Mandy
the premise of the story is really good and interesting, but i think what didn't work so well for me was how the story was told. like how the narrative kept jumping between past and present, and not just one linear timeline in the past but multiple points in time in the past. it was really confusing and kept making me lose interest and momentum in the first half of the book. this was especially confusing before i could piece together what exactly was even going on and what was the central mystery of the whole story, which i was only able to do around the halfway mark. once you got a grip on the story though, that's where it gets interesting and hooks you in, so the second half was a lot easier to read than the first.
the premise was very original and refreshing. i liked the idea about ExtraOrdinary people who gained superpowers after experiencing a Near-Death Experience, and their powers being strongly influenced by the kind of last thoughts they had before they “died”. i also liked that these EOs lose some part of their humanity after coming back from near-death, and they are all more than a little inhuman in some aspect or other. i liked the character dynamics between Serena and Eli running circles around each other, each trying to assert control over the other, Eli becoming some kind of religious megalomaniac going around self-righteously killing other EOs, Victor hell-bent on causing Eli as much pain as possible even when he knows he can't kill him, and Sydney being a huge wildcard in terms of how much humanity she really has in her, considering she seemed to be able to manipulate Dominic in the end in going back to save Dol her dog, although her power isn't like that of Serena's. so all in all, i'm a fan of the premise, it's just the narrative structure that really turned me off and would make me hesitate to pick up the sequel.
wow this was a heavy book, i really enjoyed most of it where it kinda dwelt on the disparity and gaps between the Southern gentility and Northern factory men. it asked a lot of questions about class hierarchy, the function of religion in the society as it was back then, and also like what constituted “breeding” at all, instead of only focusing on the upper-middle class societal politics that most novels at the time was wont to do. i kinda felt like the last 10 chapters were a little draggy though. i felt like after Margaret left Milton, the discussion and the contrast between the classes went away as well, and then we just have a series of events that first made her lonelier and then made her richer. as for the ending, i really wish there was more said of the reconciliation between Margaret and Mr Thornton, or that we had seen how she would behave with Mrs Thornton. there's so much that could have been said between them! she was once a subject of Mrs Thornton's disdain because she was a Southern gentlewoman who was too soft, i guess, and was poor, but now she's the one saving her son's entire business. and then how would her match with Mr Thornton be viewed by her aunt Shaw and her cousin Edith?? SO MUCH COULD HAVE BEEN SAID. what a wasted opportunity. but still the book did leave me happy and i really want to watch that mini-series now.
i have read absolutely nothing to do with Odyssey so while i may know the names (Odysseus, Jason, etc.) i know nothing about it. for the other “side stories” of Glaucos, Pasiphae, Minotaur, Daedalus, and so on, i only really know the most superficial level. i have never heard of Circe as a character or even as a mythological figure before, so i was really going in mostly blind to this. i found that i enjoyed it quite well, all in all! the writing was easy to follow, and although the driving point of the plot was kinda opaque for most of the book, the pacing and unfolding of the events were pretty engaging so i didn't really feel bored throughout (it helps that it's such a short read too). until now i have no idea exactly how much was changed from the mythology to the book, so i'm just gonna comment on the book as it is (i intend to read up more deeply on the mythology soon).
Circe is pretty much a god who struggles with (and even hates) her own divinity, and for the most part of the book, she's also just learning to understand mortals as well. the promiscuity, the ruthlessness, the sadism and general apathy of the other Greek gods was well portrayed imo, and it really gives you a sense of why Circe loathed her kind. i kinda wish that more had been done with the whole Pasiphae/Minotaur arc, when Circe had a bit of a truce with her sister after realising that they both hated the gods - it just kinda felt set up to lead to nowhere? the only plot-valuable thing to come out of that arc was Circe's fondness for Ariadne, which continues to stay on in her mind as how fragile mortality is.
i was also kinda sad that Telegonus would rather hear more about Odysseus's adventures than about his mother's, when he has never laid eyes upon him. and i was annoyed that Circe didn't assert herself more on that, and just chose to keep her life to herself in a sense. no wonder there's a gulf between herself and her son? when she would tell him sanitised and aggrandized versions of his father's adventures but not share more about her own. instead, she tells them to Telemachus. continuing from that, the ending was a little weird for me that she ended up with the son of her an ex-lover... i mean, i get that it's certainly not on the list of weirdest things in Greek mythology, but considering the fact that this was not part of the original mythology and was added in later on, it still feels weird to me.
as i've said, the writing was definitely engaging, but i had issues with how repetitive some sentence structures felt by the end. for example, “Full of pain, it was. Full of searing pain.” (not actually in the book) it was still easy enough to read though, and it didn't annoy me a whole lot, but it was obvious enough to notice and i was a little tired of it by the end.
this book started off really slow in the first 1/3 but it got better after that and i couldn't put it down in the last third of the book. this is a book that is better read not solely for its plot, which is generally slow-going, but for the introspection that it offers on how it might feel like, and the different paths open, to gay gentlemen in early 20th C England. Maurice pretty early on realises that his sexuality cannot be reconciled with Christianity so he gives up on that, but he takes a much longer time to face up to the realities of living as a homosexual man in his society. i like the idea near the end where the book says that Clive and him are descended from the same Clive from their time in Cambridge - they were both in almost identical positions in life, but one chose respectability and the other rebellion. man, Alec's letters to Maurice also twisted knives in my heart :( it's also interesting that Maurice's love of his life ended up being a gamekeeper, and presumably of a different class. i'm sure class hierarchy was still a big thing even at that time, so i think in having this relationship be doubly taboo in that it also transcends class boundaries, it also rebels against the Greek ideals that Maurice had initially based his sexual awakening on, because (iirc) Greek homosexuality was only amongst men of the same class? and it felt like in making big sacrifices for each other and deserting their own classes, both of them ended up becoming equal with each other. frankly i skimmed through some parts of this book but i enjoyed it overall because in writing fiction instead of a biography, we can sort of have a more intimate insight into the inner workings of perhaps Forster himself, and the generally-hidden world of homosexuality he was a part of at the time.
- the writing was very engaging, i generally found myself being swept along with it and the first half passed very smoothly.
- i really really didn't care for Kvothe's romance arc with Denna, and i think that's when the book kinda took a dip and went downhill from about 50-80+%. it only picked up a tiny bit when they first discovered the draccus and when we see tiny glimpses of Denna's banter and wit, but then after that it went back to meh all the way until Kvothe finally summoned the name of the wind. i gotta admit i started skimming through some chapters during this entire arc. the rest of the plot was a pretty good epic fantasy but the romance bits were so incongruously amateurish somehow.
- i enjoyed the bits at the end when Elodin finally started talking a bit more about how Naming works, and also that exciting bar fight with the demon-possessed (?) mercenary at the Waystone Inn.
- i was annoyed by adult Kvothe at the beginning of the book, was OK with him as a child and a teen all the way until he got all half-crazy and obsessive over Denna then i was really annoyed, and by the end he's just meh all right. i'm confused why he's holding himself off from Denna despite being in contact with her, and then also lusting over Fela at the same time :WaitWhat:
- things i care about by the end of the book: Auri, Bast, the system of Naming, Elodin's backstory, the Underthing
- this book was a 4/5 for me for the first half, but then dipped down to a 3 in the middle and now i guess i'd probably settle around 3.75 maybe?
- would i read the next book? a big Maybe. i'm not entirely ruling it out, but i'd definitely need a significant amount of time before i decide if i want to pick it up.
I've tried multiple times throughout the years to read Fellowship of the Ring but I've always either skimmed through the book or given up entirely. Still, it's one of those bucket list TBR that I know I want to keep having another go at, and I think I've finally gotten to a sweet spot in life where I've managed to finish reading Fellowship and enjoy it.
I think my previous attempts had been foiled by mismanaged expectations brought about by my obsession with the first movie (back when I was a teen), but now that I've kinda left that behind at this point. I've also read more classics and gotten used to this style of writing, and all of this made Fellowship a much more pleasant read than I've previously experienced. It also helped that i went into it knowing that some parts were going to be slower-paced and lore-rich rather than action-packed (as i had expected during my very first attempt), and that helped me to shift my mindset to enjoy it better.
I took so long to read this not because it was a drag as it had been on my previous attempts. In fact, this is the most I have been engaged in and enjoyed the book in all my numerous attempts throughout the years! But I figured that this was a book I didn't want to rush through and force myself to read any faster than what I was comfortable with, so along the way I got distracted by a lot of things, like reading an entire other book (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry) and watching an entire 50-episode TV show. Despite all that, I'm still managing to finish FOTR within a month, and I think that's really good progress for me.
I'm already planning out the rest of my LOTR reading journey - TTT in Sep and ROTK in Dec. I really want to finish the rest of the trilogy this year, but I also think that these are books that I don't want to read consecutively because they're pretty dense in themselves. I want to take my time and slowly savour it along the way.
Some spoilerish observations:
Sam is even more of a voice of reason in the book than he was in the movie. I also can't believe they ended it so abruptly?? I thought that they'd at least have gone on to the death of Boromir and the kidnapping of Merry and Pippin etc. but I guess not. I previously really didn't like the whole Tom Bombadil bit because it felt so draggy and useless, but I found myself really fascinated by it this time round! Also, very fascinated by the Lothlorien bits and the fact that Galadriel is in fact Arwen's grandmother.
The first chapter or two were a bit of an info dump. Tyson doesn't shy away from the numbers, and the basic scientific principles underlying the concepts he is attempting to drive across, and therefore assumes some basic knowledge of chemistry and physics right from the get-go. From the third chapter or so onwards, he eases into a more laypeople-friendly tone, inserting everyday analogies to help us understand the concepts or the scales at which he is describing astrophysics. Overall, an entertaining and educational book on one of my favourite non-fiction topics which I thoroughly enjoyed - though it's probably not for everyone.
I guess the book was... OK?! I kinda lost interest in it at about the 60% mark and scanned through the rest of it. The mystery was not very engaging, the twists were not super twisty, but I'll give it to the author that my initial guesses for the murderer were wrong.
I'm a huge fan of Jane Austen and also really enjoy classic British literature from that time period, so I'm not unfamiliar with how convoluted English writing could be from that era. However, the author dialed it up to 11 when she was trying to replicate that style. It felt overdone and stilted, and really screamed, “This is trying very hard to write like Jane Austen” rather than replicating her style.
The author seems to have a penchant for replacing a perfectly regular “had” for “did”.
Regular sentence: “Had she arrived in a Scargrave carriage, she would have caused a commotion.”Author's sentence: “Did she arrive in a Scargrave carriage, she would have caused a commotion.”
I'm not entirely sure if it's an accurate use, but even if so, she used it so many times that I actually got really annoyed with it after a bit.
None of the characters were particularly endearing, unfortunately not even our narrator Jane. As someone invested in finding out the solutions to the mystery, she jumps to a ton of conclusions and also gets led on super easily by the worst of characters. In fact, every plot twist that comes to her in the end takes her entirely by surprise. I get that she can't know too much, or it would be spoiling the twists for the reader, but then why even make her the “detective” of this series? I was also really annoyed that she was so resolutely confident in Fitzroy's innocence despite learning about his "misdeeds" in London and she gave no reason why besides that he was just oh so noble. I mean, even Isobel, his lover, was completely taken in and we are to believe that Jane wasn't simply because she had a gut feeling. It just felt like the author wanted Jane to be right in something in the end, rather than jumping on the hate bandwagon for Fitzroy only to have to be contrite about it when it's proven false.
There are definite P&P elements in the plot here, and frankly that was a little annoying too. As the author notes in the preface, First Impressions was written way before the time period of this book so it wouldn't make sense to say that, in an alternate universe, the events of this book inspired the events of P&P. Along with some iconic quotes directly lifted from P&P and attributed to some of the characters in this book, it just felt like a cheap homage to P&P. Don't get me wrong, I love P&P but don't shoehorn elements of it into something that's meant to be completely irrelevant. Don't copy and paste quotes from another novel and add it in here just so that we can all have a nudge nudge wink wink, I know that's from P&P moment. It's just a pet peeve for me as a Jane Austen fangirl.
I am also super bewildered by how Jane started off with a terrible impression of Tom Hearst, and despite writing about how she will guard her heart against him, etc., she suddenly feels betrayed when she finds out that he actually got Fanny pregnant. And then what shocks her even more than that is when she finds out that he's actually a wastrel who cheats at cards and has racked up gambling debts (obviously a Wickham prototype), it's only then that she starts thinking, how could I have been so deceived by him? Ummm. There was really nothing at all to even give us the impression that she had been deceived, or any reason why she would like him at all, as she persistently rebuffs all his advances. I don't know, this entire plot point was just so so contrived and unnecessary, and just made Jane look even more silly.
Wow, that ending.
It was just as frustrating as the world that Newland Archer lives in. His eldest son, Dallas, couldn't have put it any better.
"You never did ask each other anything, did you? And you never told each other anything. You just saw and watched each other, and guessed at what was going on underneath. A deaf-and-dumb asylum, in fact!"
Then, Newland Archer took his cue solely from the fact that the Countess Olenska's manservant kept the balcony awnings and closed the shutters - and left after thirty years of not seeing her. I'm just blown away.
Overall, this was a great book examining the slowly cracking facade of the New York social scene, and the interface between the generation obsessed with Society and the museum-like superficiality that its participants needed to live every aspect of their lives with, and the one that throws these things to the wind. Amazingly and intricately written, it was an engaging read that kept me going page after page, despite a lack of “action” in its traditional sense.
What a beautiful and riveting book.
This book starts off almost like an homage to the classic “ex-partner” emotional baggage that many of us have experienced before in our lives. The feeling when you've just gone serious with someone special, but everyone around them seems to only look at you just to compare you with their previous long-term partner. The feeling of never being able to live up to expectations and that you're not welcome in your new partner's life. It ambles along slowly and I took about 5 days to get up to the halfway mark.
Today, when I finally got up to about halfway and a major event happens (Mrs. Danver's bitchiness at the fancy dress ball), I had an inkling that things were coming to a head. And, boy, was I right. The second half of the book simply flew by and I refused to do anything else but sit and finish it. If the first half of the book read like a slow and abstract stroll through a patch of woods that you can't decide was more sorrowful, beautiful, or sinister, the second half of the book is when you realise you're not in Kansas anymore.
I really wanted to like this book, but I end up feeling rather conflicted about it.
The world it sets up is compelling, although the magical system is pretty much non-existent. Even though our “hero” Quentin Coldwater attends a magical school, we learn next to nothing about how spells work, how it's casted, and what potential it has. We're simply told that spells are cast, we see the effects they have, but we have no idea how it happens. For a book that has been, for so long, tagged as “Harry Potter for adults”, it sorely lacks the comprehensive world-building and deeply intricate magical system that Harry Potter has. Anyone who has even just watched the Harry Potter movies could probably name at least one or two famous spells (Alohomora? Expecto Patronum? Avada Kedavra?). Having finished this book, I struggle to remember any spell that was cast, and I probably couldn't explain coherently how magic even works in this world, except that only special people who can somehow wield it gets sent to Brakebills.
I was also terribly uninterested in the cast of characters. Eliot and Josh are interchangeable sex-driven jocks, Janet was just downright annoying and a one-dimensional archetype. Air-headed, endlessly promiscuous, and selfish, she's that stereotype of a high school cheerleader with no conscience, character, backstory, and simply exists to wreck some havoc in the main characters' lives and inject some sex into the plot line.
Quentin was worse. It felt like I had to sit through all that hormonal teenage whining of Order of the Phoenix again, but without any of the redeeming sparkle that Harry Potter generally offers. He was a main character that continually annoyed and annoyed and I could never find it in me to root for him at any one point. The lowest point of his character arc was when he blew up at Alice for sleeping with Penny, even though she had done it partly in retaliation at him sleeping with Janet. I kept waiting for Alice to round up on him and give him a taste of his own medicine, but she did nothing of the sort and that was so, so frustrating. Some parts of the story were just downright insulting to women, and while I get that the story is told through Quentin's eyes, I expected some sort of redemption at the end where he realised what a chauvinistic prick he's been - that never came and honestly, that really dampens my motivation to continue reading the trilogy.
For all its faults, I will say that the book got very engaging in the last third, and I found myself not being able to put it down. The general gist of the plot and the twists it involved were pretty satisfying, and it's only because of that, certainly not the characters, that I'd even consider continuing the trilogy.
, but that never came by the end of the book, which honestly makes me
Honestly, I'm pretty divided about this book despite the great ratings it's gotten on Goodreads so far.
THE BAD:
- Instances of non-consent framed as “desirable”. This book was first published in 2007 and it shows. It's hard to imagine similar plot elements being published by a socially savvy writer in more recent times
- Insta-love/lust is never a great plot choice in my opinion
- The third arc of the book took a rather strange turn, especially with Leo's storyline
THE GOOD:
- Unlike many romance novels where most characters (aside from the MCs) are just glorified background scenery, I appreciate that this book takes the time to develop the personalities, problems, conflicts, and backstories of the other characters, which really does a huge favour for the storyline
- Although MCs have an insta-love problem, they do spend an ample amount of time conversing with each other after that, and their subsequent chemistry isn't unrealistic
- The female MC isn't so much of a Mary Sue - we can see why people can get annoyed with her and her overbearing personality. She does acknowledge and, to a small extent, try to improve herself by the end of the book, although there could be more character development here (the same can't be said for the male MC)
All in all? It's not a bad book, and one of the more well fleshed-out romance novels that I've read. It's definitely going in for the melodrama rather than a light-hearted romance, but I enjoyed that there were substantial sub-plots that kept the story from being too monotonous and fixated on the one relationship between the female and male MCs. Goodness knows, I'm actually slightly more interested in one of those subplots (I have been enamoured with Win and Merripen from the start) than the main characters' story.
I'll give kudos to Christina Lauren's writing, which drew me in from page one. Their tone was modern, fun, light-hearted, with just the right amount of inside jokes for the social media generation, without seeming like they were trying too hard. The entertainment value of their writing is probably worth a whole 2 stars from my rating already.
I liked that this was one of the very few romance novels out there with an Asian-American male protagonist. I liked that there was just the right amount of Korean culture incorporated in it without going too over-the-top but also without completely ignoring it. All these factors combined made the book more than a sum of its parts. It was fun and I think that's what kept me going, speeding through the book in what is, to me, record time.
But things have to be said about the two protagonists. While they certainly weren't as annoying and cliche as romantic protagonists could be, but I kinda found myself wishing that they were... more. Despite all their quirks, it still kinda felt like the protagonists were generally one-dimensional. Hazel is a quirky girl and Josh is a nice dude who likes crazy. That pretty much sums up the entire characterization arc.
Another thing I wasn't so hot about was the way they were thrown into each other's paths again. The whole “we are going to be male/female best friends!” thing fell super flat for me, because they were clearly attracted to each other from the start (no matter how many times they tell each other they're not) and I didn't feel like they were close in a platonic way. Every time they drew closer to each other, it felt like there was always sexual tension there that you, as the reader, just knows will get explored at some point. Perhaps it's a personal preference, but if we're doing the best-friends-to-lovers thing, I'd like to see a very, very clear friendzone happening before attraction sets in, rather than it having been there from the start.
Last but not least, the ending...
If it hadn't been for that ending, I may actually round this book up to 4 stars. The ending felt rushed as hell! Josh and Hazel hadn't even gotten to the point of verbalizing their feelings for each other (although a lot of HINTS were made) before wham bam, suddenly Hazel's pregnant from the very first time they had sex. Talk about bullseye, eh? Sure, this situation could happen and has happened before. But what comes next makes things even worse. We are somehow shuttled forward in time where we meet Josh and Hazel having a date night, before going back to his empty house to have sex on the wooden floor all over again (really?). Finally, we get to find out that Josh and Hazel are not only happily married, but have 2 kids and are expecting a third. A very conventional, almost cheesy, tableau of happy married family life plays out. End scene.REALLY?!Are we really expected to believe that Josh and Hazel had a happy marriage life having gotten pregnant just 2 months after they started sleeping together, and before they actually started dating proper???? It's not to say that this is an impossibility, but to not even acknowledge that this is a thing, that there would've been hard times and arguments and struggles to overcome to get to where they are at the end, and to make it seem like it's effortless and easy to get from infatuated sex to happy married couple. I can't imagine if the readers who actually worked their butts off for their relationship when they get surprised by an unexpected pregnancy way, way too early on.
I casually picked this up from Goodreads' Romance Week recommendations, expecting just a regular run-of-the-mill romance but with m/m - and boy, was I wrong.
This was everything I've been yearning to find in romance novels for so long (and I usually read m/f 99% of the time). It's a book about an actual honest-to-goodness relationship blossoming between two people. They are certainly physically attracted to each other, but it's not just about that - and I think that's where this book truly shines. You can really feel the actual chemistry between Silas and Dominic, and most of that is outside of the bed. Their relationship feels deeper than just physical intercourse. K.J. Charles does an excellent job really sculpting the interaction between these two people, having them act realistically and logically. They may have a hierarchy in the bedroom, but you can feel that despite their class difference, these two people have such complete respect for the other and they treat each other as equals on every level.
Best of all, their relationship is also situated in the world that they lived in. I guess it helped that I recently watched a documentary on the Regency era and know a smattering of the real events referred to in the book, such as the Peterloo massacre and the Cato Street Conspiracy. K.J. Charles managed to weave an entrancing and compelling historical piece seamlessly and intricately into the romance that I never skipped or skimmed a paragraph. Dominic and Silas stand on opposite sides of a class war, but through them we really appreciate why that divide brewed in English society to begin with. Coming away, I felt like I had a deeper understanding and appreciation for the social setting during the Regency - and it's so wild that a romance novel taught me that!
All in all, one of the best romances I've read so far.
An entertaining and well written account of the fascinating Plantagenet family. With nearly 200 years of kings who are either named Henry, Edward or Richard (and sometimes John), Dan Jones did an excellent job at not only making the monarchs easily distinguishable from each other but also added enough flavour to the narrative that kept the reader going despite the length of this book, all without sacrificing chronology and historical accuracy.
This book is formulaic. It's fairly predictable. The characters veer towards one-dimensional and there's hardly any character development throughout the story.
And yet, I loved it.
I can't explain it, but A Countess Below Stairs just has some unexplainable charm that caught me off guard.
The way I like to think about it, is that the book feels like almost like the embodiment of Anna Gravinsky, the main character in this story. She's every bit of a Mary Sue as you might imagine (innocent, beautiful, nice to everything and everyone, somehow gets into everybody's good books), and I typically despise Mary Sue characters with a passion, but I just can't find it in me to hate Anna. Anna is almost like that wide-eyed little girl that never quite grows up and who sees the world around her as in a fairy tale, and that's exactly what this book is like. The story has that sort of child-like simplicity and wonder to it that even though you know how things are going to go down before you're a few chapters in, you just somehow can't help that soft spot you have for it.
Not to mention, Ibbotson's writing is a delight to read after having waded through so many commercial romance paperbacks before this. There is none of that insta-lust (not a single mention of nipples, though I can't say the same for breasts) and the plot isn't so completely absorbed in the burgeoning sexual tension between the two main characters. The chemistry that springs up between Rupert, Earl Westerholme, and Anna, Countess Gravinsky, is actually believable (although I would by no means call anything about this book ‘realistic').
Don't come into this book expecting realism, historical or otherwise. You're not going to find it here.
All in all, A Countess Below Stairs was an extremely feel-good book for me despite its shortcomings and I enjoyed it thoroughly. This was the first time in a long time that I ended the book with an, “Aww!” because I wanted more, and heaving two long sighs consecutively because the child in me wants to continue reveling more in the innocent, bare-faced positivity that permeated the whole book.
The interrupted wedding scene at the end was a downright riot. Even if my experience with the book had been bad (which it wasn't), that scene alone would've made up for it all. I've never seen a better parody of Jane Eyre. I had an inkling that shit would happen, but this was far beyond anything I had been expecting, and I gotta give Ibbotson mad props for that.
Halfway through the book, I got really excited because I thought this was a book that was going to be about P&P and also have a P&P-ish plot to it, especially during the middle bit when Alex came under suspicion and DCI Quimby started being nice to Kate. What if DCI Quimby was actually the Darcy-esque character while Alex was Wickham? After all, the whole first half of the book seemed to foreshadow some sort of “appearance is very different from reality” theme which Kate apparently wrote some thesis about.
But such a plot twist was not to be. Instead, DCI Quimby is just another police officer and the romantic hero is still Alex.
The plot trudged along predictably enough, and I wasn't even surprised by the revelation of the murderer. I'd have pegged Eve as the most uninteresting suspect from the start, because she'd be so predictable. When Kate started getting excited about various details falling into place (but deciding that Eve definitely had to be the one who had sent her Kevin's camera because of the way she folded wires, really? Because no one else could fold wires in that same way? Talk about jumping to conclusions), I was actually bracing myself for a bigger plot twist at the end. What if it hadn't actually been Eve, and Kate had let her prejudices get in the way and suspect the wrong person when in fact it was actually someone that no reader would've suspected, a la Agatha Christie murder mystery. Unfortunately, again, that fell flat.
The premise of the book was really interesting, and for that I'd give it the 2 stars. It failed to impress with the conclusion of both the romantic and the mystery plots, however.
I wasn't into the writing style, especially the overdramatic drop of pronouns: “Stopped what she was doing, heard a rustle.” (quoted almost verbatim from the book)
I didn't feel invested in any of the characters, especially not whiny Sasha or Bran “Mary Sue” Killian. Plus, I didn't understand why she got all pissed at him for not having told her he was a wizard, cos I mean, didn't she dream of him and his lightning bolts? You'd have thought that she'd be the least surprised member of the party. In one chapter, the actual “strategising” on how they were going to search for the fallen stars was relegated to a cursory single short paragraph: “They spent one hour strategising...” (Not quoting verbatim here because I'm too lazy to find the actual quote in the book, but that was the gist) The rest of the chapter is dedicated to Sasha and Bran getting to know each other in a romantic walk on the beach. Gee.
The last straw came after a short dialogue between Riley and Sasha when Sasha asks Riley to teach her “how to fight”.
“Okay, see, you're punching like a girl.”“I am a girl.”“Nobody's a girl in a fight. You're a fighter. ...”
These are two women, by the way.
DNF.
Because I really love 18th to 19th century time-tested novels, contemporary historical fiction is one of those genres which I naturally and strongly gravitate towards, but I rarely enjoy what I pick up.
I'm happy to note that A Curious Beginning was one of those rare instances. I thoroughly enjoyed myself from beginning to end, and I was already busy figuring out how to get my hands on the next book before I had even finished this one.
Victoria Speedwell is a 24 year old spinster who, having just nursed and buried her two aunts, thought she was now free from any strings holding her to England. Things get nasty when her house is broken into by a burly henchman, but with the help of a mysterious German baron, she escapes unscathed. From there begins her rollercoaster adventure through Victorian London and beyond, as the baron throws her lot together with his “protege” of sorts, the faux-ruffian Stoker.
I won't pretend to say that this novel does a 100% flawless job at blending in with the 19th century backdrop. It doesn't. Victoria Speedwell is remarkably progressive and independent for a woman of her time, and she is certainly something of an anachronism. I typically don't like anachronistic characters in historical fiction, but I liked that Victoria was consistent. Unlike many novels out there, she wasn't a female character who simply flared up randomly about how downtrodden Victorian women there but then cowered at the first sign of danger or got herself captured so the hero could come in and save her. She means to have her way, and she defies anyone who stands between her and her goals, damn the consequences. And the book really means, damn the consequences.
At Stoker's introduction, I was bracing myself for your typical undermined hero, with all his rippling muscles and ruffian-like exterior hiding the soul of an aristocrat. In many ways, he does fall into all those tropes, as does Victoria into the anachronistically independent Victorian spinster stereotype. What I liked, however, was the way the tropes played off each other: to explosive fireworks and some truly hilarious conversations. Stoker has an apparently dark past and I still don't know the whole of it, since nothing much is explained by the end of this book but he doesn't sit brooding on it all the damn time as tormented heroes are wont to do. He does get up and live his life, especially when Veronica (metaphorically) slaps him out of it.
Another thing I really enjoyed is that sexual/romantic tension so masterfully built up between the two characters but never quite consummated. We're given deliciously brief brushes with that palpable connection between the two, but they don't quite fall into each other's arms and decide to commit themselves to each other by the end of the book. At the rate I have rolled my eyes and given up on so many romantic plots from historical fiction novels, you might think I've lost my romantic soul, but this book has proved that I haven't. I do enjoy reading romance, but I like to see it built up realistically, with a solid foundation as is happening here with Veronica and Stoker. Heck, I can't even be 100% sure if they end up together in the subsequent books, and it's fun to have that ambiguity hanging.They also don't display that annoyingly overdone trope of tortured forbidden love, where one or both parties pretend nothing is happening between them for some reason or other, if only to increase the angst and torment. Veronica and Stoker, I think, without actually saying it out loud, have acknowledged an attraction between themselves, but at least during the duration of the book, they were too busy with more pressing, life-and-death matters to really go into that, and I could respect that plot decision. It's a far cry from some historical fiction I've read where they had the main couple having sex in a jail cell when both were in apparently mortal danger, just because they couldn't keep it in their pants. Not Veronica and Stoker.
I'm off to start on the second book now and I'm pleased to note that the Goodreads ratings of subsequent installments of the Victoria Speedwell series are only increasing. “Excelsior!”