Books I've Read -- Jan

Yay! Books of 2014!

Enchanted by Alethea Kontis, finished 1/6. Enchanted is basically a retelling of pretty much any fairy tale you can come up with -- all wrapped up into one novel. Seriously, I didn't even bother counting. But for having as many different story elements as it did, Enchanted did okay with handling all of them. Sure, some of them were pretty cliche (but that comes with the territory, really), and some of the fairy tale references were just in passing. It was a really light-hearted book for me and I enjoyed it. However, it is kind of predictable, so I don't know if everyone would like it. (Goodreads reviewers also have an issue with the "insta-love" and plot, so I guess keep that in mind?)

Itch by Simon Mayo, finished 1/9. I originally wasn't going to finish the book. The margins were "messing with my zen". Eventually I did get over it, but the book was kind of a weird size for me. Anyway, I'd say the book overall was just okay. It wasn't absolutely terrible, but I'm still debating the three star rating I gave it. A lot of the book seemed implausible. I mean, okay, it's fiction, so you have a lot of wiggle room with it. But a fourteen year old being able to get his hands on dangerous elements (not to mention one that hasn't been discovered)? A teacher that's okay with torturing a student and possibly letting him die over the new element? Teachers that know a student has a radioactive chemical and don't do much about it? I was questioning a lot of characters' sanity over the book. If this actually a middle grade book like the Goodreads shelves suggest, then it makes sense in my head, but it seems too big of a book to really be middle grade. And there are no reviews of the book under three stars, which is fishy. I'm tempted to change my rating to two stars to see what happens.

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick, finished 1/30. I totally binge-read this book. I got over halfway through in one afternoon, and just about finished it in an hour the next day in school. It's a "fluffy romance book". And it was really cute! It reminded me slightly of Along for the Ride, especially with Samantha's relationship with her mom. Sam and Jace did seem to have a kind of insta-romance, but they've also been aware of each other's existence for a long time, so it's not like they just fell totally head over heels for someone they just met. I will say that the book was kind of lacking plot-wise -- not just with the romance, but also with how Sam is somehow good with babysitting Jace's siblings despite never doing it before (and she got a lot better than I did over one summer than I have over more than a year) and how it built up to the climax. Things built up slowly but steadily, creating a sort of perfect existence, and right when Sam points that out, it's pretty obvious that it's gonna go downhill from there. The whole "downhill" part seemed a little strange, though, because it wasn't just a few things crashing -- it was pretty much Sam's entire life that fell to pieces around her, and at least with Nan, it was for almost no reason at all. Like it fell to pieces just to make her life miserable, and for no other reason. Other than that, though, I did like the book. Sometimes predictable ones are okay to recover from an emotionally-tolling book. (Or Itch, which really bothered me.)

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, finished 1/30. You know, I should probably go back and add in all of the books I've read for English in the past. I'm glad that we were assigned The Glass Castle after having to read The Things They Carried and Fallen Angels. It was a really interesting story, especially since it's a memoir. Some of that stuff, you'd have to be really imaginative in order to make it up. Or just want to make the characters as miserable as possible.

January seemed like kind of a slow month for books. February is looking better, though, with the release of Cress and the remainder of the library books I have.