Severed Heads, Broken Hearts - Robyn Schneider

Publisher: Simon and Schuster UK

Pages: 288

Published: September 2013

Blurb:

Robyn Schneider's book, originally titled Severed Heads, Broken Hearts is a witty and heart-wrenching teen novel that will appeal to fans of books by John Green and Ned Vizzini and novels such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Golden boy Ezra Faulkner believes everyone has a tragedy waiting for them—a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen. His particular tragedy waited until he was primed to lose it all: In one spectacular night, a reckless driver shatters Ezra's knee, his career as a jock, and his social life.
No longer a front-runner for homecoming king, Ezra finds himself at the table of misfits, where he encounters new girl Cassidy Thorpe. Cassidy is unlike anyone Ezra's ever met— achingly effortless, fiercely intelligent, and determined to bring Ezra along on her endless adventures.
Together, Ezra and Cassidy discover flash mobs, buried treasure, secret movie screenings, and a poodle that might just be the reincarnation of Jay Gatsby. But as Ezra dives into his new studies, new friendships, and new love, he learns that some people, like books, are easy to misread. And now he must consider: If one's singular tragedy has already hit and everything after it has mattered quite a bit, what happens when more misfortune strikes?
With lyrical writing, nerdy humor, and realistic romance, Robyn Schneider's The Beginning of Everything is a story about how difficult it is to play the part people expect, and how new beginnings can stem from abrupt and tragic endings.

Review:

Severed Heads, Broken Hearts sat on my bookshelf and stared me down for a long time before I picked it up. I’m not completely sure it was worth my time in the end. I’m not sorry I read it, but I can’t help but think about all the other better books I could have been reading instead of this one.

SHBH reminds me of Paper Towns by John Green , and a lot of other YA fiction to be honest. In SHBH Schneider sets about dismantling the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, something Green does quite successfully in PT. The problem is Schneider doesn’t manage to pull it off the same way Green does. Ezra, the main character, was the golden boy of his clichéd high school in northern California. Cassidy, the MPDG, has a surname for a first name so obviously she is special af. Cassidy doesn’t give a shit about anything, but she’s horrendously clever, talented, spontaneous and of course, very beautiful. But most importantly she’s not like the other girls. In fact it is her “not like the others” ness that makes her the best!!! I’m actually just completely sick of this cliché, that you have to be weird and wonderful to be a love interest, that if you like sunbathing, lipgloss and trashy magazines you are vapid, shallow and deserving of the snotty debate girl looking down her nose at you. I’m tired of reading about this trope over and over again and I think  Cassidy might just be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m all for female empowerment and the right to wear men’s shirts and do public speaking, but that doesn’t mean you get the look down at the girls who choose not to. YA lit had better come up with something else to fill a book with because I’m pretty sure the genre is saturated with Cassidys.

Something that Schneider got right, however, is the whole idea of someone fixing you vs fixing yourself. I’ve always hated the trope of the main character being fixed by this cool new other person, because that’s not really a good example to set for young people. In the real world Cassidy isn’t going to come along and help you up, you’ve got to drag yourself up by your shoelaces. You can’t wait around for a saviour because you might be waiting forever. Ezra walks the fine line between fixing himself and being fixed by Cassidy, and it was quite interesting to see his development throughout the narrative.

Schneider also deals with the idea of tragedy, and how we are defined by and our lives are irreparably changed by events. Ezra loses his future, his friends and part of his identity when he injures his knee in a car crash that takes place before the book starts, and Cassidy experiences her fair share of life changing tragedy. This really resonated with me at the time because , completely coincidentally, I began reading this book just after the Berkeley balcony collapse in which six students were killed and countless others seriously injured. At the time I couldn’t help comparing the moments of tragedy experienced in the book to the students in Berkeley , whose lives were cut short or changed irreparably because they went out on a balcony to chat with friends or have a cigarette.

Schneider hit on a few interesting aspects of teenage dynamics as well. Usually in YA fiction all the cool kids are mean and the nerds a nice, but this was not the case in SHBH. Well all the cool kids are still mean, that’s a difficult trope to get away from, but not all the nerds are nice. I’ve always found this simplification of the social hierarchy in highschool a bit tiresome, and it was refreshing to see that the group of unpopular kids suffered from the same politics that the popular kids usually do. The relationships in this book are pretty good as well while we’re at it. Ezra and Cassidy’s relationship is pretty cute, but there’s nothing really new there. I loved Toby and Ezra’s relationship however. Toby and Ezra were friends as children, but they drifted apart as they grew older. However, when Ezra is in need of a friend with a bit more substance when he returns to school after the crash, Toby steps up to the plate and does a really great job. The other relationship I found really interesting was that of Phoebe and Luke, and Phoebe’s relationship with the rest of the group.

Schneider also touches on the idea of identity, and what happens when we lose what we feel is a large part of our identity through Ezra. Ezra is no longer the star tennis player, and when he can no longer play he feels lost, and not very like himself. He loses his friends and his main hobby, and no longer looks like himself. Instead of looking the perfect picture of health and athleticism, he looks skinnier and paler. Throughout the narrative he struggles to figure out who he is without tennis and his posse, how to fill his new spare time, his new image and his new future.

Even though this book had quite a few redeeming and interesting quality, I can’t help shift the feeling that I’ve read it before. If you’ve read a lot of YA fiction you can probably skip this one.

Three Stars ***

We Were Liars - E. Lockhart

Published: May 2014

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Pages: 225

Blurb:

A beautiful and distinguished family.

A private island.A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.A revolution. An accident. A secret.Lies upon lies.True love.The truth. We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart. 
Read it.And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE. 

Review:

I came quite late to the We Were Liars party, so I had experienced all the hype surrounding it. I have to say it lived up to every expectation, and I recommend it to everyone. However due to the nature of the book, it’s going to be really hard to review without spoiling everything, so this review might be quite vague.

In my opinion this book is beautifully written, but a lot of people don’t seem to like the style it’s written in. It’s written in first person narration by the eldest Sinclair grandchild, Cadence. Most of the book is told from Cadence’s point of view, but sometimes it is told by the fairytales Cadence makes up to make sense of what is going on around her. I thought the stories were a really clever way to add to the fairytale quality of the book. And sometimes, while still being narrated by Cadence, Lockhart breaks into this kind of free verse style, which I loved but apparently not everyone did. If this sort of thing annoys you, this book mightn’t be for you. I loved Lockhart’s writing, her descriptions were beautiful and her dialogue flows. I’m really looking forward to reading other books by Lockhart because I love her writing.

One of the major themes of this book is memory. Cadence, who is an unreliable narrator, suffers from amnesia and severe migraines resulting from an accident. As she has nothing to go on herself, she believes everything her family tell her about the accident. A lot of the mystery in this story is tied in with Cadence trying to fill in the gaps of her missing memories.

Wealth and class are another huge aspect of this novel. The Sinclairs are an old ultra-white, super-wealthy family, and while the aunts and Cadence’s grandfather seem to be fine with their economic and class status, but it doesn’t sit well with Cadence and her cousins Johnny and  Mirren, and their friend Gat. The Sinclair patriarch goes on about how blonde and great and better than everyone else his grandchildren are. He looks down on people of colour like Gat and his uncle, an attitude that his grandchildren are not comfortable at all with.There’s also a Wuthering Heights Heathcliff parallel, which I probably would have understood better if I had read WH, but I got the gist of it. Lockhart also deals with wealth and how it can bring pain as well a joy. None of the aunts are able to support themselves without the help of their parent’s trust funds, they fight over their inheritance and it begins to tear the family apart.

I would recommend this to everyone. Seasoned readers would love it, but also those who find it hard to stick with a book. It’s short and utterly engrossing and perfect for anyone making their first foray into YA or trying to get onto the reading wagon.

Five Stars *****

The Happy Ever Afterlife of Rosie Potter (RIP) - Kate Winter

Published: 2014

Publisher: Little Brown

Pages: 298 Pages

Blurb:

Falling in love is never simple. Especially when you're dead.

When Rosie Potter wakes up one morning with what she assumes is the world's worst hangover, the last thing she expects is to discover that she's actually dead. With a frustrating case of amnesia, suspicious circumstances surrounding her untimely demise, and stuck wearing her ugliest flannel PJs, Rosie must figure out not only what happened last night, but why on earth she's still here.

Slowly the mystery unravels, but there are many other secrets buried in the quiet Irish village of Ballycarragh, and nobody is as innocent as they first appear. Aided by the unlikeliest of allies in her investigation, Rosie discovers that life after death isn't all it's cracked up to be, particularly when you might just be falling in love . . .

In this hilarious, life-affirming and romantic journey through Rosie Potter's afterlife, she shares the ghostly tale of how she lived, she died, and she loved (in that order).

Review:

I wouldn't usually read chick-lit, but there were a couple of reasons that made me read this book, despite the genre. Firstly, the book is written by a local ( you gotta support your own , HUP SLIGO), and secondly because this is no regular chick-lit. The best way to describe The Happy Ever Afterlife of Rosie Potter (RIP) , hereafter referred to as Rosie Potter , is a rom-com slapstick paranormal murder mystery, like a crossover between Father Ted and Bridget Jones’ Diary and that Reese Witherspoon film where she’s a ghost. If that doesn't convince you to read it, I don’t know what can.

The novel opens after Rosie wakes up dead,which she handles quite well actually. The narrative moves on from that point as Rosie tries to figure out who her killer is, but Winter occasionally jumps backwards to before Rosie’s death in a very anecdotal style in order to fill us in on things like Rosie’s relationship with her best friend Jenny, her boyfriend Jack and her childhood friend Charles. The mystery in this book is probably the best I've ever read, no exaggeration at all, and I've read my fair share of thrillers. Normally I can see the solution a mile away, but I didn't cop this one until it was explained to me. And even then I was totally surprised. Starting out I didn't think that the mystery would be the strongest part of the novel, but it turned out to be. Of course, there is a love story, and it’s a adorable and full of cheese. But that’s great because cheese is DELICIOUS. Seriously, if the romance wasn't cheesy, I would have asked for my money back. I can never understand why people complain about these things?

Rosie Potter has the best chick-lit characters I’ve ever read. Most chick-lit characters are no better than a damp dish towel, but Rosie and her cohorts were so real and leapt off the page at me. Rosie and her best friend Jenny were real, strong yet messy women, not the simpering idiots that you normally see on chick-lit and never ever in real life. Rosie are Jenny are equal parts hilarious and heart-warming. They have a great relationship, and while they might not get along all the time, they have genuine affection and love for each other.

Apart from Jenny, my favourite character is Jack Harper, but I love him for completely different reasons. We probably all know a Jack Harper, and somehow the Jack Harpers of the world get away with far more than should ever be allowed. Obviously he’s not my favourite character because I like him. It’s because there are a lot of people like him in the world,and I don’t see them a lot in books or films. Jack is one of those subtle bad guys, ( think Gaston from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast), the one’s you don’t figure out are bad news straight away because they don’t wear a long black trench coat or have suspicious scars, and then it’s too late. But also Jack is just ridiculous and made me laugh despite myself.

Finally, I absolutely loved the setting of the book in the rural west of Ireland. As someone who was raised in a slightly larger town than Ballycarragh, I found reading about Rosie’s life in the country gorgeous and familiar. It’s a nice change from the endless stream of books that seem to be set in London and New York. It’s nice to see rural Ireland portrayed in a more realistic way , especially because I feel like this is going to be an international hit!

The only thing I didn't like about the book was the Rosie being a ghost didn't make much sense. That seems like a really stupid grievance, but as a fantasy puritan I need my supernatural content to have rules and stick to them. That being said, if you don’t read a whole pile of fantasy or if inconsistency like that doesn't bother you, this book is flawless.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed this book, I devoured it in about two days. I would recommend this to everyone, especially people like me who don’t read a whole pile of chick-lit. I’ve a feeling I’ll be a lot more likely to read more of this genre after reading this book. The Happy Ever Afterlife of Rosie Potter (RIP) will make you laugh and cry in equal parts, and will grip you right until the very last page.

Five Stars *****

Lola and the Boy Next Door - Stephanie Perkins (#2 Anna and the French Kiss)

Pages: 384
Publisher: Usborne
Published: June 2014

Blurb:

Budding designer Lola Nolan doesn't believe in fashion... she believes in costume. The more expressive the outfit – the more sparkly, more wild – the better. And life is pretty close to perfect for Lola, especially with her hot rocker boyfriend.

That is, until the Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket return to the neighbourhood and unearth a past of hurt that Lola thought was long buried. So when talented inventor Cricket steps out from his twin sister's shadow and back into Lola's life, she must finally face up to a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door. Could the boy from Lola's past be the love of her future?

Review:

Lola and the Boy Next Door, like Anna and the French Kiss, is heart squelchingly adorable. It’s a quick, easy read that touches on a themes that are slightly more serious than just teenage love and heartbreak, and I feel like the characters are more realistic and the plot is more rounded than in Anna. Perkins is definitely not suffering from second-album-syndrome and the series seems to be improving with each book!

The main character Lola is one of my favourite aspects of the book. Lola is a budding costume designer(She doesn’t believe in fashion, she believes in COSTUME!), and I’ve never really read about a character like her before. Once again, it’s nice for the main character to have a passion that isn’t writing, like they seem to have in most YA novels.

Cricket, the love interest, is another of Perkins’ attempts to give the love interests in her books the worst names ever. But other than that I loved him. Cricket is an inventor, and possibly the sweetest guy in the entire world. Cricket’s main physical attribute, like Etienne’s, is his height, but he is also quite well-dressed which Lola is super into. In my opinion he’s less annoying than Etienne, and less of a cliché.

Through Lola and Cricket Perkins explores the whole “what happens if you fall in love with someone while you’re already with someone else” theme, except this time it’s the main character that is in the relationship. Lola and Cricket are childhood sweethearts, but when Cricket comes back to San Francisco after touring with his sister, it’s clear that there are some residual feelings between them. However Lola is already dating her boyfriend Max, who is a twenty-something year-old rocker, and we know from the get go that that one isn’t going to end well.

However the aspect I found most interesting is Lola’s relationship with her parents. This is the first book I’ve read in which the main character has gay parents, and I found reading about this relationship really interesting. In the lead up to the gay marriage referendum in Ireland, there was a lot of debate about whether or not gay couples should be allowed raise children, and if they did would the children turn out ok. As I suspected, if the children who are raised by gay parents in real life are like Lola, they will turn out totally normal and absolutely fine, and that there’s nothing to worry about. However Lola’s relationship with her birth mother is a lot more complex, and it was interesting and a little heartbreaking to watch their relationship unfold and develop.

Overall I really loved this book. If you’re looking for a cutesy romcom read with a bit of bite this is definitely worth checking out. And the cute cameos by Anna and St. Clair mean that fans of Anna will get to reconnect with it’s protagonists.

Five Stars *****

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle - Lady Fiona Carnarvon (The Women of the Real Downton Abbey #1)

Published: December 2011
Pages: 310
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton

Blurb:

Lady Fiona Carnarvon became the chatelaine of Highclere Castle - the setting of the hit series Downton Abbey - eight years ago. In that time she's become fascinated by the rich history of Highclere, and by the extraordinary people who lived there over the centuries. 
One person particularly captured Fiona's imagination - Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon. 
Almina was the illegitimate daughter of banking tycoon Alfred de Rothschild. She was his only daughter and he doted on her. She married George, the Earl of Carnarvon, at 19 with an enormous dowry. 
At first, life at Highclere was a dizzying mix of sumptuous banquets for 500 and even the occasional royal visitor. Almina oversaw 80 members of staff - many of whom came from families who had worked at Highclere for generations. 
But when the First World War broke out, life at Highclere changed forever. 
History intervened and Almina and the staff of Highclere were thrown into one of the most turbulent times of the last century. Almina was forced to draw on her deepest reserves of courage in order to ensure her family, the staff and the castle survived.
This is the remarkable story of a lost time. But Highclere remains and in this book, Fiona weaves Almina's journey into the heritage and history of one of England's most exquisite Victorian castles.

Review:

Like most people who have read this book, I only did it because of Downton Abbey, which I adore. It’s horrendous and I love it. The author, the current Countess of Carnarvon, plays up the Downton Abbey connection, but rather than giving an entire historic timeline of Highclere, she focuses in on the turn of the century and Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon.  

I know the book is called “The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle”, but not a whole lot of it actually happens at Highclere. A lot of the action actually goes down in London and Egypt. The book also goes into detail on Lord Carnarvon’s excavations in Egypt, the hospital in London, and the action on the battlefields. There is an awful lot of history, but I found it a really interesting way to learn about the Victorian and Edwardian era and the First World War. So rather than the castle becoming the focal point of the book, the story revolves around Lady Almina and her family. I feel like the author feels a certain kinship to Almina, given that they both married into the Carnarvon family, both having to adapt to the new lifestyle that comes with the title, so there is probably a personal bias there.

As I was reading I couldn’t help but notice some serious parallels between Almina’s life and the plot of Downton Abbey, which made me wonder whether Fellowes sought inspiration for his series from the history of the castle itself. To me, this just means that anyone like me who is reading this book because they love the series, will really enjoy it.

The book is written in third person, and really reminded me of the style of Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale. Both books are based on real events and references letters, records and documents. However , the Countess of Carnarvon seems to have been a bit more liberal in her interpretation of the events than Summerscale ever was, giving accounts and descriptions of the “characters” opinions and emotions. Unless of course she has all this is recorded in letters and diaries, but it all seem a bit speculative to me.

Overall, this is a really great book that any fan of Downton Abbey would enjoy.

Four Stars ****

A Moment of Silence - Anna Dean ( Dido Kent #1)

Published: March 2011

Publisher: Allison and Busby

Pages: 300

Blurb:

When Miss Catherine Kent's fiance Richard Montague disappears, she is distraught. Catherine sends for her beloved spinster aunt, Miss Dido Kent. But on the very day of Dido's arrival, a sinister discovery casts unwelcome suspicion on Richard's sudden absence. Long-hidden family secrets begin to emerge as Dido attempts to unravel the strange happenings. Dido uses her logical thinking to carve a swathe through the ulterior motives of the other guests. When she finally arrives at the startling truth, it is to change the lives of those involved forever. But will it be for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health?

Review:

A Moment of Silence is a murder mystery in the vein of a Jane Austen novel, following Miss Dido Kent , a ‘spinster’ detective.

In this novel, Dean answers the question of what would happen if Jane Austen had turned her hand to solving murders instead of writing novels. It turns out, that if she had been anything like Dido Kent, she would have been quite good at it. I feel that it’s a safe bet to make that Dido, a remarkably clever ‘spinster’, the daughter of a clergyman, at her brothers’ beck and call due to her financial dependence on them, is a profile of Austen as we have come to know her. The book has everything we have come to love about Austen’s novels, plus a murder mystery. It reminded me more of Miss Marple/Poirot murder mysteries than their modern equivalent, rich people with titles in old houses murdering each other.

That being said, like Marple and Poirot, I didn’t figure out the mystery until the very end when the characters did. However it was a quick and easy read, I flew through it, and it wasn’t frightening or gruesome like a modern thriller. The only criticism I would have is that I found it hard to keep track of the characters sometimes, as I would in a real Austen novel.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who like old style murder mysteries and, obviously, Jane Austen. It’s a really enjoyable read and I can’t wait to read the next two.

Four Stars ****

The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins

Published: January 2015

Publisher: Doubleday

Pages: 316

Blurb:

Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. ‘Jess and Jason’, she calls them. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough.

Now everything’s changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar.

Now they’ll see; she’s much more than just the girl on the train…

Review:

The Girl on the Train is a gripping and fast thriller that hooked me right from the start and took me about a day to read. This book has been compared to Gone Girl by so many people that it was hard not to do it myself as I was reading it, but I feel it is a useful way of figuring out if you’d like this book. If you found Gone Girl a little long, or convoluted you'd probably enjoy this.

In my opinion, it reminded me more of Before I go to Sleep by S.J. Watson, because so much of the plot and the mystery is concerned with memory, or the lack of it. Rachel, the main narrator , is an alcoholic and suffers from blackouts causing her to have gaps in her memory. This plays a huge role in the plot as Rachel tries to retrieve her missing memories to solve the mystery.

As well as being narrated by Rachel, the plot is narrated by Anna and Megan. All three narrators are extremely unreliable for different reasons. The book is written in the form of entries, mostly morning and evening to coincide with Rachel’s train in and out of London.  I found reading from Rachel’s point of view extremely interesting, I’ve never read a book from the point of view of an addict and it was riveting and heartbreaking to watch Rachel struggle with herself.

The narrative jumps backwards and forwards, and as I wasn’t really paying attention to the dates I was very confused to begin with. But when “the inciting incident” happens , the jumping back and forwards makes a lot more sense.

I wouldn’t say the ending was unpredictable, but I only figured it out only a few pages before the characters did , so in that way it’s one of the most surprising thrillers I’ve read.

The Girl on the Train is a fast paced, gripping read and I would recommend it to anyone who is new to the thriller genre like me, and anyone who’s looking for a quick holiday read.

Five Stars *****