I Love Romcoms and I am a Feminist by Corrina Antrobus

 I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and White Lion Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

This was a super fun read and pretty much exactly what I wanted from a book with this title. This is a light exploration of 100 romcoms through the lens of 'feminist lessons learned'. I loved the mix of famous romcoms and lesser-known films. It meant I have a few new movies to check out, which is always great. The amount written about each film was about perfect. It's a good book to casually flick through, and it's the kind of thing I love to read on Christmas day inbetween all the bustle. If you're a fan of romcoms, this is definitely worth a read!

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Originally the last of Flynn's books I read (starting with Gone Girl of course) I decided to re-read this one after finding out they were releasing a film about it. I remembered very little about it despite only reading it about a year ago, which wouldn't bode well except that I also remember very little about Sharp Objects and I by far thought that was the strongest of the Flynn books. Anyway, the first time I read this book I felt very little except abrupt disappointment. This time round I was more prepared and I definitely enjoyed it more.

The main problem with Dark Places is it sells itself as a mystery but the conclusion is so unsatisfying and contrived that it doesn't make a very good one. On both read-throughs I was sucked in, keen to learn what really happened to the Day family. It definitely helped to read it again knowing that I wasn't going to be happy with the ending. Instead the book became about the characters, and viewed like this makes it much stronger on the whole.

In terms of Flynn's style, I guess it's quite formulaic. All the female characters are deeply flawed and not that pleasant but honestly, I adored Libby. She's not a nice person but at no point is she expected to be. At the end of her story, she is essentially just as flawed but also on the way to being happier. Female characters are so rarely allowed to be flawed in the first place that it's great to have one where her flaws aren't something she has to change in order to get her happy ending. Instead the plot is about what happened to her and that's much more powerful.

I also loved the character of Krissi, especially with how similar she was to Libby. Patty Day just broke my heart, and her part in everything made much more sense to me the second time around. Diondra...let's just say I forgot about her completely until I read it again which is very bad considering how much she is in the novel. I know I'm not supposed to like her [HIGHLIGHT FOR SPOILERS] but like Amy in Gone Girl, her comeuppance is not good enough for me. I also don't really get why Ben lets her kill his sister and in general, Ben as a character troubled me. Am I supposed to see him as redeemable and sympathetic? I really don't.

On the whole, I stand by my statement that this is the second weakest of Flynn's books, with Gone Girl being the weakest in my eyes. However, I do think Gone Girl is the more interesting and enjoyable book the first read-through. The difference is, I would not read Gone Girl again without skipping the first third. Taken as a character story rather than a mystery, Dark Places is brilliantly written and gripping throughout. Heck, even as a mystery it still manages to succeed for most of it. It's just a shame that I certainly didn't buy the conclusion, nor did I think it was a worthy end to the story that proceeded it.

Overall Score:

.5

Favourite Quotes:

'It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.'

~

'I don't have friends but I have people who invite me places.'

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'How could you kill something you cared enough to name?'

~

'And still she'd gotten pregnant three more times, because he didn't like to wear condoms and it was too much trouble to nag.'

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Okay, I admit it-I'm a bad book blogger. I went to see Divergent before reading the book...and I'm very glad I did. The movie Divergent is a refreshing take on the YA genre with a female protagonist who isn't afraid to kick butt and a romance that takes a backseat to the far more pressing matters of mass extermination and the threat of war. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the book Divergent.

 Tris is a girl who has grown up living in a world where everyone gets neatly sorted into groups based on their key personality traits. Unlike everyone else though, Tris is divergent which means that the test which does the sorting doesn't work on her. Instead she gets to choose her faction and spend the rest of the series wondering if she made the right choice.

It may sound like your standard YA dystopian stuff and for the most part, I guess it is. While movie Tris was pretty badass and had better things to focus on than her lovelife, book Tris sadly does not. Instead we get page upon page of her fretting about Tobi-I mean Four, the cookie cutter brooding bad boy of this series.

Don't get me wrong, Divergent is not a bad book. It still has a fairly engaging plot (which admittedly drags a bit) and the heroine does have to make some tough choices which are a lot darker than those found in say, Twilight. It's just a disappointment after seeing a movie which was a breath of fresh air to then go and find out that the book is more of the same. I would definitely recommend the movie but if you want to know whether you should check out the book, really I'd say it's up to you. There is nothing particularly special here but if you like dystopias then I see no reason why this one is any worse than any of the other hundreds upon the shelf. At least it spares us the grief of a love triangl-

Oh wait. There's a sequel. What are the odds we'll escape it the second time?

Overall Score:

 

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

As far as books which have been turned into movies go, I will almost always prefer the book. This isn't some weird snobbish thing-I believe a movie is worth just as much as a book in terms of merit, and (depending on the movie and the book) sometimes more. It just so happens that usually I like the book better.

City of Bones is no exception.

I was on chapter ten of this book when I went to see the movie. After enduring what was possibly the most boring 2 hours of my life, I really had very little desire to finish it but I'm glad I did. This book is a hundred times better than the movie. For one thing it's actually pretty funny, a quality I find rare in books. For another, Clary actually does stuff in the book which doesn't involve screaming and falling over all the time.

But anyway, this isn't about my issues with the movie. Taken on its own, City of Bones is a pretty decent book. As I said, the dialogue manages to be pretty funny at times and the secondary characters are all likeable and interesting. My main issue comes from the main characters. That is to say, I don't actually particularly like either of them.

You might question how I can enjoy a book when I don't like the main characters and to be honest, I don't really have an answer for you. Clary is a little bland and suffers from the whole 'hostile and snarky for no real reason' problem which plagues 'feisty' female characters. Jace is just an asshole, plain and simple. But the rest of the characters I liked on the whole and for whatever reason, I was able to look past my disinterest in the two main ones.

The twist at the end I actually really liked, weird though it was. If I hadn't seen the movie first then it would have been genuinely surprising and it's definitely something which hasn't been done before. It's also very brave in YA fiction so Clare deserves some bonus points for that. Which she prompty loses for naming her heroine 'Clary'.

Overall, City of Bones is a moderately enjoyable book. It doesn't make my top ten list perhaps but I will be checking out the rest of the series and it's certainly an improvement from the snorefest of a movie. It's probably worth reading and you could certainly do a lot worse.

Overall Score:

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

One thing I've noticed about sci-fi books is that they have a tendency to get analysed a lot more than the average bestseller. People seem to love to analyse the crap out of sci-fi in a way that simply doesn't happen with other genres, with everything being an allegory for something else. Ender's Game has suffered from this somewhat, particularly when considering the questionable views of its author. I however believe that you should judge a book solely on its own merits so I shall avoid discussing any potential 'hidden messages' and instead focus on reviewing the book simply as a book.

In a nutshell, this is a book about children being trained for war using advance computer simulations. Really though it's a story about Ender and the way he is broken down and manipulated to become the perfect soldier.

It's hard to describe how I feel about this book. Most of my problems with it come from general problems I have with this particular genre rather than problems specific to the book itself. There's a lot of politics in this as well as a lot of description about the futuristic setting. Some of it is interesting, a lot of it isn't, but it's well-written and not as bad as in some other cases. The general tale is very compelling and the clinical style in which it's written fits the character of Ender perfectly. I had mixed feelings about the subplot with Ender's siblings but ultimately I think I enjoyed it due to how interesting I found their characters.

Before I started reading this book, I'd heard a lot of fuss about the ending. I'm ashamed to say I didn't see the twist coming (although it was fairly obvious in hindsight) but it also wasn't as big a twist as I was expecting based on the hype. I felt that the book maybe carried on too long after its climax but at the same time, I did enjoy reading about the stuff that happened afterwards so I can't really fault it for that.

I'm aware I'm being a bit vague in this review but as I said, I can't quite sort out my feelings about it. Strengths-it's a solid sci-fi book with strong themes, reasonably strong characters and it will definitely provoke thoughts/feelings in its readers. Weaknesses-some parts are just so weird that they seem disjointed and other parts tend to be dull. Overall, I did enjoy Ender's Game and I'm glad I read it. Would I read it again? Probably not for a very long time. Should you read it? If you enjoy sci-fi, then yes. Definitely.

Overall Score:

.5