Jamaica Inn - Daphne Du Maurier

Her mother's dying request takes Mary Yellan on a sad journey across the bleak moorland of Cornwall to reach Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience. With the coachman's warning echoing in her memory, Mary arrives at a dismal place to find Patience a changed woman, cowering from her overbearing husband, Joss Merlyn. 

Affected by the Inn's brooding power, Mary is thwarted in her attention to reform her aunt, and unwillingly drawn into the dark deeds of Joss and his accomplices. And, as she struggles with events beyond her control, Mary is further thrown by her feelings for a man she dare not trust...

Okay. Okay. Okay. Just breathe. 

That. Was. Amazing. 

It took me a week to read it because I kept going over bits I’d just read and reading them again because I loved them so much.

Mary Yellan? Yeah, screw everyone else. She is the original badass. Daphne Du Maurier. You’re the best. THE. BEST. I love you. 

This is the type of book where I know I’m going to own as many second hand copies as possible, and get them with like nice covers and stuff and have a shelf dedicated to Jamaica Inn BECAUSE IT WAS THAT AWESOME.

I’m only going to talk about Mary. Because Mary. She’s not stupid. She honestly just does not give a f*ck. Basically, she is the epitome of this:

It all starts when she gets to Jamaica Inn. She’s only there because her dead mother’s sister lives there, and her mother’s dying wish was for her to join her Aunt Patience at this place in the middle of nowhere. So Mary goes and meet Patience’s husband. Uncle Joss. Who by the way is an 8-foot built like a tree crazy dude who has reduced his wife to a quivering wreck. What would most people do? Realise he’s scary and gtfo. What does Mary do? Well, in chapter 2, when faced with big beefy scary man who has just told her ‘if you talk I’ll break you until you eat out of my hand’, she answers: ‘I’m not curious by nature, and I’ve never gossiped in my life. It doesn’t matter to me what you do in the inn, or what company you keep. I’ll do my work about the house and you’ll have no cause to grumble. <b>But if you hurt my Aunt Patience in any way, I tell you this -- I’ll leave Jamaica Inn straight away, and I’ll find the magistrate, and bring him here, and have the law on you; and then you try and break me if you like.’ </b> BOOSH. And then later on she’s threatened again into going somewhere and she says, ‘I’ll come with you but you’ll find me a thorn in the flesh and a stone in your path. You will regret it in the end.’ CAN I GET ANOTHER BOOSH? It’s one thing not to be afraid of someone. It’s another thing not to be afraid of someone who’s just punched you in the face. Yah. 

Mary Yellan isn’t like any Victorian woman I’ve read before. And this book was written in the 30s. Dudddeeee. Just. Amazeballs. Srsly. 

Du Maurier’s writing is just so strong too. There’s no point me babbling on about that though, everyone knows she is otherwise she wouldn’t be on the GCSE reading list. There were a couple of um interesting dialogue bits -- that priest was a bit dodgy -- but nothing to stop me reading. In fact, I read bits over before I’d even finished. Just read it. 

Please? It’s my first 5 star in a long time.

Fangirl -- Rainbow Rowell

Cath and Wren are identical twins, and until recently they did absolutely everything together. Now they're off to university and Wren's decided she doesn't want to be one half of a pair any more - she wants to dance, meet boys, go to parties and let loose. It's not so easy for Cath. She's horribly shy and has always buried herself in the fan fiction she writes, where she always knows exactly what to say and can write a romance far more intense than anything she's experienced in real life. Without Wren Cath is completely on her own and totally outside her comfort zone. She's got a surly room-mate 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. Now Cath has to decide whether she's ready to open her heart to new people and new experiences, and she's realizing that there's more to learn about love than she ever thought possible.

I would like to start this review by saying that I was not a fan of this book. I realised this fairly quickly and started to make notes of my thoughts for this review. I will also say that it was very engaging, and even though it took me about two weeks to read it (that’s ages for me), it definitely kept my attention. But probably for the wrong reasons. 

I was so excited to read this book. It seemed perfect for me: it was about a girl starting uni, she wrote, she was obsessed with (let’s face it) Harry Potter (disguised as Simon Snow). And you know what, the snippets of Simon Snow were about a thousand times for interesting than the actual book. 

I don’t even know where to start. With Cath, maybe?

Okay, yeah, with Cath. Okay, so Cath is insufferable. Boring. Judgmental. Her twin is about 1001% more interesting than she is -- Rowell could’ve written the whole thing from her twin sister, Wren’s, point of view and I think I would’ve been on board. 

Cath. Cather. Yah, like Catheter but no one brings it up… no one cringes when they hear about Cather and Wren (I did, I almost faceplanted the wall… you don’t even freaking SAY it like that. Cath and Wren would’ve hurt my heart, but it would’ve worked). 

So back to Cath. This story would’ve been a lot better without her. Okay, okay, I know. Not every character can be likable, that’s the point, blah blah blah -- you can talk to Courtney Summers about unsympathetic main characters she freaking rocks at it --  but Cath was just irritating. And, get this, other characters like her. When her uber awesome roommate, Reagan, told her she was pathetic I jumped for joy. It’s going to be one of those stories, about realising that being pathetic and boring won’t get you anywhere in life. Oh no wait, there is absolutely no character development in this story. We didn’t see Cath with her boyfriend before, we didn’t know that she didn’t like to be touched, therefore we didn’t get it when she was suddenly okay with it. I forgot she even had that first boyfriend. 

She gets to uni, right, and she doesn’t even try. She doesn’t do what we all did when we went, which was cry in our room, and want to go home. Everyone does that at some point -- I was that kid in 2009 when I went to a university far away from my home. And I did drop out of that uni to go somewhere else. But I tried, and it wasn’t because of the awesome people I met there. She doesn’t even try. Fine if you don’t like the uni, fine if you don’t like the classes, and to be honest, I know why no one is friends with you, Cath. You are so boring, my eyes wanted to bleed every time you sulked. Boo. Boring. Move on.

The other characters, Wren, her dad Art, Nick, Levi, Reagan, had personality, sure. They seemed like people, and that’s good. Even no-fun-allowed-Cath seemed like a person. A person who I would hate if I met them. A person who gives nothing to nobody throughout the entire thing and expects the moon back, and get this. They give it to her. Levi thought she was a special snowflake (he wasn’t ‘nice’ he was overbearing), Reagan still wanted to hang with her despite it not making sense at all, Nick thought she was a good writer (you get to read her stuff, and news flash, she’s terrible). 

One of my biggest peeves was Professor Piper’s -- Cath’s creative writing teacher - reaction to Cath’s writing. Telling her it was good. That is was amazing, in fact. It wasn’t. I read it. It was awful. After a while, I stopped reading the fanfiction because I couldn’t get through it.

Simon Snow itself I could read, and I thought it was supposed to be like Harry Potter and tbh Rowell could’ve left out the line about HP existing, and I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. But she didn’t. She said that HP existed. So this is a world where someone has ripped off HP, published it, and it’s massive. Yep. Let that sink in. 

My last point before I round this up is that Cath makes the weirdest comparison’s I have ever witnessed. 

Here are some examples: 

WTF Comparisons

‘Reagan wore eyeliner all the way round her eyes, like a hardass Kate Middleton.’

‘Wrapped a beer around her waist’ 

‘Eyeteeth’

‘Cracks in your foundation’ -- (not WTF really but she says this outloud to Wren and I sang Kate Nash)

‘You’re like Winston Churchill’ didn’t make any sense at all in its context. 

‘Foetal smile’ yah I dunno either.

‘Cat in a field of daisies’ 

There were a few more but I didn’t make a note of all of them. 

In conclusion, it wasn’t a terrible book. It’s important to capture your audience, and Rowell certainly did. I did actually want to read it, and keep wanting to read it, and want to finish it. But not for the right reasons. 

February

28 Day Book Challenge

I decided to set myself a little challenge it being the only 28 day month. 

In this month (dun dun dunnnnn) I have to read:

Dangerous Girls -- Abigail Haas

Out of the Easy -- Ruta Sepetys

Fangirl -- Rainbow Rowell

No Going Back -- Alex Gutteridge

Tape - Steven Camden

Just One Day -- Gayle Forman

OKAY? Okay. <<< Not a John Green quote. I REPEAT, NOT A JOHN GREEN QUOTE. 

Blood Red Road

Blood Red Road: 4 out of 5 stars

'Saba lives in Silverlake, a wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms where her family scavenge from landfills left by the long-gone Wrecker civilisation. After four cloaked horsemen kidnap her beloved twin brother Lugh, she teams up with daredevil Jack and the Free Hawks, a girl gang of Revolutionaries. 

Saba learns that she is a fierce fighter, an unbeatable survivor, and a cunning opponent. And she has the power to take down a corrupt society from the inside. Saba and her new friends stage a showdown that change the course of her civilisation.'

First off, I really enjoyed this book. Like really really enjoyed it. I started off knowing absolutely nothing about it -- which is always a good way to start -- and at about page 120, I was in love. 

Where can I even start with the things I love about it?

Right, so let’s start off with the way it’s written. It’s written in a dialect that anybody can associate with. To me, I read it in a northern accent (naught being specific to this) as well as a kind of cockney one sometimes. But that’s because I’m English. I’ve been told my Americans that to them, a southern american accent is appropriate. I think, to anyone, they can connect the accent with whichever “uneducated” accent they like (don’t kill me northerners, I meant literature-ally). This is great. I read the first two chapters outloud and then I could read it in my head. 

I like Saba. She’s like Katniss Everdeen standard but she’s everything that Katniss isn’t. She feels remorse (most of the time), she’s uncaring, she even says that she doesn’t really care about her little sister to the point of where if Emmy was kidnapped instead of her twin brother, she wouldn’t have gone after her. This is a great flaw to have. It takes her away from the normal heroines and makes her real. There’s a point in the book that I wasn’t expecting at all where she becomes a Cage Fighter. I wanted to see a lot more of this, but that’s just me. She quickly becomes a killing machine which I kind of liked. I do think though that sometimes she still had hope where perhaps she shouldn’t have. Like after she thought she killed the King, she never doubts that Lugh has died. And she doesn’t link it to twin telepathy or anything. I thought that Lugh would be dead if the King was but that thought never crossed her mind. 

Jack - the love interest and not much else. I personally don’t think the story would be much different without a love interest. He was kind of pointless in that aspect, and I don’t care about him. At all.

Maev - I got a major crush on Maev as soon as we met her. Like major crush. So much, I’d like a companion novel please. Also, she needs to be in the second book please. Also, can we drop Jack and have Saba and Maev in a relationship? Cheers. 

I had a couple of dislikes, but nothing to stop me from recommending this book to everyone ever. Okay, so first off. The heartstone. Blerg. It made me wanna throw up in my mouth a little. Here we have this strong heroine, she knows what she wants. She wants to save her brother. But she gets given a heartstone that will draw her to her hearts desire. She states that she already knows who that is; her brother. Until she meets this random bloke and instantly falls for him. Okay, so I kind of get what Young was trying to do here. Prove that Saba is just an *ordinary* girl despite how kickass she is. That’s fine. I don’t mind her falling in love, just because someone’s awesome doesn’t mean they can’t fall in love. What I object to is the way she acted around Jack. The woman turns bright red whenever he speaks to her at first. Oh, and when he’s about to pull his trousers down, she runs. LEGIT RUNS. RUNS AWAY. WHAT IS THIS. Oh she can fight and kill people, no problem, but RUN. RUN FROM THE PENIS. OH MY GOD A FLACID PENIS, BETTER RUN. Seriously? It’s a non-Saba reaction imo. 

The end. Talk about drag. Also Ike’s death. Pointless and fast and unclear about how it happens. By that point I was so bored that I didn’t care he was dead. This needed super tightening. 

I will be going onto Rebel Heart and I hope to see more of Lugh. Saba idolises him. I really want to see his flaws, even maybe her being let down by him. Right now he has a golden halo around him that I kind of want to see shattered just to make him human. 

All in all, the only reason this missed off 5 stars is because I got a bit bored at the end, and that terrible romance
 

Naked by Kevin Brooks

Verdict: 3/5 stars

London, 1976: a summer of chaos, punk, love . . . and the boy they called Billy the Kid.

It was the summer of so many things. Heat and violence, love and hate, heaven and hell. It was the time I met William Bonney - the boy from Belfast known as Billy the Kid.

I've kept William's secrets for a long time, but now things have changed and I have to tell the truth. But I can't begin until I've told you about Curtis Ray. Hip, cool, rebellious Curtis Ray. Without Curtis, there wouldn't be a story to tell.

It's the story of our band, of life and death . . . and everything in between.

This characteristically gripping novel from award-winning author Kevin Brooks will rock you to the core.

*This review contains spoilers*

So I’ve just finished the book Naked by Kevin Brooks. 

I’ll say this though, first off, I thought the MC was a boy. Brooks didn’t drop enough hints and then I was all ‘who the hell calls a boy ‘Lilibet’?’ then I realised she was a chick. I then hoped it’d be some kind of gay romance, but stiffed again. She was wearing a dress. I was screwed. It took me a couple of pages to get over it, but once I did I suppose she was an alright girl although I don’t think it would’ve been the same had it been written by a woman.  

I loved when it was set. It’s about the punk movement from the 1970s and here we are with Lili as she’s smack bang in the middle of it. I even started listening to the Sex Pistols whilst reading even though they suck. It was cool to see real characters pop up in there -- Johnny Rotten, Vivienne Westwood -- although none of them ever said anything (you need permission for that stuff don’t cha?) they were just kind of there. I felt disappointed a couple of times that there wasn’t more about them, but I suppose they were real and we can’t just tarnish their characters or whatever. I felt like I wanted more than them, and they were just furniture dotted about. Undescribed and unreal. Meh. However, the different parts of London were interesting and it was pretty good to read about 1970s England. Books with English anything as a setting are becoming more and more in decline these days, so it was nice to be able to relate. 

Curtis. He’s the front of the band. He’s a bit of a douche bag but he’s kind to the MC -- Lili -- so we learn to love him. He just wants to play, and I felt as though he was very real. Very relatable. Very 70s. Very punk. Very everything. He’s always there even when Lili starts to loose interest in him as a boyfriend, and I like that he doesn’t change, just gets more crazy. It’s good. It’s real. 

William. I think, actually, I would’ve been more interested if it was his story. He came in too late. I found myself not actually caring when he dies. Partly because Lili wasn’t very good at emotionally explaining it to me, and I saw it coming a mile off because of the narration, but I just felt there could’ve been so much more to William. Unlike Curtis, he wasn’t that real. 

Lili. She’s our main character. She’s telling the story to us from 2011, looking back on the Summer of 1976. I think, as a narrator, she’s tolerable. But when you’ve got someone as awesome and interesting as William to contend with, it’s kind of hard to listen to (or read) her moping. Also, she never, ever, ever gets over William’s death. Like it’s told from 35 years later and she doesn’t nothing with her life. We don’t know what she did. We know she had a son, and that her son calls her every day, but her life is nothing without William. This was a boy she knew for the total of about a month. 35 years. Just doesn’t make sense does it? 

My main gripe with this book however was the ellipses. Yeah, you heard me. Ellipses. Everywhere. I get it, teenagers don’t finish their sentences. Does that mean you have to ellipse all the dialogue and enough of the narration to bang my head against the ground? No. To any kids out there reading and wanting to be a writer. ELLIPSES ARE BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD. Okay? Okay. 

I found a lot of problems with this book but there was something, as with the other Brooks book I have read ‘Black Rabbit Summer’ which meant I was just unable to put it down. I wanted to keep reading. The story WAS interesting. I wanted to know if they’d make it. I was slightly disappointed when they didn’t. I recommend it if you can get over the grammar thing… 

Playing Patience Review

Verdict: 0/5 Stars

‘Sometimes all you need is Patience.

Life’s been hard for Zeke. Being a punching bag for his alcoholic father has turned him into stone. Not even the dodgy trailer park he lives in can scare him. Fighting is his release and sex, drugs, and his guitar bring him peace, but deep down Zeke isn’t quite as hard as he makes himself out to be. When he meets Patience, she finds all his broken pieces and puts him back together, but she’s a ray of light in his shadowed life and the last thing he wants to do is bring her into his dark world. Playing careless is easy, playing the bad guy can be fun, but playing Patience is impossible, especially when she can see right through him. 

Zeke isn’t the only one who’s broken, and for the first time, in a long time, Patience feels alive. Her black and white world gets a shot of color when she meets Zeke. He’s unlike anyone she’s ever met with his tattoos, piercings, and blunt honesty. She wants nothing more than to let go and ride the wild side with him, but some wounds never heal and the broken pieces of Patience aren’t so easy to find.’

I have a confession. I actually harbour a secret love for romance, especially this type of romance. Okay? Okay. I like the whole bad guy thing, though bad girl doesn’t go a miss either. So, I was happy to read this. 

My GAWD was I disappointed. Actually, not disappointed. Angry. Where the hell to start, eh? Somewhere where I’m not floundering in a big ball of cringe, probably. I did actually get to about just half way through where I was no longer reading it for enjoyment, but I felt like I needed to carry on, for the good of humanity if I’m being dramatic. 

Zeke. Ah Zeke. He’s the bad boy, he’s “emotionless”, he doesn’t give a toss about anyone but himself. He’s into sex, drugs, and rock and roll. He’s a rockstar with no time for a relationship, and why should he have one when he can have lots of sex with lots of women? We know fairly quickly that we don’t like him, we get to learn this quite near the start (and just in case you didn’t notice, he tells Patience that he’s not a nice guy many times). It reminded me of that episode of the IT crowd where Moss and Roy sign up to OkCupid and their profiles read, ‘Shut up, do what i tell you, I'm not interested. These are just some of the things you'll be hearing if you answer this ad. I'm an idiot who doesn't care about anyone but myself.’ (That’s Roy) and ‘I'm going to murder you! You bloody woman.’ (That’s Moss). I mean, they’re taking the piss out of it, but in this book that is actually what happens O_O. Zeke’s basically a caricature. 

You can have a douchebaggy character, in fact, it’s refreshing to have a character that you don’t instantly like just for something a little bit different. However, Zeke is a misogynistic arsehole who never, ever has a good word to say about women. In fact, he doesn’t even call them women, he calls them ‘females’. What? That’s not sexy. That will never be sexy. Okay, so, he’s a douchebag, we hate him, everyone around him knows how much of an arsehole he is. That means that any woman wouldn’t even give him the time of da--WHAT? Oh they’re all falling for him. For what? No reason that I can think of. My problem wasn’t really with Zeke himself (not at first anyways), but the way women react to him. He also uses pretty outdated language, emphasised in one memorable quote ‘she looked hotter than shit’ I may have lol’d for about three hours. Also, he always talks about his mother, who wrote cheesy quotes all over his guitar (do we get to know what any of these are or…?), but he obviously didn’t respect her. He even says himself that he’s never respected anything a woman has said to him. So I didn’t even have sympathy for a dead woman. What the actual McNugget?!

Patience is the typical  rich girl from suburbia, except she’s being raped by her father (it’s okay though, turns out he’s not her dad, what a cop out). Some things that stuck out to me: her having little or no psychological effects having being raped by her own father for so many years, referring to one rape incident so severe she breaks her ribs as a ‘table ride’, talking about HOW SHE CAN NEVER BE TOUCHED BY ANYONE EVER and touching Zeke straight away. Firstly, though, you should know that Patience has no personality. So if you’re expecting one, don’t, cause you won’t find it. Also, she falls for Zeke when all he does is objectify her. Annnd she’s so straight-laced that she actually uses the words ‘drugs are bad for you’. Oh my goodness, I can’t even. I saw the other reviews talking about how they were glad it wasn’t insta-love, and I do agree, although I don’t feel it was anything love. I literally got no feeling from either of the MCs at all, the entire time. I can’t really say anything about her cause I didn’t get much from her. Also, she's judgemental and ridiculous, and so horrible towards her own gender. If they're not her then they're sluts, or stupid. Ugh.

I’m not sure how edited this was but there were a fair few spelling mistakes. The one that stuck out to me at first was when the judge bangs his gravel. HIS. GRAVEL. I dunno how the editor missed that one because I couldn’t get it out of my head for the next 400 pages. I’m annoyed I spent money on it, because I can go on Wattpad or Movella or Figment and get free things with spelling mistakes :/ And at least then I can be all ‘yo, there’s a spelling mistake here’ and the author be like, ‘thanks oh wise commenter’. 

New Adult. This wasn’t New Adult. New Adult was created to fill the void between end of high school (which both kiddiewinkles are still in btw) and ‘Imma grown up with a million children and divorce problems’. This is just an excuse Young Adult erotica. There’s a difference. So if you’re looking for actual New Adult, don’t waste your time.

What has this experience taught me? Always be dubious if a book has nothing but 5-star ratings.