Persuasion

by: Jane Austen
Publisher: Headline Review
Dates Read: January 8 - March 26
Pages: 267
Source: Own it

Why did I read it?
It's Jane Austen.  That is enough of a reason.  

Persuasion is the last, completed novel by Jane Austen.  Anne Elliot fell in love with Frederick Wentworth when she was twenty.  They became engaged but after many persuasions from a woman very close to their family, Jane's mother had died, the engagement was broken as he was not seen to be suitable for her.  Fast forward to eight years later the book begins and Jane still loves him.  Now he is a captain in the navy and extremely suitable for her to marry, but she is convinced too much time has passed.  Let the sexual tension begin.  

Jane Austen truly understand the mind of women.  Her books are timeless, I am sure, for this very reason.  I have said for years, nobody writes love pentagons like Austen.  It is always so much more than boy likes girl with one mild conflict.  Boy likes girl but girl rejected him so he focuses on his work, makes some friends, realizes he may have given another girl the idea he likes her, she almost dies, he feels obligated, just barely gets out of that one, writes a wonderfully telling note and, finally, gets the girl.  Her books continue to feel relatable even though they were written 150 years ago.  They always will be because she just plain got it.  

If I have to say one bad thing about Persuasion, it would be that it got a little slow in the middle there.  The plot was not pulling me in and then BAM I thought for sure we were witnessing the death of a girl who landed head first on some rocks.  That is not something I have seen in Austen before.  It pulled me right back in and really helped to push us forwards.  I was all in from there.  

I cannot speak any more negatives than that.  It's Jane Austen.  She is a classic for a reason.  Everything she writes is wonderful - pure felicity.  

"You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope."   

Rating: 4.5/5
As I said.  It was slow until the girl almost died from a head wound. Jane Austen my friends.  She knows how to write waiting and longing.  She just gets it!


Recommendation: 
Everyone should read this book.  Everyone should read Jane Austen.  Men, you want to understand how our mind's work?  Read Austen.  It will help.  She just gets it! I really don't think their is a maximum number of times I can say that she gets it, so read it. 

Before You Meet Prince Charming

by: Sarah Mally
Publisher: Tomorrow's Forefathers
Dates Read: February 6-February 23
Pages: 248
Source: Own It

Why did I read it?
Five years ago I did a "boy fast" (see teen angst filled blog for more on that).  During which I read multiple books about Christian dating/relationships.  This was one of them.  One of my youth has been asking to borrow some of these relationship books and I wanted to be reminded what was in them so we could discuss.  Also, maybe a refresher course would be nice after five years.  

I bought this book because I was a big fan of the Duggar family and the Duggar girls were a big fan of this book.  It matched my theme of the year in 2012 so I figured why not.  This is probably the most conservative book to ever be written about courtship - and yes, I have read (and will probably be re-reading in the near future) I Kissed Dating Goodbye.  

Sarah Mally is trying to speak to the princess that every girl has always wanted to be (I never did).  She's also really emphasing that we are daughters of the King (aka. God).  Every chapter starts with a fictional story of a princess actually living in the Middle Ages and being challenged by society and her impatience to find a husband.  Her dad, the king, encourages her to be modest and be nothing like the people; while the crocodile (big callback to another reptile from Genesis) tells her she should go to festivals and talk to boys. Whoa.  Hold on their princess.  No festivals for you.  Anyway, we get the little princess story and then Mally writes a chapter about whatever the princess had been feeling in the story.  It's a little juvenile.  I am guessing the target group for this book is girls ages 13-17, but it feels more like a 9-12.  

As far as content, as I said before, super duper duper conservative.  I did not remember it being this conservative.  She emphasizes modesty to an extreme degree.  The princess wants to go to a festival to hang out with her friends, but because there will be lots of princes who might want to talk to her her father strongly discourages it.  She'll hit on something good like dreaming about a man coming into your life and making everything good, but ruins it by saying do not think of men ever.  Never ever.  There is little balance.  You cannot never see boys or think about boys, it's nearly impossible.  I think we should be teaching girls the healthy balance and why it is not healthy to go too far with it.  

The writing itself was also not the greatest.  Sometimes the stories she threw in to try and prove a point were super random.  At one point she tells a story about a girl who dates *gasp* and now she is stuck in an abusive marriage, then she just moves on without even addressing the real problem of this story.  Somehow in her mind dating was worse than abuse.  Oh boy.  She's a bit all over the place and pretty repetitive.  This book did not need to be 248 pages.  Also, it's full of cartoons that are just terrible.  It could have gone down to 200 pages without the pictures and repeats.   



Rating: 2/5
Unfortunately, five years ago I probably would have given the book 3 stars.  I am knocking it down to a 2.  I am not even sure I want to lend this to my youth who is asking to borrow it - maybe under the condition she discuss it all with me afterwards.  I did glean a few lessons out of the book, but overall, unless you decide to court in the most extreme way, it was not very helpful.  

Recommendation:
I guess the Duggar girls can keep reading this book.  It seems to really be working out in their favour.  We're up to 4/5 Duggar daughters, of marrying age (that sounds Austenian), who are married or engaged now.  

We Were Liars

by: E. Lockhart
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Dates Read: Sept. 20 - Oct. 9, 2016
Pages: 225
Source: Own it

Why did I read it?
It seemed like every time I went into Chapters this book was on display as one of the greatest YA Books of all time.  I didn't buy it at Chapters.  I found it in mint condition at Goodwill (which isn't always a good sign) and decided I would spend $2 on a book that was supposedly that good.  

 We Were Liars is about a super rich family who have an entire island to themselves with one house for each "branch."  These people have so much money they can take off 2 months and bring their kids to the island for the entire summer.  Cadence, the main character, can't remember what happened two summers ago and no one will tell her.  Her cousins/best friends won't tell her, her aunts and uncles won't, even the little kids won't let it slip, so she spends the whole summer trying to remember.  The directions in the book sleeve tell me I'm supposed to lie to you about how it ends, so I'll say that she never finds out for sure what actually happened.

Rating: 3/5
If it wasn't for the last 25 pages of this book, We Were Liars would not have been all that great.  It was kind of boring and slow.  It was all a little weird, kind of haunting.  Almost like Jane Eyre: there is romance and good plot but it's all surrounded by darkness somehow.  It was all kind of blah until we find out the truth.  I did not see the truth coming.  This was no mystery where eventually you figured out who dun it before they actually tell you.  This was unexpected.  Looking back, it turns out it was well written and still a little weird.  I just wish I had gotten a little more into the first 200 pages.  

Recommendation: 
You know, I'm almost glad this is a super popular YA fiction book right now.  This isn't the usual girl-meets-boy-they-overcome-an-obstacle-and-they-fall-in-love.  There were no vampires, zombies or other supernatural activities.  I would recommend it to the age group because it's not the usual crap they are served.  

Love is a Canoe

by: Ben Schrank
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
Dates Read: May 7 - July 1, 2016
Pages: 342
Source: Library

Why did I read it?
I was wandering my local library on a cold day and BAM there was a book called Love is a Canoe.  The past few summers I had really grown to enjoy canoeing.  I have great memories with friends and youth.  It was one of those snap decisions where I just grabbed the book 100% based on the title alone.  

I guess it wasn't a complete bust.  This book follows a few story lines all intermingled and mixed.  The first is of an old widower who authored a book call 'Marriage is a Canoe' based on his wonderful, happy marriage and the advice he learned from his grandfather while in a canoe.  His wife has died recently, he doesn't know what to do anymore, and is now in a basically loveless relationship with a new women he'll never commit to because she is not his late wife.  The irony is that now he is going against almost everything he wrote in his book 25 years ago.  Flash over to the publishing company editor trying to make it big by bringing the book back for it's 25th year.  She comes up with the idea to run a contest for a couple having hardships to write in and win a day hanging out with the supposedly wise old man in hopes to fix their marriage.  Skip over to the young newly-ish married couple who are already having marital problems because the husband is just too good-looking and can't say no.  

I think you can see where all of this meets in the middle.  The story was pretty meh.  There were all kinds of little subplots thrown in that didn't really add a whole lot.  I think the author may have been trying to make the book fatter for show.  You can pretty well see where all of it is going.  The main question is will this young couple get divorced or not - aka. can the widower give good advice now that his wife has died?  It didn't really leave me up in arms wondering.  I was so disinterested I didn't really care which way it went.  I ended up just pushing through the book amidst my pre-summer busy-ness for the sole reason of being out of renewals from the library.    


Rating: 2.5/5
Love is a Canoe is somewhere between a "didn't like it" and a "liked it."  It had it's moments.  The writing itself wasn't bad, it was the plot that didn't have me enraptured.  I might give Schrank a second chance if he has another eyecatching title like this one. 

Recommendation: 
I'm not sure I would recommend this book to many people.  You won't totally hate yourself for picking it up, but it won't be the greatest thing you read all year....probably not even the greatest thing you read all month.  It lives in the nebulous of a 2.5 rating.  

Beautiful Creatures

[Audiobook]
By: Kami Garcia and Margarat Stohl
Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
Publisher:Hachette Audiobooks
Dates Listened: Sept. 1 - Jan. 11
Length: 17 hrs 33 min
Source: Overdrive App

Why did I read it?
In February 2013 a friend and I wanted to see a movie but didn't really know anything that was out.  We decided on what seemed liked the best: Beautiful Creatures.  I remember walking out of the theatre and saying "That was some weird shit."  Well, fast forward to September 2016 and I have a long drive ahead of me to visit my mom so I need an audiobook.  I was browsing around, looking for something good and available.  Let me just side bar to say how weird it is that a library only allows one person to listen to a book at the same time.  Why can't 100 listen?  Who knows, but Beautiful Creatures was pretty well all there was available.  

As you can see, this book took me more than 6 months to listen to.  I cannot tell you how many times I borrowed this from the library.  I wasn't really motivated to listen to it until the end because, by then, if I listened to it it would finally be over.  

Ethan Wate finds himself falling for the dark, mysterious, new girl in school everyone seems to hate: Lena.  Her family is weird but he doesn't seem to care.  Soon enough they're teenagers in love and he finds out that she is a castor.  Not a witch, they prefer "castor".  In Lena's family at the age of sixteen you are claimed to either the dark or the light side.  Turns out this girl is pretty powerful so everyone wants her.  The darkest castor in all the world is campaigning pretty hard to get her, thus, crazy shit ensues.  


Let's start with the writing of this book.  What I appreciate is that it is told from the boy's perspective; most YA fiction is not.  However, as per usual when it comes to supernatural fiction, it is told by the person on the outs (I'm looking at you Bella Swan).  Honestly Lena's story is not very compelling to me.  This girl takes angst to a whole new level.  She is completely unreasonable and besides her being beautiful the authors do not give a good reason for Ethan to be attracted to her except for the "undeniable bond" between them.  As I said, her family is made up of castors and I feel like the writers kept throwing stuff in because it would be cool and then bringing it no where.  There was a lot of stuff they could have easily cut out.  

They could have cut out some supernatural to add a little more about Ethan's "normal" family.  Normal in the fact that his mom died four months before the book begins, his dad has gone crazy because of it, and his nanny/housekeeper/second mother can speak to the dead and other weird stuff.  There was so much left unsaid about Ethan's family.  It drove me nuts.  That was the good stuff!  I want to hear more about his mom.  Will his dad always be crazy?  How on earth did this nanny who can speak to the dead end up in his house?  In summary, there was too much Lena and not enough Ethan...even though Ethan was the one telling the story.  

Now the narration: Kevin T. Collins was good.  He sounded like a girl when he was reading as a girl.  He sounded like a sassy southern voodoo housekeeper when he needed to.  He sounded like a staunch old man.  Good stuff.  What bugged me about Collins was that he narrated in an American accent, but when he spoke as Ethan, he had a southern accent.  The book takes place in the south and he did great with the varying accents/dialects, but why would being in Ethan's head sound different then the words that come out of Ethan's mouth?  This was the only reason I was ever confused about what character was talking.  It actually took me a while to realize that the regular southern guy was Ethan, the narrator.  I'll go ahead and blame that on the director.  

I will also blame the director for the weird singing.  Ethan and Lena often hear a creepy song that tells them about what is going to happen later.  Here is the problem: I couldn't understand what the girl was singing.  They tried too hard to make it sound haunting I couldn't understand her.  I went the whole novel not knowing what was going to happen because the song that explains it could not be understood.  They also added a lot of atmospheric sound affects.  These were nice because you really felt like you were there in the storm or in front of the burning trees with them.  However, sometimes they were so much you couldn't clearly hear the words being spoken and it took away from the scene instead of adding to it.  I would think twice before hiring the people who produced or directed this audiobook Hachette.  



Rating: 2/5
I did not like or enjoy this audiobook.  The story was bad.  The writing was subpar.  The production was annoying.  It is possible that some of the holes I mentioned above come out in the later books, but I doubt it.  I have no great desire to find the answers so I will probably never read/listen to the remainder of the series.  Although, I am kind of curious to watch the movie again now that I've read the book...I have a feeling it would still get the same rating as this book though.  

Recommendation: 
If you are a teenager who likes darker books about the supernatural this might be your cup of tea.  I suggest actually reading it and not listening to it. If you don't care a whole lot about writing style and liked Twilight, this just might be your next "great" read.  If you are none of the things I said above, don't waste your time. 

Once Upon Eliza

by: Erynn Mangum
Publisher: Self Published
Dates Read: Dec. 22 - Jan. 30
Pages: 322
Source: Own It

Why did I read it?
Erynn Mangum is my favourite author.  This is the second book in the Carrington Springs series.  The first is Katie in Waiting which I read a year ago.  

Once Upon Eliza was what I expect from Mangum.  It was some light chick lit about a Christian girl possibly finding love.  She always threads in themes that make you think about your own life too.  Somehow her characters are always relatable and going through something that I seem to be going through.  

Eliza is a nurse on the new mother's floor at her local hospital and survives off of lattes from the machine down in the cafeteria.  Life seems to be piling up higher and higher and she pushes it deeper and deeper inside.  As we know from real life (see, Mangum is so good at doing that) when you bottle things up, life gets difficult.  We get to walk alongside Eliza as she figures all of this out.  

Even though my brother would say that all of Mangum's books are the same, I really enjoy them.  They are the epitome of chick lit and I enjoy them every time.  My one grievance with this book is that the editting, like her last self-published novel, is just terrible.  Erynn, we are on a first name basis because I like to think we are good friends since I think we would be good friends if we actually knew each other, PLEASE HIRE ME TO EDIT YOUR BOOKS!!  Usually it is the odd grammar mistake or typo or she tried to replace a word only to leave the replaced word and the new word there, but she referred to Michael McConaughey.  Michael.  Michael McConaughey.  If this book was written by anyone else I would have just walked away.  The editing is truly becoming ridiculous.  So Erynn, my dear fake friend, please let me do this for you.  Free of charge.  Just send a copy up to Canada and I'll be done in a week.  




Rating: 4.5/5
I really liked it.  I may have given it a 5 if it weren't for that Michael McConaughey reference.  The ending for Eliza's book was a little more satisfying than Katie's.  I didn't actually see the ending coming until we were pretty much there.  It was good,I was happy and I can't wait to read about Ashton soon.  Onto book 3 (once it comes out)!

Recommendation: 
If you a girl over the age of 14 or so and enjoy chick lit, you will like this book.  I think you will like it even more if you happen to be single and dreaming of finding a good man of your own.  Read the book.  Read the whole series.  Read everything Erynn has ever written (although Sketchy Behaviour is a little bit of a different genre, still good, but not the same).