Tag: book blog

When All is Said

1 Comment

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Anne Griffin
Genres: Fiction
Pub. date: Jan. 2019 (read in Aug. 2019)

I’d heard such wonderful things about When All is Said that I convinced my book club to read it… and then missed the discussion for it! Turns out, they all loved it! It was our highest rated book so far this year and a much needed “good read” after a bunch of disappointments.

That said, while I liked this one, I think it might have been slightly overhyped to me and it wasn’t quite as good as I was anticipating. It definitely delivered on the heartwarming novel I was expecting, but there wasn’t really anything unexpected in the plot, which ended up being a tiny bit of a disappointment. I kept hoping for just a little bit more, but I guess that is the beauty of the book too. It’s narrated by Maurice as he looks back on his life after the death of his wife. What makes it beautiful I guess, is that his life is both remarkable and unremarkable at the same time, much like most of us that live on this earth.

The story is told through a series of 5 toasts to 5 of the most important people in Maurice’s life. There’s a real feeling of nostalgia and finality throughout the course of the book as Maurice toasts all the people that had an impact on his life to his son. Each toast reveals a different part of Maurice’s life, from his childhood, to the courtship of his wife and birth of their children, to the great sadness of his life, the death of his wife. Throughout his life story, he also reveals the impact that some of his early interactions working for a rich Irish family, the Dollards, had on both his life and on the Dollards. How one action can have long lasting impacts and influence your outlook on life for years to come.

The story with the Dollards was quite interesting and I liked how the author wove it into the rest of the novel. It’s never the center of the story, but it pulls it together. I thought the writing was good and I’m impressed that this was a debut novel. But like I said, nothing really unexpected happened in this story and I kept wanting just a little bit more out of it. It reminded me of other books I’ve read that have featured senior protagonists (A Man Called Ove is the most popular book that comes to mind), and while I love all these books, I would have liked to see this one do something a little bit different with the story, although the storytelling through toasts was undeniably creative.

An excellent debut though and I’m excited to see what Anne Griffin writes next!

Magic for Liars

2 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Sarah Gailey
Genres: Fantasy, Mystery
Pub. date: Jun. 2019 (read July 2019)

I’ve been on a fantasy hiatus for the last 6 months, so well done Sarah Gailey on writing a book that finally inspired me to break the fast! I’ve been really dis-enchanted with YA fantasy lately, but this adult fantasy finally piqued my interest!

Everything about Magic for Liars seemed interesting and unique. On the surface, it sounds like the same tired Magic School trope, but it has a lot else going for it. Yes, it is set in a magic school, but the premise of the story is about private investigator Ivy Gamble being asked to investigate a gruesome murder that took place at the magic school.

Ivy herself is not magic and lives firmly in the non-magic world. However, her twin sister, Tabitha, is magic and has been working as a teacher at the school for several years. Most non-magic folk are unaware of the existence of magic, but Ivy has been in the know since Tabitha was first invited to attend magic school and she was not. Since then, there has been a bit of resentment between the sisters and they have grown apart.

The magic system in this book was quite different than other fantasy books I read, which I really liked. People with magic are still very much ensconced in the real world, with the study of magic being very deeply ingrained in other fields, such as medicine, math, and science. Some branches of magic are little understood and the magic itself seems to be in some ways much more unstated then similar books, but in other ways much more intense.

What I liked about Magic for Liars is that Gailey takes many fantastical tropes and integrates them into their story, while at the same time, poking fun of them. The most obvious is the “chosen one” trope, but we also have the childhood misunderstanding, the competitive sisters, the psychopathic cool girls, the PI who has to solve their own childhood crime, and a misleading romance, just to name a few. I also liked the diversity that Gailey tried to include in the story. Gailey is non-binary and I thought they did a good job at including diverse relationships, without throwing them in your face.

Despite all the great things Gailey tried with this novel though, sadly I still didn’t love it. Something about the writing just didn’t flow that well and I felt pretty disconnected to the characters throughout much of the novel. I wanted to empathize with Ivy, but I did think she was unnecessarily harsh with Tabitha when they were younger and the misunderstanding between them seemed too obvious to have been the misunderstanding that it was.

So overall, this was a 3 star read for me. I definitely liked it, but I didn’t love it. I am impressed with it as a debut novel though and I’m excited to see what Gailey writes in the future!

The Place on Dalhousie

2 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Melina Marchetta
Genres: Fiction, New Adult
Pub. date: Apr. 2019 (read Jun. 2019)

Okay, first things first, it breaks my heart that this book is not currently available in Canada or the US. Send us the love please! I’ve been dying to read this since it came out 2 months ago (lol, it felt WAY longer). I finally broke down and ordered a copy from Book Depository, which is the only place us North Americans can get it as far as I can find. It is $30, which was the main reason I was reluctant to order it, but so worth it! The Place on Dalhousie was everything I was looking for from a Marchetta book and I loved it!

This is the third book in Marchetta’s companion series that starts with Saving Francesca and The Piper’s Son. In honour of her new book, I re-read Saving Francesca and read The Piper’s Son for the first time. Believe it or not, I think this may be my favourite of the three!

Saving Francesca introduces us Francesca and her group of friends that carry us through all three novels. The Piper’s Son is about Tom Mackee’s story and The Place on Dalhousie focuses on Jimmy Hailler. I struggled with parts of The Piper’s Son because I found the story and characters a little hard to follow at times, but The Place on Dalhousie was perfection. We’re introduced to two new characters, Rosie and Martha, who carry the story with Jimmy. This book has a lot of angst and heartbreak, but God, it was just so good!

Jimmy and Rosie meet in a flood in rural Australia while they are both skirting their lives and responsibilities back home in Sydney. Jimmy has always lamented never really having a family and Rosie is dealing with the death of both of her parents over the past few years. They connect briefly and then both go their own ways, not realizing the profound impact their meeting will have on one another in the future.

Rosie returns to Sydney to stake her claim on her father’s house. Seb spent years re-building the house on Dalhousie Street for her and her mom, only to have her mother pass away from cancer before the house is completed. Seb then re-marries less than a year after the death of her mother to Martha, and since Seb’s death, both Martha and Rosie are dealing with their grief, dislike of one another, and their claim on the place on Dalhousie.

I don’t want to go any further into the plot, but this story had a the markings of a good Marchetta book. It’s a character driven, family drama, made all the more special to me by the fact that it’s a new adult book rather than a young adult book. It features all kinds of friendships and relationships and it will make you feel so many things for all of the characters. I loved returning to Jimmy’s group of friends and getting to meet new friendships from Martha and Rosie’s lives. This is a book about grief, family, and growth. We don’t have to be defined or held hostage by the past. We get to make our own decisions and decide how we let the things that happen to us and around us impact our lives.

Exactly what I was hoping for from a Melina Marchetta book. Recommend to all her fans!

The Fellowship of the Ring

5 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: JRR Tolkien
Genres: Fantasy
Pub. date: 1954 (re-read in Jun. 2019)
Series: The Lord of the Rings #1

So I first read Fellowship of the Ring when I was around 10 or 11 years old. My Dad played a big role in fostering my love of reading and encouraged me to read the series before the first movie came out. I have to admit, I’m a little impressed that I read this whole series as a pre-teen and actually loved it. I’ve always remembered the books (and heard them described by others) as being super dense and descriptive, and for some reason I was totally intimidated to re-read them.

I’m a huge fan of the movie franchise and I re-watch the whole trilogy every couple of years. I recently re-watched it with my friends and convinced two of them to re-read the trilogy with me. I’m a little embarrassed now at how much I was actually intimidated by this book, because while it is a little indulgent in the descriptions, it’s nowhere near as dense as I had built it up to be in my head and I really had no problem reading it.

I’m going to skip the synopsis because we all know what the Lord of the Rings is about. It’s a classic good-versus-evil fantasy story that puts everything else in the genre to shame. It was fun to re-read and compare what lines Peter Jackson lifted right out of the book and what liberties he took with the characterization (I’m looking at you, Arwen). This is our introduction to hobbits, middle-earth, and the fellowship and re-reading the first book only cemented my love for all of Tolkien’s characters. ‘Hobbits really are amazing creatures’ and I loved Sam, Merry, and Pippin for being so willing to follow and support Frodo, no matter where he went or what challenges they faced. Even hobbits like Farmer Maggot and Fatty Bolger went out of their way to support the hobbits without asking anything in return.

I’m giving this 4 stars instead of 5 stars because there were parts of the story that dragged. It felt like it took forever to actually get out of the Shire and Rivendell and Lothlorien went on a little too long for my tastes. I was really impressed with how Tolkien wrote Gollum in this book. He dogs the fellowship for the entire second half of the book without them ever putting a name to what’s following them and it was pretty creepy. It takes a while to get to know each of the nine in the fellowship as well, but slowly Tolkien starts to tease out their personalities and develop each of them into more fully fleshed out characters.

The action definitely translates differently then it does on the screen, but the book had me on the edge of my seat for most of the second half. I thought things picked up a lot once to the fellowship left Rivendell. There were a few parts from the book that weren’t in the movie that I did remember, like the old forest and Tom Bombadil, but there were other parts I didn’t remember at all, like the fellowship getting attacked by wolves. Overall, I still think Peter Jackson did a great job on the adaptation and I can’t wait to re-watch the series again and get started on Two Towers!

The Piper’s Son

2 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Melina Marchetta
Genres: Fiction
Pub. date: Mar. 2010 (read May 2019)

I am getting lax in my reviews lately. I finished The Piper’s Son about a week and a half ago and I’ve been putting off writing my review about it. I just re-read Saving Francesca and I was really excited to read The Piper’s Son, which is the only Melina Marchetta book I haven’t read, save for her newest book, which just came out.

I liked but didn’t love Saving Francesca on my first read through, but loved it when I recently re-read it. I’m wondering if I might have a similar experience with The Piper’s Son. I definitely liked it, but I did struggle to get into it for most of the novel. I love Marchetta’s writing style, but sometimes her books are hard to process on the first read through because of her unique style. I feel like Marchetta never starts her story at the beginning. I feel like her characters are already fully realized when she actually starts writing them. She doesn’t waste time on introducing us to her characters and their strengths and flaws, but rather throws them at you in all of their brokenness and let’s you try and sort out the pieces. It’s an interesting style because it is very reminiscent of real life. People are hugely influenced by all of the experiences that came before you and the result that you get is an individual that is flawed in ways you can’t quite understand because you don’t know their story. Eventually those things are teased out as you get to know someone and it becomes easier to understand how they grew into the person they are, but upon first meeting, you have no context for their behaviour.

This is how I felt with Tom and Georgie. Both of them had a lot of history and were obviously broken by it, but I didn’t understand what events happened to them to get them to that point. Tom is drowning his sorrows in things that only make him hurt more and Georgie is stuck in the past. Heartbroken and unable to forgive or move forward with her new reality. Both family members are grieving.

This is exactly the kind of character-driven story that I love. We can’t rely on the plot in this book at all, only on where the characters will take us. They make mistakes, but are human. Stuck in the past and unable to forgive the family members and people who have hurt them. I did struggle with the complete lack of plot and I struggled to feel empathy for Tom or Georgie early in the novel. I did really like the story and the characters, but I think it could maybe have used a little more plot to carry the story.

One thing I still loved though was Marchetta’s unflinching commitment to friendships. I think Marchetta writes friendships better than any author I’ve read. There’s no pinpointing the moment when Marchetta’s characters become friends. They are either already presented as fast friends with a history, or she weaves a brilliant story arc in which subtle, but lasting, friendships develop between her characters. I loved seeing all the characters from Saving Francesca flit through this book and each support Tom in their own way. The way Marchetta writes friendships makes you ache for someone who knows you so well. She’s not afraid to have her characters challenge one another and do ugly things, but those things are always deeply rooted in their character and hurts. She’s not afraid to test her characters and their relationships and I love watching those friendships grow stronger as a result.

So overall I feel like this review is a whole lot of posturing about nothing. I think I may need to pick this book up in another year or so to see what I can glean from it having already gained the perspective about Tom and Georgie’s characters. I can see how this book isn’t for everyone, but it is also largely beloved, so there’s something powerful going on with these characters.