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Category: 2 stars

Evening’s Land by Pauline West

Evening’s Land by Pauline West

Evening’s Land by Pauline West is the kind of book that you have to read closely and with an open mind as there are plot lines that are very far-fetched and moments in the book where something doesn’t quite fit. It was an interesting read due to being mainly after life after death and questioning that, but I felt like there was too much going on at the same time. …

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Mysterious Kor by Elizabeth Bowen

Mysterious Kor by Elizabeth Bowen

Mysterious Kor by Elizabeth Bowen means a lot of different things to different people. I’ve read that the whole story is set in some kind of purgatory, I’ve read that none of it is real and that it’s happening in one of the character’s imaginations and I’ve read that the main character of the story is the moon.

I can see where all of these points begin to make sense but for me, what happens in this story is to be taken at face value.

…

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Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

Regular readers of my blog or those closest to me will know that as soon as I finished reading To Kill A Mockingbird for Year 10, I fell in love with it and it instantly became my favourite book. Nearly six years later and it still is the best book that I have ever read and it doesn’t seem like that going to change.
When I heard that Harper Lee (Rest In Peace) was going to release a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, I felt skeptical. I didn’t want my love of the characters to be distinguished. So I waited… And waited… And I had heard nothing but bad reviews about Go Set A Watchmen. I heard things about the book that just didn’t seem right and didn’t make sense.
It was published in July 2015 and it wasn’t until more than a year later – September 2016 – that I would read it.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – returns home from New York City to visit her ageing father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and the political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt.
I feel like this review is going to be very short and very brief. I did not like this book and I felt like it shouldn’t have even been written (Harper Lee, what were you thinking? I would love to know…) I finished the book, put it down and felt like crying. Go Set A Watchman hadn’t ruined my love for To Kill A Mockingbird, but it had added detail to the characters that I didn’t want, it expanded on things that I didn’t want to learn about. For me, TKAM is the perfect standalone with the perfect characters and the perfect messages about society. GSAW ruined it all.
*minor spoilers now so look away if you don’t want to read about them*
 “The only human being she had ever fully and wholeheartedly trusted had failed her; the only man she had ever known to whom she could point and say with expert knowledge, “He is a gentleman, in his heart he is a gentleman,” had betrayed her, publicly, grossly and shamelessly.”
– Harper Lee, Go Set A Watchman
 
 
The biggest question I had once I had finished this book was ‘was Atticus racist or not then?’ We are told that Atticus attends council meetings and that he has turned into a hater of black people but later on in the book, we are told by Louise’s love interest that the only reason him and Atticus turn up to the meetings is to see whose faces lie beneath the masks, so when the time comes for “war”, Atticus and Hank know who want to destroy Maycomb.
Then, at the end of the book, Scout has a huge argument with Atticus, yelling at him about how he’s completely different to the way he brought her up. How he has ruined everything by going to the council meetings and become the complete opposite of the values he used to believe in. Atticus doesn’t even argue with her.
I wanted to cry. I really did. Atticus was this fictional character that I felt a huge amount of love for. I fell in love with him in year 10, I fell in love with what he believed in and in GSAW, Lee ruined everything. Twenty-six-year-old Scout became the person Atticus was in TKAM and Atticus became someone that I didn’t even recognise.
Also, quick point, can we just talk about how annoying Scout was with Hank? Stop playing the poor lad and just tell him whether you’re going to marry him or not. Of course, after she saw him and her father at the council meetings, I could understand why Scout was weary of marrying Hank but before that, she was messing him around so much!
I only give this book two stars because it’s from the same world as TKAM and it’s written by Harper Lee. This book should never have been written, it should never have been published, it should never have even been an idea. I’m sorry Harper Lee, I love you, I will always love you, but this book shouldn’t have happened. TKAM was a book of pure perfection. You should have left it like that.
Heaven by Alexandra Adornetto

Heaven by Alexandra Adornetto

I don’t know whether this was better or worse than the first installment in the Halo series: Halo. It was bad enough to get two stars anyway.

 The first one had the theme of conquering those who try and come between true love, the second book – Hades – had the theme of darkness and trying to overthrow it, the third one… Well… I don’t even know what the theme was.



Bethany and Xavier have already pushed the boundaries of Heaven with their relationship. In this conclusion to the Halo trilogy, the two take their love to the next, forbidden, step: they marry.

 At a time when they believe nothing will come between them again, they are faced with their most daunting challenge yet: the Sevens, a military order of angels designed to maintain balance in the universe. These soldiers won’t stop until their job is done – capture the wayward angel and send her home.

 The thing that didn’t work with this book was that it was the third book, it came after Hades – which was the best book in the series. And if you follow a good book with a not-so-very-good book, then it’s going to look even worse. 

“That is when you need faith the most. Not when everything is going your way, not when you have much to be thankful for, but when there is darkness all around.”
– Alexandra Adornetto, Heaven
 
 


 One of the parts that annoyed me the most about this book was when Beth and Xavier had to attend college to ‘blend in’. It was such a boring part of the book and it dragged for what seemed forever. Then, Heaven perked up a little bit when the Sevens were introduced. They are Heavens warriors and they are badass. They added a thrill of the chase as they are hunting down Bethany. 

 Three-quarters of the way through, something happens to Gabriel which is very shocking and instead of that shocking element being carried on, Gabriel suddenly (trying not to spoil anything here) has a change of personality and it completely goes against his storyline. 

 There are quite a few shocks in this story but they last for a very short time because Adornetto doesn’t cling on to those shocking elements that make the reader think ‘YES! SOMETHING GOOD IS FINALLY HAPPENING WITH THIS PLOT!’ Instead, she counteracts the shockingness with some soppy, stupid action that ends up ruining everything.

 The Halo series had so potential to be an amazing series but with bad writing and annoying characters, this series just fell to the dirt for me. Throughout Heaven, there were so many good opportunities to finish off this series on a high, but it just flopped, which is a massive shame.

 I won’t be reading this series again, it just put me in a massive reading slump.


Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

Halo is one of those books where I don’t know how I really feel about it…
Is love a great enough power against evil?

Three angels are sent down to bring good to the world: Gabriel the warrior; Ivy the healer; and Bethany, a teenage girl who is the least experienced of the trio. But she is the most human, and when she is romantically drawn to a mortal boy, the angels fear she will not be strong enough to save anyone – especially herself.

I don’t know who I was annoyed at the most: Gabriel or Bethany. I got very annoyed at Bethany because whilst I was reading it, I was yelling at her to not fall in love with anyone because she’s got a job to do. I mean come on, if I was an angel I would not want to let some boy stop me from doing my job. Hello! I would work for God. How awesome is that? I’d have powers and wings. No mortal boy is stopping me from being an awesome angel. Bethany was so stubborn and would go against anything that Gabriel said. He’s Gabriel, you do not want to mess with him (yes, he’s exactly the Gabriel that you’re thinking of.)
However, I wanted to yell at Gabriel because even though being an angel would be super cool, I can completely understand why Bethany would be fascinated with Earth. It’s completely different to anything that she’s ever experienced before and because she’s a young angel, she’s going to be influenced very easily. Gabriel would be so stern with Bethany and expect her not to pique an interest in anything. I know he’s an archangel and everything but come on, give the girl some slack.
“One of the most frustrating words in the human language, as far as I could tell, was love. So much meaning attached to this one little word. People bandied it about freely, using it to describe their attachments to possessions, pets, vacation destinations, and favourite foods. In the same breath they then applied this word to the person they considered most important in their lives. Wasn’t that insulting? Shouldn’t there be some other term to describe deeper emotion?”
– Alexandra Adornetto, Halo
 
 
Even though I could see both of the characters points of view, I admit I was absolutely sick of hearing how much Xavier and Bethany loved each other, or how gorgeous Xavier was. We get it, you find him attractive. Get over it already. I also hated how overprotective Xavier was. If I had a boyfriend and he was like that, I would tell him to stop and that I could handle carrying my own school books. And I hated when he decided he could just answer for Bethany is class. I seriously wanted to punch him. But everything was ok, it was fine that he was overprotective because he was attractive *sarcasm* (I hate books like that, that get the male to do everything for the female because we’re apparently so weak we can’t even carry our own books.)

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the book as well. It started to get good when Jake Thorn was introduced but again another cliche of a British guy being evil. Us British people aren’t all evil ok? I finished this book in two days and even though there were some very annoying bits with the romance and the characters, I found the whole idea of the book very interesting.

I am in no way religious (if I was, I’d be a Buddhist) but I like reading books about heaven, hell or limbo. I find it fascinating when it gets a fantasy twist put on it and I think it was this that made me keep reading it. I like reading about evil trying to take over and the good guys trying to fight it.

I also found Adornetto to be very descriptive in her writing. Sometimes I found it brilliant as it made me imagine the setting of Venus Cove much more clearly and made me understand the characters better, but on the other hand, sometimes it got annoying because she would repeat herself when describing things. However, I would say that the descriptive side of the book is more positive than negative in its storytelling.

Because of this, I will be reading the second book in the series: Hades. I don’t think I will thoroughly enjoy the second book because I wasn’t a big fan of the second, but let’s hope that I like it enough to not put it down for the second time.