Category: Fiction

Eligible

Title: Eligible
Author: Curtis Sittenfeld
Genre: Fiction, Adaptation
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: April 19, 2016
Rating: ★★★★★

Imagine Elizabeth Bennet as a writer living in New York City. Imagine Mr. Darcy as a neurosurgeon. Imagine Jane Bennet as a 40-year-old single woman undergoing IVF treatment. Imagine Bingley as a reality TV star.

That is exactly what Curtis Sittenfeld did in her new novel Eligible. This new retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice takes place in modern day New York and Cincinnati. Jane and Liz have to return to their hometown of Cincinnati when their father has a heart attack. While they are hime, they hear that the star from the reality show Eligible, like The Bachelor, is moving to town. Mrs. Bennet has picked out Bingley to marry one of her daughters. Bingley and his friend Darcy are doctors working at the local hospital. Other favourite characters are also in this story, such as Charlotte Lucas, Catherine de Bourgh, and Caroline Bingley.

This novel is my favourite retelling of Pride and Prejudice. Sittcnfelf updated the events so that the story is completely plausible in today’s world, such as the Bennets being in debt from Mr. Bennet’s medical procedures following his heart attack. That is the reason they will lose their house, rather than it being entailed to a distant male relative. Though Sittenfeld follows the original plot faithfully, there are many surprises that could only happen in a modern retelling, which kept me laughing through the novel.

The Sound of the World by Heart

Title: The Sound of the World by Heart
Author: Giacomo Bevilacqua
Genre: Graphic Novel
Publisher: Magnetic Press
Release Date: April 11, 2017
Rating: ★★★★★

Sam is a photographer and writer. He created a magazine with his friend, Jorge. Jorge sends Sam to New York City to work on a project, and get over his girlfriend. The project is that Sam has to survive 2 months in New York, without saying a word to anyone. The only person he is allowed to communicate with is Jorge and only through texts. One day, Sam goes to pick up his photos from the printer. He ordered them all in black and white. But when he looks at them, there is a girl with red hair who is in many of the photos. She stands out in the photos because she is in colour while everything else is in black and white. Sam can’t remember seeing this girl, though she is in many of his pictures. Now, Sam has to figure out why he has blocked this girl and her photos out of his memory.

This is a beautiful graphic novel. The story is amazing. It’s about recovery and overcoming obstacles.

The pictures are beautiful too. They represent NYC very well. I loved how there were reflections of buildings and people in the water and any shiny objects, such as the store counters. It made the pictures realistic.

This story has multiple narrators, but unlike a traditional graphic novel it doesn’t have any speech bubbles. The narrators are differentiated by coloured boxes (for example, Sam’s narration is in a blue box). I like how this gives multiple perspectives of the story. The reader finds out what’s happening to Sam at the same time he does.

This is a great graphic novel! I’m so glad I had the opportunity to read it.

New Release: Arboria Park


Title: Arboria Park
Author: Katherine Tyler Wall
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: She Writes Press
Release Date: May 2, 2017
Rating: ★★★★

Stacy Halloran is the youngest of four. When she is a young girl, her older sister, Mary, has to get married at 18. Her sister is pregnant, so her parents force her to marry her boyfriend, though she isn’t sure if she loves him. They move into an area close to their home in Arboria Park, but not as nice. Stacy loves wandering around the neighbourhood and looking at the architecture. When she meets Greg, a boy she really likes, all she does is talk about the houses in Arboria Park. Though her friend thinks it’s strange, it makes Greg fall in love with her. The story follows the perspectives of Stacy, as she grows from a child to an adult, as well as her nieces Autumn and Rosie in their journeys through life in Arboria Park.

I really enjoyed this story. It is setting driven, which is not as common as plot or character driven. The story revolves around the neighbourhood of Arboria Park. Though Stacy is the main focus of the story, it also shows how the neighbourhood grew through the eyes of her nieces Autumn and Rosie. Even though Autumn and Rosie are sisters, there are so many years between them that they’re almost from different generations.

An important part of the story is the way that music influenced the lives of all three women. Stacy and Autumn mark major points in their lives through the music they listened to or created. Music also helps Rosie find her place in the world, by looking at biracial women in rock music.

The character list started out small, with just Stacy’s immediate family: her parents, her sister Mary, and her brothers, Tom and Mark. It slowly branched off into each of the siblings’ families. It was a little complicated with so many characters at the end, but I liked the way that it demonstrated the way a family grows.

This story is a realistic look at how the Halloran family grew with the times, from welcoming people of multiple races into the family, as well as same-sex couples. They also have one family member who doesn’t agree with the way the family has accepted these “different” people because they are not white and heterosexual. I liked this modern look at how families, and neighbourhoods, have changed over time.

 

Great Expectations (Manga Classics)

Title: Great Expectations
Author: Stacy King, Charles Dickens
Genre: Manga, Graphic Novel
Publisher: Udon Entertainment
Release Date: May 19, 2015
Rating: ★★★★★

The story opens on Pip in a cemetery looking at his parents’ graves. A prisoner in shackles approaches him and asks him to bring a file for him to remove his chains. Pip returns to his home, with his sister and her husband who is a blacksmith. Pip smuggles the file to the prisoner who is then able to escape. One day, Pip is invited to go visit the widow, Miss Havisham. She is a very wealthy women who lives in her wedding dress because she was left at the altar years ago. She adopted a girl named Estella, and Pip falls in love with her. Then, after Pip has begun an apprenticeship with his brother-in-law, Joe, someone comes from the city and tells Pip that he has a benefactor who is going to pay for him to become a gentleman. He now has great expectations. Pip moves to the city, assuming that his mysterious benefactor is Miss Havisham. Pip hopes that if he can become a gentleman, he will be able to marry Estella.

This graphic novel followed Dickens’ story faithfully. It gives the basic story, without all the added details in the novel. Though I love his writing style, I know some people think that Dickens is tedious to read. This graphic novel is a great alternative to get the same story.

It’s been a few years since I read the novel, so I liked reading the story again in graphic novel format. This is a great addition to any library of classics.

New Release: Eden

Title: Eden
Author: Jeanne Blasberg
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: She Writes Press
Release Date: May 2, 2017
Rating: ★★

Becca Meister lives in her family home of Eden on Rhode Island. Her father built it following World War I. She has always lived at the house, but due to the debt that her husband left her with, she may now have to sell it. She wants to sell her share to her brother, so that the house can be kept in the family. For July 4th in the year 2000, Becca invites her whole family to give them a big announcement. Not only does she have something to tell the family, but her granddaughter, Sarah, has returned from college pregnant. Becca invites her brothers and their wives, her son and his family, and her sister-in-law for this family reunion. However, some family members can’t handle the news.

I struggled with this book. There were so many characters that I couldn’t keep track of them. About half way through I thought I had them all figured out, but then I got some names mixed up. I don’t like when a story is difficult to read without the help of a family tree, or taking notes.

Another thing that made it confusing is that it jumped back and forth between periods of time, and generations in the Meister family. It alternated between the “present” on the July 4th holiday in 2000 with Becca’s children and her siblings, and the early 20th century with Becca’s parents and her brothers.

The story line was good but moved very slowly to compensate for the jumping between time periods. This story could have been improved if it was spaced between a couple of different books. Even if it was divided into different volumes within this book that separated the different generations so it moved linearly through time, it would have improved my understanding of this novel.

The Rejected Writers’ Book Club

Title: The Rejected Writers’ Book Club
Author: Suzanne Kelman
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Release Date: March 29, 2016
Rating: ★★★★★

This book was a page turner from beginning to end. It starts with Janet Johnson being asked to attend a meeting with other women who live in the small town of Southlea Bay. She discovers it is a club for rejected book writers. All of the women in the club write books of different genres and then submit them to publishers in order to get a rejection letter. They have a collection of 475 letters and are planning a celebration for when they reach 500 letters. The leader of the club invited Janet, one of the town’s librarians, to the meeting for help with the club’s latest problem: one of the women has received an acceptance letter! This is terrible news for them as it means they are no longer all rejected writers. The ladies embark on a trip to the publisher to get them to change their minds about her book and give her a rejection letter as well as a letter of apology for accepting the book in the first place.

This was a fantastic book and it was very funny. It was hard to put down. The characters were all distinct and, at times, outrageous.

This book is similar to The Jane Austen Book Club, but I liked The Rejected Writer’s Book Club much more because I was laughing out loud the whole time. The idea of writing for the purpose of receiving rejection letters is hilarious, but there are many incidents along the way to getting the letters that are equally entertaining.

New Release: Anything Is Possible

Title: Anything Is Possible
Author: Elizabeth Strout
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: April 25, 2017
Rating: ★★★

This collection of connected short stories is a follow-up to Elizabeth Stout’s bestseller My Name Is Lucy Barton. Each story focuses on different people from Lucy Barton’s hometown of Amgash, Illinois. Since it is a small town, everyone knows each other. The main characters in most of the stories are middle aged. They now have children and grandchildren of their own. They revisit things that happened in their youth, and how it has affected them in their adult lives. A couple of the women had mothers who had affairs and left their husbands. Some of the characters have lost parents. They also discover that a childhood friend was molested by her father. Though they had hard times growing up, most of them have become successful adults, who can give their children better upbringings than they had.

When I started reading this book, I realized it was a sequel to My Name is Lucy Barton. Since I hadn’t read that one, I was worried I wouldn’t understand this book. However, since it was a series of connected stories that don’t focus on what happened in the previous novel, I still enjoyed it.

I liked the way that each of the stories are connected. One character who was mentioned in the previous story would be the main focus of the next story.

The stories are good, but I didn’t find them very moving. They are all well written, but there are so many characters that it got overwhelming at times. They also have similar lives since they grew up in the same town, so I mixed up some of them.

This was a good book, though it wasn’t something I would normally read.

New Release: The Ridge

The thrilling narrative styles of Gillian Flynn and Stephen King meet in this new thriller!

Megan and her husband Tyler move to Willow Ridge. Tyler has just gotten a job at the institute at the edge of the Ridge as a technician. The families of employees at the institute all live in the neighbourhood of the Ridge. Megan is furious that her neighbour, Rachel, has been flirting with her husband. One evening, she goes over to talk to Rachel in her garage. Rachel is standing on a ladder and stacking clay pots on a shelf. Megan tells Rachel to leave her husband alone. When Rachel just laughs at her, Megan starts throwing Rachel’s gnomes at the wall. Then she throws some of the clay pots at Rachel. Rachel loses her balance and falls off the ladder, her neck twisting at an unnatural angle. Megan looks at her and decides that she is dead. Megan runs back home but she’s too scared to call the police. She calls her husband to come home from work, and she tells him what happens. Tyler decides to go over to Rachel’s house and knock on her door, so that when she doesn’t answer he can go around to the back of her house and “discover” her body in the garage. However, he comes back into his house a few minutes later, saying that Rachel opened her door. Megan is sure that she saw Rachel’s neck break when she fell off the ladder, but Tyler saw her open her front door. Has Megan lost her mind or did Rachel somehow come back to life?

I was sitting on the edge of my seat through this whole novel! The chapters were short, yet almost all of them ended with a major cliffhanger. Though Megan doesn’t narrate the story, the narrative follows her, making her perspective seem unreliable. It is a great thrilling mystery and a really fast read too!

New Release: 180 Seconds

Allison is entering her junior year at college. Her adoptive father, Simon, drops her off. He adopted her out of foster care when she was 17 years old. Allison is quiet, and she is happy when she finds out her roommate isn’t attending school anymore, so she will have the room all to herself. Then one day, after wandering around town by herself, a girl grabs her to participate in a social experiment. Allison has to spend 180 seconds looking at a boy, without breaking eye contact. At the end of the 3 minutes, he pushes his chair back and kisses Allison passionately. She runs away immediately after, not saying anything. Her best friend, Steffi, who lives in California, calls her and asks her about a viral video by the online sensation, Esben Baylor. Esben makes videos of his social experiments, and the one that he posted of him and Allison holding eye contact for 180 seconds has gone viral. All of his fans want to know what happened to the girl in the video, after she ran away. At first, Allison is embarrassed and furious at this invasion of her privacy. She doesn’t want any kind of attention, especially not from fans on the internet. Eventually she speaks to Esben, and he isn’t the jerk that she thought he was. She thought he posted the video for his own gain, but he really cares about Allison. Esben teaches Allison to break down the walls that she has built up after years of living in foster care. However, soon her newfound strength is tested, and threatens her relationship with Esben.

In general, this was a good story. It had a unique plot, though some aspects were cliches of contemporary YA books (such as Allison living in foster care for most of her life). It was entertaining and the characters were realistic most of the time.

Good stories give the reader an emotional attachment. When Allison was falling in love with Esben, I felt happy with her. Similarly, when Allison was facing tough times, I felt bad with her.

Though the plot was intriguing, this story was quite a rollercoaster of emotions. The high parts were super high, with everything going extremely well for Allison and the other characters. But the low parts had everything spiralling out of control. There wasn’t really a happy medium of emotions. This is the only criticism I have of an otherwise good story.

New Release: Gone Without A Trace

After attending a conference in Oxford, Hannah is so excited to get home and tell her boyfriend about the promotion coming her way. Her boss told her that she is in the running to become a director at their company soon. She wants to see the look on her boyfriend, Matt’s, face when she tells him the good news. But when she arrives home, she notices his paintings are no longer on the wall. His TV is gone too, with her old one in its place. Everything in her house looks just as it did before he moved in with her, years ago. She goes to the fridge and even his bottle of ketchup is gone. Not only are his belongings gone, but his texts, emails, and phone calls to Hannah have disappeared from her phone. She can’t figure out why he suddenly left her like this. Things only get worse when she starts receiving texts from random numbers, sent from someone who claims to be watching her. If it’s Matt texting her, why doesn’t he just talk to her? Or is it more complicated than just an ex-boyfriend wanting revenge?

Hannah tells the story from her perspective. This makes her an unreliable narrator. She starts drinking, so she doesn’t remember everything she does. She quickly begins questioning herself and her relationship with Matt. She’s confused about the whole situation, and she doesn’t notice that the people around her are acting suspicious, such as her best friend, Katie and her boyfriend James, and her coworkers Sam and Lucy.

To me, what makes a good thriller is the ending. This ending didn’t disappoint. The last 50 pages were so exciting, I think I held my breath the whole time. I’m excited to see what the reception is like for this great, thrilling book.