Mini Review: The Bell Jar

Written By Sylvia Plath
Original Publication Date: 1963

Rating: 4 Stars

Let me see if I can phrase this correctly.  I found The Bell Jar to be both an easy read and a difficult one.  Language-wise, the book was easy to read, it flowed; Plath has this way of giving you an entire picture with just a simple few words.  However, where I found it difficult to read was the bluntness and the truthfulness of the decent into a world inundated with dark thoughts and depression.  To some extent, especially when we're in our late teens, early twenties, I think this is something that everyone struggles with.  Trying to find your place in the world is a hard, scary, thing to do and some of us handle it better than others.  Plath encapsulated this in her vaguely autobiographical novel.  She was really writing about the "Quarter-Life Crisis" 30 or 40 years before the phrase came into vogue, and she did so brilliantly and truthfully.

Ten Tiny Breaths

Written By K.A. Tucker
Original Publication Date: 2012

Rating: 1 Star

Book Notes:

I received this ebook for free from the publisher, via Netgalley.

6%

I'm sorry?  He's too beautiful to be a creep?  This is going to end badly, isn't it?  Pull out my hair, bad.

35%

You know, I actually really like this main character.  Unless she's around Trent - then she turns into a simpering moron.

Women can fall in love or lust without turning into simpering morons, truly we can.  I know this is contrary to popular belief in the Romance genre, but it is true.

Review:

Why did I request this book?  Oh, right.  I fell victim to the "Oooooh.  Pretty Cover!" disease.  And then I actually read the summary, and felt a sinking in my stomach.  I hadn't read the reviews close enough before requesting it to realize that it was a book considered New Adult.  New Adult has been a genre I've been avoiding like the goddamned plague.  I think it's a bullshit genre made up as a publishing, marketing, gimmick.  "Hi, I'm a sad Twilight reader, I'm growing up.  I think I'm too old for Young Adult, but I can't handle Adult literature.  What do I read?  Oh wait!  This new genre is just for me!  New Adult!  It is easy to read like Young Adult, but it says the characters are between 18 and 25!  Just like me!  I'm a big kid now!"  Bullshit.  Fucking bullshit.  New Adult doesn't exist.  It's the writing style, not the age of the characters that makes a novel Young Adult or Adult.  I've read YA with 25 year old characters before, and I've read Adult literature where the main character is 6.  It's the style, not the age of the character.  The style that seems to make up New Adult is badly written Young Adult Romance.  We already have a genre for that.  It's called Young Adult Romance.

/rant.

Anyway, I decided to put my preconceptions aside, and try to read this with a blank slate.  I was hoping it would surprise me.  I was wrong.

Kacey Cleary is 20 years old.  Four years ago, on the way home from a high school sports game, the car her father was driving was hit by a drunk driver.  Everyone in the car - her mother, her father, her best friend, her boyfriend - all died, except for Kacey.  Her little sister, Livie, was saved by a cold that had kept her home that afternoon.  Custody was taken by Kacey and Livie's Aunt and Uncle, until the day that their uncle climbs into bed with Livie.  Kacey and Livie run away to Miami, and that is where this novel starts.

The thing is that I actually think I liked Kacey as a character.  She was believably fucked up after the way she watched almost everyone she loved die around her.  She was constantly angry, but competent, could take care of herself.  Yes, she needed to get help, but the character was well built and interesting. 

 My biggest complaint about Kacey, is that authors have got to learn that "watery" is not an attractive sounding adjective for eyes.

Aren't my watery blue eyes beaaaaautiful!?

Cute, right?

And then we met Trent.  And that's where everything in this novel went bad.  Kacey takes one look at this man and decides that all her intellect is going to disappear.  She even says at one point that her instincts tell her that he is dangerous.  And yet, she still wants him?  Dafuq?  He's a goddamned stalker.  He follows her to work, to the gym, and just watches her.  And yet, they still date?

STALKING IS NOT SEXY.  FOR THE LAST GODDAMNED TIME.  TWIHARDS.  YOU HAVE DESTROYED THE ROMANCE GENRE.

And then there's this twist, that I of course, had figured out way before the author revealed it.  I'm honestly still not sure what I think of this twist.  Of course it makes me hate that stupid romance x1000000 more than I already did.  Story-wise it was interesting, but romance-wise it made me want to pull out my fucking hair at the root.

The Fault in Our Stars

Written By John Green
Original Publication Date: 2012

Rating: 5 Stars Out of 5

Book Notes:

No notes in this book as there usually are. It only took me four hours to read, and I truly stopped for nothing. Not even to mull over points.

Review:

Of the four hours it took me to read this novel, I sobbed for two.  Curse you, John Green, for writing something so fucking beautifully depressing.

Hazel is a 16 year old girl who loves to read and watch bad reality television. She has loving, devoted, parents.  She doesn't see her best friend, Kaitlyn, as often as she'd like to because she doesn't attend high school.  She has, however, gotten her GED and takes a couple of classes at the local community college.  She's falling in love with her wonderful boyfriend, Augustus Waters, and they're on a mission to find their favorite author and have him follow up on his novel, which ends abruptly.

They'd be average, normal, though overly articulate and self-aware (John Green tends to do that with all his characters), teenagers except they met in a cancer survivor support group.  Hazel has aggressive thyroid cancer that spread to her lungs, but the mets' growth is slowed by an experimental drug; she could live "a long time," like this as long as she keeps her oxygen tank and has her lungs drained every so often.  Augustus has lost a leg to someformofcancerI'veneverheardofbefore, but he's been in remission ever since.

This is a love story both in spite of cancer and because of cancer.  The love story is beautiful, and obviously doomed.  I started sniffling barely 30% into the novel, by the time I was at 60%, I was all out sobbing, highlighting favorite passages when the crying got so bad I could barely see the page.  I want you to understand something.   I. Do. Not. Cry. At. Books.  I just don't.  So, even warned as I was that it was a tragedy, I didn't realize how much this novel was going to tear my heart into itty bitty paper pieces.  

My only real problem with the novel was Augustus.  And at that, he was only a problem when he was first introduced.  He was this broody, muscly, pretentious, douchenozzle; and that puts it mildly.  I outright hated him for a while.  He obviously knew that he was smart and thoughtful and he tried so damned hard to sound smarter than other people.

This novel is going directly on my list of favorite books of all time.  I still have a head(heart)ache from all the crying I just did.  I'd like to both Thank and Curse John Green for this novel.