Review: The Season

Book: The Season
Author: Sarah MacLean
Pages: 352
Published: March 1st, 2009 by Orchard Books

Seventeen year old Lady Alexandra is strong-willed and sharp-tongued -- in a house full of older brothers and their friends, she had to learn to hold her own. Not the best makings for an aristocratic lady in Regency London. Yet her mother still dreams of marrying Alex off to someone safe, respectable, and wealthy. But between ball gown fittings, dances, and dinner parties, Alex, along with her two best friends, Ella and Vivi, manages to get herself into what may be her biggest scrape yet.
When the Earl of Blackmoor is mysteriously killed, Alex decides to help his son, the brooding and devilishly handsome Gavin, uncover the truth. But will Alex's heart be stolen in the process? In an adventure brimming with espionage, murder, and other clandestine affairs, who could possibly have time to worry about finding a husband? Romance abounds as this year's season begins!

General Overview: The Season is a fun, romantic debut by Sarah MacLean! I am a huge historical fiction fan and The Season sounded pretty good when I read the synopsis, so I went in with high hopes. This book met every single one of them!

Characters: Alex was such a cool character for her era! I loved how independent she was and how willing to follow her own paths and choices -- most women at the time were pretty submissive, but Alex was definitely not one of them. Her friends, Vivi and Eleanor, were both just as courageous and adventurous and I had so much fun reading about them! And Gavin…he's the dark, brooding, mysterious loner dude from that time. Heehee (:

Plot: So, the book didn't really catch my attention at first. But that was just the first few pages. After that, I became thoroughly absorbed in Alex's story and the mystery she's trying to solve. The mystery was well thought out and not overdone at all, like I read on another review of this book. Even if a little predictable at times, the reader hardly notices and instead keeps flipping the pages to find out more!

Writing: Sarah MacLean writes effortlessly. This was an impressive debut and I loved it! Her writing style seemed to very much fit this time period, and it might've been difficult for some others to get the speech and mannerisms right (I would've struggled!) but MacLean executes it perfectly.

Cover: The girl who I think is Alex doesn't really look like how I imagined Alex in my head…but I loved the dresses they were wearing! And her expression is very fitting and the font totally fits the time period too!

Overall: 5 out of 5 stars

Review: The Help

Book: The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Pages: 451
Published: February 10th, 2009 by Putnam Adult

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step...
Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, raising her seventeenth white child. She's always taken orders quietly, but lately it leaves her with a bitterness she can no longer bite back. Her friend Minny has certainly never held her tongue, or held on to a job for very long, but now she's working for a newcomer with secrets that leave her speechless. and white socialite Skeeter has just returned from college with ambition and a degree, but, to her mother's lament, no husband. Normally Skeeter would find solace in Constantine, the beloved maid who raised her, but Constantine has inexplicably disappeared.
Together, these seemingly different women join to work on a project that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town -- to write, in secret, a tell-all book about what it's really like to work as a black maid in the white homes of the South. Despite the terrible risks they will have to take, and the sometimes humorous boundaries they will have to cross, these three women unite with one intention: hope for a better day.

General Overview: An enlightening, touching book. I don't normally read books like that, but I'd just heard so many good things about it that I had to -- and now I'm glad I did. It made me appreciate so many of the things in my life and the people in it.

Characters: The characterization in The Help was flawless. I connected with all three of the narrators and I hated Hilly! Jeez that woman really irritated me. I wanted to slap her in the face. The characters' each had such a distinct voice, and they were as different as different could be but yet they became friends anyway, despite social boundaries and even certain laws. I loved how deeply I was able to feel with these characters and how passionately I was able to hate some of them.

Plot: There were a few times when this book dragged, I will admit. I felt myself losing interest a couple times, but luckily Kathryn Stockett intrigued me again by throwing in a plot twist or some new atrocity that captured my attention. I was worried about how this book would end; there were a number of ways this book could've ended, but I think Stockett chose the best way for each of the narrators to end their narrations in this book.

Writing: Some of the words in this book are written phonetically, particularly the narrations of Minny and Aibileen, but I thought that added more dynamic to the book and made it more unique. I had no problem understanding it and I felt like Stockett was so able at making her characters and her ideas stand out. I could imagine what living in Jackson, Mississippi, would be like, for both whites and blacks and I didn't like it at all, I think that's the way Stockett wanted her reader to feel.

Cover: I think it's kind of passable, but its simplicity contradicts the complexity of the story and that was interesting for me. I like how there are three birds that could be interpreted as our narrators: two of them are darker, and close together on one end of the stick, while the third is pale and on the opposite end, yet you see them moving closer together. Very symbolic.

Overall: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Review: How The Hangman Lost His Heart

Book: How The Hangman Lost His Heart
Author: K.M. Grant
Pages: 256
Published: September 18, 2007

What's a nice girl like Alice doing with a hangman called Dan Skinslicer?
He likes a good clean killing and a hearty supper afterwards.
She likes pretty dresses and riding a well-bred horse.
But fate throws them together on a mission of mercy--to save Alice's poor uncle Frank's head and restore his dignity.
Soon they find themselves on the run from every soldier in London.
It could be their necks next!

General Overview: The premise of this book sounded interesting, but I wasn't sure how much I'd like it -- that's why I checked it out from the library. Unfortunately, How The Hangman Lost His Heart just didn't do it for me.

Characters: Okay, the thing is, I kind of liked the characters. I liked Alice's wit and stubbornness and I liked Dan's resolution and dedication. Sadly, I just never connected with either of them. I enjoyed their casual banter and easy relationship, and I liked the dialogue, especially the ones that involved the major and Ffrench, but I was never able to sympathize with any of them, particularly not Alice. I found that I was disappointed with these characters more often than I was happy with them.

Plot: This is supposed to be an adventure book, and while there are definitely some elements of action in here, sometimes the plot felt like it was moving too slowly for me and it got too repetitive! And, not to mention the fact that the inside flap synopsis is really quite misleading. Alice is definitely not the lady she's supposed to be, and Dan isn't as rough as the synopsis makes him seem. I thought the plot could have been more absorbing and more...well, adventurous! I had already predicted the entire storyline of the book from the first few chapters, and what do you know? I was right. That seriously disappointed me.

Writing: This is reasonably easy book to read. The writing doesn't have any amazing prose, nor is there a lyrical quality to the words, but it flowed. And I mean it really flowed! Some authors, even though their writing sounds beautiful, write with sentences that don't flow together! They seem very choppy sometimes, and I hate when that happens. However, K.M. Grant definitely writes with a certain ease that makes her books easy to read.

Cover: Hmm...I wouldn't say that this is an exceptional cover, the font confuses me a bit (why does it change?), I do like the background and the crows, even though they're not of much significance to the story. I don't think this cover fits the book at all, but it's a nice try.

Overall: 2 out of 5 stars

Review: To Kill A Mockingbird

Book title: To Kill A Mockingbird
Author: Harper Lee
Pages: 374
Published: October 11th, 1988

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960.
Compassionate, dramatic, and deepyly moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos...This regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

General Overview: This book took me a week to read. A week. Books hardly ever take me that long to finish. I did, however, very much enjoy it.

Characters: Although I enjoyed Scout's narrative, I thought she seemed too mature and insightful for her age -- she's supposed to be eight, yet she sounds like she's at least sixteen. I did think that she was extremely perceptive and wise, and I really enjoyed that for a change, instead of girls who are somewhat ditzy and clueless. It was also interesting to read from the POV of such a young character, at an age where not much of the world is yet seen or understood. My favorite character by far, however, was Atticus. I loved his shrewdness and his intelligence, and I liked how he was so very capable of standing up for himself and for his family. He seemed, to me, to have the personality and mannerisms that most men should aspire to also possess.

Plot: Okay, this book is a classic, and I can understand why. The book addresses serious issues such as racial discrimination, though also moral values such as family and trust. Though this book has its light moments, it is, for the most part, a somber book, and I don't think it is to be taken lightly. Half of this book revolves around introducing the children, Jem and Scout, and their obsession with a reclusive man named Boo Radley. The second is about a case their father, a lawyer, has taken on about a man named Tom Robinson. The majority of this book is not centered around Tom Robinson's case -- it's centered around how the children grow and how they act, and their family and the environment they grew up in.

Writing: It might be a little hard to understand, as are all classics. But once you do, you jump right in. Lee's writing is absorbing and clear, and I very much enjoyed her style of writing.

Overall: 4 out of 5 stars