Owl Eyes: A Fairy Tale by Molly Lazer Review

This book was given to me by Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

I always find retellings to be rather enjoyable, but they don't always deliver - sometimes they are just too similar to the originals by Andersen or the Grimm's or even to the Disney remakes but other times they have enough of an original flare to make them highly enjoyable. And this one delivered.

A stunning retelling of Cinderella, Nora works in the kitchens living with her adoptive family, her parents are dead and the family she works for hates her more than anything. But her life changes when she discovers her father has lived in the main house her whole life, finding this out she begins to question everything - why was she thrown into the kitchen? Why is magic forbidden in the house? Why has she inherited only a silver-bladed knife from her mother?
When a royal ball is announced, Nora must decide what she really wants and whether she is willing to lose every thing she loves to get it.

I found this to be a very fast paced book, A LOT happened in the first 4 chapters and in a book of 18 chapters I did feel slightly swamped by everything that happened. But I also found that to be a huge positive when it came to this book, I couldn't put it down as I was constantly hoping to find out what happened next, and I wasn't disappointed.
Nora the main character, showed few signs of character development until the very end of the book, and seemed to believe she was entitled to an awful lot. This I found hard to deal with while I was reading but as it was a fairy tale, it is to be expected. But because of this, I found it hard to relate to Nora and had a hard time understanding the choices she made, However I am VERY different personality wise and not every book can relate to everyone. My favourite character was Jack, a kitchen boy who worked with Nora and her family along with his mother. Jack was very down to earth and seemed to be Nora's Jiminy Cricket at times. Also in my head he was gorgeous...
As I said previously I had been worried that this book would be too similar to other Cinderella stories but nope. The Kindred (those who could do magic) that were featured in this book were like nothing I have ever read in a Cinderella retelling and with them the whole story, although taking points from the original took a very different path from most that I have read.
I really enjoyed the description used in the chapter featuring market, very well written and reminded me a lot of the description Morganstern used in The Night Circus (another book I really enjoyed).
Molly Lazer was a former associate editor at Marvel Comics and worked on books such as Fantastic Four, Captain America and the New Avengers. These facts surprised me as I saw no parallels between Owl Eyes and the Marvel Comics.
Overall this was a classic fairy tale with Lazer's own personal twist and I enjoyed it greatly.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys fantasy or fairy tale retellings, or both.

8/10
xo

Book Published by Fire and Ice YA publishers 20th March 2018

More Than This by Patrick Ness Review

This review shan't be a long one but I shall begin.
I'll start by mentioning that I am taking part in a challenge on Instagram called The Unread Shelf Project, the aim of which is to read the books that have been sat on your self but haven't yet been read. Each month we are set a different challenge by the creators of the challenge and for this month the challenge was to pick an unread book from your shelf and read it by the end of the month or get rid of it (which I personally found to be a terrifying idea). I chose More Than This by Patrick Ness, I bought it from a charity shop at least a year ago, probably more because I'd heard good things about Ness and even better things about this book (should also mention this book has a 4.03/5 rating on Goodreads). The reason I decided to read this book (or face the idea of getting rid of it before I'd read it) was that Ness had been the writer of the TV show Class that was on BBC 3 two years ago, a brilliant show that unfortunately didn't get a second season.
And now for my review.

The cover of my copy of this book reminded me a great deal of a great episode of Doctor Who called the God Complex with 11, Amy and Rory. The end of that episode had a door in what appears to be pixels (see right)... Just a nice feeling for me as a slight *coughs* major Whovian.

A boy dies, drowns completely alone then he wakes up naked and still alone but alive. Unsure of what has happened he dares to believe that the could be more, more than life perhaps an afterlife.

This book took me on a roller coaster of emotions, looking into depression, survival, and the meaning of friendship. I found this book rather hard to get into, I stopped and started for the first 30 pages but after that I couldn't put it down again, so much so that I read the next 450 pages last night, unable to sleep until I was done.
Unfortunately there is very little I can say about the plot without giving much away, some books are just like that but as John Green says "Just read it". It is heart wrenching at times, creepy at others and unbelievably brilliant.
There were aspects of the Matrix in it as well but again that is as much as I can say without giving anything away...
I refuse to publish spoilers of any sort on this blog...
Genres: YA fiction, Sci-fi, LGBT+, Dystopian
I will recommend this to anyone who loves any of those genres.

10/10
xo

A post shared by El in wonderland (@book.monkey) on Mar 13, 2018 at 3:16am PDT

Book Published May 2013

In Sight of Stars: A Novel by Gae Polisner Review

I have many, many things to say about this book... First I'd like to begin by saying thank you to NetGally for providing me with a pre-publication copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This book will be published on the 13th of March 2018.

Lets begin with how beautiful the cover is before we get serious. I love the sunflowers in the cover and the first thing I thought of when I saw the cover was Van Gogh, and how right I was.

This novel is about a young boy Klee (pronounced Clay) who's father (who was an artist and greatly inspired by Van Gogh) kills himself, Klee's this fact hard to deal with and he spends a couple of weeks in a psychiatric hospital working through what has happened. I'd like to warn now that if you have ever had any experience with suicide this could be a very hard book to read, and I know this from experience. I'm admitting a lot here to the great wide world of the internet, but my dad died when I was younger and this book managed to bring up a lot of feelings that I really didn't want to experience. If I'd know just how "triggering" this book would be it is unlikely I would have picked it up but since I started it before I realised I finished it, and not just because I felt I had to but because I found it really interesting to read about how Polisner portrayed the grief that is felt after experiencing a death in a family.
I felt I should explain my situation before I began my review.

Let us begin with Klee, basically he was messed up in the head. In more detail, Klee had witnessed some terrible things and because of it he wasn't well. I really liked how Polisner portrayed someone who has recently lost someone, it was very accurate (I wonder whether Polisner was able to do that due to extensive research or because she has experienced it herself?). I felt very strongly for Klee due to that fact that I have been in a similar situation (not the same but similar) and know how it feels, blaming yourself and everyone. Not feeling like you are loved, and finding it hard to make connections with people. From my own experiences, I cried at times when Klee was particularly effected by what had happened to him and felt equally happy in the moments he did as well. And during the second part of chapter Day 13 into 14 - Overnight into Morning, my heart basically swam. I felt all the emotion that Klee was putting into what he was doing.
Dr Alvares and Sister Teresa were wonderfully written characters, full of love and only wanting the best for Klee's future, they treated Klee how you would expect carers to treat someone who was working through a death. They were the type of people every child who has lost a parent should have to help get them through it.
All the characters felt very real and I felt strong connects to Klee as well as Sabrina and Martin (also in the psychiatric hospital), they all gave me the impression that perhaps Polisner has in fact had similar experiences and not just done a lot of research, but either way this is fabulously written book in the emotions it was portraying!

The structure I found to be slightly confusing, but not in any major way. The book was present day in the psychiatric hospital with many flashbacks, however in the pre-pub copy I had it wasn't very clear sometimes when it changed from present to past until names were mentioned though this may be different for a fully published, physical copy. The whole book was written from Klee's perspective and besides not quite catching when the flashbacks happened I enjoyed this novel greatly.
This novel was written very well, and I felt everything! It is beautiful, and portrays grief really quite well. I also could barely put it down after the usually taking time to get into the flow of a book, I stayed up much to late last night in order to try and finish it.
Now although this is a Young Adult book, again I'd like to warn that if you react badly to death/suicide, please be wary reading this book. I'm not saying don't, just be wary.
I shall buy this book for my mum when it's released!
8.5/10
xo

Published 13th March 2018

A Year of Books - 2017

I feel I have had quite a good year of reading in 2017, for the past few years I've been partaking in the Goodreads Reading challenges. In 2015 I read 55 books after I'd challenged myself to read 35, in 2016 I challenged myself to read 60 books and I only read 57. This year I decided to set a harder challenge and read 65 books (just to see if I could), and this year, somehow I managed to read a whopping 122 books with still 7 days to spare and because of that I'm going to see if I could read three more books to get it to a nice even 125.

2017 Reading Challenge

Ella has completed her goal of reading 65 books in 2017!

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122 of 65 (100%)

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I have read some brilliant books such as The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks and more. I also discovered some truly amazing writers such as Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970), Danielle Paige, Peter Swanson and again so many more.
This was the year that I left my comfort zone in terms of what I read and moving from simply reading young adult fiction to classics such as the works by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Psychology books such as Jon Ronson, Tony Buzan, non-fiction such as Sins of the Family by Felicity Davis and simply general fiction such as Vibrator by Mari Akasaka and Intimacy by Hanif Kureishi. I have also developed a love for plays, specifically Shakespeare plays since I really became invested in my work as a Theatre Technician and I even have a favourite of the year, The Tempest.
This year I have finally finished the Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), I don't think I enjoyed them enough to read them again any time soon as it took so very long to get through them all but it was a fantastic read. I have this gift I think, I can read the first book in a series (The Fellowship of the Ring for example) in 2015, I can read the next book in the series a year later and the last one a year after that and still remember exactly what has happened in the previous books. Just thought you'd all be curious.
I have also developed in my love for a genre called cozy mysteries which consist of books written by people like Agatha Christie (1890-1976) and Frances Brody, cozy mysteries are defined as being "a sub-genre of crime fiction which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection takes place in a small, socially intimate community". I have spent many an evening curled up next to our wood burning fire reading books in this genre.
Overall I feel I've had a pretty good reading year and if anyone is curious in what I've been reading then feel free to click the widget above and it will take you to goodreads.

As for next year, I am going to continue to read books I haven't read before, I am going to read more books to do with the technical theatre industry and I am going to learn to write reviews, improve my Bookstagram (@book.monkey) and hopefully expand how far this blog is reaching.

Thanks for reading.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from me xo