The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
In 1913, a little girl turns arrives in Australia from England on ship all alone . She can’t remember her name or how she came to be on the ship. The dockmaster takes the little girl in, gives her a name – Nell and raises her as his own. When she is 21, he decides to let her know about her mysterious origins. This knowledge changes her whole outlook and eventually she sets out to England to try and find out who she is and why nobody ever came to look for her.
The story is told from several different points of view, Eliza in the early 1900s, Nell mostly in the mid 70s and Cassandra mostly in 2005. After Nell dies, Cassandra, her granddaughter, is left to try and solve the mystery of Nell’s parentage and her solo voyage to Australia. Eliza is the author of a book of fairy tales that was one of the few things Nell had with her when she arrived in Australia.
The story had so many narrators and so many characters that it had the potential to become quite confusing but it didn’t. It was a long story with lots of twists and turns and while it wasn’t a book I just HAD to read, it was still very captivating and enjoyable to read. It moved slowly but not in a bad way. It was a very comfortable read. It’s the kind of book you like to curl up with on a rainy day. It reminded me a lot of The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield.
It is a very long book but it didn’t feel like it was too long. Sometimes books like this that have lots of little ends to tie up tend to wrap everything up at the end too quickly and it feels like the author was rushing to meet a deadline or something. Not this book – the pace was nice and even throughout the book and it had great flow (even though it was told through so many characters.) I really enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to read more of Morton’s novels.
Going Bovine by Libba Bray
This was another book I picked up because it was part of the library’s summer teen survivor contest. This one I enjoyed a lot more than the other one.
Going Bovine is about 16-year-old Cameron who is pretty disappointed in life and his family when he starts seeing weird stuff. At first he just ignores it or attributes it to some bad pot, but eventually it gets to be too big to be ignored. The doctors diagnose him with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, otherwise known as mad cow disease. The rest of the book is one giant hallucination (or is it?). He sees an angel who sends him on a mission to find Dr. X who can cure him. The mission takes him all over the southern United States and teaches him a lot about himself and his family. It helps him to come to terms with his disease and his coming death.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about this book until the very end. It was a little wacky. (But maybe that was the point?) But as strange as everything that happened was, there was a still an element of the real about it that kept you wondering if it was all in Cameron’s head or if only part of it was. It also had some pretty good lines – my favourite:
‘Yes. Putopia. It stands for Parallel Universe Travel Office…pia.’ Dr. O. breaks in. ‘We haven’t figured out the whole acronym yet, but we wanted to secure the domain name before anyone else did.’
Also, Cameron was reading Don Quixote in his English class at school just before he was diagnosed and I suspect there are many parallels between the two novels but I haven’t read Don Quixote myself so I can’t say for sure. (Can anyone help me out with that?)
The book was well written, funny, poignant and enjoyable. The only complaint I have is that sometimes there was so much crazy going on I found it a little hard to follow. I also suspect there was a ton of symbolism and such that I missed out on. I bet this would be a great one to discuss in a high school English class though…
Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
I picked up this book at the library because it won the Teen Survivor contest (the local library picks a few books each year and then they vote off a new book each week) this summer. It beat out Airborn by Kenneth Oppel, which I loved. I figured it had to be good. Well, I was disappointed – very disappointed.
Stephanie’s rich uncle has just died, leaving most of his money and property to her. When she is staying at his (her) house one night she is attacked by a strange man demanding a key. Just before he kills her Skulduggery Pleasant (a strange man she met at the funeral) bursts onto the scene and saves her life. He then introduces her to a world where magic exists and the bad guy, Serpine, is searching for the ultimate weapon which apparently belonged to her uncle.
First off, I’m pretty sure I went into this book with unfair expectations. Because it won the contest, I was hoping for something GREAT and it wasn’t. But if I had just picked it up without those expectations, I might have enjoyed it more.
It actually wasn’t a bad story and the writing was pretty good. I just found that the story jumped around a lot. I felt like the author was trying to build excitement and suspense but it just came off as a little hyperactive. It just didn’t seem to flow very well.
What I liked about the book though was the dialogue. Stephanie and Skulduggery had these funny little conversations which I found very entertaining. I don’t plan on reading any more Skulduggery books but I’m sure that lots of people will enjoy this book.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
Read for: This review
I loved this book! I have to admit, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read it. For some reason I seem to have some kind of mind block about books that are written by more than one person. I don’t know why. Probably because a really long time ago I read a collaborative book and it sucked and somehow I just attributed the suckiness to the fact that two people worked on the book, when in reality it was probably something else entirely!
Anyway, this one was about two teenage boys named Will Grayson who both live in the Chicago area but have never met. One night, through a set of funny and sad circumstances, they come into each other’s lives. Even though they don’t really become friends, they each eventually gain something from each other.
The characters in the book were so real and likable. Especially Tiny Cooper, the first Will Grayson’s best friend. I think he was my favourite character. As I read the book, the way I felt about each character changed. Sometimes I liked them and other times I was annoyed by them. I think this is why they felt so real to me, because this is how we feel about the real people in our life. Sometimes they are awesome and other times we get ticked at them.
I also love John Green’s writing. I’ve never read anything by David Levithan before but I think the two writing styles worked well together. (They wrote alternating chapters for each of the Wills.) They styles were different enough that each character had his own voice but similar enough that book book flowed well. And I loved the ending. I had no idea where the story was taking me, but I really liked where it ended up.
Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran
Finally! A book I’ve enjoyed. I haven’t been posting many reviews because I haven’t been finishing any books due to disinterest. And the ones I have been able to finish, I haven’t really liked either so I haven’t posted that many reviews this summer.
This one is about Cleopatra’s daughter (duh!). After Egypt is conquered by the Romans, Selene and Alexander, Cleopatra’s twins are taken to Rome and become part of Caesar’s family. It tells the story from Selene’s point of view, from entering Rome for the first time and adjusting to the different culture and way of life to yearning to return to Egypt and losing people she loves.
This is the first of Moran’s books that I’ve read and I can’t wait to read more. I’ve read a lot of Colleen McCullough’s books and there is a significant amount of overlap in the time line but McCullough’s books are more epic than Cleopatra’s Daughter is, which I liked. Instead of trying to tell a story that takes place over several decades she stuck to a relatively small time period and it worked. I love reading books that take place in ancient Rome and Egypt. It’s so fun to imagine what it must have been like to live back then.
I liked the writing style as well. Moran didn’t try to explain every little thing about how society and politics worked. Instead she showed the reader through the plot. And the characters seemed very real to me (maybe because I know that they were real at some point) but Moran did a good job of bringing these ancient rulers to life.
If you like historical fiction, I would definitely recommend this one.
