Reading Wrap Up: June

These images are taken from my personal bookstagram account

Well, it was a matter of time before the inevitable reading slump got to me and it turns out June was that time of the year. Hopefully I manage to turn things around for July, even though the first book I picked up for July is a honker of a thousand plus pages (1376 pages to be exact), which I hope to finish soon. But who cares about July when I haven’t even talked about June yet, so here we go.

These images are taken from Tumblr

PUBLISHED IN 2017 / WRITTEN BY ASHLEY POSTON

I’m not sure how I feel about fairy tale retellings because there are three now that I’ve read (that I’m sure of), and only one of them I loved. Geekerella sounded like something I would love as well. A contemporary young adult novel featuring a geeky girl with a Cinderella twist thrown into it. Turns out it wasn’t that great and I didn’t end up loving it. And even though I read it like a month ago, I’ve already almost forgotten all about it. I didn’t think about the book after I finished it, I didn’t have that feeling of needing the main characters to be together forever, I wasn’t really experiencing any big emotions with this novel.

In other words, Geekerella is a mediocre novel that has its moments but it lacks that greater impact I needed. There are elements to it that feel right, there are supporting characters that are interesting and worth further character development, but their story lines are really vague in the book. Most importantly, though the story tries to add that Cinderella twist at the end, it doesn’t work and it’s because of the double point of view.

With fantasy novels a multiple perspective angle mostly works. With novels such as Six of Crows and It for instance, the multiple perspectives add richness to the story. Geekerella, by adding both the female and the male perspective to the story, dulled the element of surprise the book was trying to create. Also, with it, I feel like I didn’t get to know either of the main characters because I was constantly thrown from one to the other. Which is a shame because I feel like I could have loved that geeky girl.

PUBLISHED IN 2014 / WRITTEN BY PENNY REID

After reading two Penny Reid novels in May, I was focused on continuing with her Knitting in the City series. But it seems like I’ve stepped onto a weird universe where I’m starting to dislike adult romance novels. First, I did love Dating-ish, the latest book in Reid’s series, but when I picked up the first novel last month I was less impressed by it and now that I’ve read Neanderthal Marries Human (a continuation to the first novel), I want to give up this entire series.

Not only did the follow up novel to the first book fill me with a great deal of anger, it started to point out flaws of the first novel even though I had looked past them at first. The main relationship feels so wrong and utterly toxic and despite me trying to push myself through this novel, I started to hate not just the male character but the female character. It’s one thing for a man to be mysterious, but being overbearing and dominating in such capacity? I couldn’t stand it.

At this point I’m surprised I didn’t DNF it, because it took me almost three weeks to finish this, and I usually breeze through these novels. But the thing is, everyone else seems to love it! Was I reading something else? Why do women think Quinn is swoon-worthy when I literally want to punch him in the face and walk the other way? Maybe it’s because in my mind I was starting to compare him to Christian Grey, both well dressed rich men ordering women around, and I hate Grey’s character (based on the movies because I haven’t read the books and never will)! And once I started to compare these two characters, I slowly started to hate the main relationship, no matter how many times the author tried to salvage the story by throwing us into a sex scene.

So, despite my so far very adult romance filled year, I think this novel just threw me off this course and I’m now looking forward to returning to my favourite genre – fantasy. So maybe this novel actually did me a favor by making me hate it so much and making me feel like I needed a break from it all. Because now I’m so ready to jump back to fantasy. Not to say the adult romance genre is bad, it’s that I really do like other genres a lot more and I’ve missed fantasy so so much.

PUBLISHED IN 2007 / WRITTEN BY SCOTT LYNCH

The saving grace of June was The Lies of Locke Lamora! Though I had my doubts half way through this novel, as that first half of the book took me ages to read, the whole story really picked up momentum after certain events and my doubts were erased. It was wonderful and almost perfect.

The book is a mixture of Ocean’s 11 and Six of Crows, where our main character Locke Lamora is capable of disguising himself extremely well. He, among other thieves, call themselves Gentlemen Bastards and they make their living by stealing from nobles. The book also features flash backs to Lamora’s past, and his training, as well as introducing us to other characters along the way. There are emotional moments in the book that surprised me because I hadn’t realised how well the characters had actually been set up. It’s like that first half of the book really made more sense by the time the second half started.

And if I was being completely honest, I’d say that the world building was a little difficult for me to grasp. Sometimes I think these things happen because English is my second language, but I’ve read enough fantasy to know that I can imagine the world just fine if the story allows me to. With The Lies of Locke Lamora I had difficulty at first because the writing style was a little strange to me but once I got the hang of it, I was loving it. There are moments in this books that feel like utterly brilliant, the author also isn’t afraid to use words that feel out of place in fantasy world yet they feel like completely at home in the hands of Locke Lamora. Therefore, even though the world building classifies this novel as fantasy, there are elements in it that make the novel feel like a historic fiction, set in a utterly fictional part of the world.

Lastly, I want to say that even though there are two other books out in this series which I own, I’m not sure when I’ll pick those ones up. The novel doesn’t really scream for continuation because it ties up everything quite well. Sure, there are characters and mentions of things that indicate a follow up but the ending doesn’t really demand it. But since Lamora as a character is fantastic and refreshing, I’ll probably pick up the sequel soon.