North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Over the Christmas holiday my sister in law lent me the movie North and South. She said I'd probably like it because of how much I like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Plus it stars Richard Armitage who plays Thorin Oakenshield in the Hobbit (of which I am a huge fan) and I thought it'd be fun to see him in a different role. Last week I finally watched it and instantly fell in love and decided I simply must read the book. Besides, after all these fantasy and paranormal books I've been reading lately I decided a nice Victorian novel sounded divine.

 

Our heroine is Miss Margaret Hale, the daughter of a parson, Mr Hale, who decides to abruptly uproot his family from the quiet country town Helstone for the bustling factory town of Milton. As Margaret in confronted with her prejudice of mill-owners and factory towns, she becomes acquainted with lower class factory workers, particularly the Higgins family, and a mill-owner Mr Thornton. She becomes personally invested in the social inequality and injustices she sees between the two classes, all the while cultivating unconscious (for most of the novel) feelings for Mr Thornton, who also has feelings for her.

 

I loved this book. I love that so much of it is focused on the political issues of the time it was written. I probably don't need to point out that I live for a really good love story, and the romance between Mr Thornton and Margaret, while not the focus of the book, is sweet and provoking. The only negative I can have is that I wish the ending was more developed. You root for Margaret and Mr Thornton for the full 400+ pages, so the ending should adequately represent the struggles they both (and the reader) go through to get there. At least the movie embellishes on the ending to make it a little more satisfying. But overall I was so happy to have discovered this gem. It's definitely more serious and darker than Pride and Prejudice, and has less romance than Jane Eyre, but anyone who is a fan of either of those (or any other Jane Austen, Bronte, or Dickens), I highly recommend North and South.

 

5 out of 5 stars

The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare

Is it strange how you can finish a series, look at all the covers lined up in a row, and not be able to recall what the story was?? I'm experiencing this conundrum right now. I finished book 5, City of Lost Souls, just about a week ago, and for the life of me I can't remember what happened in each book. Strange...

In any case, The Mortal Instruments series, by Cassandra Clare, was a whole lot of fun. They're making a movie of the first book, City of Bones, to be released soon. It's difficult to explain what this series was about because Clare created a richly detailed world in which to tell her story, so giving a vague summary won't do it justice.

The story starts with a girl named Clary, a seemingly normal girl who is best friends with an actually normal boy named Simon. One night Clary and Simon meet some strange people--Jace, Alec, and Isabelle, shadowhunters whose duty it is to destroy demons and protect humans. When Clary's mom is kidnapped by a powerful rogue shadowhunter, Clary discovers secrets of her past and learns that she is, by blood, a shadowhunter. She and Simon are thrown into this world of demons, vampires, werewolves, faeries, and angels and join the battle to save the world.

I think the thing I liked best about this series was that I couldn't predict ANYTHING. The only clues I had to who ends up with who were from the book covers, and the story was beyond anything I could have guessed. The character development was really good--you get to know and care about each character, which I think is monumentally important to any good story. Each book had great momentum, full of adventure and excitement, with the exception of book 4 where it got a little slow. I almost think the series would have been stronger if it ended after book 3 when a major conflict that tied books 1-3 together was resolved. Instead a few threads were left hanging to propel the series to books 4-6+ (book 6 is to be published around 2014). When I picked up the first installment at the library, I figured that since there were 5 books then the series must be complete. I probably wouldn't have started these if I had known they weren't finished yet. I absolutely hate waiting for books to come out; I lose interest if I have to wait too long.

Overall I thought these were a great read and I would definitely recommend to others.

4 out of 5 stars

Wings series by Aprilynne Pike

I've gotten into the bad habit of waiting to blog until I've read several books so that by the time I get around to blogging, I can hardly remember what I read. Such is the case this time. I read this series by Aprilynne Pike, recommended by my fellow book worm friend Katie, a couple months ago.

Wings starts off with a girl named Laurel who finds out that she is a faerie, sent to live in the human world to protect the gateway to Avalon, the home of all faeries. She also finds herself in a rather complicated love triangle, torn between the enticing and passionate faerie Tam and the grounded, human best-friend Mike.

I found this series to be enjoyable and entertaining but somewhat predictable. I was never surprised by anything that happened, even her eventual resolution of the love triangle. It was fun to read about faeries; I've never read any faerie stories before. I would definitely recommend these books if you're looking for a light, pleasant set of books in which you could easily be lost.

3 out of 5 stars for the first three books
4 out of 5 for the last