The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

This was another recommendation from my friend. I knew I'd love this book just from the title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. How can you not love a book with such an awesome title??

Written in letters, this story is set at the end of World War 2 on a little island off the coast of England called Guernsey. Juliet Ashton, a writer, receives a letter from a stranger in Guernsey and they strike up a friendship. He writes her of the German occupation of their island during the war and how their literary society came to be and how it bonded the islanders together during a difficult time. Juliet is so intrigued by their stories that she decides to write a book on the experiences of her new Guernsey friends.

What I loved most about this book were the characters. Other books I've read written in this style (letters or journal entries) have come off as disjointed and choppy and unrelatable. It can be hard to care about the story without a constant storyline, which is what made me appreciate this book even more. I was able to pick out small details in the writing and try to draw my own conclusions between the characters, hope and guess about potential romances, in different ways from traditional novels. I loved the main character, Juliet. She has gumption. And I absolutely fell in love with the people of Guernsey and their stories. I felt like they became my friends and I cared about what happened in their lives. There is one character, Elizabeth, whom everyone speaks about but Juliet never actually gets to meet, and yet by the end of the book, you feel as though you know her and care about her better than anyone else. I learned that they are making this book into a movie in the next year or so and Kate Winslet is supposed to play Juliet. I adore Kate Winslet and think she'd be a perfect cast.

I definitely recommend this one!!

4 out of 5 stars

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

Last week I ran out of things to read. After I finished North and South, I started to panic because none of the books on my to-read list were at the local library, and heaven forbid I should go even a day without reading material. So I polled some friends during a play group for our kids and got a great list of books. The next few book reviews on this blog will be a result from their recommendations. Thank goodness for fellow bookworm friends!

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt was a delightful feel-good book that left me with warm fuzzies all over. CeeCee, a 12 year old girl living in Ohio, has been raised by a mentally ill mother who frequently acts out her delusions that she is still the Vidalia Onion Beauty Queen from her youth in Georgia. She dresses up in prom gowns from the local Good Will and parades herself around town, humiliating her daughter. When CeeCee's mother is hit by a car and killed, her father, who chose to ignore his wife's illness and desert his family, comes to arrange for CeeCee to move to Georgia to live with her Great Aunt Tootie. Leaving the past behind, CeeCee is able to live and heal and thrive under her kind aunt's care and she meets many wise people who help her learn to move on and love her mother's memory.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. If ever in the mood for a good, soul-uplifting story, I heartily recommend this one. I really enjoyed the characters that CeeCee meets in Georgia. Pretty much all of the significant characters, aside from her father, are women and there sure were some powerhouse ladies to help CeeCee along her way. The story is set in the 1960s and it kind of made me wish I'd grown up in the south. As a California girl, I can truly say that I've never, ever wished that before, but there is something so charming about southern hospitality and the way women back then took care of each other. Although it also reminded me of the racial inequality of the times, making me grateful for how far we have come as a nation.

Loved this story. Perfect for reading snuggled under a blanket on a cold day.

4 out of 5 stars

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

Deerskin by Robin McKinley

This book was....interesting. Not what I expected, but I enjoyed it for the most part. When I was looking for books after my awesome dream I found this on the shelf next to the book I was looking for. The synopsis looked promising so I checked it out.

This is a spin off the fairytale "Donkeyskin", which I had never heard of so I'm guessing many other people haven't. It's about a princess who is the daughter of the beloved and extraordinarily conceited king and queen. Her mother is known to be the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms, and her father, along with the rest of the kingdom, is smitten with her. She dies when Lissar (the princess) is 15 and her father loses his mind with grief. Lissar grows up to be beautiful like her mother and those around her begin to notice. On her 17th birthday her father declares that he will remarry and that Lissar will be his bride. She is horrified (as well she should be) and locks herself in her room. Her father breaks in and rapes and beats her until she is close to death. She manages to escape with her one friend, her faithful fleethound Ash (who was also injured in her father's attack), away from the kingdom and finds solitude for the winter in an abandoned cabin in the woods. Here she blocks her memory of the horrors of her past and seeks a way to move forward with her life.

This story was a lot darker than I expected (not knowing about the rape/beating beforehand) and I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone without them knowing that it gets, not necessarily too graphic, but very realistic dealing with ugly topics. Overall I enjoyed the story and earnestly wished for Lissar's happy ending, which she got, but perhaps not as happy as I would like fairytales to end. This book had the same problem as Robin McKinley's last book I read, Beauty, in that the main character's journey and life is painstakingly described in detail, but the ending is rushed and left me unsatisfied. When I read a fairytale, I want a mind-blowing, weak-at-the-knee, unforgettable happily ever after, where there is no doubt that the prince and princess WILL be happy together after all their struggles. Lissar had to go through some serious trials and she deserved the best happy ending imaginable, not a wishy-washy, rushed, semi-sweet ending. My only other criticism is that things got a little weird at the end and I found myself not really believing what the characters were doing because it all seemed so far-fetched, but maybe that's just me.

Overall: I would recommend to others, but perhaps not for the faint of heart. It gets a little gruesome.

3 out of 5 stars

Beauty by Robin McKinley

Last week I had this really awesome dream that I was reading a book that had adventure and magic in it and a great love story on the side. When I told my husband about it he said "You dreamed you were reading a book??" in a tone that said he thought I was a complete nerd. But it was a great dream and it made me want to find the perfect book to read. After searching through Goodreads for recommendations, and cross-referencing with my local library, I finally settled on Beauty, by Robin McKinley. Not exactly the adventure-romance I was looking for, but a fun read nonetheless. Fairy tales are fun.

A retelling of Beauty and the Beast, this version goes into pretty good detail of Beauty's family and her life before she meets the beast. I've only ever known the Disney version of the story (I know Disney is not the best source of info, but don't judge) so I was interested in the back story. This was a really fun, interesting, and quick read, and I was overall pleased with all but the ending. McKinley took her time describing Beauty and her sisters and father and their whole life together in great detail, and all of the sudden the book ends after a page and a half of resolution. Wha??? I can't figure out why the ending was so rushed after so much thoughtful storytelling. Didn't make sense to me and I felt robbed of my (I mean, Beauty's...) happily-ever-after.

With a good ending this book could have earned a 4 out of 5 from me.

Unfortunately it only gets a 3.

Not bad, but not great.