Review for The Fault in our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Published by: Dutton Books ®

Summery:

[From Inside Flap]

Despite the tumor-shrinking miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

Introduction:

Many people know John Green through either his books or the YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers, he has with his brother Hank. I first heard about him on a book-tube channel when that person reviewed The Fault in Our Stars. I then watched one of the Vlogbrothers’ videos because this book-tuber mentioned that the author had a channel on YouTube. I didn’t think much of it after that. But then many more book reviewers were saying amazing things about this book, and after seeing one in particular from CassJayTuck (who is my favorite book-tuber), I convinced myself that I would buy it. Well, I didn’t get it for a long time after that. I was afraid that all the hype was just because John Green has many loyal followers on YouTube. I started to watch the vlogbrothers videos, just to see what kind of person this John Green was, and I soon became quite a fan. I quickly subscribed to many of John and Hank’s channels. They seem like really awesome guys. They’re funny, smart, and never dull. And that is what finally convinced me to by The Fault in Our Stars.

Characters:

Hazel Lancaster is 16 and living with terminal cancer and has to have a continuous flow of oxygen to her lungs. The story starts with her at Cancer Support Group, which meets at a church. She meets Augustus there, who came because his friend, Isaac, brought him. Augustus previously lost his leg to cancer, but is now cancer free. He’s good-looking, buff, and athletic, even though he has a prosthetic leg, and he’s immediately interested in Hazel. At first, she fights her growing feelings for him. Since she’s dying of cancer, she doesn’t want to get close to him, but then wind up hurting him later when she dies. Augustus changes her mind about that, finally, because he is this wonderfully perfect guy, who does some amazing things for Hazel just because he loves her.

I do have a few problems with these two however. Both of these characters are in their mid-teens, but neither of them spoke like teenagers would. Most of their “witty banter” seemed really forced and plotted out way too much. None of it seemed to flow naturally like real conversations do. Then, the personalities of these characters were very, very bland, and they just seemed very much like crafted people cut out of plain cardboard. I could never feel a connection with either Hazel or Augustus; it was so easy to remember that they were just story characters. There was very little believability in their personalities. The characters that I could identify with, however, were Hazel’s parents, who were both very natural and believable. It was easy to feel for Hazel’s father when he cried, or to understand why Hazel’s mother would do anything for her daughter. The love was easy to feel there. Isaac, Augustus’ friend, was also easier to believe in. The poor guy, he went through some hard things, and seemed to handle it more like a teenager would.

My Thoughts:

Because I consider myself a fan of John Green, I really wanted to like this book a lot, and feel the extreme emotions that I’ve heard that other people experienced whilst reading it. A really enjoyable thing about it was when I opened up the book and started reading, because I could instantly tell it was a John Green book! The narration was so him, even though the book is told from Hazel’s point of view. John Green’s voice is very distinct. Watch a number of his videos and then read one of his books and you’ll be able to understand what I’m talking about. A lot of authors struggle with having a distinct “voice” in their narration and their words come across as sounding robotic and bland. Not so with John Green! He is a very good writer. Unfortunately, his characters didn’t meet my expectations and fell short of seeming real. I wanted to like this book so much because I like the author so much. I kept reading it and telling myself, “Hey, it’s John Green! He’s awesome! His book HAS to be awesome too.” But it wasn’t. No matter how much I wanted to like this book, get invested in the characters, and cry at the end (like I’ve heard so many people have), I couldn’t. I feel terrible about that. I wanted to love this book so bad! However, because it’s John Green, I’m planning on getting another of his books and giving it a chance. Maybe this just wasn’t the book for me. It is very different from the books I normally read, since there’re no fantasy elements in it at all. I don’t usually read contemporary fiction, so maybe I just need to read more, and get used to them. My preference is for books that are fantastical. I mean, I live a contemporary life, why would I want to read about someone else’s contemporary life? That’s just personal preference, and has nothing to do with my opinion of the book’s or the characters’ quality.

Warnings:

There’s some language in this book, and there’s a brief, but not really descriptive sex scene, as well. What else do you expect from a Young Adult novel? Other than that, there isn’t any violence. It is a book about people with cancer, so some death is also to be expected. (I don’t think I would consider that a spoiler alert, I mean, considering the book’s content, would anyone expect anything else?)

My Age Rating: 14 and up. I think it’s quite appropriate for the age group it’s marketed for.

~Cya!

 

 

Review for Serena

Serena by Ron Rash
Publisher: Ecco, An Imprint of Harper-Collins Publishers
Summery
[Back Cover]

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Although George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains—but she soon shows herself to be the equal of any man, overseeing crews, hunting rattlesnakes, even saving her husband’s life in the wilderness.

Together Serena and George ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of their favor. Yet when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she sets out to murder the son George fathered without her. Mother and child begin a struggle for their lives, and when Serena suspects George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons’ intense, passionate marriage begins to unravel, and the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.

Introduction:

When one signs up for a literature class in college, they must be aware that they are going to read a number of different kinds of books. Good ones, bad ones, ones that make you think, and ones that make you want to forget. Yeah, there’s quite a variety. This book, Serena, is the first novel my class was assigned. We have been covering Southern Gothic Literature, and this book definitely fits in that category. There are a few reasons why the teacher chose this book, I think. One is that it’s set in North Carolina, which is the state where I live. The second reason is probably because the author came to my college a year before to speak and sign books. My English teacher at the time required my entire class to go to this author talk by Ron Rash. He spoke on growing up in North Carolina, and about his many short stories. He even read one to the audience, and while I found the whole talk interesting, that little sample of his work convinced me that his writing wasn’t something that would interest me. I probably saw Serena on his book table afterwards, but it didn’t leave an impression on me. None of the books seemed to be anything I’d read actually. When my literature teacher told us we’d be reading this, I was kind of surprised to find out that I knew of the author.

Characters:

The main characters are the Pembertons. They are two lumber company owners who come to North Carolina to cut down the trees in the mountains. (I’ve been to these mountains before, and I really don’t know why anyone would want to cut down the forests there. They are beautiful.) Anyway, Serena and George Pemberton are newly married when they come to the camp, and their arrival starts a string of killings and murders. While Pemberton seems to be a tough man who isn’t afraid to shed blood, Serena is cold and ruthless. My literature teacher describes her as very practical, and I do have to agree. If anyone gets in Serena’s way, or does something she doesn’t like, she won’t mess around, and she’ll have them killed. That stops anyone from coming around and bothering her again, for sure. She is what I have dubbed “murder-happy.” One little mistake and she’d do away with anyone. No one is an exception; any one of the characters could be her next target. Her husband seems very similar to her, but in a way, he is more human. The man feels some of these murders are unnecessary, and when Serena has her sights on Pemberton’s illegitimate child and its mother, Pemberton starts to feel sort of protective for the child. I had a feeling Pemberton would have been a better man if he never had met Serena. She influenced him in almost every aspect, and as some of my classmates have said, “She’s the one who seems to wear the pants in the family.” I’m not too sure about that statement, it did seem that Serena swayed Pemberton on many issues, but I don’t know if she was the dominating one in their marriage. It’s more like they shared everything equally.

There’s also a man named Galloway and his future-telling mother. They both become prominent in the story, and are feared almost as much as the Pembertons. Galloway is a very threatening character, of the kind you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, or anywhere else for that matter.

Of the good characters, there’s Rachel and her son, Jacob, who is also Pemberton’s son. Rachel goes through a very rough time, from the moment her father is killed, to the time she has to start running for her son’s life. She’s a hard working girl, and doesn’t wallow in self pity, though she has many reasons to. The other good characters in this story are the Sherriff McDowell, who I would say is the hero of the story. I was rooting for Rachel, Jacob, and McDowell through the whole thing. I didn’t want to see anything happen to the baby, or to his mother. A few of the other characters mentioned, but not main characters, were Joe Vaughn, who is a friend of Rachel’s, and the lumber crew.

My Thoughts:

This is one of the few books told from the point of view of the villains. I’ve wondered why there weren’t more stories that give us that point of view, but after reading this, I can honestly say I don’t like it. I want a book told from the hero’s perspective and with a battle between good and evil. I’ll be looking through my To-Be-Read stack for something that I know will be like that. I need a story about a hero after reading Serena. This book has been compared to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Serena’s character to that of Lady Macbeth. I do see the similarities of the two stories, and the main difference between the two leading ladies is Lady Macbeth’s guilt about her wrong-doings. Serena never regrets anything. If her killing ways weren’t enough to make you dislike her, then maybe it’s her lack of personality. In telling my family about this book and Serena, I’ve described her as “an evil, cardboard cutout”. She has no personality, she falls flat, and the way she spoke really distracted me. It didn’t sound natural, and seemed more forced than the voices of the other characters. In the author interview at the end of the book, I found out that Ron Rash stated he had Serena talk in a “loose iambic pentameter.” So, that’s what was wrong! I really don’t think he should have done that, because it was a source of irritation for me.

Another thing about this story was the writing. Many reviews I read on Goodreads say how great Ron Rash’s writing is, and I guess it’s not bad, since this book was nominated for a Pen/Faulker Award, but a few sentences confused me. I found the way he worded some of them hard to understand, since the punctuation was weirdly used, so I had to unravel the meaning sometimes. Other times he didn’t even use quotation marks for dialogue, but had it the same as the narration. I’d read the paragraph, and not know one sentence is actually one of the characters talking, until I got to the “So-and-so said.” I don’t understand why he so loosely used the quotation marks, or why he didn’t always put different characters’ dialogue on separate lines instead of in the same paragraph. Some of these are rules that are stressed in grammar lessons, but for some reason Ron Rash seemed to ignore them whenever he felt like it.

The biggest gripe for me, however, was the way Serena’s evil deeds went unpunished. That woman gets away with murder, and becomes very successful because of it. No one can touch her, and the only one who tries dies for it. I just think that in fiction, good should be rewarded and evil should be punished. Even if the bad guys do get away with their schemes for a while, there should be a resolution at the end where good finally triumphs. It may be realistic for people like Serena to get away with their deeds in real life, but in a book, I think there should be hope and justice. Isn’t that why we read books? To escape from real life? To learn a valuable lessen, maybe? This book holds nothing like that. Unless the whole reason  for it is to try to make readers despise the main character and shock us by showing her get rewards for her ways. Maybe I’m just over sensitive. What do you think?

There’s also a movie coming out eventually. It starts Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as George and Serena Pemberton. I personally don’t want to see this movie, but it will be interesting to see how it is received.

Warnings:

This isn’t a book written for teens, but adults. It’s very mature in places. There are quite a large number of scenes with sexual content, violent deaths happen often, though many of them only the aftermath is shown, and there’s also swearing. It actually isn’t as bad as Across the Universe is with the inappropriate content, but it’s mostly just the story I have a problem with.

My Age Rating: 16 and up.  

~CYA!

Review for Across the Universe

Across the Universe Trilogy: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Published by the Penguin Group

Summery:

[Back Cover]

Amy is a cryogenically frozen passenger aboard the spaceship Godspeed. She has left her boyfriend, friends—and planet—behind to join her parents as a member of Project Ark Ship. Amy and her parents believe they will wake on a new planet, Centauri-Earth, three hundred years in the future. But fifty years before Godspeed’s scheduled landing, cryo chamber 42 is mysteriously unplugged, and Amy is violently woken from her frozen slumber.

Someone tried to murder her.

Now, Amy is caught inside a tiny world where nothing makes sense. Godspeed’s 2,312 passengers have forfeited all control to Eldest, a tyrannical and frightening leader. And Elder, Eldest’s rebellious teenage heir, is both fascinated with Amy and eager to discover whether he has what it takes to lead.

Amy desperately wants to trust Elder. But should she put her faith in a boy who has never seen life outside the ship’s cold metal walls? All Amy knows is that she and Elder must race to unlock Godspeed’s hidden secrets before whoever woke her tries to kill again.

Introduction:



This is the cover I got.

This book, oh, this book. Where should I start with this? First of all, the cover was beautiful! Not the one I ended up getting, which was actually quite ugly, but Wal-Mart was selling it cheap so I took it. The original cover looked so graceful and the colors were just lovely. That was what drew me to pick it up in the first place. Then the description sounded so exciting. It was a mystery story, in SPACE! How cool is that premise? Very cool, I’d say. I went in expecting a romance/murder mystery story, but what I got was something that shouldn’t have been put to print. Seriously, I don’t understand any of the positive reviews on this book. For one thing, the romance was nonexistent. It was just a bunch of lusting from the male character and pretty much nothing from the female character. Another thing was the slow pacing and the characters’ ability to forget about the cryogenically frozen passengers who are getting murdered. Really, it would seem like they would forget for a long while, and then suddenly remember that those people were there and then do a little more thinking about the situation, never moving on the figuring out the connections which were staring at them and blaringly obvious. Expect this to be the harshest review I’ve ever done. I usually try to find something good about a book, but it will be hard to do with this one.

Characters:

We’re first introduced to Amy when she and her parents are being put in the cryo chambers. That scene was intense and vivid, I’ll give it that. It grossed me out, and I felt sorry that her family had to go through that. For the good portion of half the book, Amy is in the cryo chamber, dreaming or thinking. The chapters are usually short, and didn’t really add much to the story or her character. I guess it was to show that Amy wasn’t completely out of it. She could sense the passage of time in a way, but never know just how long she had been in the cryo chamber. Once Amy is let out, she immediately starts to act with no thought to the consequences to her actions. She awakes to a ship that is mono-ethnic, and the people have never seen anyone with pale skin and red hair. She completely stands out, and she is told to stay in the hospital to avoid any trouble. What does she do then? She goes for a run outside around the ship. Yup, smart move. She nearly gets in big trouble. The leader of the ship, Eldest, threatens her, but she continues to go on and do things her way. Now, when it’s because she’s trying to find out who tried to murder her and is trying to murder the others, I can see that, because he’s a suspect. But for a good portion of the book, she does nothing but complain that she ever came in the first place. She kept complaining that the way things were on the ship were wrong, but never did anything to explain why they were wrong. Poor Elder was probably so confused by her. The girl barely did anything.

Elder is the only teenager aboard Godspeed (I’ll explain why later), and he is to be the next Eldest. Elder is introduced in the second chapter, and is the reader’s link to how the ship thinks. He’s also the romantic interest for Amy, such as it was. He sees her in the cryo chamber and can’t help but think how different and beautiful she looks, and how much he wants to kiss her, and other things. When she is unfrozen, he tries to get to know her better, while also trying to please Eldest, who is teaching him how to become the next leader. He had doubts about if he would make a good leader, which was believable. He also seemed to have unwavering faith in Eldest at some points, and then be completely distrustful of him the next. He battled with the things he used to know, and with the truths he was coming to learn. All in all, he would have been a believable and maybe even likable character, but there was no personality, nothing to distinguish him, and he seemed kind of wishy-washy in my opinion. He was also very disrespectful to the idea of God and laughed when Amy mentioned it, saying believing in that was ridiculous. The only reason he seemed to like Amy was so he would have a special someone to experience the Season with. I don’t want to get started on that, but I must if I am to do this review right. But I’m not going to talk about it now.

The only character I enjoyed was Harley. He was Eldest’s best friend who lived in the hospital because he was supposedly insane. He was an artist, and was quite enthusiastic about it. Creative people are those I can understand and relate to more. He was also very kind and caring, and took good care of Amy when Elder was off with Eldest. I actually would have preferred Harley to be the romantic interest. If I never understood the term “chemistry” before I read this book, I do now, because Amy and Eldest had none! Harley and Amy had more chemistry together and they didn’t even have feelings for one another! It’s strange how supportive characters seem to be the better people in books or movies. I don’t know why it seems to be like that.

My Thoughts:

Ok, so here’s the part where I usually talk about what I liked about the book. Well, I can’t really do that now, because I just mentioned Harley above, and he was the only highlight of this book for me. In reviews I’ve read for this book, people would go on about how well-written it was, and how poetic it sounded, and how great the plot was. Um, did we read the same book? This is actually the first book that I’ve made marks in the margins. Not only for the grammar and punctuation errors, but for odd situations that came up, or the use of the wrong word in a sentence. It was not well-written in my opinion. And then there was the use of made up words that annoyed me to no end. Yes, I get it, it’s almost three hundred years into the future, so there are bound to be either new words, or old words with different meanings, but seriously, the substitute swear words were just cheesy. I’m glad the author didn’t use the real thing instead, since it seemed to be Elder’s favorite word, but still, why make one up? Another word often used by Elder was “brilly” and I couldn’t really get what the meaning was supposed to be. Was it supposed to be a positive word or a negative? Because I think the author used it for both. There were more words that were made up, but I think just mentioning those two will be enough. It was annoying and silly sounding. The overuse of them either made me laugh or groan.

Then there was the blaringly obvious plot twist. For the entire book, the characters are trying to figure out what Amy and the other victims had in common. They even made a list and drew lines connecting similar aspects, but never seemed to grasp it. To me, it was so obvious that I was able to see it without the use of their chart. Why couldn’t the characters see the connection? I won’t say what the connection was, because if someone decides to read this book after my review, I don’t want to spoil anymore of it than I have to. But really, the clues the author placed in the book for the reader weren’t cleverly hidden, and they just made the characters seem either dumb, or uncaring about what was happening. And then the shocking twist about the villain. Gasp! I didn’t see that one coming. -_-  (Hear my sarcasm there?)

The absolute worst part of this book? Every scene that had something to do with the Season. To keep a regulated population, every person went through the Season. Elder is the only teenage aboard because he was born to be the next Eldest, who is supposed to be older than the generation he rules. The Season had the entire ship’s population going about acting like animals in heat. It was extremely inappropriate for a Young Adult audience, and was the most graphic, terrible, and perverted majority of a book that I’ve ever come across. There was absolutely no point in putting such a nasty thing into a book that could very well be read by some young teenager that does not need to read something like this. Where’s a fire when I need it? This book ought to be burned.

Warnings:

Pretty much everything one could warn about is in this book. Language? Yes, both the real thing, and made up substitutes. Sexual content? For many chapters it’s talked about and described. Suicide? It has that in there too. Violence? Some, but not bad.  

My Age Rating: 20 and up. (But if I were to be truthful, it’s not appropriate for anyone of any age. It’s just rubbish.)

~Cya!

Review for Airborn

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Publisher: Eos (An imprint of HarperCollins® Publishers)

Summery:

[Back Cover]

Matt Cruse has the life he has always dreamed of as a cabin boy on the Aurora, a luxury passenger airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean.

Then one night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies who are completely real and utterly mysterious.

Introduction:

Airborn is my first taste of steampunk. I don’t know if it can be called true steampunk, but since it uses airships and not so realistic, yet old-fashioned, flying machines, that’s what I think I can classify it being. After reading a very positive review of this book, I bought it, and fully expected to have it read within a few days. It certainly started out interesting enough; just read my comments on it on Goodreads. The first portion of the book was full of excitement and beautifully written. I seriously wanted to climb aboard an airship and fly across the Pacificus with Matt, the main character. Once I hit the middle portion of the book however, things started to get very dull and the writing became monotonous. Once the final stretch came around, the book finally started to pick up pace and it felt like important stuff was finally happening. I finally began to enjoy the characters and their situation.

Characters:

The main character, Matt Cruse, is not what I’d call a likable character. He first started out that way. When he was up in the crow’s nest and spotted the sinking balloon and the old man, and then he became relatable when the job he was hoping to get was given to Bruce Lunardi, the son of the man who owns the Lunardi line of airships, of which The Aurora is a part. One could understand how he felt overlooked and unfairly treated. Bruce was a likable guy though, he wasn’t a snob, nor did he rub his job in Matt’s face. He was actually my favorite character in the book, not Matt, the main character I was supposed to sympathize with. Matt became annoying and whiny. He would continuously talk about his ship, The Aurora, and how much he loved her, how much he loved flying, how wonderful his amazing sense of direction was. I wanted to shout at him, “I get it! You can move on now.” Then, after the shipwreck, he wouldn’t quit whining about how terrible he felt on land, it was suffocating him, closing him off, he wasn’t flying, it was so terrible! Again, I wanted to yell at him, “You survived the crash, everyone is all right, shouldn’t you focus more on keeping it that way instead of how miserable solid, unmoving Earth is?” I didn’t like Matt at all. I almost wished The Aurora would turn out to be landlocked forever. That might be mean to wish on the main character, but he really annoyed me that much about it.

Then there was Kate, our other main character. She was intent on discovering the mysterious creatures her grandfather found just before he died. He was mocked for it, so she wants to prove her grandfather was right. A noble thing to do for her grandfather, so that’s why she boards the airship in the first place. After they’re marooned on the very island where her grandfather discovered the flying creatures, she enlists Matt to help her uncover evidence of them, and that’s when she got annoying. She didn’t seem to understand that Matt had duties he couldn’t just abandon, especially since the ship needed repairs. She got him in trouble a number of times, but never seemed to understand why. She thought everyone was being a pain and unfair. A number of times I wanted to tell Matt to just leave her alone. Finding the flying creatures wasn’t as important as getting everyone off the island safely.

Both of the main characters seemed to have one-track minds about their respective interests. But when the villain finally showed up, the characters started becoming less annoying, because then, they were forced into situations that caused them to act in the ship’s and the crew’s best interests. Finally, they both stopped thinking only of their precious obsessions and did something.

My Thoughts:

This book did start out exciting and attention holding, but that was only the first one-fourth of it. The next two-fourths were boring, filled with ship talk and description of every little detail of the airship and its workings. Some parts almost felt like a manual. Then there were pages of Matt groaning about him and his ship being on land, and how it was so terrible. I felt like I read the same things over and over again when the focus was on Matt.

When the final fourth of the book came around, things picked up again and I really enjoyed it. It once again became exciting, suspenseful, and the characters were once again put in interesting situations. If you can get through that tedious middle portion of the book without giving up, this book is a great read. I’d recommend it, but warn whoever I’m lending it to about the slow and almost pointless middle. Even if the main characters were annoying, the supporting cast was great and the situation was thrilling.

And speaking of pointless, the flying creatures were such an odd addition to this book about airships and pirates, I felt they were out of place. Sure, they were the reason Kate showed up in the first place, but I’d much rather read the book without them there. I was nearing the end, and the flying mystery creatures had yet to do anything productive to the story. In fact, they were practically pointless even in the end. I think the author included these creatures because of his previous books in The Silverwing Trilogy. They’re about bats, and apparently, this author has a great interest in flying things. They felt like a forced element in what would have—in my opinion—made a much better pirate/castaway type story. Especially since the pirate captain was very interesting and a complex character. He wasn’t the stereotypical bad guy pirate, which is why the last fraction of the book was so awesome. I won’t deny that the creatures in this book were interesting, but they just seemed to be in the wrong book.

The writing was good, if wordy and littered with unnecessary descriptions, and half the book was just plain awesome. Just watch out for that middle chunk. People who really enjoy reading a very involved book will probably enjoy this.

Warnings:

There was some language, but not that much. It was typical of what is found in other YA books. There are fight scenes going on, but nothing excessively violent. It had some blood and some death.

My Age Rating: 13 and up (Because it’s a more tedious read than a lot of other YA fiction.)

~Cya!