Review: Beautiful Creatures

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this book up because the movie looked good and I wanted to read the book first. Didn't realize at first that it was a series, but there we have it. After reading this one, I can't say that I'm eager to read the next book, or that I will read the next book, but it's a thought. Maybe for a rainy day when I run out of other things to read.

Overall, the book was pretty good. That's why it got 3 stars instead of 2. I thought the storytelling was good but it was a bit too heavy on the sickly romance aspect. Then again, I'm not a teenager with raging hormones who feels like my heart will explode if the boy I like doesn't like me back. Been there, done that, really don't feel like reliving it.

The magic aspect of the book was interesting, although some of it seemed a bit far-fetched for a fantasy. I can tell it was very thoroughly thought-out, and I'm sure the next book gets further into it because by the end of this one there's a lot of magic happening.

Most of the characters were pretty one-dimensional. Lena was probably the most fleshed-out of the group, including Ethan, from whose point of view the book was written. The one thing I noticed is that he had more feelings than I've ever seen a male protagonist have. I was also very surprised that the book was from his point of view. But he was so in love with Lena from the start of the book that it was impossible to think of him as anything other than a love-sick puppy.

The storyline with Ethan's parents needed to really be worked on, because there is only one moment where we get a revelation about Ethan's mother's death and then it's forgotten like it was never said. His father is spiraling into a severe depression, but the only part that truly goes into it is when Ethan and Lena break into his study.

I appreciate the end of the book, it was pretty neatly wrapped up but still left the way open for the sequel. But as I said, it wasn't enough for me to pick up the next one immediately.

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Review: The Boleyn King

The Boleyn King by Laura Andersen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

[DISCLAIMER: I RECEIVED AN ADVANCED READER'S EDITION OF THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS GIVEAWAY]

There were some parts of the ARC that I received that I hope have been fixed in the final edition of the book. For example, halfway through the book extra "u"s started showing up in words like "for" and "more" and "tomorrow." If the author was going for authenticity, the "u"s were completely out of place because (a) there wouldn't have been a "u" in "for" or "more" or "tomorrow", and (b) "tomorrow" back then used to be written as "to-morrow" not "tomourrow." There were also some glaring typos towards the end, not so many in the beginning. It was a distraction which I hope has been taken care of since the book was published formally on 6/4/2013.

Anyway, to the story.

I was expecting an historical fiction novel but this was more of a romance/mystery. The way the book was set up was that there would be breaks in the text when it was switching POVs from one character to another, but this could have been better accomplished by telling one person's story first, then in another chapter moving to another character. I've found several authors are doing this now, and it becomes confusing and muddles the story.

There are also sections of the story written as a diary, but they aren't signed. Sometimes the author finishes the diary entries and says something like "Minuette closed her diary," which tells us they were Minuette's entries, but again, this would have been better accomplished with a header saying something to the effect of "Entries from Minuette's diary." There was one section where Dominic is writing dispatches to William, and there is a header on those. Some consistency would have been nice.

The book read too much like a mystery novel to me, sort of a "whodunnit" that bothered me since that's not what I signed up to read. There is a plot afoot to discredit William as Henry VIII's son and most of the book is spent trying to figure out who it was, as well as who killed Alyce de Clare, a young woman who supposedly throws herself down a flight of stairs because she's pregnant. None of this is resolved by the end of the book, and no one seems to wonder or care. The reader gets closure in the Interlude at the end of the novel, and it's pretty much what I had expected.

The romance was also strange and forced. I knew Minuette and Dominic would be in love right from the start, because that made the most sense. But the other men who fall in love with her don't seem to work right. Especially the one at the end. That one is too quick happening, and the end leaves it unresolved and pretty much ridiculously laid-out. I didn't enjoy it at all.

Overall, I'm giving it two stars because I did end up finishing it, but it wasn't a great book and wasn't at all like what the description made me think it was. I didn't really enjoy it, especially as a "what-if" type book. It just didn't read as a sincere re-imagining of what the world would have been like had Henry VIII fathered a living son.

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Review: Masque of the Red Death

Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed, but didn't LOVE, this book. The writing style isn't amazing, but the story is interesting enough to keep me reading. It was definitely written for teens, although the main characters act like they are older than they are. I didn't realize Araby was only 17 at first, she was acting like a 21-year-old.

This book is a steampunk-meets-post-apocalyptic/dystopian-future kind of thing. A plague has wiped out a huge number of the population, and it's still killing people daily. Infection is a risk if you don't wear a specially-made mask, invented by Araby's father. Once you breathe through it, it won't work on anyone else, so stealing one from a dead person does you no good.

Araby's twin brother died when she was younger, presumably from the infection (later you find out exactly how it happened), and she blames herself because he didn't want to try on the mask made for him, so she put it on and breathed through it. She makes a silly vow never to experience anything he would not get to experience. This makes her immediately ridiculous to me, but that's how the author wrote it, so that's how I'm going to proceed. I mean, she got to experience growing up, a great depression, having friends, and all sorts of things. But when it comes to boys and love and even sword-fighting, she doesn't want to do it because Finn will never get to. Whatever you say, Miss Araby.

But she's in love with Will, the bouncer at the club her friend April is always dragging her along to. She barely speaks to him at the club, so she knows nothing about him (not even his name at first), until she wakes up in his bed after passing out from a bad high. He "rescued" her, and instead of taking her to the hospital, he brings her home. There she meets his little brother and sister, whom he takes care of because their parents are dead. Neither of them have a mask, and Araby is instantly upset and determines that she is no longer suicidal and must get them masks. Believable, I guess, but it was a bit too quick for me.

Then she meets April's brother Elliott, who convinces her to act like they're madly in love and to join a resistance movement. He asks her to steal her father's blueprints for the mask so that production can begin in a separate warehouse where they can be handed out to the lower classes who can't afford the ones made by Prince Prospero (April and Elliott's uncle who supposedly murdered their father). Elliott wants revenge for the murder of his father, as well as to turn the city around and start to rebuild. Meanwhile, Elliott decides he's actually in love with Araby, and Araby, obviously, can't figure out how she feels about him compared to how she feels about Will. Love triangle, here we come.

The love interests aren't quite believable - Araby falls for Will but has never truly spoken to him aside from in the test room. He rescues her and brings her home with him, and suddenly she's hooked, but what does she really know about him? Next to nothing. Even by the end they're still practically strangers, they each know almost nothing except what happened to Araby's twin brother and what happened to Will's parents. And Elliott is practically abusive to her, and yet she still can't say "Oh I hate your guts you sociopathic moron!"

3/5 stars because I got through it quickly, it was interesting, and I want to read the next book. If the writing had been better and the characters more believable and less like "Oh hi, you're Will, I love you," it would have been 4 stars.

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