The New Year is fast approaching as well as a new decade. We are now entering our second chance at the “Roaring Twenties” and I couldn’t be more excited to start some New Year’s Resolutions of my own.
Over the past year I had noticed the amount that I read was exponentially less than in previous years. With work, school and life, reading feel into the background. I decided that it is time to regain my love of reading and what better time to make a change than at the start of the decade?
I am now one hundred pages into The Cruel Prince by Holly Black and it struck me in such a way that I had to do a review before I even finished. Please, don’t mistake this for a positive review because I am very much disappointed in the story thus far.
I originally picked this book up because I had seen it multiple times on the book side of Tiktok and I couldn’t go to a bookstore without seeing it very obviously displayed. It became clear that this book was meant to be on my “to be read” list. I can’t deny that the plot appealed to me at first, a human girl in faerie court. It is a Young Adult novel so I really had no doubt there would be some type of love interest (my guess would be Prince Cardan since his name is mentioned on the back cover, assumingly the “cruel prince” the title is referring to). It seemed like a harmless, if not mindless, read to get me out of my reading rut. It also helps that the cover design is extremely appealing. I did, indeed, judge this book by the cover.
I suppose I can’t complain because so far I’ve gotten what I was looking or, a relatively mindless read. However, the story is lacking in world building and, after one hundred pages, still hasn’t provided characters I really care about. Here’s the story so far… and all of my problems with it.
Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.
If you are a book lover like me, you probably have book shelves filled with stories. And if you are terrible like me, then you probably haven’t read a good amount of those books that decorate your shelves. Even worse, you have plenty of books in your room that you haven’t read but you still continue to buy more books.
That is the situation I found myself in today. I have more than a dozen books in my room I haven’t read yet and I still took the trip to Barnes and Noble, knowing exactly how it would turn out – I would leave with a handful of books. Five books to be exact. I figured I’d share with you the books that caught my eye and that I trust will renew my love of reading.
Well, it happens to the best of us: the infamous reading rut. I’m afraid that it hit me pretty hard during this whole pandemic. A time that I had infinite time to read and create and instead I did the opposite. If you look at the Bibliography page, you’ll see that I haven’t completed a book since April. I’ve started many but didn’t get far enough in any of them to make note of them on that page.
So, this is me starting over. I want to find my love for books again and I think I’m finally back in a place where I can escape into the pages I love so much.
That being said, I can’t guarantee that I’m going to be entirely consistent but I am going to try to read and update when I can. I also believe I’m going to take a different approach to reviewing books, possibly going at them from a more segmented point of view.
I’m excited for the things to come and the books I have yet to read. I can’t wait to bring you all along for the ride.
I care more about the people in books than the people I see every day.
Jo Walton, Among Others
We all have our favorite book characters; whether they be the dreamy ones, or the intelligent ones. That doesn’t mean they would all be good at a party. I love Sherlock Holmes but I’d imagine he’d be quite the buzzkill at a party. Here are the list of book characters I would love to have a night on the town with.
Wintersong started out so incredibly promising and then somehow managed to become worse and worse as the story continued. It is a beautifully written novel but unfortunately the characters and the main romance falls short. You see, the thing about a love story is that there needs to be some kind of chemistry. Unfortunately, there is nothing in this story that makes me root for the two main characters to get together.
Hooray! Hooray! The end of the world has been postponed!
Herge, The Shooting Star
Times are weird right now. We’re all stuck inside with our families and absolutely nowhere to go. That being said, I couldn’t help but think about what characters I would want to take with me into the apocalypse. Whether it’s zombies or just an abandoned waste land, these are the characters I would want by my side during our very own apocalypse.
It happens to the best of us. We start a book – hopeful for what is to come. Then, we begin reading it and each page is harder to get through than the last. Sometimes it’s the book, whether it be bad writing or a terrible plot, and sometimes life just gets in the way. Either way, we’ve all had books that we’ve started that we just didn’t finish. Here’s a list of some of the books I didn’t finish for one reason or another in the past year.
You probably think that Aled Last and I are going to fall in love or something. Since he is a boy and I am a girl.
I just want to say – we don’t.
Alice Oseman, Radio Silence
Right from the start, I came in to this book with pretty high expectations. One of my favorite Youtubers is a book based channel called paperbackdreams and she has raved about this book several times on her channel. For her, it was an emotional read and she claims it as one of her favorite books. Because of her opinion on this novel, I expected a lot from it. Perhaps I set myself up for disappointment in this way.
From the start, the author and the narrator make it pretty clear that this isn’t some kind of love story. Frances Janvier and Aled Last do not end up together, not romantically anyway. On one hand, this is a bit of a let down considering I’m a sucker for a good love story. On the other hand, it was refreshing to read a novel that was about life problems and platonic friendship. I must say, that is something this novel did really well. Normally friendships are the secondary plot while the romantic relationships remain in the forefront. It’s all about giving the people what they want, I suppose.
The story takes place in the UK which can be somewhat confusing for American reader’s at first, only because the book focuses largely around the school system. Francis, our lead female, is a head student that spends most of her time studying and preparing herself for University. In this story, there is a lot of talk about terms and exams that I was unfamiliar with but it wasn’t too difficult to keep up. I think what was most important to understand was that Francis was in her last year of, essentially, our version of high school and was going to go to university soon.
The studious heroine isn’t exactly a new character in a novel. Many times I have seen the main character that only spends their time studying and therefore doesn’t have many friends and therefore their studies becomes their identity. This is how Frances started out, providing little need for any backstory into much of her life. Her whole life up until this point has been about getting the best grades to get into the best university. Well, that and a podcast called Universe City that she has been obsessed with for some time but has never talked to anyone about. In fact, you’ll find that anything that makes Frances interesting – her interest in the podcast, her drawings, or even her odd choice in clothing – she doesn’t talk about with anyone.
That is until she becomes friends with Aled Last, a fellow school mate and the secret creator of her favorite podcast, Universe City. One drunken night, Aled mistakenly admits that he is the creator and their friendship blooms from there. Frances and Aled both become comfortable around each other, each coming out of their shells and exposing their odd interests to each other. Frances even becomes the animator for Aled’s podcast and becomes a guest character in the world of Universe City, the sidekick of the podcast’s main character, Radio Silence.
I can see where paperbackdreams and other people would gain a certain attachment to this book. It touches on several important subjects such as friendship, sexuality, forms of mental abuse, and how society and family expectations can affect young adults and decisions that they make.
As discussed earlier, I love that this is a story about friendship. When Aled and Frances find each other, the two of them really grow into themselves and start to embrace more of who they are. However, I wish it had more to do with the fact they were comfortable being just friends with no romantic feelings for each other than the fact that both of their sexuality made it so they had no romantic feelings. Frances is bisexual and used to have a crush on Aled’s sister before his sister ran away and Aled struggles to put a label on his own, whether it be pansexual or asexual or something else. I’m completely fine with this and I actually enjoy the representation of these characters in this novels as I believe it is one of the more accurate and believable representations I’ve seen in a novel, but I suppose I also want to break the misconception of “guys and girls can’t be just friends”.
We also see in this story Aled struggle a lot with familial expectations. His mother, as we come to find out, is abusive in a way that most of us wouldn’t recognize. She takes away the things that brings him joy, even making him end his beloved podcast and putting his dog down without his permission, so that he only focuses on school. We find out later that this is why his sister ran away which ultimately made his mother’s focus turn to him, making his life a living Hell.
Perhaps even worse, Aled never wanted to go to University. I think that is one of the things I enjoy about this novel. The main character, a boy that has spent most of his life studying to be better and get into the best school, doesn’t even want to go to college. He did it all because it was expected of him. Even Frances finally decides to change what major she wants to do in college, following her passion instead of what seems practical or profitable. I think this could be an incredibly important novel for teens to read. Parents should, of course, have some influence in what their children decide to do. Parents are there to help their children make educated decisions, but college isn’t right for everyone.
I think this book contains a good message and is a good read for those who are about to graduate high school or are just starting at university. It’s a coming of age story told in a unique way. I also really loved the idea of Universe City but it may also be one of the reasons I gave this story only 3/5 stars. It seemed like a good idea for the story, but also seemed like an afterthought. The story contains excerpts of the podcast and few descriptions of the characters and the creation but the podcast had me completely lost. I couldn’t exactly picture it if I tried and it doesn’t feel like the author completely knew what the podcast was either. The author wrote just enough on it to try to appease the reader but also not enough for me to understand what it was.
Also, a couple of the conflicts meant to be the “big” conflicts… didn’t feel like they should have been the “big” conflict. Aled basically unfriends Frances after it is found out that he is the creator of Universe City because he blames her for everyone finding out. I’ll admit that she didn’t do much to hide his identity, but it wasn’t exactly her fault either; at least, it wasn’t only her fault and it wasn’t right to end a whole friendship over.
Then there was the whole plot point of Aled’s sister, Carys Last. Frances had a crush on Carys when they were younger and one night kissed her while spending the night together. Carys, I’d say, overreacted. The next day, Carys ended up running away and none of the characters had seen her for years. It turns out she left because of her overbearing mother but that means she also left her brother to get the brunt of his mother’s mental and emotional abuse. Carys, in my opinion, was a selfish and pointless character. Even at the end of the novel, Frances goes through this whole thing of tracking Carys down so that she can help her brother and it doesn’t even amount to much in the end. I suppose he was happy to see his sister at last and it was more than likely an emotional moment for him, but it added very little to the story. Honestly, the book could have been written without a Carys Last and nothing would change.
Overall, I’m certainly not raving about this book and it won’t be first on my recommendation list. It was good, but certainly not one of my favorites and it isn’t one of those books I feel like I’ll want to reread anywhere in the near future. Perhaps it’s just because it isn’t exactly targeted to my age group. This is a good novel for teens, an okay novel for anybody else.
Have you read this book? Do you agree with what I said or do you have different thoughts? Let me know in the comments!
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
March certainly didn’t start off strong as far as reading… then the virus hit and everything came to a screeching halt. Just like many others, I’ve been confined to my house with nothing to do other than what is immediately accessible to me. Fortunately for me, I’m surrounded by books and this became a great opportunity for me to catch up on some reading. My March reading list:
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
There are some things non-readers will just never understand and some things that fellow readers understand and relate to all too well; one of these things happens to be re-reading a book we’ve already read. Some people can hardly sit through a book in it’s entirety, let alone read it all over again – sometimes multiple times!
I’m super guilty of re-reading novels, even if I do have books on my shelf that I haven’t even read yet. Something is just so enjoyable about returning to the characters and world of a book I’ve already read. A lot of people ask why I keep my books and let them take up room when I could get rid of them and the fact that I like to revisit them is a big reason why. Here’s a list of the books I currently have on my bookshelf that I’ve read more than once.
The Reader 