JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Get Your Shit Together by Sarah Knight

Get Your Shit Together
Sarah Knight
January 2017
Hachette Publishers

I’m not going to lie. The title of this book was enough to make me want to read it. Get Your Shit Together by Sarah Knight is a no f*cks given, no-holds-barred guide to living your best life. It’s aimed at people who can never seem to find their keys or their wallet, or who are always late, or always complaining about the size of their inbox. It’s for those people who exhaust you and you always think to yourself: Seriously, get your shit together.

Sarah, described as the ‘anti-guru’, gives us advice to make our lives easier and better. She gives tips for managing your inbox, or your organisational level, or your daily planner. She gives us the signs to look for when we definitely don’t have our shit together, and she is extremely blunt when doing so.

“(This book) is more of a let-me-help-you-help-yourself-help book, with “me” here to “help” when your “self” gets in the way. Let’s face it- if you could help yourself, you’d have done it by now, right? Also, unlike many traditional self-help authors, I am going to use the word shit 332 times (including several shitmanteaus of my own invention), so please do not go on Amazon saying you were expecting sunshine and kittens and got shitstorms and shittens.”

She takes us through three simple tools for getting (and keeping) our shit together:
1. The Power of Negative Thinking
2. How to balance work and fun and save money while you’re at it
3. Ways to manage anxiety

The book is not only informative, it’s very funny. Side notes and authorial comments provide humour to the book and make the reader enjoy being told to get their shit together.

Sarah helps readers set goals, meet them, and be on time to everything they plan to attend. Her previous book The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck was an instant bestseller and this latest book has the same blunt, unapologetic attitude to it. She gives some dietary advice in the book and even uses the three different chipmunks from Alvin and the Chipmunks to help readers recognise what kind of personality they have.

“At this point, we’re living in a post-tidying society. … People get their tidying groove on for a few months, or even just a few weeks, and then… kinda lose the thread. … Why is that? Well, I submit that if they had their sh*t together in the first place, the tidying bug would have stuck.”

Get Your Shit Together is meant to liberate you from the things that you think you should be doing and instead, get started on the things you actually want to do. The book includes flow charts and graphs and colouring pages and countless hilarious jokes. The reader also learns a lot about Sarah throughout the book. She suffered a lot of panic attacks at work and didn’t know what to do about them. She then quit her job in corporate America after realising just how much she hated it. She built a house in Caribbean and moved there. She had to get her shit together, and now she’s teaching the rest of us how to do it.

Raw, honest and hilarious! This should be required reading for many people.

Thank you to Hachette Publishers for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Threader by Rebekah Turner

Threader
Rebekah Turner
May 2016
Harlequin Teen Australia

Set in the year 2050, Threader by Australian author Rebekah Turner is a near-future dystopian novel about a slowly emerging minority group who have been exposed as harbouring mutations that give them special talents – super strength, regenerative powers, psychic gifts or the ability to sink through shadows and travel through time and space. This minority group includes our protagonist, Josie Ryder, who was orphaned at six years old and has been raised by her uncle. She possesses an unusual skill: she is a threader and is able to weave a combination of psychic talents around others to manipulate their powers.

Rebekah has built a world that is like a corporate dystopia. The cities are heavily polluted and very overcrowded. The world features advanced technology but there is a distinct line between the rich and the poor and if you in the latter group you live a really hard life and almost have no way of advancing to be alongside the other elite within society.

Josie and the other ‘talents’ join the prestigious Helios Academy, a training facility in a distant country. But when Josie joins the academy, she starts to uncover secrets about its history and also about her dead parents and their involvement many years earlier. She sets out to uncover the truth.

“Don’t let no one tell you you’re not good enough…you’ve got Ryder blood in you, which means you’re a goddamn bare-fisted, blood-knuckled fighter.”

Threader is a bit of a slow build and it does take a bit to really grasp the world that Rebekah Turner has built, but it does bring a lot of intrigue and entertainment and the characters and the dynamic between them is fantastic and really well-written.

Presumably, this is the first book in a series because there is a lot of the world and the characters that is yet to be discovered. The story does, however, draw the reader in and excite them for what’s to come. The tension between Josie and the other trainees in the academy helps build the characters and the quick pace of the novel makes for a fast read. It’s only a couple of hundred pages and can be read fairly quickly.

Josie spends most of the book trying to unravel the mystery surrounding her parents’ death, and as she learns, her uncle has been keeping a lot of secrets from her. She joins forces with Blake Galloway, and the two end up developing feelings for each other. Their relationship becomes very hot-cold and I struggled to feel the chemistry between the characters, but I assume this is something that will be built upon if there is a sequel.

Josie Ryder is a great protagonist. She’s feisty, bold, tough and she’s a fighter. Although Rebekah has left a lot unsaid in this novel, it’s fast-paced, interesting and easy to read. I look forward to reading more about Josie. I recommend this book to readers over the age of twelve.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Burial Rites
Hannah Kent
May 2013
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Burial Rites is a historical novel based on the real life and death of Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman to be executed in Iceland. She was sentenced to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men, and she was beheaded on the 12th of January in 1830. She was aged 33 at the time.

It was not me they stared at. I understood that these people did not see me. I was two dead men. I was a burning farm. I was a knife. I was blood.
-AGNES

Agnes is sent to wait out the time leading to her execution on the farm of District Officer Jon Jonsson, his wife and their two daughters, one of whom grows very fond of Agnes and believes her to be innocent. Toti, the young assistant reverend mysteriously chosen by Agnes’ to be her spiritual guardian, attempts to salvage her soul and spends considerable time speaking with her and attempting to understand her past and present. Slowly, Agnes’ story unfolds.

Burial Rites, set in 1829-1830, is melancholic and beautifully written. The story may be bleak but the prose flows effortlessly and Hannah Kent has captured the Icelandic setting in such a vivid way that someone who has never been there before can imagine it very easily. The tale has a real sense of place and this is developed really well throughout the book.

They have strapped me to the saddle like a corpse being taken to the burial ground … bruises, blossoming like a star clusters under the skin … I am tied like a lamb for slaughter … I wonder where they will store me, cellar me like butter, like smoked meat. Like a corpse … like a cow I go where I am led …
-AGNES

Burial Rites is written with lyrical, effortless prose and dimensional characters. The novel explores the notion that how we are perceived is very different to how we perceive ourselves to be, and Hannah Kent has set this plot again the backdrop of Iceland’s stark and harsh landscape. You feel like you’ve been punched in the guts when you read it, because of Agnes’ past and present and how her life has unravelled. We come to sympathise for her and it’s bleak that we know she will be executed, despite the circumstances that led to the double murder.

I loved reading this novel and finished it in two sittings. Hannah Kent is a masterful storyteller, using historical documents and her own imagination to weave together this story. She undertook an immense amount of research in Iceland to be able to write this novel, and it really comes through. The story feels authentic and it’s a really enjoyable read. This is the kind of book you’d give someone as a gift if you weren’t sure what kind of book they would want.

Don’t be put off by the haunting true story behind the book. It’s engrossing and a fantastic addition to the bookshelf.

Pointe by Brandy Colbert

Pointe
Brandy Colbert
April 2014
Penguin Random House

Pointe is a debut young adult novel told from the point of view of 17-year-old Theo Cartwright, whose best friend Donovan was kidnapped four years earlier and has just returned home.

Theo is a ballet dancer and is recovering from an eating disorder. Her best friend, Donovan, went missing four years earlier. Or perhaps he ran away. Theo isn’t sure. On a separate note, four years earlier, Theo was dating an older guy Chris until he disappeared and left her just shortly before Donovan’s disappearance. She thought the events weren’t connected, until Donovan returns from being held captive and it becomes clear that Chris was the person responsible.

Brandy has written this book with emotive language, evocative imagery and realistic dialogue. The characters make revelations that give the reader chills, and the disturbing connection between Theo’s relationship four years earlier and Donovan’s kidnapping make for a troubling tale. And Brandy writes it with such beautiful prose that makes it a one-sitting read and something that stays with you long after you’ve put down the book.

Brandy left more unsaid than said – when Donovan returns home after four years, you’d expect him to play a large role in the rest of the novel. But he doesn’t. He won’t speak to anyone, including Theo. She’s been worrying about him for four years and now that he’s back, she’s scared to think of what her ex-boyfriend did to him the four years he was gone.

Set in Chicago, this novel isn’t about finding out the details of what happened to Donovan when he was gone – it’s about Theo finding the courage to tell the police what she knows about his kidnapper. Through flashbacks and reminiscent paragraphs, we learn about Theo’s relationship with her ex-boyfriend. At times he was loving, and at times he hurt her, but she just didn’t realise it because she was so young and she thought she was in love.

Thank you Brandy for writing a young adult novel with a black protagonist, because it doesn’t happen very often. Theo is a fantastic main character. She might seem naive at times, but she’s strong and she’s reflective and she’s dedicated – not only to ballet but to Donovan and her other friends.

Pointe explores many different themes, including mental illness, courage, friendship and relationships. Theo’s mental illness manifested itself into an eating disorder shortly after Chris left her, and the stress of Donovan’s disappearance did nothing to help that. When she learns that Chris was responsible for kidnapping Donovan, and that after disappearing from Theo’s life, Chris waited two weeks in hiding before actually kidnapping Donovan, she retreats back into her old self and her mental state starts to suffer. Ballet is not the most important thing to her anymore, and she starts to make poor choices.

I loved that Brandy did something different with this storyline. Readers would expect the kidnapping to be the main focus of the book, and even though it is, the fact that Donovan doesn’t really play an active role in the book throws the reader off. Donovan appears mostly through Theo’s memories, and that certainly wasn’t something I expected.

I can’t rave about this book enough. It may be categorised as a young adult novel, but adults and older readers will love this. The writing is complex and the characters are diverse and three-dimensional. The issues explored in this novel are in no way immature or reflective of typical ‘high school issues’ that you sometimes see in young adult fiction. This is definitely a fictional novel that anyone over the age of twelve will love.

When Michael Met Mina by Randa Abdel-Fatah

When Michael Met Mina
Randa Abdel-Fatah
Pan Macmillan, $18.99
28 June 2016
For ages 13+

What a refreshingly unique, insightful and beautiful book. I really enjoyed reading this novel and thought Randa Abdel-Fatha did such a fantastic job of making these characters so realistic and so rich with emotion.

When Michael Met Mina is a young adult novel that explores race, religion, family, class, multiculturalism and identity. It delves into the refugee policy in Australia, which feels very timely and relevant. The treatment of refugees and asylum seekers is a constant point of conversation at the moment, and When Michael Met Mina does a marvellous job of grounding that discussion and allowing the reader to really consider all opinions.

Mina is a young refugee whose family came to Australia by boat as refugees from Afghanistan. They settled into the Western Sydney suburb of Auburn and then suddenly moved to the affluent North Shore when Mina received a scholarship to an elite private school. And there, the family are subjected into a world where casual racism is the norm.

Michael’s parents founded a new political party called ‘Aussie Values’ – aimed at stopping the boats – and without realising it, Michael has absorbed their anti-immigration stance. He has grown up following in his parents’ footsteps and adopting their beliefs. And then Michael meets Mina on the opposing side of a refugee rally. And his attraction builds.

“Before Mina, my life was like a completed jigsaw puzzle but Mina has pushed the puzzle onto the floor. I have to start all over again, figuring out where the pieces go.”

As Michael starts to fall for Mina, he starts to question his parents’ beliefs. He starts to disagree with his friends when they make fun of Mina and the reader witnesses him evolving and maturing and growing aware of what it means to be a refugee in Australia.

The characters in this book are complex but beautiful. Their obstacles are realistic of Australians today and the naivety of some of the characters can be seen in many young people today. Mina’s experiences are not unique – many refugees in Australia have experienced what she has. And she’s a sweet, compassionate character who isn’t afraid to stand up for herself. She isn’t afraid to be confident about her place in Australia.

“There’s a lot of ugliness under this sky. But there’s plenty of beauty here too. I want to find it, spread it around, all over the cruelty and injustice. I want to shake this world like a can of lemonade, pop the lid and watch the bubbles explode”

Randa is a wonderful writer. Her prose is evocative and descriptive and the dialogue reflects teenagers today. The social dynamic between the characters is brilliant and the progression of the story keeps the reader engaged and interested in how the story will end.

I really loved this book and can’t recommend it enough. You don’t need to love young adult fiction to love this novel. It’s an enlightening, relatable and highly relevant novel to read at this time in Australian history.

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