, right?� "If you were the one dating him and she was the one who couldn’t stop thinking about him, you’d want her to stay away, right?�According to this book: boys >>>>>>> friendship. There's a stupid 60s song by the Supremes whose lyrics I think goes together perfectly with this book. Nothing you can say can tear me away from my guyI read a lot of bad books. Please believe when I say that this book has the dubious honor of being one of the worst YA contemporary romances I have ever read. You know the saying, "bros before hos," and "sisters before misters" meaning, value your same-sex friends before all else, don't let a boyfriend or a girlfriend come between the way of genuine friendship? This book doesn't have it. If you want female friendship, this book will tell you to "fuck off, slut." This book is a sweet book about female friendship in the same way that Fifty Shades of Grey is a lovely, uncomplicated little book about romance. There's insta-love, there's cheating, there's the most obvious love triangle in the world (it's more of a love square, really). There is so much girl-on-girl hatred. There is so much slut shaming. I have almost lost track of the word count of references to "sluts," "bitches," "skanks," "ho-bags," and "tramps" in this book. The girls in this book have nothing but contempt for each other. The Southern high school atmosphere is so exaggerated as to be completely fucking laughable. The guys are simple idiots. Every single girl, with the exception of the main character, is a mindless, boy-crazy whore. I loathe slut shaming. I fucking hate it. I think it is unnecessary, I recognize that it exists, but don't expect me to like a book in which the sole comment used to insult another girl involves her sexuality. Yes, I know perfectly well that girls use those words to insult each other in real life, but a book in which a girl calls herself "a slut" for kissing a lot of boys. Where girls are constantly referred to as trashy. A girl who is obviously determined to redefine white trash.Where a girl is shamed for having a curvy body. Where dressing provocatively is to risk being humiliated. “She looks like such a skank. Everyone is talking about it.."The word slut is a word I hate, the use of sexuality as a derogatory term is a fucking stupid trend in YA novels that should be discouraged. I absolutely hated this book's plot and main character, and the rampant shaming of sexuality within this book does it no further credit. “Whatever,� says Amanda Bell. “You’re still a skank.�The Summary: “So, what do we do now?�You wouldn't know it, but Megan and our main character, Claire, are best friends. Megan is the stunning, super-popular (albeit slutty-looking) Queen Bee... Amberly’s wearing the regulation uniform like everyone else, but it just looks different on her. Like it’s a stripper costume.Who has long ago initiated lowly, gawky Claire into her super-secret-special-society. She clasps her hands in front of her and smiles. “CJ, we want you to be a member of the Crown Society.�And Claire is, like, SOOOOOOOOOO grateful. Thanks to the beautiful Megan, she is now one of the popular girls. Megan is not only her best friend, she is her closest confidance. Megan knows Claire's secrets. She knows about Claire's mother's secret depression, Megan understands Claire. I mean, they made a PACT together. Pact #1: We will be best friends forever (sealed with a pinky swear in seventh grade).So how long does that pact last? All of 5 minutes after Claire falls into insta-love with dreamy newcomer Luke. I’m momentarily startled by his eyes. They’re blue and dreamy and everything, but there’s something else, something shuttered, and that’s the part I find myself strangely drawn to. If my life were one of those paranormal romances, he would be the guy that turns out to be a were-manatee or whatever.Ah, yes, the irresistible were-manatee. Friendship, fuck friendship. This is war. The prize is Luke. Years and years of friendship is nothing when it comes to securing a man, y'all. Megan wants him, too, and it is a silent battle, because Claire saw him first. She might have peed on him alpha-wolf style, if she could. I’m dying to scream, Back off. I saw him first!They're at war, an undeclared war where Claire can't even hug Megan without thinking about Luke. I want to hug Megan right here in the middle of the cafeteria, but that would be weird. Plus, she might take the hug as permission to go after Luke, which I am so not giving her.Everything Luke does has sooooooooo much more meaning when he does it with her instead of Megan. Her story sounds similar to when Luke was comforting me. But...she must have misinterpreted what he did. I know what it was like with Luke on that porch. I’m positive he wanted me.Instead of comforting Megan when her newfound relationship with Luke is starting to fall apart... As I slip downstairs I feel shocked and sad for my best friend like I’m supposed to, but buried underneath that, I feel the tiniest flicker of hope.When it looks like Luke is talking shit about Megan behind her back how does Claire feel? He laughs. “Megan’s not exactly the brightest crayon in the box.�And when she gets the chance, will Megan stab her best friend in the back? Perfect enough to backstab your best friend over? a tiny voice inside me asks.Oh, you fucking bet. The Setting: I expect a lot of sweetness, quietness, community when I read a book that takes place within a small-town setting. I really shouldn't have bothered. This book is utterly laughable. There is nothing but pettiness in this small town, from the adult churchgoing women who laugh at the fact that a woman's suffering from severe depression after losing her infant child, to idiotic teenagers who form the equivalent of a Mean Girls clique who daaaaaaaaaaance so, like, groovily, man! Britney alternates her little dance moves with a glare that is either self-conscious or angry. Hip shake. Glare. Shimmy. Glare. Amberly dances with so much hip action I’m worried a teacher will come over. Megan looks beyond cool. She flings her long blond hair around, and throws her hands in the air, and laughs with her head thrown back as she sings along to the music.I was laughing my ass off at the initiation of Claire in the CROWN SOCIETY because it is just so fucking dumb. Even for a bunch of teenagers, that is. If this book intends to parody Mean Girls, it fails. I'm supposed to laugh WITH the book, not AT it. The high schoolers (particularly the female ones) in this book redefine the meaning of idiocy. There is not a single realistic, likeable teenager in this book. “We need to talk to you,� says the blond one, who is obviously their leader.Claire-ly A Bitch: I don’t like the way it makes me feel about myself to think about it, so I try to push those thoughts away.Meet your main character! Isn't she fucking awesome? No. Claire is, frankly, a backstabbing bitch. Megan has been her best friend for years. They like each other, they understand each other. Despite her beauty, Megan is not stupid, and she is a good human being. She’s fiercely loyal. She’s fun. She’s hilarious. She’s completely honest about the things she loves and the things that terrify her.And therefore it is completely idiotic to give me a main character who is so willing and able to stab a friend in the back for the sake of insta-love. Megan spends the entire book telling us about her 17 first kisses, and the fact that she felt like SUUUUUUUUUUUCH A SLUT because she kissed so many guys. She is immature. She is juvenile. She does stupid fucking things and hurts other people. “No.� This time I look him right in his kind brown eyes. “I mean, that’s why I kissed you. I kissed all four of you guys to get back at him.�I get it. Teenagers are not perfect, they do dumb things. It's when the number of stupidity seems infinite that I lose patience, and that's what this book does for me. There is simply no end to the number of dumb fucking things that Claire does. The Romance: There is a love triangle in this book, and you could see it coming a mile away. It's between a male best friend named Sam, formerly "lardy," now a hunk. Sam isn’t supposed to do stuff like go for drives. He’s supposed to be asexual like aphids or those lizards we learned about in bio.And the hot new dude, the well-traveled Luke, Luke, who woos Claire with romantic stories of ALL THE THINGS. And we’ll end in Paris, because you have to end in Paris, and I’ll take you to the best macaron shop, and we’ll have a macaron feast for breakfast while we sit on the Pont des Arcs and watch the sunrise.�Was I ever so fickle and easily bought when I was a teenaged girl? Nope. Nope. Claire is just fucking starry-eyed and dumb as fuck. Luke...well, this is your love interest, guys. This is the guy you're supposed to fall for. A guy who would talk trash about a girl's best friend behind her back. And Claire is just so fucking loyal to her best friend that she lets him---and takes great joy in it “A couple of times when it was just guys hanging out, he said stuff about Megan. Like, he makes fun of the stupid stuff she does. And he called her dumb.�Fuck you a thousand times. Die in the fire of a thousand tons of dried hyena feces. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 12, 2014
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May 19, 2014
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ebook
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| 076532556X
| 9780765325563
| 076532556X
| 3.51
| 17,675
| Jul 26, 2010
| Aug 03, 2010
|
did not like it
|
This book is like Jane Austen's works in the way that a genetically modified out-of-season greenhouse tomato is like a cherry. Sure, they're technical
This book is like Jane Austen's works in the way that a genetically modified out-of-season greenhouse tomato is like a cherry. Sure, they're technically both classified as fruits. They're red. They're juicy-looking. They're attractive. The difference is that when you bite into said GMO tomato, it tastes like mealy, mushy, tasteless crap. This book is the equivalent of a limp, tasteless slice of tomato on a McDonalds' hamburger. Why bother? You're just going to pick it off and throw it away anyway. Or maybe that's just me. I hate raw tomatoes. This book tries way too hard. The main character is a doormat. Her love interest is not so much Darcy as he is Jane Eyre's Rochester (yes, I know they're not by the same author) played by a 9th grade drama student with aspirations of playing Heathcliff, whose inspiration for Heathcliff (yes, I know that's yet another book) comes from The Simpsons' Ned Flander's portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (I KNOW THEY'RE ALL BY DIFFERENT AUTHORS, THAT'S NOT THE FREAKING POINT!). [image] Sorry for all the literary references. Not really. I'm just in a fucking bad mood right now after reading this book and I don't care. - The characters are extremely similar to Austen's, with none of the complexity, resulting in characters that are predictable and dull - The language is both pretentious (Shew! Shewed! Chuze! Chusing!) and inconsistent - There is no sisterly love. Expecting Elizabeth and Jane? Don't hold your breath. It's more like Fanny and Lydia (I KNOW THEY'RE NOT IN THE SAME BOOK1!111). - There's no fucking point to the magic! None! It's literally fucking window decoration! There's no explanation! Poof! Magic sparkly dragon fairy dust everywhere and hidden glamour strings being pulled out of thin air like a used fucking tampon string within some invisible female unicorn! What's the fucking point?! The Plot: We're in Jane Austen-era England! Hooray! Our main character is named Jane! Hooray! She has a sister, a beautiful beautiful beautiful sister named Melody!---the loveliest maiden in the entire fucking shire (the English shire, not the Middle Earth Shire, although it would be pretty epic if there were an Elven P&P, I would watch the shit out of that). Jane has a doting father and a fussy mother who does nothing but whine and gossip and worry about her daughters' marriage prospects. I'm shocked!! Their estate is entailed in favor of a male relative. Such wonder! Such surprise! A new neighbor has moved in, a Mr. Dunkirk!! No! He is a kind, handsome young gentleman, reserved and polite. I never! He has a young, very shy little sister named Elizabeth (16 years old and not yet debuted! Oh, my!) whom he dotes on. Said beloved sister is so beloved, so protected, because she HAS A DARK, DEEP SECRET! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUN! I WONDER WHAT THE SECRET COULD BE?! There's a young, charming, handsome military man named Livingston who gambles and flirts, who might or might not have a dark, dastardly, [image] It depends on which BBC production you watch, of course, but I'd rather not give the dude in this book the benefit of the doubt. So, the love fuckery, I mean, you could call it a love triangle, but again, I'm in a pretty fucking foul mood right now. You would be too if you read 300 pages of nothing! Jane admires Captain Livingston while secretly in love with Mr. Dunkirk who admires Jane but shows all the attention to Melody, who flirts with Dunkirk and flirts with Mr. Vincent and flirts with Captain Livingston (hell, anything with a penis who's not her father---oh, right, it's a Regency. I'm not supposed to say the word penis. Or tampon now that I think about it. Or curse. Crap!). Vincent doesn't give a fuck about anyone and snarls at Jane while showing (shewing!!!!) attention upon Melody. Livingston is flirting with Melody while choosing (chusing?! chuzing?! Make up your mind, fucking book!) to bestow his attention upon another SECRET YOUNG LADY WHO HE REALLY SHOULDN'T BE SEEING. I wonder who the mysterious very young, very off limits lady could be!!!11 And in the middle of all this, magic (glamour) is used to decorate everything and to make things pretty and sparkly and bright. Ach, mein head! The Fucking Language: Be fucking consistent. It tries too fucking hard. This book tries to use the "antiquated" language of Austen days, which would work EXCEPT IT ONLY DOES SO WHEN IT FEELS LIKE IT. Shew, shewed, shewn. AKA Show, showed, shown. Here written as shewn for the entire fucking book except when the author forgets to do so. SHEW SHEW SHEW SHEW. GAAAAAAAAAAAH. IT PISSED ME OFF SO MUCH. - "Beth was out of sorts, however, and the enthusiasm she had shown before dinner seemed to be smothered under a layer of melancholy" vs "They were shewn to the library, with Jane’s mother accompanying them as chaperon." Chuse! "Choose" is written as chuse, chuse, chuuuuuuuuuuse! except when the modern form is used. "She would not have chosen to meet him next in this manner." Teaze! Surprize! Really, what was the fucking point?! The ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ makes it so much more fucking authentic?! No! It just gives me a fucking headache. “You may teaze me, but Mr. Vincent’s praise is more valuable for being rare.�. "To her surprize, Mr. Vincent had come to call." Haphazard fucking use of British spelling vs. American. Sometimes things are spelled with an "ou" wherein the US, we would simply spell it with an "o." The SAME FUCKING WORDS are spelled differently in the book. Honor and honour. Apologize is given the American spelling instead of properly spelled in the British way as apologise. Favorite is used instead of favourite. There is no ends to the inconsistencies within this book. The Characters: Straight out of Austen, with none of the details of personality that makes the original a classic. One could call Jane an P&P's Elizabeth Bennett wannabe, but I prefer to call her a motherfucking doormat. Oh, I know perfectly well that in that age, women were expected to be docile. There is such a thing as being gentle-natured without laying yourself flat on the floor and asking people to walk all over you. Elizabeth and Emma are good examples of how a Regency woman can be strong-minded while not being a fucking incompetent nincompoop who does nothing but mope and whine all freaking day. Jane is a martyr. She is plaaaaaaaain. Plain Jane. Beloved by her daddy, but plain and a spinster, nonetheless. She loves Dunkirk. She's unwilling to do anything to get him. She's half torn by his attraction to him and her desire to do good by her sister, who is courting him, so in essence, we get a lot of internal wangst and emo and not a whole lot of action at all. Jane is really, really dull. I would say that's a consequence of her name, but that would be an insult to all the glorious Janes worldwide. Including our revered Jane Austen herself. Misters before Sisters: Melody stopped and tossed her head, eyes sparkling. “And I thought better of you. Jealousy is unbecoming on you, dear sister. It is not my fault he finds me beautiful.�You want P&P's Jane and Elizabeth's loving, sisterly relationship?! Fuck you, says this book! Melody is more like Kitty, and Jane is, well, P&P's Jane, without the beauty, without the personality, without the sweetness, with all of the inaction with a truckload of internal pettiness piled onto her. Why do we like Jane again? Oh, she's the main character. Well, alrighty then! Jane resents her sister for her beauty. She secretly relishes Melody's lack of intelligence compared to her own. She secretly wants Melody out of the way so she can date---pardon me, la! Dreamy Dunkirk! She had not hitherto allowed herself to hope, but if Melody’s affections had truly transferred to Captain Livingston, that would remove the most immediate obstacle to Mr. Dunkirk. It left her plainness and her awkward carriage, but to a man such as him, might these things be overlooked in favour of her talent?Melody is beautiful, but conniving and bitchy. She is envious of Jane for her talents in glaaaaaaaaaamour, and constantly belittles Jane every chance she's got. In front of all the boys! That's just mean. Melody is deceptive, bitchy, shallow. Though she knew that she should aid her sister in making a match, Jane could not stomach the games that Melody played.There's also a "sick" scene that was just pathetic. Melody is a combination of P&P's Lydia and Kitty. Kitty's shallowness and brainlessness and Lydia's compulsion and idiocy. And like Lydia, it's only too easy to see where Melody will end up. The Rooooomance: Jane is in love with Dunkirk, but there's kind-of-not-really a love triangle because we know all along who shes's going to end up with. This man, we'll call him Mr. V, isn't quite Darcy. Darcy is subtle. Darcy is polite. Darcy is all that a gentleman should be. Mr. V..."His jaw clenched and he seemed about to say something, but the moment passed and his anger subsided," "made his sneer deepen," "smirked," "his teeth bared as he snapped his reply." More like a hound of the Baskervilles than a man. Mr. V is as subtle as a brick to the face. The Magic: What's the fucking point?! There's nothing to the magic. It comes from hidden strings in the air. people don't have to be born with it. It's like motherfucking embroidery, only men can do it too. And with all the maaaaaaaaaagical magic, it's being used for nothing but motherfucking party decoration. There, a combination of glamour and paint contrived to turn the hall into a nymph’s grove. Though yet incomplete, the illusion teazed the spectators with scents of wild-flowers and the spicy fragrance of ferns. Just out of sight, a brook babbled.Motherfucking OOOOOOOOOOOOH! What's the point?! Where did all this magic come from? If it's so powerful, why aren't more people using it? Why is it completely optional? If the strings are so fucking invisible, how come anyone can see them and pull on them if they want to? Isn't it completely contradictory to have invisible glamour strings that you can see and pull and manipulate?! Can I please have some freaking explanations?! Ugh. What a waste of time. I'm going to go reread Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife. Darcy and Elizabeth fucking each other like rabbits had more depth than this book. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 19, 2014
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May 19, 2014
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May 19, 2014
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0061989711
| 9780061989711
| B006OHVXTK
| 3.86
| 4,824
| Dec 28, 2010
| Dec 28, 2010
|
really liked it
|
Actual rating: 3.5 The strange staring contests. The lack of parents. And the missing blood. Oh God, the missing blood. How could I be so stupid? ThActual rating: 3.5 The strange staring contests. The lack of parents. And the missing blood. Oh God, the missing blood. How could I be so stupid? They’re vampires, or at least under a number of severe delusions.This was a hilarious read. It's partially a parody on Twilight and other generic vampire books, so expect quite a few insider vampires jokes. If you're expecting a DEEP DARK SCARY YA VAMPIRE NOVEL, stop here. This book is 75% lulz, it doesn't take itself seriously at all. There are stupid, dangerous, and silly vampires who are completely out of touch with modern high school life and refers to Twilight as a manual. Marisabel just shrugs, rolling on her back to stare up at an open copy of Twilight.It is light on romance, and the main character is realistic, funny, and likeable. She's a snarky journalist wannabe with as much curiosity as there is blood in her veins. The side characters (the humans, at least) are kind of shallow, but considering this book is a parody, it's fine. This isn't War and Peace, I just want a book that would make me laugh, without any elements like slut shaming and abuse/stalking that would piss me off. This book did the trick. The Summary: I can imagine the expressions that flicker across my face; there’s the “Crap, she is a vampire,� followed by “Crap, I am not supposed to know she is a vampire,� followed by “Crap, I think she just realized that I still know she is a vampire.�Sophie wants to be a journalist. This is the year she will become editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper. Only her journalism teacher think she takes her assignments a leeeetle too far. “Like I said, I love everything you’re doing, but our school paper is generally supposed to be less investigative and more...�She's assigned the boring-as-fuck job of interviewing the surprising number of new students that have shown up at her school over the summer. Four of them. They stare at people at length. They're really strange. They live together. They have really weird names, like Vlad and Marisabel. They're not too willing to give her any information about themselves, and Vlad is oddly fascinated with Sophie's stepsister, Caroline. Of course, he doesn't give Sophie the time of day, which SUCKS, because she's supposed to interview him. Sophie's got competition for the editor-in-chief position. She NEEDS to get this article together. The more Sophie finds out about the new students, the stranger they seem. It helps that Caroline won't stop talking about him. Vlad is hot. Vlad is cool. Vlad has a silver Hummer with tinted windows and he offered to drive Caroline around in it. Vlad is rich. Vlad’s parents are away on business in Europe, so he has the house to himself. And yes, he’s delighted that they let his friends come stay with him this semester so he wouldn’t be lonely.Hm. HMMMMMMMMMM. The new students don't act right. They're overheard saying really strange things. “They already like me, Neville,� Vlad says. “Did you see how many of them congratulated me afterward? Look, this is called a ‘fist bump.� It is more accepted now than a handshake.�They walk with unnatural grace. Vlad is making his way across the cafeteria. He moves silently and with an easy grace, an achievement when you take into account the cheap tile that makes everyone in sneakers sound like farting mice.And then there's the weird mystert of the missing blood from a blood drive. Hm. HMMMMMMMMMM. To further complicate things, Sophie's childhood best friend, James has returned. He's living next door. Alone. James seems to know a little bit too much about the new students, and since they were friends, Sophie confides in him. “Not only won’t they talk to me, they scare the crap out of me. They’re not normal students. I overheard a very strange conversation yesterday. And Vlad’s dating my sister. And possibly dating his sister, too.�Sophie's investigational skills will finally get the better of her, and she'll come to discover a shocking, horrifying secret. They're vampires. WHO'D HAVE THUNK IT THAT THE STRANGE SCARY NEW PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO ACT NORMAL ARE VAMPIRES. Like, what the FUCK, man?! The freaking vampires aren't at school for no reason, they're here on a mission to find a girl. “She’s said to be the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of some dumb baby of some musty vampire family named Mervaux.�And she's going to have to decide who to trust. Can she trust James, her old best friend who might have something to hide? For one crazy, hurtling second I heave a sigh of relief; if forced to choose, he is the better option. But then again, I would also rather drown than be eaten by snakes.But whatever happens, Sophie is smart, intelligent, she's a fighter. I attended a weekly karate class with the same fervor as a nun attending Mass. It was three years before my sensei told Marcie that he was afraid I was there for the wrong reasons. I believe the word “bloodthirsty� was used. Right before the phrase “I think you should get her checked out.�And she's completely prepared for whatever the vampires have to throw at her. After a moment of deliberation, I grab the wooden spoon and a knife and do my best to file it into a point. Two thousand years of folklore can’t be that wrong, right?The Vampires: She is gorgeous in a dark, moody way, with thin black brows and long chestnut hair that breaks into a natural wave at her shoulders. If ever there were a girl meant to sit in a smoky café and tell you about the guinea pig that died tragically when she was four, it’s her.*Stifles laughter* Yeah, they're as you'd expect, and they're all sorts of hilarious. From the bumbling Neville, to the cold determination of icy blond Vlad, to gorgeous, mournful Marisabel, to...Violet. Who is absolutely batshit crazy. “Can I ask you a question?� Violet asks. “Let us say that you liked this boy. You liked him so much that you didn’t care that your family and friends said that it would end badly. You think he admires you as well, so you give him everything that he could ever want. But what does he do? Does he stay with you forever? No! He ignores you and goes off to live who knows where.� Her voice cracks, and she lets go of my arm to flounce back into her seat. “I am at a loss,� she hiccups, holding the handkerchief to her mouth. “Do you think I should give him a lock of my hair? Maybe he is unaware that I still care.�Honestly, the girls are a lot more fun than the guys. They're hysterical in one moment, calmly cool the next. The guys are just plain awkward. This book plays on all the vampire tropes, and it's absolutely hilarious. I loved seeing the "vampires" interact with one another. I loved leader Vlad's frustration as it seems like his plan and his "friends" aren't going anywhere as planned. “Can you believe them? Neville does nothing but attach himself to any organization that will have him, and Violet...yesterday Violet asked if I wanted to participate in a ‘quiz� that will tell me what my ‘best fall look� is,� he says. “What does that even mean?�Sophie: “And you’re stronger?�Meet Sophie, whose knowledge of vampires is restricted to Twilight. She's not dumb at all, but she's just silly enough to be endearing. Sophie is intelligent, she's a natural investigator and journalist, but she's not Too-Stupid-To-Live. She runs when there's danger. Sophie fights back when needed. I’m just about to start my return creep across the yard when a figure darts through the far hallway. For a second my shocked brain scans for a “Stop, drop, and roll� sort of acronym that explains what to do when you’re about to be caught spying. I decide on RLH—Run Like Hell.What I love about Sophie is her sense of humor. Sophie has a deadpan internal narrative that made me giggle, she constantly makes snarky observations. “Wonderful,� Vlad says, and then probably follows it with something else ridiculous (“Your hair is like sunlight in space� or “Let’s greet the dawn with kisses�).She's not altogether rational, she relies on gut instinct sometimes, against reason, but I understand her choices. Altogether, Sophie is an awesome narrator. The Romance: In reality our relationship consisted of hair pulling (age six), doll vandalism (age eight), and relentless teasing about my freckles (age eleven). Not exactly Romeo and Juliet, but try telling Marcie that. Luckily he moved away to New York before either one of us had to drink poison or kill a cousin.The romance in this book was really light, and thoroughly adorable. There is no insta-love. Sophie and James have known each other almost their whole lives, until he moved away...and turned into something else. James isn't your standard Edward Cullen. He does shit like climb through windows in the dark of night, but Sophie proceeds to kick the crap out of him when he does. Now I channel all of my anger and lingering fear into one mighty upward chop to the nose. When he covers his face, I bend my knees up and use my legs to pop him off of me before rolling sideways and scrambling to my feet, my legs still shaky from the adrenaline.*cheers* They're an equally matched pair. James respects her. She respects him. James is never a creeper, and although he's made difficult choices in the past, I understood why he made his (really stupid) choices, and I really liked them as a couple. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. You can’t kick me more than I’ve kicked myself.�Overall, great book, with likeable characters and a lot of humor. Recommended. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 17, 2014
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May 17, 2014
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Paperback
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| 0385741278
| 9780385741279
| 0385741278
| 3.66
| 1,243,502
| May 13, 2014
| May 13, 2014
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it was ok
| Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a wee house in the woods. Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a wee house in the woods.It was a better coming of age than Catcher in the Rye, but I also thought Twilight was a better coming-of-age than Catcher in the Rye (fuck you, Holden Caulfield). It wasn't a terrible book. I've read far worse. It's just that the writing style sometimes get on my nerves. The sentences are sometimes written fully, and oftentimes it just goes like this out of freaking nowhere. For no freaking. Reason at all. If that's the kind of thing that bothers you. Then you should probably avoid this book. This book has almost no plot. It is full of odd sentence structures and purple prose. The entire book is about a poor-little-rich-girl living with a poor-little-rich-family with the kind of ending that makes you go "WHAT THE ACTUAL KIND OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN FUCKERY IS THIS?!" It's not terrible. But there's almost no plot at all. The "Liars" are more "Talkers," and they have almost no relevant role in the book because this book is about a pretentious girl with nothing but #whitegirlproblems and #richpeopleproblems. The aforementioned "Liars" don't do anything in this book, they're not witty, they're not cute, they don't give off the sense of closeness and kinship that you get from growing up with someone their entire life. Hell, they're nowhere near Dead Poets Society kind of interesting. This is a coming of age, and nothing more. It has the kind of writing style that's often choppy like this. Commas are sometimes used. And sometimes not. Haphazardly. With no punctuality. No pun intended. Sentences are fragmented. The main character sometimes. Has the tendency to use overwrought, run on metaphors. To describe herself. And her headaches. Such as a helicopter blown by the wind tossed by the torrential rain in the wilds of Alaska felt by a little Eskimo girl during the first whispers of a glacial spring with the scent of violets and hints of lavender in the fields of Grasse. The Summary: My full name is Cadence Sinclair Eastman.Poor little Cadence Sinclair is wealthy. She is loved. She is one of the Sinclairs, a good-looking "old-money Democrat" family, think the Kennedys, without the political aspirations. They have names like Liberty, Taft, and Tipper. They go to Ivy League schools. They have trust funds. They have sired a generation of children, the leader of which is Cadence. Cadence and her crew call themselves "The Liars." The Liars are composed of her cousins Mirren, Johnny, and the outcast "Healthcliff," Indian love interest, Gat. The Liars supposedly cause trouble. They don't really. They do almost nothing. Cadence herself is sick. She is prone to theatrics, and she is not-so-secretly in love with Gat. She gets headaches. She feels self-pity. She is privileged. She doesn't realize it. This is the story of a wealthy, beautiful family. It’s a beautiful night, and we are indeed a beautiful family.This is the story about a girl's headaches. Why did I go into the water alone at night?This is a story about The Liars. And their spectacularly brilliant conversations for the entire fucking summer. They have baby oil spread on their bodies. Two bottles of it lie on the grass. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get burned?� I ask.They're not the only ones bored out of their mind. The Writing: I plunge down,I really have a problem with the writing, but this is just a matter of taste. But then again, I've never been a fan of this type of prose. Needless to say, I don't like e.e. cummings. The writing is so often choppy, haphazardly punctuated. The first-person narrator also has a tendency to use very, very dramatic imagery to describe situations. Some situations are false. Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,That, there, was a description of how she FELT. It confused me as fuck until I realized that she didn't actually get hurt, which made it even more confusing when she did actually hurt herself. Every time Gat said these things, so casual and truthful, so oblivious—my veins opened. My wrists split. I bled down my palms. I went light-headed.I thought that was her being overdramatic again, until I realized that the guy was fucking bandaging her up afterwards. The main character has a huge tendency to use purple prose. She describes her migraines like they were the end of the world, which, I understand to some people they might be, but if you're getting a fucking migraine, there's really no bloody need to get all freaking poetic about it. A witch has been standing there behind me for some time, waiting for a moment of weakness. She holds an ivory statue of a goose. It is intricately carved. I turn and admire it only for a moment before she swings it with shocking force. It connects, crushing a hole in my forehead. I can feel my bone come loose. The witch swings the statue again and hits above my right ear, smashing my skull. Blow after blow she lands, until tiny flakes of bone litter the bed and mingle with chipped bits of her once-beautiful goose.That entire passage is one of many throughout the book about her headaches. I just couldn't take it. The Main Character: “You’re filled with superiority, aren’t you? You think you understand the world so much better than I do. I’ve heard Gat talking. I’ve seen you eating up his words like ice cream off a spoon. But you haven’t paid bills, you haven’t had a family, owned property, seen the world. You have no idea what you’re talking about, and yet you do nothing but pass judgment.�Poor-little-rich-girl syndrome. She's beautiful, but wounded, and "mysterious" and revered, just for the sake of her blood alone, for the sake of her family's name alone. Think about it. If you were a Kennedy, it doesn't matter if you look like an elephant stepped on your head when you were born. People are still going to love you and worship you and whisper your name with reverence because you're a motherfucking Kennedy. It's this way with the Sinclairs, only there's no paparazzi following them around. All of the benefits, and no family curse. But somehow Cadence finds a way to be a rebel-without-a-cause anyway. She's rich. She's hypocritical about her wealth because she criticizes her own fucking family for being wealthy. She does stupid shit like give things away to random people because she can. Before the summer is over, Cadence's room will have been empty because she keeps giving shit away for no fucking reason. Cadence is unaware of others. She is spoiled. She takes her wealth for granted. She doesn't pay any attention to "the help." One night, the four of us ate a picnic down on the tiny beach. Steamed clams, potatoes, and sweet corn. The staff made it. I didn’t know their names.I'm sorry, but I can't sympathize with such a whiny person who's completely unaware of how privileged she is, headaches be damned. “Who are Ginny and Paulo?�The Love Interest: “You’re saying Granddad thinks you’re Heathcliff?�Gat is the only interesting character in the book. He is Indian-American. Gat Patil. He is the nephew of her aunt's boyfriend, and they've known each other for years. He is self-aware. Too self-aware in the pretentious way that teenagers can often be, but his character feels authentically teenaged. I liked him. He is accepted into The Liars, but he's not altogether accepted in the family. Because of his skin color, because of his lack of family money, he feels left out. And I can sympathize with him. “I’m not saying he wants to be the guy who only likes white people,� Gat went on. “He knows he’s not supposed to be that guy. He’s a Democrat, he voted for Obama—but that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable having people of color in his beautiful family.�Gat is intelligent. Reasonable. Likeable. And I wonder why the fuck he cares about a waste of air like Cadence. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 16, 2014
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May 16, 2014
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Kindle Edition
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| 1442477180
| 9781442477186
| 1442477180
| 3.69
| 986
| May 06, 2014
| May 06, 2014
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did not like it
| “Daddy, no!� I shouted.Meet Eros, the Greek Goddess of Love. She never stops f “Daddy, no!� I shouted.Meet Eros, the Greek Goddess of Love. She never stops fucking wailing. This is one of the worst books based on Greek mythology that I've ever read. To make matters worse, it's told from THREE POVs. People usually get wiser with age, for example, I used to be afraid that monsters would munch on my toes while I slept. That ended when I was 20, so clearly, I gained some wisdom over 10 years. One would think that after several fucking millennium, a fucking Greek goddess would have developed a few fucking brain cells in her dumb fucking head. One would think the goddess of love would know better than to fall into desperate, desperate love after knowing someone for all of six fucking months. In Greek mythology, Eros is supposed to be the Greek god of love (not to be confused with his mother, Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty). Like this. [image] You're welcome. Instead, we get THIS. [image] This is Eros, aka Cupid. Aka the little naked dude on cheesy Valentine's Day Cards that shoot arrows into people's hearts and make them fall in insta-love who is now turned into a stupid teenaged female. Needless to say, Eros has played an unseen and unnamed role in much of YA literature. In this book, Eros is the Greek goddess of love, and she shows no more intelligence than a particularly stupid 16-year old girl, and by saying that, I think I might be insulting all the 16-year old girls out there, because there's no denying the fact that Eros is a stupid fucking moron who's probably been indulging in too much Bacchanalia. The Summary: Orion was my soul mate. Orion, who had bedded Eos and dallied with Artemis and gotten himself killed by her and her awful brother, Apollo. Orion, the notorious egomaniac, the most reckless thrill seeker who’d ever lived, a mortal I was still getting to know. He was, in many ways, my polar opposite, but he was my one and only home.The Ancient Greek goddess of love, Eros, has fallen in love with Orion (as in the constellation dude) after a few months. He is her sooooooooul maaaaaate, man. No matter what anyone else says about him, dude, Eros knows that he is THE ONE, man! After several tremendously long months of courtship, Eros declares her undying love for Orion! “I’d rather die than live without you.�And BOOM! Daddy Ares (the god of war) appears. Orion shits his pants, because, well, hello? You don't fuck around with an angry father, and you particularly don't fuck around with an angry father who IS THE GOD OF WAR. A deafening crack of thunder shook the ground beneath our feet, sending us staggering together into the nearest tree trunk.(DADDY! NO!!!!!! Eros wails) [image] (DADDY! NOOOOOOOOOOO! Eros wails) DON'T MESS WITH ARES, MOTHERFUCKER. And since Eros is such a wonderful daughter, she tries to shoot her father in the back. With a bow in my hands I never failed. With a bow in my hands I was the purest version of myself. I pulled back and let fly. The hunting arrow zipped through the air, headed directly for its target. Headed for my father’s heart.She shoots her dad. To protect her boyfriend. Of six months. Such a filial thing to do. Long story short, Eros isn't supposed to be fucking around (literally) with a mortal. She's in deep deep shit. Zeus (here referred to as "The King," and "Your Grace," and "Your Majesty," like what the FUCK, man?!) sends Eros to Earth as punishment. Her mission to get back into grace and to save Orion's life? “You will be banished to Earth without your powers. You will be, essentially, a mortal. You will then prove your worth to me by forming true love between three couples with no godly tricks up your sleeve,� Zeus continued. “Only then will you be allowed to return to Mount Olympus.�Simple, right?! I mean, Eros has only been watching humans and making them fall in love for thousands of years. How hard can this be?! First: choose a name that blends in. At the very top of the page in front of me was a space for my name and my birth date, which had been left blank. At least the king had given me that, the chance to choose my own name.Um. Ok, True. Fine. It's fine. Really. It's just a name. We can deal with the name True. Ok, next, be subtle about it all. “Do any of you have girlfriends?� she asked.Ok, it's fine. It's her first day in school. Eros, aka True has been watching humans for thousands of years. Surely she can blend in with them, you know, dress like how they dress. She was wearing a white sweatshirt about ten sizes too big and pink shorts that showed almost every inch of perfect leg. But craziest were the brand-new, shiny, red-and-purple cowboy boots. Which I think she was wearing with no socks.Um, well. I'm sure that's fashionable in some parts of the world. It's fine, whatever her name, whatever she chooses to wear, as long as she's got her eyes on the prize. As long as she's got a subtle way of fulfilling her mission that's not going to draw any attention whatsoever. “I’m going to find you a girlfriend,� I repeated, taking another swig of iced tea. “I’m really good at matching up couples. It’s a special talent of mine.�Fine, that's just, like, the second day of school or whatever. Just give her some time! Eros is smart, she'll surely use her millenium of experience to match couples up. “Another setup?� I whispered.WHATEVER. Just as long as she blends in as a high schooler. She'll fulfil the mission eventually. “Who the hell do you think you are?� I shouted.Needless to say... This was a nightmare.-_- The Greek Gods: “Lmee ’lone,� she muttered. Her breath smelled like rotten grapes. I maneuvered her back onto the mattress and flung the covers over her legs. Her hair was matted in places, and puddles of drool marred one pillow.That...thing, ladies and gentleman, is Aphrodite, Goddess of Love. This book gives us the most one-dimensional portrayal of Greek gods and goddesses that I've ever encountered. Zeus is pockmarked. Ares is petty and only seeks to curry favor. Aphrodite is a drunken slop of a mess when she doesn't get what she wants. One of the most powerful goddessses in the Pantheon, and she's a wreck when she's on earth. Aphrodite does nothing but drink herself into oblivion. She sobs. She wails. She screeches. Artemis is..."the most vile. She has the bark, but not the bite.� Apollo is a nasty, childish idiot. Selene is "a bit of a dimwit." The Greek gods are rarely mentioned in this book, but when they are, they are stupid, foolish, flat characters. Eros AKA True: I leaned forward, horrified. Was that a pimple on my chin?*waaaaaaaaaaails Oh, for fuck's sakes. One would think that an immortal goddess who has been living for thousands and thousands of years would be less of a motherfucking dumbass. Wah I have a pimple. Wah I don't look perfect. Your motherfucking boyfriend of three motherfucking months is going to die, because you tried to fucking KILL YOUR DAD. ISN'T THAT CUTE? Despite watching humans for thousands of years, she hasn't a fucking clue how to blend in. She doesn't know how to dress normally. It was me on vomit day, wearing the band jacket over the long, gauzy dress and jeans Then me in my overalls on Wednesday, that itchy plaid vest I’d sported on Thursday, and finally the purple sweatpants and striped shirt I’d worn on Friday.Despite watching humans, she doesn't know how to blend in at all. She steals. Everything. A scarf. We passed by an open bag on a chair and I saw a pretty plaid scarf peeking out from inside. I grabbed it and tied my hair back from my cheeks.A pair of sunglasses. I looked her up and down through the silver-framed sunglasses I’d taken from an open locker.Other people's food. That iced tea looked good. Refreshing. I picked up the bottle and gulped down half of it. Charlie stared. I placed it down and sighed. My head throbbed a bit more dully.And she steals food from EVERYONE. This is the new girl in school we're talking about. She leaned away from me, sliding wary eyes in my direction. I picked up one of the doughy sticks, dipped it in the vat of maple syrup I’d been provided, and took a bite.Are you fucking telling me you don't know how people behave after watching them all this time? Are you fucking telling me that you don't know how to tell personalities despite having matched people up and observing them for thousands of years. Are you telling me you don't know how to blend in as a NORMAL person and keep attention from yourself? I reached past a tiny girl with blond curls and took a carton of milk and a brown roll.Are you telling me that a Greek goddess who's such a judgmental asshole who calls EVERY GIRL SHE DOESN'T LIKE A BITCH is such a terrible judge of character? After shadowing Veronica this morning, I was certain of one thing: The girl was a two-faced bitch.Are you telling me that a Greek goddess of love can be such a woman-hater? The honors English teacher looked like a Hun and had the personality to match. You’d think she’d be happier, considering she was sporting a gold wedding band and had a picture of herself and her handsome husband framed on her desk. People around here obviously took true love for granted. I would have liked to have seen how she would behave if she’d had that big hunk of masculinity ripped away from her for the gods knew how long. Maybe it would soften her a touch.The Romance: I have to stop. I have a headache. I can't even go on about the fucking mess that is the OTHER romance in this book. Hint: it's about a girl who is ...bogglingly beautiful. So clearly clueless to it. So obviously sweet and shy and vulnerable."...And... ..."Not-Justin-Bieber was standing there, holding my books out to me in a neat stack. Except up close he looked nothing like Justin Bieber. His cheeks were more square and his eyes very, very blue. He was hotter than Justin Bieber. By a lot."Die, book. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 15, 2014
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May 15, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0802733905
| 9780802733900
| 0802733905
| 3.80
| 13,393
| Feb 26, 2013
| Feb 26, 2013
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it was amazing
| I sat back in my chair and sighed. “I have to seduce someone,� I announced to my parents. “High school is already destroying my moral code and I ha I sat back in my chair and sighed. “I have to seduce someone,� I announced to my parents. “High school is already destroying my moral code and I haven’t even set foot on the campus yet.�This book was a fucking blast. Every other page had me giggling. I can't even remember the last time I gave anything a 5. This book is about a female sleuth. You might be expecting Nancy Drew, and you'd be so fucking wrong. The main character is more female Johnny English than Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew is far too sophisticated and far too reliant on deus ex machina. This book is about a fiercely competent spy who finds herself a fish out of water...and into high school. Hell might be more easy to crack. The main character is not perfect, the premise and execution of this book is incredibly convincing, despite the premise of a teenaged spy. This is due to the fact that the main character feels so real, and her errors are due to not incompetence, but a lack of experience in an arena she's never been through before. High school is terrifying. I'm sure we can all relate. Why did I love this book so much? - An awesome spy/safe-cracker who is fiercely competent at what she does until she meets her biggest challenge yet...HIGH SCHOOL. She is hilariously believable, sweetly bumbling, and completely convincing. - No insta-love, not an overwhelming amount of romance, and one of the most likeable, sweetest, funniest love interest I've ever encountered in an YA novel. - An awesome female best friend who is the most likeable 17-year old drunk I have ever met. This friend is a cheater, and there is absolutely no slut shaming here. - Fucking fantastic parents: spies who are just twiddling their thumbs bored out of their minds while waiting for their daughter to finish her "job." They're about to learn what it's like to be parents to a high school student...who actually goes to high school. HA! - Angelo: He always gives good advice, too, especially about safecracking and lock picking. It’s like if Tim Gunn and James Bond had a baby, and that baby was Yoda. Angelo’s response? “Who’s Yoda?� The Summary: “I get to go to high school?� I said. “No more homeschooling? Do I � do I finally get an assignment?�Maggie is the 16-year old daughter of spies. Her parents work for an organization called "The Collective," which does a lot of cool shit behind the scenes that us normal mortals don't know about. Tobacco executives on trial because of damning evidence? Human smuggling rings being broken up? The fall of that Peruvian dictator? That’s us.She's a safecracker, a lock breaker, and she is damned good at her job. Except being the daughter of spies who are constantly moving from place to place is pretty fucking boring. She's hardly attended school, she sometimes accompany her parents to different jobs, and she has no friends. She has imaginary conversations with cute boys, but that's pretty much it. Her life is boring. I even managed to mortify myself by having a long-running and completely one-sided “How you doin�?� imaginary conversation with Cute Boy.Maggie is ready for a change. And she gets it! Halle-fucking-lujah! Her assignment: Jesse Oliver. Son of Armand Oliver, a magazine editor. A magazine editor who's about to blow the lid on The Collective. “So you get in through Jesse,� my dad said to me. “This one’s on you, kiddo.�Hooray! Go to high school, get close to Jesse Oliver (who, from a background search, seems to be kind of a loser). “He’s a delinquent!� I yelled out to my parents. “He was arrested for shoplifting last year!�Get into Oliver daddy's safe, steal the information. BOOM. Easy, right? Not exactly. After my first week of high school, I was ready for it to be over.It turns out that The Collective are fucking idiots. How the fuck is Maggie supposed to infiltrate the high school social structure in the middle of the fucking quarter? She's the new girl! She's never been enrolled in school for long! She has no idea what to do! The Collective should have enrolled me on the first day, not three weeks into the semester. What were they even thinking? I didn’t know who made up the Collective, but clearly, there wasn’t a teenage girl among them.To top it off, it's a big fucking school. It's not easy to get close to Jesse Oliver. She hasn't even fucking SEEN Jesse Oliver. She's made a possible friend/spy... I was sure I knew her! Maybe she was a spy, too. Maybe the Collective had two of us infiltrating the system. That would be a first, but hey, it wasn’t any crazier than enrolling me in geometry.But where the fuck is Jesse Oliver?! Maggie's so fed up with this shit, so she calls mommy to complain... “Sorry,� I said immediately. “Look, I can do this. I can do this better than anyone because I am a spy, okay? I am a great spy and—and something is licking me.�Well, fuck. Luckily, Jesse Oliver, like most normal people, thinks she's joking. After all, who in their right mind would believe a 16-year old girl is a spy?! And as it turned out, Jesse's not a bad kid. He's actually kind of nice. Despite the fact that he eats all the cherries out of their pint of shared Cherry Garcia ice cream. I mean, this is the kind of teenaged boy who doesn't flinch when a girl makes a joke about marriage over a cherry-flavored Ring Pop! “Are we sworn now?� he said, his eyes crinkled at the corners.Well, crap. This mission is going to be harder than she thinks, not least because it's KIND of hard to get into his penthouse and sneak around and find a safe and crack it...it's pretty much like finding a needle in a haystack to bring down daddy Oliver. Along the way, Maggie finds that she actually likes being a normal teenager. Somewhere in the deep, shameful part of my heart, I knew that I wouldn’t always be friends with Roux, or even together with Jesse. It wasn’t in the job description, and I had watched my own parents pack up and move so many times that I had lost track. None of this was a surprise.Her parents find out what it's like to be parents to a high schooler for the first time. I entered the code to our front door and opened it carefully. My parents were probably sleeping and I didn’t want to�And can Maggie bear to leave this new, wonderful life behind when the mission is finished? “But how can you expect me to make a choice about my life, my future, when I know only one option? All I know is this job. Yeah, I’m good at safecracking, but what if I’m better at being a normal person? What if it makes me happier?�The Parents: “It’s two thirty in the morning!� my mom cried. “In Manhattan! Do you know all the things that could have happened to you?�OH MY GOD, WE HAVE ACTUAL PARENTS? And they are all sorts of adorable. We have computer hacker mom... She’s an amazing computer hacker, which I think sort of rankles my dad. He’s useless when it comes to electronics. One time, we were in Boston and they got into this huge fight because my dad thought my mom was taking too long to do her job. She just handed him the TiVo remote and said, “Tell me how this works.� And of course he couldn’t, so she was all, “Don’t tell me how to do my job,� and believe me, he doesn’t anymore.To linguist dad. They are cool parents, but they weren't really normal parents, because they were spies first. And really, Maggie's never been a problem. Hell, she tags along safecracking with them on their jobs. So they were parents, but they never did the parenting thing until Maggie goes to school. And damn, they freak out. All of a sudden, their little safecracking darling is STAYING OUT PAST CURFEW and DATING BOYS and MAKING FRIENDS and HAVING SLEEPOVER and I mean WHAT KIND OF HIGH SCHOOL GIRL DOES THAT ANYWAY?. Oh. Well, crap. So Maggie's parents are learning to be parents for the first time, just as Maggie is learning to be a high schooler for the first time. And it is such an awesome learning experience. For me, that is. Maggie: Make nicey-nice with Jesse Oliver? Check! Get into his house so I can scope out his father’s office and see what his safe situation was? Check, check! Foil Dad Oliver’s plan, save the world, and be promoted to head spy of all time? CHECK, CHECK, AND CHECK!AHAHAHAHA. I have to admit that Maggie might come off as immature to some, but to me, she is so endearing. She has the right amount of self-consciousness and immaturity that I totally love. She is so good at what she does (being "beige" and safecracking), but normal things like making friends and going to school is something so completely new for her and she's completely cowardly. “Right back atcha,� I said, taking my class schedule and sauntering out.She is not incompetent, she's just not used to this whole situation. Maggie has never had friends outside of the suited (and awesome) 50-something Angelo. She doesn't have girlfriends. She's never dated. She doesn't know how to flirt. She doesn't know anything but blending in (because spies don't stand out). She is so teenager at times, but she sees her own faults. You know how sometimes you realize you’re doing or saying the wrong thing, but you just can’t stop yourself? You can literally hear the words coming out of your mouth and you just want to shove them back in because the real you, the good you, would never want to be this way, but you just keep going?This book did such a great job of highlighting Maggie's insecurities, with just the right amount of humor. The Romance: “Look,� I said. “I like you. Like, like like you. Like, a lot.�Jesse Oliver made it onto my book boyfriend list. He's just fucking adorable. Initially, he seems like a douche. He shoplifted, he has stupid pictures on his profile. Even Jesse Oliver’s photo page was banal. Hanging out with friends in one shoot, giving the finger in another, hugging a golden retriever in the third.But as it turned out, it's just a facade. I usually hate poor-little-rich-boy tropes, but Jesse is so likeable that I completely forgive him. “It’s like, I have all this luck and wealth and privilege, but who gives a shit? People expect me to be some spoiled brat, so then I act like some spoiled brat—I mean, I stole that book, what a dumbass—but it’s not me at all. And then when I try to act like an upright citizen, volunteer and all that, they accuse me of using my dad’s connections to get ahead. But if I don’t do anything, then my dad gets pissed that I’m not doing anything."The thing with Jesse is that he is such a sweetheart. He never, EVER acts like a jerk to Maggie. He has a sense of humor. He never flinches. His only fault is that he trusts and falls for her too easily (although it's not insta-love). Their romance was so seriously sweet. I feel like I'm swimming in a vat of dark chocolate and getting giddy on a sugar high. “Maggie.� He got up and came over to stand next to me, taking my hand in his. “Would you like to go on a date with me?�Jesse is not smooth. He's the biggest dork in the whole world, as you can tell from that quote above, and I absolutely adore him for it. Overall: a fantastically fun book. Even better than Prep School Confidential. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 11, 2014
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May 12, 2014
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May 11, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 1599907879
| 9781599907871
| 1599907879
| 3.59
| 7,201
| Mar 26, 2013
| Mar 26, 2013
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did not like it
|
Actual rating: 1.5 "‘Don’t whine to your spouse about your daily troubles. He’s had a harder day providing for you and your children.� This is whatActual rating: 1.5 "‘Don’t whine to your spouse about your daily troubles. He’s had a harder day providing for you and your children.� This is what you’re aspiring to? To be some guy’s house slave?�This book is vapid, at best. It's cute, sure, if you don't really want to think about it too much. There was a lot lacking from this book, mainly, depth. The main character comes off as a whiny, selfish child who can't stop crying, instead of an actual young woman growing up and trying to overcome her heartbreak in a realistic way. It tries too hard to be cute, and the "vintage" premise was executed so halfheartedly that there was really no fucking point. There is a love triangle involving two cousins, a insipid, whiny 12-going-on-16 main character, who can't stop thinking about ME ME ME ME ME ME. Her sister. Her mother. Her grandmother. They need to pay more attention to poor wittle Mallory. If she has time? Doesn’t she get what I’m telling her? [Grandma] has changed, and not for the better. I know she’s still dealing with the loss of Grandpa, but we’re all dealing with something, and she should be more aware of that. More aware of me.This is what I want to do to the main character. [image] This is the story of a girl who decides that life would be REALLY, REALLY AWESOME IF SHE WENT VINTAGE. That is, live life as she would if she had been a teenager living in 1962. Let's see, let me rack my brain. What was life like in the 1960s?! - Sexual inequality! Women made 2 cents (a rough estimation) for every dollar a man made. Why hello, there, Don Draper, how you doin'?! - Segregation! If you're black, get back! To the back of the bus, that is. Don't touch the white-only drinking fountains! - War movements! The Vietnam war and shit, give peace a chaaaaaaaance, man! All those war protests in Berkeley and throughout the country? Whatever. Mallory? Fuck all that shit. For her, the 1960s means wearing pretty vintage clothing and be secretary of a pep club! Not the president, just the secretary. That's the woman's place, after all! The Summary: "I am so over this decade, this century.�Mallory has the most wonderful boyfriend in the world. Jeremy is a dream come true, even if his cousin, Oliver is pretty awesome, too! I mean, right in the beginnig, we get this lovely little passage about dear ole Oliver. I don’t know much about Oliver, but who does? I think that mysterious aloofness is part of his image. He was nice enough to give me a birthday card that night with a twenty-dollar gift card to Outback. Outback? That’s the way to get in good with your cousin’s girl.It's not like it's a hint that Oliver's going to be the future love interest while she's still dating Jeremy or anything, no! *rolls eyes* AAAAANYWAY. Jeremy's the most wonderful boyfriend in the world. I mean, he's good-looking, he makes fun of how much she eats. “Really? You’re hungry?� he asks. “Even after Pizza Hut?�He makes her do his homework for him. This guy is a keeper. Best. Boyfriend. Ever. So it comes as a total blow when Jeremy does something like cheat on Mallory with an online girlfriend. That's right, Jeremy the Amazing Asian Tool has a SimCity-like account, where he's been slutting it out with an avatar named BubbleYum. Mallory is furious. She "hacks" into his "FriendSpace" account, exposes him for the cheating cheater he is, and breaks up with him. And then she gets tons of hate messages blaming HER for their breakup. Clearly, technology is to blame. Evil, evil technology. “If Jeremy didn’t have a computer or the Internet, he wouldn’t have met BubbleYum. If I didn’t have this cell phone, strangers couldn’t text me threats. Technology is the reason my life is falling apart.� My voice rises. I’ve never felt this passionate about anything before—the world, or my world at least, is suddenly so much clearer, like everything before was a big surface float, and now, for the first time, I’m diving into the deep end of life.Uh huh. So dramatic. Much passion. Wow. Solution = go back to the past, specifically, 1962. Mallory finds a list that her 16-year old grandmother made in 1962, and seeks to emulate it. Junior Year: Back-to-School Resolutions:Uh. Ok. It doesn't quite turn out as planned, because the only thing Mallory has down pat is the clothes. Sixties dresses are so cute! Other stuff...doesn't work quite well. For one thing, she really didn't think the situation through at all. Like how the fuck is she supposed to give up the Internet when she SIGNED UP FOR A CLASS ABOUT THE INTERNET. “You knew when you signed up for the class that most of this unit involves the Internet.�And she throws a fucking fit when her sister Ginnie actually makes her follow through on her promise and bans her from using technology. Another Post-it note where my alarm clock used to be.Who cares about historical accuracy, anyway! Block all the bad stuff out! I check out the Industrial Revolution books, but don’t bother with the sixties stuff. I’m worried history will only discredit my sunshiny hypothesis.Uh huh. Way to make a plan and not follow through with it. Not to mention, Mallory cheats on both her "vintage" vow and her paper---she plagiarizes from the Internet. I type Industrial Revolution right onto the main page search engine, and instantly a million possibilities pop up. Thank you. Thank you. Ask and you shall receive. I could probably type in Completed Industrial Revolution Paper and find five reports to combine into one.So really, what's the fucking point? It's ok, though, no matter what she does, dear Oliver will always thinks she's so quirky and beautiful and adorkable. “Because I like being around you.� He’s still looking out the window, and I wonder if he’s focusing on one object when he says this and what that object is. “I probably shouldn’t, but I do. And I can’t say why. I mean, I can think of a bunch of reasons why.�Mallory: The way he describes me, like I’m this vapid girl who doesn’t care about deeper things � that’s so off.Except, it's not off. Mallory behaves like an idiot child. [image] She cries over hula figures. To clarify, these things you put on your dashboard. [image] Reaction (over-reaction?): "He has three hula girls on the dash, three more in the back. I wonder what they think behind those vacant smiles, their plastic shells. These are women who will never wear a shirt, who must spend their existence dancing on demand. There’s something so sad about that, about me, about this situation, that the tears come hot and fast." Mallory is immature. She doesn't think things through. Her reaction to the most minor fucking thing is to pat herself on the back. I should push a little more than usual, make this something worthwhile. I’m here already, right?She sets a challenge for herself, to "go vintage" only she constantly whines about it, and constantly cheats on it. And her "living dangerously?" I just need to figure out living dangerously, which might involve eating the cream cheese and sausage mixture Ginnie is presently concocting.Pfffffffffft. To take a phrase from my friend Emily May. This is Sunday School rebellion. It's sad, pathetic, and so insipid it's not even cute. She doesn't really want to think about the deeper side of the sixties, all she wants to see is the pretty pretty clothes and simple times. She hates it when people don't pay attention to HER. She expects people like her mother and grandmother to know just how she's feeling, and leave her alone when she wants to be left alone and give her attention when she wants it. “It doesn’t sound fine. Are you sure you don’t want to talk?�Her Mother: She thinks she has a right to know my everything just because she had a forty-hour natural labor with me. My life would be so much easier if she would have just taken that stupid epidural.[image] There is a constant attempt at villifying her own mother that I just don't quite get. From what I read, her mother is just the right amount of attentive, only our dear little When we walk into a store, guys always check out my mom first, taking in her tight body and large chest before noticing that she’s in her forties, not twenties.Her mother is a hard working mom who is the family breadwinner. She is a caring mom, and Mallory, in her selfish way, can't see it. She constantly complain about her mom not understanding her, when she's doing everything she can to shut her out whenever her mother asks her any sort of question about her life. Mallory comes off as nothing more but a selfish, stubborn, childish girl. The Romance: There is a love triangle between Mallory, her ex-boyfriend Jeremy, and his cousin, Oliver. Why am I thinking about Jeremy?She is. She constantly thinks about Jeremy after their breakup, which is annoying, but believable. I look down at my wedge, and notice the head of lettuce looks like Jeremy’s head, that the bits of bacon could easily be his eyes, the tomatoes his mouth, and�But meanwhile, she's got feelings for Oliver, too. Jeremy is doing everything he can to get Mallory back, while Oliver plays the kind, understanding, all sorts of supportive friend who wants to be something more. In order for me to understand the romance, I have to support the characters. I liked Oliver, despite his "hipster" ways, but I can't, for the life of me, understand why the fuck he's in love with the utter birdbrain that is Mallory. Overall: this book is the equivalent of a 6-year old refusing to eat bacon for a week after reading Charlotte's Web, and the main character has the same mental age. Not recommended. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 10, 2014
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May 11, 2014
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May 08, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0062259539
| 9780062259530
| 0062259539
| 3.53
| 6,872
| May 12, 2014
| May 20, 2014
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liked it
| "My life’s sort of in danger. I should probably lie low.�Don't let my rating fool you, thi "My life’s sort of in danger. I should probably lie low.�Don't let my rating fool you, this book is unbelievably bad, but sometimes, I just want a trashy book. Everyone's cheating on everyone else. People are fucking like rabbits. Beloved cousin's husband? Doesn't matter. Engaged to an awesome oil billionaire and college sweetheart and THIS close to being married? Doesn't matter. Dad's friend? Doesn't matter. A 50-something screwing an underaged girl? Go for it. Sex tapes? Yep! Villains who sneak around with shifty eyes? Check! A family curse? It's there! Shadowy people lurking in corners? Got it! Secret babies and pregnancies? You bet! #whitegirlproblems? Fuck yeah! #richpeopleproblems? You got it! So why do I like this book? Sometimes, I just don't want to think. This is bad and entertaining in the same vein as Passions or Gossip Girl or *shudders* Reign. Oh, I know how bad Reign on the CW is. I mean, it portrays 17th century France as some sort of medieval fantasy, in which the ladies in court wear prom dresses, and says "Fuck you" to historical accuracy. It's really fucking bad, and I watch it like I can watch a train wreck: in horrified fascination. This is that sort of book. This book is trashy. It is brain candy. It is mental floss. There is no thinking involved whatsoever. I haven't read Pretty Little Liars but I know the premise, and to me, this book is an adult Pretty Little Liars mixed with Gossip Girl. It is so, so bad, trust me. Unless you are prepared to be amused by this book, you're not going to like it. Did I say it's bad? It's bad. In case I forgot to mention it in the previous three paragraphs or something. I sometimes have a tendency to underemphasize things *snort* The Summary: They were the heiresses, all right, the sparkling princesses of a family that might or might not be doomed. But by Edith’s standards, they hadn’t been behaving like heiresses at all.The Saybrooks are American royalty. Like the Kennedys, without the political empire, but with everything else besides that. All-American good looks. The money. The star power. The family curse. The notoriety that comes with it. No one could get enough of the legendary American family that was so blessed with fortune and beauty, yet cursed with a string of mysterious sudden deaths.There's Corinne, 27-year old businesswoman, engaged to Texan oil heir Dixon. Corinne, successful, but plain. Corinne spent enough money on her looks, but her long forehead, square jaw, and thick eyebrows equated to something more handsome than pretty. Her shoulders were broad like her father’s, her chest small like her mother’s, her legs too thick and pale even after hours of Pilates, countless meals uneaten, and thousands spent on spray-tanning.And not enough to win the love of her parents, who dote on her younger sister, 23-year old Aster, radiant with beauty, a wild socialite/party girl who's scared straight and forced to *gasp* work, when her parents get fed up of her wild ways. “It’s time you got a job. I’ve talked to HR, and they’re finding an assistant position for you in one of the departments.�Rowan is their cousin, 32-year old brilliant lawyer, Rowan, who is beautiful, successful, intelligent...but who harbors a secret love. She’d known James for nearly fifteen years, and she’d loved him every minute.Which wouldn't be so bad, except James is married to her beloved cousin, beautiful 34-year old Poppy. Poppy, who has beautiful children, an adoring husband. “Poppy has it all,� said Amelia, a little unkindly. “And we all kind of hate her.�Poppy, who is the first to die. Murdered. “I know I’m not the only one who’s had questions about Poppy’s death,� she said gravely. “I’ve brought you all here to tell you that Poppy didn’t commit suicide. She was murdered.�And then there's 23-year old Natasha, a cousin who has turned her back on the family. The fact that Natasha had recently disinherited herself was the subject of much speculation. Why would one of America’s heiresses give up her fortune?Each of these cousins have their secrets. Corinne, though engaged, has a secret love who has recently emerged from the past. She has a scar that holds a terrible secret. ...her gaze drifted to the scar below her navel. It was something she rarely looked at, the sight of it still surprising after all these years.Her sister Aster knows something that would destroy Corinne if she ever finds out. What Corinne didn’t know was that Aster had protected her all these years. She’d preserved Corinne’s perfect little view of their family. Oh, there’d been plenty of times when Aster had almost blurted out what she knew, but something inside her had held back, knowing it would shatter her sister even more than it had shattered Aster.Poppy might have been seeing someone behind her husband James' back. James’s voice was suddenly sober. He placed his hands on his knees, a pained expression on his face. “Rowan...I think Poppy’s cheating on me.�And James isn't exactly innocent, since he's been fucking Rowan behind his wife's back. “He was at my apartment. In my bed. Are you happy now?� Rowan hid her face in her hands.And Natasha? Why has she suddenly resurfaced after all these years. What kind of secrets is she holding? After all that had just happened, all they’d just confessed and argued over, Natasha was texting? “Who are you talking to?� she snapped.And then there's the gossip blog, The Beautiful and the Cursed, that has all the insider information on the cousins. Who's behind One heiress down, four to go.#scandalous Other Notes: This is the part where I usually do my analysis. I can't. There is no analysis. This book is so transparent, it's not even funny. There is no character development. There's roughly 193848457983475 characters to keep track of. The secrets aren't secrets at all, because a 2nd grader can guess what's going on. Everyone's fucking everyone else, so there's no point in even attempting a relationship analysis. It's so, so bad. And I kind of enjoyed it. What can I say? #guiltyascharged Sometimes, a person just needs some mindless entertainment. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 23, 2014
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May 06, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0545476992
| 9780545476997
| 0545476992
| 3.62
| 4,826
| Mar 01, 2013
| Mar 01, 2013
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it was ok
| “So you’re cool that he only showed interest in you once you got all glam?�The book's title is rather misleading, “So you’re cool that he only showed interest in you once you got all glam?�The book's title is rather misleading, for one, there's no "revenge." For another, the sorta-but-not-really-"revenge" of the "girl with the great personality" is to become hot. :\ I get it. This is an YA book, and in the scheme of adolescent thinking, beauty is everything. I'm trying not to offend any high schoolers here, but generally, the teenaged mind seeks the most simple explanation, and in this book, the solution for lack of popularity with the boys, for not having your parents' attention, for lack of a boyfriend, is in a person's looks, or lack thereof. Again, this is just my own experience, but in my high school, nobody really cared about dating or getting a guy or becoming hot, which is why I found it so hard to connect to the main character from the way I felt as a teen. The teenaged years are never good years, I think it's the same across the board. Upon reflection, the adult version of us will realize that it takes more than good looks to win a guy, and even the most beautiful person can be so tremendously alone, seeking for love in all the wrong places. Happily married supermodels are quite rare, it seems. I was an socially awkward teen who didn't know how to talk to people. I was gangly, awkward, flat-chested, and never once in my high school life did I feel like I was a failure at life because I couldn't get a boy. Throughout high school, I didn't have a single date. I never got asked to a single dance. And I never thought the problem was because I wasn't hot or pretty enough. [image] I could barely string together two words in public (and look at me now!). I didn't have a great personality, because I was kind of the depressed angry sanctimonious little snits once you got around to talking to me, and I realized that. I had more to worry about than how I looked, because, like the sanctimonious little snit I was, I was too busy worrying about the existential crisis of life (true story, I carried around Sartre like the fucking Bible). So forgive me if, from my own experience, I found the main character rather hard to relate to. I know that this is an YA novel, but I want the situation and the character to be framed in a way that I could understand the character, even if I couldn't relate to her. This book didn't do that for me. The kind of "become hot, get a boyfriend!" message is kind of a shallow one. Because this is a growing-up type of book, the main character overcomes, but it's still a really, really shallow message, made furthermore by the complete lack of character transformation. The main character likes the fact that she's hot and she's got boys looking at her BECAUSE she's hot in one moment, only to throw a hissy fit that she feels like she's only seen for her looks and not her personality in the next 5 minutes. It's contradictory, it's hypocritical. This book has: - A caricature of a pageant family. Think Honey Boo Boo, complete with the grossly obese, obsessed mom living vicariously through her youngest daughter's success in pageantry - A shallow main character without the "great personality" in the first place, as far as I can see - Fat AND thin shaming. Her mother is shamed for stress-eating and becoming obese. A thin, beautiful Mean Girl is accused of having an eating disorder. - A very shallow portrayal of beauty. Those who are beautiful must be shallow, those who aren't beautiful must be worth more in character - A love triangle that pissed me off more than your average love triangles The Summary: Most trouble usually starts with a boy. But he’s not just any boy. No, he’s possibly the most amazing, hottest, and sweetest boy ever known to teenage kind.Lexi is a cool girl. She's got a lot on her plate, like an overbearing pageant mom, and an unbearably bratty 7-year old baby sister Mac, the competitor in said pageants. Mac is the pretty one. Lexi has always been the girl with the "great personality." And it kind of sucks. When a guy uses great personality to describe a girl, it’s the polite way of saying fat and ugly.Except she's not fat. She's not ugly. She just can't get the boy of her dreams, Logan to notice her. Ok, the other part of why she can't have Logan may be due to the fact that Logan is the happy boyfriend of the school beauty queen. But Lexi's fed up with being ignored. I know that once I leave high school and go to college, it’ll be different. There’s got to be someone out there who’s willing to give a girl with a great personality a shot.But she'd fed up with biding her time. She wants her future now. She has a gay friend named Benny who's pretty sick of being ignored by the guy of his dreams, too. They make a plan, change themselves, change their lives. A makeover and a dress? There is a very good chance no one will even recognize me on Monday.It works. The only problem is that it works too well, and instead of attracting the boy of her dreams (who has a girlfriend), she attracts the attention of Taylor, the school football star, instead. Is Taylor in love with the person Lexi is underneath, or does he only see her newly-improved appearance? Will Lexi stop thinking of one guy while she's with another? “I should be jumping for joy that I’m with somebody as amazing as Taylor, but now all I can think about is that Logan is going to be there. And that he might dance with me.�The Family: This isn't the sort of family you can usually relate to in a contemporary YA novel. Lexi's family is all sorts of weird. For one thing, her mom is a woman hell-bent on making her 7-year old daughter, Mac, into a tiny pageant queen. Her mom also has problems with overspending, she goes so far as to slap Lexi, to call her ugly, to constantly snub Lexi in favor or the adored child Mac, she steals $4,000 from Lexi, and she has a problem with overspending (which makes them constantly in debt) and with overeating, which is why she is grossly obese. While I know genetics are partially responsible, I also know that she gained over a hundred pounds after Dad left. She stopped taking care of herself, and just kept eating. The only thing that would get her out of her rut was pageants.Her mother is just so outrageous, she's the epitome of everything that one can caricature from a reality show, and I expect a little more realism from a book. Lexi: Taylor didn’t pay attention to me until I glammed up. But so what? I was a drab version of myself � why would he want to be with someone like that? It’s no wonder guys would never give me the time of day.The trouble with Lexi is that her journey into looking better devolved into shallowness. We started off with Lexi KNOWING she is a good person, if only people would notice her beyond her fairly plain appearance. After she started making herself over, Lexi became a different person. She makes justifications when guys start noticing her, she starts feeling like she should have tried to be more beautiful all along. “Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to show up in sweats and no makeup and see how he reacts? Did you ever think that maybe I like to dress up? That I like to wear makeup?�She starts lying to herself and ignoring the completely pragmatic advice of her best friend, who's just well-meaning and giving her the big overall pressure. Telling her to not be so quick to rejoice that a boy who has never noticed her before suddenly sees her now that she's "glammed up." “He never really paid much attention to you, and then you become a fancy version of yourself and suddenly you seem to matter. It’s a little insulting.�She starts ignoring her best friend, Cam, she of the sage advice, for her new bf. Cam agrees and, yet again, assures me that she’s okay. But I feel like I’ve let her down. I did the one pageant thing I swore I’d never do: Step on whoever to get to the top.Because she doesn't like Cam's way of giving her the cold truth. Which makes it all the MORE baffling when Lexi starts getting pissy at Taylor and accusing him of liking her only for her looks when she was completely ok that he apparently noticed her improved appearance a few weeks ago. “Oh, come on. You didn’t show any interest in me until I started dressing like all those Glamour Girls at school. Don’t pretend you care about anything but how I look.�The Romance: “Oh, so you realized that I was at the table.�So Lexi got herself a new boyfriend after her glamorization. Taylor may be a jock, but he's a pretty awesome guy. He's nice, attentive, sweet. The only trouble is that Lexi is constantly dreaming of her crush, Logan, while she's with Taylor. Logan has a girlfriend. Lexi now has a boyfriend in Taylor. She still has feelings for Logan. I try to shake off the jealous feeling that’s overwhelming me. I thought that as Taylor and I got more serious I’d stop obsessing over Logan, but old habits (and delusional fantasies) die hard.She never, ever stops thinking about Logan throughout the entire book, and shall I emphasize that she's still dating Taylor? I don’t even know if I like Taylor. He’s gorgeous, so I’d be stupid not to. But because I’m pathetic, all I keep thinking about is Logan. I was hoping that once I had a real date with a real boy my Logan delusions would end, or at least subside.And she can't stop comparing her fantasies of the Best Kiss Ever with Logan while Taylor's taken her out on a date and didn't try to make a move on her. “Wait a second.� Benny snaps me back to reality. “So because he didn’t shove his tongue down your throat, you’re convinced that he’s not into you? Has the thought ever crossed your mind that he’s being a gentleman?�So in conclusion, Lexi thinks she's an awful person for having feelings for two guys at the same time, one of whom is the sweetest guy ever. “Oh, it’s � I think I’m an awful person.�And I would have to agree. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 30, 2014
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May 03, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0545140315
| 9780545140317
| 0545140315
| 3.77
| 27,995
| 2010
| Jan 01, 2010
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it was ok
| "Oh, really?" Rosanna rolled her eyes dramatically, "How convenient that you decide to change the rules after you go on a date with the hottest guy "Oh, really?" Rosanna rolled her eyes dramatically, "How convenient that you decide to change the rules after you go on a date with the hottest guy in school! Maybe it shouldn't be called the Lonely Hearts Club -- maybe you should call it the Rules Will Change When Convenient For Penny Club!"In the ancient Greek comedy, Lysistrata, fed up with all the warmongering, the women of Greece to withhold sex in a revolt to try to end the Peloponnesian War. If those intrepid women's mission to give up romance and love had lasted as short as the one waged by the main character within this book, the war might still be happening right now. Because Penny Lane's vow to GIVE UP ALL THE BOYSES lasts all of 5 minutes. Yay. Bravo. Much endurance. Very patience. Such stoicism. Wow. Not. This book was terrible. I don't think Elizabeth Eulberg's YA comtemporary books are for me at all, because this is the third such I've read with disastrous consequences. 1. The heroine shows all the signs of being a contemporary Mary Sue including having a special name ("Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes"- The Beatles). She is beautiful without knowing it. ALL THE BOYSES FALL FOR HER. Etc. 2. The portrayal of teenaged females as completely shallow character whose lives revolve around that of their boyfriends and crushes 3. A theme of BOYS ARE NOT EVERYTHING that completely, utterly fails 4. An extremely juvenile way of viewing a group of people, in this case, boys, as EBIL EBIL EBIL creatures. It's so fucking 3rd grade. He was a guy. A guy guy. As far as I was concerned, he probably had the dead bodies of small children and puppies hidden in his locker.The Summary: "Are you even kidding me? Every time you're around Ryan, you flirt up a storm."Penny Lane is done with boys. D. O. N. E. So she says. Her boyfriend Nate just dumped her because she won't put out. And now that she's newly single, Penny is starting to see how HORRIBLE EVIL BAD boys are. I mean, they ruin everything they touch. They turn perfectly good, smart girls into mindless, devoted idiots, slave to their selfish EBIL EBIL EBIL needs. From the hipsters to the musicians to the jocks. I couldn't help but wonder why it was that a guy could find two good girls to date at the same time, when we girls couldn't even find one decent guy.Anything with a penis = trouble. And it's not just the boys that are the problem, it's the girls, too. The girls at her school are so fucking shallow. "The guys in the Elite Eight aren't the problem," Morgan said. "Those girls are so shallow and have zero -- and I mean zero -- things to discuss outside of their boyfriends."So, fed up with boys, Penny decides to form the Lonely Hearts Club. I would stop torturing myself by dating loser guys. I would enjoy the benefits of being single. I would, for once, focus on me. Junior year would be my year. It would be all about me, Penny Lane Bloom, sole member and founder of The Lonely Hearts Club.Famous last words. Word gets out, and the girls at school think this is a fab, fab (not to be confused with the Fab Four Beatles, with whom Penny's parents are obsessed) idea. Before she knows it, Penny is famous, and practically all the girls at her school are joining it. Giving up boys! Enjoying time with each other! What could be a better idea! Well, for one, Penny's starting to notice her best friend Diane's ex, Ryan. Diane and Ryan are THE couple. A jock, a cheerleader. Super popular, they've been dating since 7th grade. That's a long fucking time in grade school years, and they've just broken up. And now Penny's got her eyes on Ryan. So much for her vow of chastity, or, whatever. They go on a date. Or, well, not a date, because SHE'S NOT WEARING A FUCKING BLACK TOP Rita and I had joked that guys always wore that on a first date while girls always wore jeans and a black top. Since I wasn't wearing a black top, this was clearly not a date.Except Ryan sees it as a date. "First date?"And then, well, maybe it's time to relax the rules. "I started this club because I was sick of guys. But as the Club has grown, I've noticed that it's more about focusing on ourselves, and that we're really good at that. So now I think maybe our focus shouldn't be on never dating a guy, but on keeping true to your friends. if one of us wants to go --"Are you fucking serious? The Premise: All members agree to stop dating men (or, if referring to the male population at McKinley High, "little boys") for the rest of thy high school existence.Those be the rules of the Lonely Hearts Club. It's a pretty neat little club, because although it's not true for everyone, relationships tend to bring out the worst of us sometimes. "And then when we do find someone we think is special, we forget about our friends." I tried not to look at Diane. "Or we change something about ourselves to please a guy instead of doing what makes us happy or what we know is right. Why do we do this? Why do we even bother?"But this book vilifies relationships so much. It portrays all the girls within the book as desperate for boys, dependent on boys, and despite the fact that this book is about staying away from boys, it almost fails the Bechdel Test because almost ALL THE FUCKING CONVERSATIONS ARE ABOUT BOYS. And it just fails in the premise. Not only does it has a very silly, juvenile attitude of Boys Have Cooties, the purpose of the book, that of making life more about girlfriends and yourself, just completely gets glossed over because Penny still cares so much about what guys think. I spent more time than necessary hanging up the coats. the entire time I sensed Nate's eyes on my back. And I enjoyed it.And not only that, the founder of the club completely goes against the club's rules. I am on a date with Ryan Bauer.And NOT ONLY THAT, she ends up taking her little crush...way too far -_- I blushed. I needed to take it down a notch before I started making decisions about our china pattern.For fuck's sakes... Penny Lane is Making Me Scratch My Eyes Out: No, that's not the lyrics to the actual Penny Lane song, but it should be, because that's how Penny Lane makes me feel. She is a fucking Mary Sue, y'all. She is beautiful without knowing it. Her beautiful cheerleader friends are all jealous of her and she doesn't know it. "I've always been a little bit jealous of you."Because she can eat eeeeeeeeverything. So many times in the book, her friends are all jealous of Penny Lane's body and how effortless it takes her to maintain it. All the other girls in the book are on a rabbit-food-starvation-camp diet except for her. And she has no idea. She thinks she looks freakish but Penny's also got a great sense of style, without knowing it. "AND you have the coolest style. I choose what I'm going to wear based on what magazines tell me. I look the same as everybody else. But you have your own funky style that nobody else could pull off You always have."Every girl in the book adores her with the exception of a few. They don't fucking mind if Penny date their ex-boyfriend. Fucking gag me please. "You and Ryan are Diane's closest friends. She wants you both to be happy!"Such generosity! So unbelievable! All the boys fall in love with Penny. There's Ryan, of course, there's also ex-asshole Nate, and beloved asshole jock Todd. Naturally, she spurns them all. Except Ryan. RYYYYYYYYYYAN. Overall: Cute premise. Utter failure. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jun 15, 2014
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May 03, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 1477870067
| 9781477870068
| B00HZ6EEN6
| 3.55
| 2,537
| unknown
| May 01, 2014
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did not like it
| Even when I was little, I knew I wasn’t like everyone else. Sure, I had the clothes and the shoes and the general skills to win superficial popula Even when I was little, I knew I wasn’t like everyone else. Sure, I had the clothes and the shoes and the general skills to win superficial popularity points. In the last couple years, I’d managed to get involved in stuff like debate and student government, but I’d never managed to be, well, normal.I've read a lot of terrible YA detective novels and this book would fit in perfectly among those unholy terrors. When I saw a YA criminal-investigation book by an actual attorney, I had high hopes, hopes that were, needless to say, dashed to the ground. I do not doubt the author's credentials in the least. I do not doubt her intelligence, I'm sure she's 1000x smarter than I am (they don't give law degrees to idiots), but this book was absolutely terrible. The YA detective novel is a difficult thing to write, the author has to: - Make the situations believable - Give the main character credibility in her actions - Portray her methods realistically, this is, after all, an under-aged character we're talking about) - Not make the actual police and prosecuting attorneys look like incompetent, bumbling fools. This book failed on all fronts. The Summary: Totally normal girls don’t wear four-inch Prada heels to the library, or stalk criminals, or wear four-inch Prada heels while stalking criminals.17-year old Ruby Rose is something else. She's got a 4.0 GPA, she's a gray-eyed blonde, she can fit a cellphone, makeup, several small kittens, in between her breasts (known as "The Cleave")... I felt for the picture of the girl hidden in The Cleave. Next to my other important stuff—cell phone, lip gloss—she was there....and she's famous! My virginity wasn’t exactly a secret. One of those trashy magazines had even broadcast it in an article called “Ruby Rose: The Virgin Vigilante.�Ruby's SWAT sergeant father was killed in action, and ever since his death, Ruby has been determined to mete out justice on his behalf. In her Prada peep-toe shoes. [image] Ruby Rose isn't your average 17-year old, no sir. She's got a closet (named Gladys) full of designer shoes that she can consult for help. I needed a few moments with my oldest and dearest friend: Gladys—aka my shoe closet.She's got a Black SUV called Big Black... Big Black, my overly tinted SUV and current best friend.Not to mention, at the tiny age of 17, Ruby Rose somehow fucking got a license to carry a concealed weapon. Of course, that license to carry is meaningless without a gun, right? Oh, she's got one, too, named Smith. I looked down at the shimmering weapon—aka Smith, my .38 Special Revolver with built-in laser sight that I’d gotten for my Sweet Sixteenth.Is there anything Ruby Rose doesn't name? Ruby Rose can kick! She can fight! She can shoot! She's trained---at the ripe old age of 17---in the SWAT obstacle courses. She can hack into the Orange County Police Department's criminal system!! And all she wants to do is bring justice to the criminals who have escaped the system! But not kill them, no. It's not ok to kill: Ruby Rose doesn't believe in killing. “Liam, it’s never OK to kill,� I said flatly. I had good reason to do it, sure, but that didn’t make it “OK.�Right. So it's just a little confusing when she kills not once... I pulled the trigger.Not twice. I aimed for the largest target area and pulled the trigger. His chest ripped open and his body lost momentum. He would never fight again.Not three times. I renewed my grip on the knife and slashed once as hard as I could, until I felt the blade slide through tissue and hit bone. He went limp.Oh, god, I lost track of the number of people that Ruby-I-Don't-Believe-In-Killing-People killed. “Things have long been out of control, Liam. I have killed, or been responsible for...� I stopped to count with my fingers. “Seven deaths now. Seven!�Killers don't faint! Definitely not. Ruby Rose is SO competent, right? She's killed so many people (while not believing in killing), she's trained her entire life to be a bad-ass motherfucker by her police dad. So naturally, in these situations, Ruby Rose would never do anything so silly as to...faint...right? A falling sensation rushed over me, and a sickening crack echoed through my skull.Shit. Ok. That was just once. That was just a fluke reaction in a school cafeteria, a visceral reaction to something. Surely she would never lose control of the situation and faint again... And I was losing consciousness.Fuck! Ok, that was a bad example. She got caught unaware and poison-darted on the beach because she was canoodling with lover boy. She will NEVER, EVER faint again. Seriously. Never. My world quickly spun out from under me. Swirling. Darkness. Pain. The last thing I saw was Liam, still on the ground, soundlessly calling out my name.OK, THAT WAS SERIOUSLY NOT HER FAULT. I mean, what kind of teen vigilante would expect a criminal to come up behind her and get caught unaware anyway. Who does that?! That's the last time. EVER. A jarring pain stabbed through my chest, and a coughing fit brought me back to reality.That was...I don't know. I mean, whatever. Let's move on now >_< Fine. The fainting thing was a bad example. Despite all her fainting, Ruby Rose of the 4.0 GPA is supremely intelligent. Not idiotic in the least. A teen vigilante so well-educated, so well-prepared as Ruby would never do anything dumb. He’d done it again. He wanted to toy with me. And I’d been stupid, impatient, and impetuous enough to walk right into his trap.Crap. Ok, that was just one example. Surely, having killed so many criminals, having tracked so many of them down, Ruby would never... Ha, I was insane. I was about to sneak out of my nice safe home and go looking for a rapist to convince him to help me. Real smart, Ruby. Best idea ever.Fuck. I give up. The Setting: This book takes place in Huntington Beach, California, in Huntington Beach High School. It could have fooled me. I grew up 5 minutes away from Huntington Beach, California. I still live around there now. I didn't get any sense of place, any sense of location at all in the setting. There were places that were just names. The Huntington Beach Pier, Pacific Coast Highway. I love those places. I drive down there. I take long leisurely summer drives down PCH for sushi with my little sister. I went to high school in Huntington Beach. It's a beautiful town. I'm not quite sure what school Huntington Beach High School has become when in the book, teenagers have "group sex parties" and teachers ditch class to go surfing on high surf days. It's fucking Huntington Beach. People go to the beach year-round. HBHS students are stoners, at worst >_> (can you tell my high school was rivals with them?) This book might as well have taken place in any generic beach town anywhere in the world. I didn't feel any authentic sense of the city. Ruby Rose: Bafflingly inconsistent. She doesn't believe in killing, but somehow she still does it. She's intelligent, yet she constantly walks into fucking stupid situations, and allows herself to be baited into killing people (which is against her beliefs! Gasp!). She's SOOOOOOOOO fucking perfect, yet she constantly puts herself down. Really, it sucks that her father died, but do you really expect us to relate to a 5-million-dollar-trust-fund blond-haired silver-eyed, buxom 4.0 GPA high school student who's got a closet full of designer shoes, who drives a GMC Denali. [image] Who's got the attention of the hottest boy in school, a cheery best friend, the ability to shoot and kick-ass in karate, and a District Attorney mother (whom she hates for some fucking reason)? Excuse me while I play the world's smallest fucking violin for Ruby. Trouble doesn't come looking for her, she seeks it out, and she cries fucking crocodile tears when things don't go her way. Oh, and her mother. Her poor District Attorney mother. Her cougar mother who checks out her boyfriend. Her Botoxed, Restylaned mother. How dare she seek out a career as a politician. How dare she not ignore her own ambition. Fuck that bitch, right, Ruby Rose? The Writing: Oh my god, so much name-dropping. From TMZ (SO MANY MENTIONS OF TMZ) “How about that I killed somebody,� I said. “I’m a Vigilante Teen Assassin. At least that’s what TMZ called me."To UGGs (I can hardly keep track of the shoe brands in this book). To the extremely silly technological references that just sounds completely fucking absurd, even to an actual geek like me. People who like computers don't actually think in computer-speak! - “So what about Taylor?� I asked, wondering why my brain had brought her up at a time like this. It was like my logical brain had a firewall and was trying to override the invading emotions. - I wasn’t drinking her Very Cherry Kool-Aid. And I definitely wasn’t getting the message she was trying to send. Like the physical contact had created a spam filter and her message was just going to the junk file. To the long, pointless, rambling extended metaphors. I stared at his lips. Were they telling the truth? Or were they like chocolate—promising happiness, providing a few moments of heaven, then ultimately betraying me, going behind my back and putting junk in the trunk?The Romance: Liam. Handsome Liam. Liam who might be a killer. It didn’t seem like a fair choice. Chocolate had total power over me—there was no denying my addiction to the dark, creamy crack. Those few moments of bliss were always enough for me to disregard the consequences. So, even if Liam was only chocolate, I wanted to taste a piece.The Romance: Liam. Handsome Liam. Liam who might be a killer. “I nearly killed my father,� he said point-blank, staring at his hands as if they might still have blood on them.Oh, but it's fine that he beat the crap out of his dad! It's just self-defense! “Protecting yourself would be calling the police, not taking a baseball bat and putting your own father in a coma for seven days.�*slow clap* Good fucking job, Ruby Rose. Recommended for people who love stabbing themselves in the eye. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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May 08, 2014
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May 01, 2014
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Kindle Edition
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