JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Castle of Lies by Kiersi Burkhart

Thelia isn’t in line to inherit the crown, but she’s been raised to take power however she can. She’s been friends with Princess Corene her whole life, and she’s scheming to marry Bayled, the heir to the throne. But her plans must change when an army of elves invades the kingdom.

Thelia, her cousin Parsival. and Corene become trapped in the castle. An elf warrior, Sapphire, may be Thelia’s only hope of escape, but Sapphire has plans of their own. Meanwhile, an ancient magic is awakening within the castle, with the power to destroy the whole kingdom. Can Thelia find a way to protect her future – and her life?

Castle of Lies by Kiersi Burkhart is a YA fantasy novel that explores magic, loyalty and secrets, amidst a terrifying elvish invade.

The Holy Kingdom is bankrupt, ruled by an alcoholic King who isn’t concerned with much except himself. His daughter, Corene, is secretly engaged to the King’s ward Bayled, who has been promised the throne. Corene’s cousin Thelia is scheming to take the crown, despite having no right to it. And then, the King announces that he’s promised his daughter Corene to a Southern Lord to help secure an alliance ahead of an oncoming Elvish invade.

This book really disappointed me. The plot is not engaging, and there isn’t much depth to the story. There are too many characters in the book, and it switches POV between four different ones — Thelia, Bayled, Parsifal and Sapphire. Half the time, I forgot whose POV I was in, because a lot of the voices read the same and I found myself very disinterested in all of them.

The characterisation is very surface level and the characters themselves felt very flat. For example, Thelia is supposed to be savvy, secretive and sneaky, but that’s not how I felt when I read her. She doesn’t feel threatening or intelligent. She’s bold and brash but she’s not frightening.

The writing in the book is a little too simplistic. Descriptions are basic, and the vocabulary doesn’t quite connect with the atmosphere and setting. The war and politics in the book doesn’t read authentic, and a lot of it seems skimmed over, thus losing its credibility.

“Washing and brushing and putting up my hair takes all my willpower. Sitting at my vanity, I stare into my own brown eyes as I draw dark lines like a barrier around them, holding me in. I reach for my lip stain, but like a gust of wind has swept through my room, it falls off the edge of the vanity and rolls away.”

Many of the characters read very immature, even for their age. The stakes are high, the tension is mounting, and there’s a very real threat coming their way, and yet the main characters seem to be involved in such petty arguments and unnecessary altercations.

The world-building in the book is one of its strengths — the castle and the kingdom, and the lands surrounding Four Halls are fully fleshed out and I could easily imagine how this setting physically looked.

There’s plenty of romance in this book, if that’s of interest to you. There are multiple pairings, or love triangles, and most of the tension in the book is between characters who are either together, or want to be together.

“Every conversation with Thelia I’ve ever had since I came here as a little boy has been like this one — with her reflexively condescending to me. I’m wrong, I’m ignorant, I’m a foreigner. I tried over and over to befriend her because she was so close to Corene, but it wasn’t many cycles before I gave up.”

Castle of Lies has potential, but I wouldn’t recommend this book to adult readers. It’s a shame because I feel like the premise of the book, and the writing style, would be interesting to a young reader — 12 or 13. But, there are sex scenes in this book and that means I can’t confidently recommend this book to a young audience. I don’t know that the storyline will be enough to hold their attention.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Castle of Lies
Kiersi Burkhart
July 2019
Walker Books

Lying Out Loud by Kody Keplinger

Sonny Ardmore is an excellent liar. She lies about her dad being in prison. She lies about her mom kicking her out. And she lies about sneaking into her best friend’s house every night because she has nowhere else to go.

Amy Rush might be the only person Sonny shares everything with – secrets, clothes, even a nemesis named Ryder Cross.

Ryder’s the new kid at Hamilton High and everything Sonny and Amy can’t stand – a prep-school snob. But Ryder has a weakness: Amy. So when Ryder emails Amy asking her out, the friends see it as a prank opportunity not to be missed.But without meaning to, Sonny ends up talking to Ryder all night online. And to her horror, she realizes that she might actually ‘like’ him. Only there’s one small catch: he thinks he’s been talking to Amy. So Sonny comes up with an elaborate scheme to help Ryder realize that she’s the girl he’s really wanted all along. Can Sonny lie her way to the truth, or will all her lies end up costing her both Ryder and Amy?

From the author of The Duff.

I was so excited for this novel because I was such a huge fan of the The Duff. The characters in The Duff were interesting and sassy and they worked well together. But unfortunately, the characters in Lying Out Loud didn’t quite measure up.

The main character, Sonny, is a pathological liar, and has a very troubled home life. Let’s put her family life aside for just one second so I can be honest about her character without feeling guilty. I did not really like her that much. I found her annoying and irresponsible, and before anyone says “well yeah, but that’s because her mum kicked her out and she is forced to lie about everything etc etc”, I need to point out that she didn’t really seem to have enough redeeming personality traits. I didn’t sympathise for her because some of her lies were unnecessary, and I didn’t care for her because she didn’t seem to really care about anyone else. Her character seemed like a cardboard cut out, void of legitimate emotion or feelings that would suck the reader in.

I also didn’t like Ryder, who is a snobby, annoying, up himself boy in her class who she starts to like. He may be nice to her via emails (because he thinks that she’s someone else), but in person he’s a giant asshole. Again, he needs redeeming qualities to make up for how rude and annoying he is.

What Kody Keplinger does well: she captures modern high school well. She understands how teenagers use technology to stay in touch and the kinds of things that bother them or don’t bother them in school. She also understands the kinds of trivial (and major) things that can make or break a friendship and/or relationship in high school. And this did remind me of The Duff.

If you’ve read The Duff and you loved it, don’t pick up this book thinking that it’s on the same level. It’s an interesting YA story that you can read in one sitting, but the characters aren’t as likeable as Bianca and Wesley. I recommend you read this before reading The Duff.

My Score: 4/10

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A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell

How do three sisters write a single suicide note?

In the waning days of 1999, the Alter sisters—Lady, Vee, and Delph—finalize their plans to end their lives. Their reasons are not theirs alone; they are the last in a long line of Alters who have killed themselves, beginning with their great-grandmother, the wife of a Jewish Nobel Prize-winning chemist who developed the first poison gas used in World War I and the lethal agent used in Third Reich gas chambers. The chemist himself, their son Richard, and Richard’s children all followed suit.

A Reunion of Ghosts is a magnificent tale of fate and blood, sin and absolution; partly a memoir of sisters unified by a singular burden, partly an unflinching eulogy of those who have gone before, and above all a profound commentary on the events of the 20th century.

Title: A Reunion of Ghosts
Author: Judith Claire Mitchell
Publish Date: April 1st, 2015

This novel was promoted/described as being ‘like the Virgin Suicides’, and, as a huge Eugenides fan, that’s why I picked up this book. But I’ll be blunt: this is nothing like The Virgin Suicides. It’s not even close to being like it. There’s no mystery to these main characters. Everything about them is said (mostly by themselves), in a way where nothing is left to the imagination and the reader feels like they’re being talked at for 400 pages.

The ancestors’ history was somewhat interesting, but they seemed bland and lacking dimension. Their actions seemed unmotivated – they dragged along in their respective chapters. Also, there didn’t seem to be enough of an emotional connection between the three main characters and their ancestors. They seemed too separate.

The three main characters – Lady, Vee, and Delph – seemed like cardboard cut outs. They’re interesting at first and their lives seem to be a comedy of errors. But then they bored me so much that finishing this book was a real struggle. There didn’t seem to be anything about these women that I could relate to – they seemed sad and desperate, but with no redeeming qualities. At times they were funny, but that was it.

The setting in this novel was Manhattan, but it lost (or perhaps never really had) any real vibrancy. The author did nothing to use setting to the character’s advantage. In some ways, the setting was just as depressing as the three main characters.

My Score: 4/10
Buy at BOOKTOPIA or BOOKWORLD

Seriously…I’m Kidding by Ellen Degeneres

“Sometimes the greatest things are the most embarrassing.” Ellen Degeneres’ winning, upbeat candor has made her show one of the most popular, resilient and honored daytime shows on the air. (To date, it has won no fewer than 31 Emmys.) Seriously… I’m Kidding, Degeneres’ first book in eight years, brings us up to date about the life of a kindhearted woman who bowed out of American Idol because she didn’t want to be mean.

I really wanted to love this book because I watch Ellen’s show all the time and I think she’s hilarious. But this book just didn’t work for me. The first few chapters are very clever and funny, but then it lacks for the remainder of the book.

Each chapter focuses on something different, but it all seems to be surface level. You don’t complete the novel feeling like you know anything more about Ellen. This is a book where she picks random topics and gives you her opinion on them. And that’s fun at first, but it gets old.

I wish Ellen wrote on a more personal level, so that there was a balance between humour and seriousness. Lena Dunham’s book does this perfectly. But I do understand that Ellen’s book probably never intended to achieve what Lena’s did. Seriously…I’m Kidding is designed to make people laugh, and it does, but there needs to be something propelling the story forward. If there are only jokes, then the reader gets a little bored. Also, I could skip chapters that bored me and it wouldn’t matter. And even in non-fiction, a reader shouldn’t want to do this.

This book may ‘bring us up to date’ on Ellen’s life, but it doesn’t really delve deep into who Ellen is behind her comedic front. I’d only recommend this book to people who are Ellen fans.

My Score: 4/10
Buy at BOOKTOPIA or BOOKWORLD

Gunslinger, by Stephen King

I’ve broken my King virginity, but not necessarily by choice. My Honours study requires an exegesis, and I’m exploring duality within dystopian fiction protagonists. This means that I need example novels to review and critic in my thesis – enter, Stephen King. Gunslinger, published in 1982, is the first novel in a five-book dystopian series. It also took King twelve and a half years to write Gunslinger, which makes me feel better that I’m still working on my novel as it ticks over to three years.

Gunslinger has all the elements of a typical dystopian novel: few characters, melancholic atmosphere, depressing setting, and tragedy. And when I say tragedy, I mean death, of course. You can’t have a dystopian novel without a few deaths. The story itself is a little slow and confusing, not much information is given about Gunslinger, or his rival, The Man in Black. But the setting is established well through the interactions between Gunslinger and Jake Chambers, a young boy who died from being pushed in front of a car. He’s alive in the book, but that’s because the setting is almost a parallel universe, which I guessed is somewhat like the ‘afterlife’ and The Man in Black is actually the grim reaper. But, to find out if I’m right or wrong, I’d have to read the rest of the novels. And for the time being, I think I’ll leave it at Gunslinger.

Gunslinger, whose real name is Roland, is quite the anti-hero. He sacrifices Jake, but Roland knew he was going to have to do that from the beginning of the book. So did Jake, but he went along with Roland anyway. Roland also had to kill every person in a small town because The Man in Black placed a curse on him. Among these people was Allie, Roland’s short-term lover.

Roland is on a quest to find the Dark Tower, which he’ll probably get to in the final novel. In Gunslinger, Roland ventures through towns and across deserts, mostly by himself. And while he does this, very little information is revealed about anything. My edition starts with a quote by Stephen King himself. He wanted to create an epic like Lord of the Rings. Gunslinger is no Fellowship, but it definitely is the beginning of an epic tale.

My Score: 4/10
The Next Novel on My List? Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury.