THE CURE FOR DREAMING | Cat Winters

THE CURE FOR DREAMING

Cat Winters

source: netgalley

pub date: Oct 14th 2014

♠.♠.♠.♠.♠

I'm a bit in love with this book. The Cure for Dreaming is the story of Olivia Mead, a strong-willed woman in the age of the suffragette movement who lives with her very strongly anti-suffragette father. Olivia meets and becomes friends with a young hypnotist, Henri, and their lives are twisted together when Olivia's father hires him to suppress the desire for suffrage within her through hypnotism.


This is not my first five star rating for a Cat Winters book, and it's probably the galley that I have so far been most excited to be approved for. Cat Winters has a gift for twisting together the historical and the magical and creating a bright, vivid world that is accentuated by the pictures that she gathers for inclusion in each book. The Cure for Dreaming is full of images of women fighting for their rights, the fears of a changing world, and the desires for something otherworldly, both through the images and the words that Cat has woven together.


As a feminist reading this book it was very, very easy to become angry with those characters who were against the suffragette movement, but it was also quite easy to see their reasoning. Not agree with them, but understand them to a certain extent. I love the way that Cat writes her characters, even the minor ones have life to them, they're not just shallowly drawn archetypes. Olivia is a relatable heroine, Henri is a desirable love interest, and every character who wears the role of the villain at one point or another is genuine in their presentation.



This is definitely one of my favourite books of 2014, and I am very eager to see what Cat does next.

THE BLOOD OF OLYMPUS | Rick Riordan

THE BLOOD OF OLYMPUS

Rick Riordan

source: own paperback

pub: October 2014

♠.♠.♠.♠

I am so attached to the world of Percy Jackson, I wish I adored about the long-anticipated final installment of Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus series the way I love the rest of the books. There were some wonderful things in The Blood of Olympus, but there were some aspects that let me down.

This review will assume at least basic knowledge up to the end of the previous book, House of Hades, and basic knowledge of character points of view in Blood of Olympus, but will otherwise be spoiler-free.

Blood of Olympus opens with the seven demigods of the Great Prophecy on their way to stop the evil earth goddess Gaea rising in Athens, while Reyna and Nico deliver the Athena Parthenous to Camp Half-Blood, to heal the historic rift between the Greek and Roman camps and heal the gods’ split personalities.

It was a lot to fit into one book. The narrative momentum was good, but characterisation definitely suffered.

What’s frustrating is that Rick Riordan can do better. The cynic in me assumes that the gang over at Hyperion has started taking shortcuts in the structural edit because they know any Riordan book is going to make a killing.

The Heroes of Olympus series has a kickass ensemble cast who have all, throughout the series, been shown to be complex, well-drawn, endearing characters. While Blood of Olympus didn’t showcased that as well as previous books, I hope that most fans of the series will be satisfied with how the story ended.

Nico’s chapters were definitely a highlight – not just because they are the narrative voice of a queer character in what is otherwise a very heteronormative series, but also because they exist within a literary landscape in which straight kids all meet their soul mates at fifteen. That’s all I’m going to say about that, because I’m straying into spoiler territory.

I can almost forgive Rick for how little he’s done with Leo since The Lost Hero (that’s an unpopular opinion, I know; feel free to ignore it) because of the girls. The girls.

The female interaction in this book is to die for. This is what pushed my rating to four stars. Representation of positive, nuanced, meaningful female friendship in media is SO IMPORTANT, and Blood of Olympus delivered very satisfying examples.

Piper has progressively been moving away from the anti-feminine, anti-pretty ‘not like other girls’ line she took in when we first met her, and that happened AGAIN and BETTER in this book. Traditional femininity is not weak, emotions are not weak, Piper is fierce and strong and I love her a whole lot.

Reyna’s chapters were the stuff of dreams. Everything about her perspective, her backstory and her interaction with Nico was fabulous. I want an entire series about her.

Blood of Olympus is by far not the strongest of Rick Riordan’s novels, but please don’t let my critical wannabe-editor’s eye put you off the book or this series. I think deeply about things I care about deeply, and I care about this series a lot because it’s really good.

If you haven’t already, you should get on it.

.

This is a guest post by Sophie Swancott, who you can catch on Twitter @SophieSwancott9.

OH YEAH, AUDREY | Tucker Shaw

OH YEAH, AUDREY!

Tucker Shaw

source: netgalley

pub date: 14th October 2014

♠.♠.♠.

This is a cute book, it's one of those quick to read, easy to jump in to kind of books. Protagonist Gemma is obsessed with Audrey Hepburn, particularly the incarnation of Audrey Hepburn that Holly Golightly represents. It would be fair to say that she is obsessed with Holly Golightly specifically looking at the events that unfold in the novel itself but while the focus is on Breakfast at Tiffany's there is plenty of mention of Audrey herself and her other work (including her humanitarian work).



Gemma has run away from home for the day to meet up with friends she has met over Tumblr who share a love of all things Audrey. It's a fairly predictable book for its type, but that is definitely something to like about it. This is the kind of book that you want to read when you're sitting in the sun and you don't want to tax your brain. I found myself cringing over some of Gemma's choices but I did ultimately enjoy it.

Primarily because I myself have some level of adoration for all things Audrey.

BLACK ICE | Becca Fitzpatrick

BLACK ICE

Becca Fitzpatrick

source: netgalley

pub date: Oct 7th 2014

♠.♠

This was a frustrating read... let's see if we can do without whining.


Black Ice is the story of 17 year old Britt Phieffer who makes a series of terrible choices and almost gets herself and others killed on multiple occasions because of her terrible decisions. There were three things that really bothered me about this book;

1. From the beginning we know that Britt and her apparent only friend are in a super unhealthy relationship because her friend is always pitting them against each other in her head and Britt knows all about this but she just brushes it off and lets her friend be rude and derogatory towards her all the time.
   
2. Most of the book involved romantic sub plot about how she used to be in love with this guy which she is still so obsessed with she's chosen camping over Hawaii because she knows that he'll be there and it seems like she's over him but then she finds out that he cheated on her while they were dating and she still thinks about him constantly. WHY?
   
3. The main romance was when she fell in insta-love with the accomplice of the guy who kidnaps her so even though this guy never actually does anything wrong he is a witness to multiple robberies and multiple murders and does nothing about it. He doesn't even have a warped sense of vigilante justice, he just does nothing about it, and she falls in love with this guy.
   

No, no, no, no, nope.



Ultimately the rating is two stars because it wasn't painful to read, I did finish it without difficulty, but do not and would not recommend it, unless you like reading about teenage girls who make terrible choices.

Recently Read | October 2nd

Once there is more content on this blog I'm going to figure out how often to post a recently read, which will basically be a brief list of books that I've read and enjoyed (or read and hated) that I'm not going to write a full review on for various reasons. So here we go.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn [4/5]

• I ended up loving this book when I thought that I would hate it, just because I have heard mixed reviews but I've also had bad experiences with popular things in the past.
• I haven't seen the movie yet... but I will.
• I want to be friends with Amy Elliot Dunne and yes I maintain this desire after reading the entirety of the book.

the First Third by Will Kostakis [5/5]

• This isn't so much a recent read (I read it in July) as a read I feel deserves a mention but don't think will get a proper review because of time constraints.
• This book is delightful.
• So is the author, you should follow him on Twitter.

Every Breath, Every Word by Ellie Marney [5/5], [5/5]

• These were also read in July but the two books of the series that have been released both earned 5 stars so I had to include them in this list.
• Sleuthing! Sensible teen heroes! Sherlock Holmes references without being inelegant/overt/pushy about Sherlock Holmes references!
• Ellie also wrote this post about YA recently and it is brilliant.

the Collected Works of A.J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin [4/5]

• This book reads like a love affair to the short story told through the eyes of a collection of people who have learned to find themselves in books.
• It is a beautiful testament to the fact that reading is for everyone, and anyone, and the simple truth of this resonates through every sentence.
• (I started writing a review for this when I read it but never finished because the above opening paragraph was too good.)

There, that's five. Happy reading.