JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Night Circus has long been on my wishlist for both reading and reviewing. It is well-known, respected, and loved by many. It’s set in the late 1800s and early 1900s and centres around a circus that changes location. It will pop up in a small town with no warning for a few days, and then it’ll move halfway across America and appear in a major city. The circus, which is only open at night, is followed by many and loved by a lot more. And the characters in the story — the artists and performers and managers that run the circus — are unique and wonderful.

This story is imaginative, enjoyable and entertaining. Erin has crafted a great premise and has used the quite lengthy novel to project imagination onto the reader. The circus is comprised of black-and-white striped canvas tents full of unique talents and breathtaking experiences for the customers. And it is the magic within this circus that draws the reader in and keeps them engaged.

Within the circus, a fierce competition is underway. Two young magicians, Celia and Marco, are competing in a game of imagination and will, and each must take turns in improving the circus by bringing in extra, remarkable attractions. They have been trained since childhood to compete against each other, and along the way, they fall in love. And not only does this complicate their lives, but it complicates their competition. But the competition can not be stopped. It must continue, and only one is meant to survive.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices or downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

Erin is a fantastic writer. Some of her prose reads like poetry, and her dialogue is realistic. The characters compliment each other within this magic realism setting. The book moves at a slow, gradual pace within the first half, and then speeds up to build the momentum of the story and further interest the reader. Despite the quickened pace of the final 50 pages, which stifles the reader a little and proves for a slightly confusing ending, The Night Circus is still a marvellous tale, as imaginative as the acts within the circus.

Even though there were a few aspects of the book that I felt could have been improved, in particular the characterisation of Celia and Marco who seem to have similar personalities, I do respect this book for what it accomplishes. It is an enjoyable story with fantastical elements carefully woven in.

March 2016 Wrap Up

Another month has gone by, meaning another month of books acquired and reviews posted! Here is a list of the books I’ve received/bought/borrowed in March:


1. Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley
Thank you to Simon & Schuster for supplying this book to me through Netgalley. This is about Lily, a beautiful daschund who develops a brain tumour. But we don’t refer to it as a tumour. We call it an octopus. Lily’s owner is desperate to help Lily beat this Octopus because he’s so close with Lily and can’t imagine losing her. I’ve already read this book and am writing up a review for it soon. I absolutely loved it! It’s such a heart-warming tale for all animal lovers, but it’s also exceptionally well written! A favourite of mine for 2016.


2. Keep Me Posted by Lisa Beazley
Thanks to Text Publishing for supplying this book to me through Netgalley. Sid and Cassie are sisters who live in different countries and aren’t as close anymore, so they start writing letters to each other to better keep in touch. And out comes their marriage problems, parenting woes, and all the concerns they’ve had and been too afraid to tell the other. I’ve posted my review already and thought it was a lovely read.


3. The Sidekicks by Will Kostakis
I picked up a copy of The Sidekicks earlier this month at a book event, and I finished it in one sitting. This book is about three school students who are dealing with the loss of their friend, and it is painfully raw. The characters are all very different and yet they mould well together and they work to find themselves again after the sudden death. I really enjoyed this book!


4. Ruined by Amy Tintera
This is the first book in a fantastic new YA/fantasy series by Amy Tintera. I borrowed an early copy off a friend and read it within a couple of days. The main character is feisty, daring, bold and courageous. She impersonates a princess to seek revenge on the royal family because they murdered her parents and kidnapped her sister, and the story unfolds at a rapid pace!


5. Yellow by Megan Jacobson
I bought this book earlier this month after its release and have since read it and posted a review on the blog. Yellow is about a young girl who is struggling to fit in. Her friends bully her, her father has left them, and her mother is an alcoholic. And then she meets a ghost who was murdered 20 years earlier, and she seems to be the only person who can hear him. This is a really compelling debut novel!


6. Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton
This is another book I bought upon release date after hearing so much about it on social media. Imagine Aladdin set in a dystopian world, and you’ll understand the setting of Rebel of the Sands. The main character is a fantastic shooter, and she’s desperate to escape her no-hope town and find a better life. Action and adventure ensues.


7. A World of Other People by Steven Carroll
I’ve had this on my bookshelf ever since Steven Carroll won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award last year. He’s a wonderful writer, and A World of Other People is about a couple whose lives intersect multiple times but who tragically part ways every time. Steven has done a marvellous job of telling their story.


8. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
I bought this one at a Lifeline bookfest a few weeks ago and I’ve just started reading it. It’s beautiful. It sheds light on a piece of American history that is often forgotten, and the writer is extremely talented. The characters are wonderfully real and painfully flawed.

And in case you missed it, here is a list (with links) of reviews that I’ve posted on Jess Just Reads this month!

REVIEWS POSTED IN MARCH:
1. Keep Me Posted by Lisa Beazley
2. Hold by Kirsten Tranter
3. Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
4. Yellow by Megan Jacobson
5. Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton
6. A World of Other People by Steven Carroll

Thanks for stopping by and happy reading!

Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

The latest novel by Curtis Sittenfeld is a marvellous retelling of Pride and Prejudice, and Curtis has done a fantastic job of taking a classic novel from last century and making it relatable for modern readers.

The characters are still the same. Their names might be different or they may have nicknames, or there may be extra characters added into the story, but Eligible does parallel Pride and Prejudice in many ways. Eligible is full of glorious storytelling, hilarious situations, brutally honest characters, and relationship troubles that mirror modern society.

Eligible explores all of the family members, not just Lizzie. By the end of the novel, the reader will know about all of the characters’ lives, their struggles, their heartaches, their hopes and dreams, and their relationships.

Curtis weaves in and out of their lives so that the reader can understand each member of the family without bias or marginalisation present. This is hard to master in a novel featuring so many characters, but Curtis does it brilliantly.

About a year before, Kitty and Lydia had embraced CrossFit, the intense strength and conditioning regimen that involved weight lifting, kettle bells, battle ropes, obscure acronyms, the eschewal of most foods other than meat, and a derisive attitude toward the weak and unenlightened masses who still believed that jogging was a sufficient workout and a bagel was an acceptable breakfast. Naturally, all Bennets except Kitty and Lydia were among these masses.

Curtis incorporates modernity into a classic story to really intrigue and entertain the reader. Jane is in her thirties and single and is going through IVF and sperm donors to get pregnant. Lizzie is a magazine writer in her late thirties who is engaged in a friends with benefits arrangement with Mr. Darcy because she’s still pining after a man from back home who has been stringing her along. Their younger sisters Kitty and Lydia are too overly obsessed with CrossFit and Paleo diets to worry about careers, and Mary is an oddity who barely communicates with the family and is keeping secrets of her own. It is the combination of these characters, who possess the personality traits from Jane Austen’s tale but whose lives have been adapted to fit in with 21st century America, that makes this novel so enjoyable.

Curtis Sittenfeld has written a heartfelt, enjoyable, hilarious and entertaining novel that both honours and updates Austen’s beloved novel Pride and Prejudice. The reader will know where the story is headed because of how Pride and Prejudice ends, but Sittenfeld manages to push the limits of the original tale and provide her own spin on the characters and their societal relations. A fantastic story, and a brilliantly written novel.

Hold by Kirsten Tranter

This newest novel by Kirsten Tranter is chilling, intriguing and haunting.

Shelley lost her lover, Conrad, in a surfing accident three years prior to the start of Hold, and even now, she’s still stricken by grief. She lives with her new partner, David, in an old Victorian terrace house, and at the start of the novel she finds a door in the house that leads to a small room next to their bedroom. In the room is a fireplace and a stunning chandelier, and nothing else.

Kirsten Tranter has crafted a book that makes the reader doubt every event and plot point. Shelley becomes so obsessed with this room that she’s discovered, that it begins to dominate her world. She thinks of nothing else. She spends five minutes in the room and then she walks back out to discover that she’s actually been gone a lot longer. Her partner starts to stray, and her daughter won’t communicate with her. She’s an unreliable narrator, and soon the reader is questioning what is real and what isn’t.

Hold is set in Sydney, and Kirsten paints such a beautiful picture of Shelley’s life, both past and present. She describes Shelley’s life with Conrad and the pain she went through (and is still going through), but she also perfectly describes the deep contrast between Shelley’s outside world and her world within this room. In this mysterious room that Shelley has discovered, Kirsten crafts an eerie atmosphere full of uncertainty and questions, most unlike the clearly defined physical features of Shelley’s house, neighbourhood, and location.

This is the third novel by Kirsten Tranter and it explores grief and death and how mourning can affect a sufferer. Shelley becomes scattered in her interactions and almost seems to become vacant in her family life. She focuses on the room and Conrad and the reader starts to doubt her sanity. They start to wonder if what she’s telling them is the truth. And even when I finished this novel, there were still some parts of the novel that I was convinced were fake, but my friends were convinced were real.

This is quite a short novel and has such a fast pace, it’s a read-in-one-sitting book. Kirsten pulls together all the elements of a grief-stricken main character, and weaves them together seamlessly to haunt the reader.

My Score: 7/10

Keep Me Posted by Lisa Beazley

Sid and Cassie are sisters, but over the years, they’ve drifted apart and they don’t talk too often and they seem to only see each other at family events. They’re still close, but not like they used to be. They both got married, had children, and now they’ve realised that they need to work harder to keep in touch, especially with Sid now living in Singapore. So Sid suggests they write handwritten letters to each other, and this forms the basis of the novel’s plot.

Cassie is a brutally honest character. She admits when she doesn’t like someone, and she admits things to Sid that she never had the courage to admit to her in person. Cassie is finding it difficult raising her twin boys, and her husband isn’t as attentive as Cassie would like him to be. She’s struggling, and she’s a fantastic character. She is sometimes daggy, unreasonable, naive, overly trusting, or too polite, and the reader can relate to this.

There are two storylines in this book, despite the fact that it’s from Cassie’s point of view. Sid’s marriage is crumbling and the reader only learns pieces of it through Sid’s letter. It’s that terrible feeling where the reader can sense something bad is about to happen but it’s quite clear that the character has no idea. It’s a clever stylistic technique that the author has used to draw in the reader and keep them engaged.

I have one negative to point out: Cassie is extremely naive for a woman of her age. In order to keep her sister’s letters so that one day she can read over them if she wants to, Cassie scans them and uploads them to a blog. This is another one of those times where the reader knows exactly what’s going to happen, but the character has no idea. But in this case, Cassie should know that putting your private letters on the internet is not a good idea. The fallout that results is her own fault, and I had a hard time sympathising with her at all.

I’m definitely not the target market for this book. I’m not married, I don’t have children, and I’m about 15-20 years younger than all the main characters. And yet, this novel is interesting, intriguing and real. Keep Me Posted has flawed, naive characters. They’re realistic and they’re relatable and they’re witty and they’re funny. And so despite the fact that I’m not someone who would’ve thought to pick up this title, I very much enjoyed it.

My Score: 9/10
Publication Date: 2 May 2016
Publisher: Text Publishing

I received a review copy by Text Publishing in exchange for an honest review.