JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Books About Inspirational Women

Ever since Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls was published, there’s been a definite trend in publishing. There are now so many fantastic books about inspirational women from history. I’ve been reading and reviewing a fair few of them for this blog, so I thought it’d be great to compile them all for one master post.

Forgotten Women: The Leaders & The Scientists
Zing Tsjeng
March 2018
Hachette Book Publishers

Forgotten Women is a new series of books that uncover the lost herstories of influential women who have refused over hundreds of years to accept the hand they’ve been dealt and, as a result, have formed, shaped and changed the course of our futures. From leaders and scientists to artists and writers, the fascinating stories of these women that time forgot are now celebrated, putting their achievements firmly back on the map.

Forgotten Women by Zing Tsjeng is a really wonderful new series, allowing readers to discover 96 women who I can guarantee you’ve never heard of before.

Each of these books features 48 incredible women of history, styled with beautiful artwork and colourful layouts. The Leaders is all about women who were true pioneers. They may not have lived long, or they may have been overlooked, but their contributions were important.

Grace O’Malley was a 16th century Irish pirate queen, Sylvia Rivera spearheaded the modern transgender rights movement, and Agent 355 was an unknown rebel spy who played a pivotal role in the American Revolution.

The series is both informative and interesting. I thought I would’ve gotten sick of these types of books, but I’ve found myself just as enthralled and intrigued as ever. In The Leaders, chapters are broken down into different categories, from rebels to warriors, rulers to activists. In The Scientists, the chapters range from Biology & Natural Sciences to Physics & Chemistry.

Each woman is given around three pages of information, so the books are pretty quick to read and the information not too heavy.

In The Scientists, we meet women whose scientific achievements or whose inventions have paved the way for the future, but unfortunately their successes weren’t as acknowledged or praised as highly or as often as they should’ve been.

Ruby Hirose developed a vaccine for polio, Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner was a brilliant inventor who found ways to improve everyday struggles, and Ynes Mexia was a botanist who discovered 500 new plant species.

Both of these books are packaged beautifully. They’re hardback, with thick, high quality paper and bright colours. They look wonderful together on the shelf, and I hope the series will have more books coming out. I’m sure there are plenty more women out there whose achievements have been sadly forgotten.

SHE: A Celebration of 100 Renegade Women

Harriet Hall

March 2018

Hachette Book Publishers

SHE is a love letter to all the women who have thrown out the rulebook and threatened the status quo. It’s a toast to the brave, bold and brilliant women who make us proud to be ladies.

From fashion icon Coco Chanel to Queen Cleopatra, from literary legend Jane Austen to trailblazer Michelle Obama and from kick-ass activist Malala Yousafzai to the one-and-only Beyoncé, SHE honours 100 truly renegade women, from history through to present day.

SHE by Harriet Hall is a compact book highlighting 100 women from history who contributed to positive change within society. Some of these women have long since passed, but some are still alive today.

What I loved most about this book is that each woman was dedicated only two pages — one page had a black and white sketch illustration of the woman, and the other page detailed their life story. I loved that their story was summarised so succinctly.

YOU CAN READ THE REST OF MY REVIEW HERE

Rebel Voices: The Rise of Votes for Women

Louise Kay Stewart & Eve Lloyd Knight

January 2018

Hachette Publishers

A beautifully illustrated celebration of the brave campaigners who fought for women’s right to vote.

Discover that it was never illegal for women to vote in Ecuador, or how 40,000 Russian women marched through St Petersburg demanding their rights. Find out how one Canadian woman changed opinions with a play, and Kuwaiti women protested via text message. And learn that women climbed mountains, walked a lion through the streets of Paris, and starved themselves, all in the name of having a voice.

Meet the women who rioted, rallied and refused to give up. This book celebrates the women who refused to behave, rebelling against convention to give women everywhere a voice.

Rebel Voices by Louise Kay Stewart and Eve Lloyd Knight is gorgeous and inspiring, educating readers on the history of the female vote and how a woman’s right to vote was achieved in different countries.

This is a hardback book, the size of a portrait picture book. It’s quite large in size, to allow for all the stunning illustrations on every page. The quality is amazing — thick and heavy paper. And there are only 47 pages to this book and there aren’t too many words. So, it doesn’t take long to read.

YOU CAN READ THE REST OF MY REVIEW HERE

100 Nasty Women of History

Hannah Jewell

November 2017

Hachette Book Publishers

These are the women who were deemed too nasty for their times – too nasty to be recognised, too nasty to be paid for their work and sometimes too nasty to be allowed to live.

In 100 Nasty Women of History, Hannah will spill the tea on:
-the women with impressive kill counts

-the women who wrote dangerous things

-the women who fought empires and racists

-the women who knew how to have a good-ass time

-the women who punched Nazis (metaphorically but also not)

So, if you think that Nasty Women are a new thing, think again. They’ve always been around – you just haven’t always heard of them.

Well, this is just hilarious and so so fun to read. 100 Nasty Women of History is all about history’s bravest, most ballsy women. And most of them you’ve probably never heard of!

In the final debate of the 2016 US presidential election, Donald Trump leaned into the microphone as Hilary Clinton spoke about social security, and he called his opponent ‘such a nasty woman’. I’m sure Donald Trump didn’t realise that this phrase would go on to become a badge of honour for women around the world. Being a ‘nasty woman’ is now considered a compliment!

Hannah Jewell is a senior writer for Buzzfeed UK, so she brings into this book her wit and sarcasm. I laughed out loud many times when reading this book, chuckling on public transport to and from work.

YOU CAN READ THE REST OF MY REVIEW HERE

End of Year Wrap Up: My Favourite Books in 2017

To celebrate Christmas and the end of the year, I’ve decided to compile a list of all the books that I gave 10/10 to this year. These are the books that I loved the most, out of everything that I read.

Thank you to the publishers for continuing to send me review copies in 2017, and thanks to my readers for continuing to visit my site — I am always amazed and thankful for how many of you are visiting!

HISTORICAL FICTION

The Stolen Marriage by Diane Chamberlain

In 1944, twenty-three-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly ends her engagement to the love of her life when she marries a mysterious stranger and moves to Hickory, North Carolina, a small town struggling with racial tension and the hardships imposed by World War II. Tess’s new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night and hides money from his new wife. Tess quickly realizes she’s trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out.

The people of Hickory love and respect Henry and see Tess as an outsider, treating her with suspicion and disdain. Tess suspects people are talking about her, plotting behind her back, and following her as she walks around town. What does everyone know about Henry that she does not?

When a sudden polio epidemic strikes the town, the townspeople band together to build a polio hospital. Tess, who has a nursing degree, bucks Henry’s wishes and begins to work at the hospital, finding meaning in nursing the young victims. Yet at home, Henry’s actions grow more alarming by the day. As Tess works to save the lives of her patients, can she untangle her husband’s mysterious behavior and save her own life?

You can read my review HERE

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Her Mother’s Secret by Natasha Lester

1918, England. Armistice Day should bring peace into Leonora’s life. Rather than secretly making cosmetics in her father’s chemist shop to sell to army nurses such as Joan, her adventurous Australian friend, Leo hopes to now display her wares openly. Instead, Spanish flu arrives in the village, claiming her father’s life.

Determined to start over, she boards a ship to New York City. On the way she meets debonair department store heir Everett Forsyth . . . In Manhattan, Leo works hard to make her cosmetics dream come true, but she’s a woman alone with a small salary and a society that deems make-up scandalous.

1939, New York City. Everett’s daughter, Alice, a promising ballerina, receives a mysterious letter inviting her to star in a series of advertisements for a cosmetics line. If she accepts she will be immortalized like dancers such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker and Ginger Rogers. Why, then, are her parents so quick to forbid it?

You can read my review HERE

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LITERARY FICTION

Together by Julie Cohen

This is not a great love story.
This is a story about great love.

On a morning that seems just like any other, Robbie wakes in his bed, his wife Emily asleep beside him, as always. He rises and dresses, makes his coffee, feeds his dogs, just as he usually does. But then he leaves Emily a letter and does something that will break her heart. As the years go back all the way to 1962, Robbie’s actions become clearer as we discover the story of a couple with a terrible secret – one they will do absolutely anything to protect.

You can read my review HERE

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NON-FICTION

Hunger by Roxane Gay

From the bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her own past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

You can read my review HERE

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A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind by Emily Reynolds

A funny and moving memoir from a girl with bipolar, including down-to-earth, practical advice for young people and those who love them.

Emily Reynolds is mad. After years of trying – and failing – to cope with her symptoms, she was finally diagnosed as bipolar in her early twenties. Since then Emily has been on a mission to find the best way to live with her illness, and now she wants to share that knowledge with you. Living with mental illness is isolating, infuriating and painful – but also very boring and, sometimes, kind of gross.

A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind is a companion to make the journey feel a little less lonely.

A blackly funny, deeply compassionate and extremely practical book, A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind is a candid exploration of mental illness that is both a personal account of what it’s like to live with mental illness and a guide to dealing with and understanding it.

You can read my review HERE

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FANTASY

Godsgrave by Jay Kristoff

A ruthless young assassin continues her journey for revenge. The sequel to Nevernight.

Assassin Mia Corvere has found her place among the Blades of Our Lady of Blessed Murder, but many in the Red Church ministry think she’s far from earned it. Plying her bloody trade in a backwater of the Republic, she’s no closer to ending Consul Scaeva and Cardinal Duomo, or avenging her familia. And after a deadly confrontation with an old enemy, Mia begins to suspect the motives of the Red Church itself.

When it’s announced that Scaeva and Duomo will be making a rare public appearance at the conclusion of the grand games in Godsgrave, Mia defies the Church and sells herself to a gladiatorial collegium for a chance to finally end them. Upon the sands of the arena, Mia finds new allies, bitter rivals, and more questions about her strange affinity for the shadows. But as conspiracies unfold within the collegium walls, and the body count rises, Mia will be forced to choose between loyalty and revenge, and uncover a secret that could change the very face of her world.

You can read my review HERE

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YOUNG ADULT

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan…

But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving. Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words… And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

You can read my review HERE

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The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

You can read my review HERE

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Remind Me How This Ends by Gabrielle Tozer

It’s the summer after high school ends and everyone is moving on. Winning scholarships. Heading to uni. Travelling the world. Everyone except Milo Dark. Milo feels his life is stuck on pause.

His girlfriend is 200km away, his mates have bailed for bigger things and he is convinced he’s missed the memo reminding him to plan the rest of his life. Then Layla Montgomery barrels back into his world after five years without so much as a text message. As kids, Milo and Layla were family friends who shared everything. But they haven’t spoken since her mum’s funeral.

What begins as innocent banter between Milo and Layla soon draws them into a tangled mess with a guarantee that someone will get hurt. While it’s a summer they’ll never forget, is it one they want to remember?

You can read my review HERE

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CHILDREN’S FICTION

Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend

Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she’s blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks–and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday.

But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters on horseback, he whisks her away into the safety of a secret, magical city called Nevermoor.

It’s then that Morrigan discovers Jupiter has chosen her to contend for a place in the city’s most prestigious organization: the Wundrous Society. In order to join, she must compete in four difficult and dangerous trials against hundreds of other children, each boasting an extraordinary talent that sets them apart–an extraordinary talent that Morrigan insists she does not have. To stay in the safety of Nevermoor for good, Morrigan will need to find a way to pass the tests–or she’ll have to leave the city to confront her deadly fate.

You can read my review HERE

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Laugh Your Head Off Again & Again by 9 bestselling Australian children’s authors

9 authors. 9 stories to make you laugh your head off again and again!

A scary shower + three twisty little pigs + a choose your own adventure + a Halloween chicken + a demonic clown + an unexpected gift + terrible twins + a famous dancing dog + a running race like no other = one hilarious book.

You can read my review HERE

Snow Like Ashes (Snow Like Ashes #1) by Sara Raasch

A heartbroken girl. A fierce warrior. A hero in the making.

Sixteen years ago the Kingdom of Winter was conquered and its citizens enslaved, leaving them without magic or a monarch. Now, the Winterians’ only hope for freedom is the eight survivors who managed to escape, and who have been waiting for the opportunity to steal back Winter’s magic and rebuild the kingdom ever since.

Orphaned as an infant during Winter’s defeat, Meira has lived her whole life as a refugee, raised by the Winterians’ general, Sir. Training to be a warrior—and desperately in love with her best friend, and future king, Mather — she would do anything to help her kingdom rise to power again.

So when scouts discover the location of the ancient locket that can restore Winter’s magic, Meira decides to go after it herself. Finally, she’s scaling towers, fighting enemy soldiers, and serving her kingdom just as she’s always dreamed she would. But the mission doesn’t go as planned, and Meira soon finds herself thrust into a world of evil magic and dangerous politics – and ultimately comes to realize that her destiny is not, never has been, her own.

I’m fast becoming a sucker for a YA dystopian series with a fantastic cover. Perhaps I’ve read too many, or perhaps I love YA dystopian novels because they’re always so unique and interesting and they are can’t-put-it-down kind of books. I actually have to stop myself from reading more YA dystopias so this blog can remain a book review blog where I review different genres of books.

Snow like Ashes is the first novel in a new series by Sara Raasch where different societies are separated by seasons. Not districts. Not class levels. Seasons, like winter, autumn, spring and summer. And it’s very refreshing. And I love that our main character is from Winter. It reminds me of Frozen, and it also reminds me of many glorious fantasy novels where they’re fighting winter or they have to travel through horrific cold conditions to complete their task/mission.

The main character, Meira, is fantastic. She’s confident, daring, bold and she knows what she wants. This isn’t exactly unique in YA fiction, because I’m reading more and more novels where writers are finally giving their female lead character a bit more backbone. There aren’t many Bella Swan’s in YA dystopian fiction, thankfully. Meira also knows how to handle a really shite situation where she’s been betrayed. There’s a particular scene where her love interest and father figure betray her (quite horribly) and she acts accordingly. She knows how to get what she wants and she doesn’t give second chances.

I’m looking forward to reading Ice like Fire (the second in the series) because there were romantic links between Meira and Mather and also Meira and Theron, and these remain unresolved at the end of the novel. This leaves it open to be further explored in the second novel. Also, Meira’s magic powers and her link to the kingdom in Winter is also expected to be developed further in Ice like Fire.

Despite the fact that it took me a good 50 pages to fully understand the premise of the story, and also to understand which character is which (I got confused with all the names in the first few chapters), I do think this book is wonderful.

Cheers to Snow like Ashes:

My Score: 9/10

In the Skin of a Monster by Kathryn Barker

What if your identical twin sister was a murderer? Does that make you a monster too? A profound, intense, heartbreaking fantasy that tackles issues of fate versus free will, and whether you can ever truly know someone.

Caught in a dreamscape, mistaken for a killer … will Alice find a way home?

Three years ago, Alice’s identical twin sister took a gun to school and killed seven innocent kids; now Alice wears the same face as a monster. She’s struggling with her identity, and with life in the small Australian town where everyone was touched by the tragedy. Just as Alice thinks things can’t get much worse, she encounters her sister on a deserted highway. But all is not what it seems, and Alice soon discovers that she has stepped into a different reality, a dream world, where she’s trapped with the nightmares of everyone in the community. Here Alice is forced to confront the true impact of everything that happened the day her twin sister took a gun to school … and to reveal her own secret to the boy who hates her most.

I bought this book because of the cover first, blurb second. The cover is inviting, intriguing, interesting, and really stands out in a bookstore. Not only does this book appeal to a young adult and adult audience, but the cover also looks like the cover of a horror novel. The book gives you that dreaded uneasy feeling like when you’re watching a horror movie and you don’t know which characters are going to live and which ones are going to meet an awful end.

The premise of this story is fantastic. Three years earlier, Alice’s twin sister murdered seven children at their school. Even after you’ve completed In the Skin of a Monster, you never really understand why she did it. You never really understand her character, but that’s because this isn’t her story. This novel is not about Alice’s sister. This novel is about Alice, and her perception of her sister and her memory of her sister.

Alice is accustomed to abuse from people in their town. She lives in a small town with a low population, and everybody blames her for the massacre that her sister caused. Mostly because she looks exactly like the murderer, but also because they need someone to blame, and that’s Alice. And then Alice is walking along the highway and she sees her sister’s ghost. She leans forward and touches her, and they switch. Alice is thrust into an alternate dimension where she’s faced with the nightmares of every single person in their town, and Alice’s twin sister (well, an alternate version of her) is now in the real world, where she murdered seven innocent people.

I got quite confused when reading this novel. The alternate dimensions weren’t what I was expecting. After reading the blurb, I thought this book would be about Alice trying to live her life after her sister murders seven children and then kills herself. But it wasn’t. And then when Alice switched with her sister, I thought this novel might be about her sister living in Alice’s body, walking around in the small town, potentially planning another killing. But it wasn’t. This novel is about Alice coming to understand her sister’s actions. This novel is about Alice understanding how she feels about her sister and about the final weeks leading up to the massacre.

This novel is classed as young adult, but it also appeals to an adult market. It’s a disturbing novel, and there are many questions left unanswered after completing it. It’s originality is fantastic. The writing is fantastic. It’s very creepy and very disturbing, which is fantastic. Go into it with an open mind, and you’ll enjoy the read.

My Score: 8/10

5 novels I want to reread (for the purposes of reviewing)

I’ve read some truly amazing books in the last couple of years, before I started this book review blog. And not only do I want to reread them so I can revel in their amazingness (not a word, but still relevant), but also so that I can review them and convince other people to read them.

This list is in no particular order, and these books WILL be reviewed at some time on this blog, so keep an eye out for them.


1.The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Richard Papen arrived at Hampden College in New England and was quickly seduced by an elite group of five students, all Greek scholars, all worldly, self-assured, and, at first glance, all highly unapproachable. As Richard is drawn into their inner circle, he learns a terrifying secret that binds them to one another…a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life…and led to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning….

This book is THE campus novel to read. Much like Brigid Delaney’s Wild Things, this novel is set in the confines of a university campus. Together, the students plot and murder one of their friends (this is revealed in the opening chapter, so I’m not spoiling anything by telling you). Half of the book is about explaining/showing why (and how) they murdered him, and then the second half of the novel is about them trying to get away with murder. And it’s amazing, raw, emotive, and gripping all at once.


2.Rebecca by Daphne dy Maurier
The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady’s maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives–presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

I was forced to read this in English class in high school, and usually I hate any book that I’m forced to read, but I loved this one. There’s something about the naivety of the main character (who remains unnamed) and the almost historical romance between her and Maxim de Winter – can we all please have a moment of respect for that character name? I couldn’t even come up with a pseudonym that good. The book is spooky, mysterious, and shocking until the end.


3.Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens–until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state’s best witness, but she can’t remember what happened before her very own eyes–or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show–destroying the closest of friendships and families.

This is probably my favourite Jodi Picoult novel (apart from Leaving Time) and it’s an emotionally gut-wrenching story about a high school shooting. The novel flicks back and forth between ‘before’ the shooting and ‘after’ the shooting. The characters are three dimensional and fleshed out and the reader ends up sympathising with the shooter. But there’s a twist at the end that you’ll probably see coming – sorry Jodi, it’s the one fault I can find with this novel.


4.The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stiegg Larsson
Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch—and there’s always a catch—is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson’s novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don’t want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo.

This book is shocking, haunting, and gripping. The mysterious disappearance from forty years earlier is intriguing and you’ll be desperate to find out what happened. I recommended this book to my sister after I read it, but I had to include a disclaimer of ‘the first 50 pages are so boring’. So boring! So if you are going to trust this list and read this book, please remember to just push yourself through the first 50 pages. After that, you’ll be glad you did.


5. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The shocking thing about the girls was how nearly normal they seemed when their mother let them out for the one and only date of their lives. Twenty years on, their enigmatic personalities are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who now recall their shared adolescence: the brassiere draped over a crucifix belonging to the promiscuous Lux; the sisters’ breathtaking appearance on the night of the dance; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched a family disintegrate and fragile lives disappear.
I had to read this book for a subject at university, and it’s now one of my favourite novels. It’s about five sisters who all commit suicide in the same year. It completely broke the boundaries of writing, and Jeffrey Eugenides did it in such a thought-provoking way. The voyeuristic nature of how this story is told is captivating and unique and moving. I couldn’t put the book down until I’d finished it, and then I was in a semi comatose state while I tried to process what happened at the end. This book is pure genius, and will be considered a literary classic in future university subjects.