Hideous Love (2013)

Hideous Love: The Story of The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein. Stephanie Hemphill. 2013. HarperCollins. 320 pages. [Source: Library]

I am familiar with the story of Mary Shelley. I am probably more familiar than the target audience would be of Mary Shelley, her sister, Claire, her lover-husband, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, etc. I took a whole semester focusing primarily on these Romantic authors. (Claire was an extra bonus. You can't cover the lives of Mary, Percy, without mentioning Claire and her lovechild.) I was curious how the story would be presented. I am not usually a big fan of verse novels. I think some work really, really, really well. And I think others are absolutely awful. This falls into the "why is this a verse novel?" category. I think the story could have been told just as well, if not better, in prose format, in journal format in particular. We do know that Mary Shelley kept a journal, of sorts.

That being said, I do think the book did a fairly good job at capturing the ANGST that is Mary Shelley's private life. Her life was a BIG, BIG MESS. Oh, what she had to put up with! Oh, what she had to endure! Oh, the consequences of leaping into love without being ready for it! As a teenager, she runs away from home with a married man, a poet or would-be poet. She takes her sister. Because she took her sister, well, her STEP sister, with her, she'll be stuck with the sister for what seems like forever. With her husband's notion of free-love this and free-love-that, the LAST thing Mary needs is another woman in their lives who is constantly there and wanting/needing attention. Mary also suffered so very many losses. So many of her children died, died in their infancy or toddler years. And some of that was just the times they lived, and some of that was due to her husband's stupidity and stubbornness. Anyway, it is an emotionally demanding story. Far from boring. Because her husband was a poet, because she spent so much time with poets, it would be nice if this format of verse novel worked in telling her own story. However, I did not feel the verse format was one of the book's strengths. If the book works, which I think it does in a way, it is because of the emotion behind the words, not the words themselves. The writing didn't seem especially lyrical or lovely or poetic.
© 2014 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Beauty's Daughter (2013)

Beauty's Daughter. Carolyn Meyer. 2013. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 352 pages. [Source: Review copy]

Beauty's Daughter is the story of Hermione and Helen of Troy. I'll be honest, Helen of Troy is more of an afterthought. The book has very little to do with her directly. Indirectly, I suppose, there is plenty having to do with Helen. The story follows Hermione and her father during the Trojan War. She goes with the armies. She befriends some of the other women. She falls in love. After they win the war, her father arranges a marriage for his daughter. She is angry but submissive. The novel then follows her through this mess of a marriage. She cannot forget her first love, Orestes, and when she learns the mess he's in, she sets out to rescue him. Accompanying her are a few of her best friends. The journey won't be easy, of course, but with the help of a god, perhaps they will succeed.

Beauty's Daughter makes Greek mythology accessible. I enjoyed it for that reason alone. Hermione may not be beautiful like her mother. But she is strong-willed and brave. She is not a particularly emotional heroine. The book isn't so much about how she feels at any given time as what she does.

Beauty's Daughter is not my favorite Meyer novel, but it is a good read. 

© 2014 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

The Apprentices (2013)

The Apprentices. Maile Meloy. Illustrated by Ian Schoenherr. 2013. Penguin. 432 pages. [Source: Review Copy]

I still have mixed feelings on both books in this series. (The first book is The Apothecary). On the one hand, there are lovely little historical details in both books that make me want to love these books. (The books are set in the 1950s. The first book was mainly set in England. The second book is set in America and Asia. Multiple locations in Asia.) On the other hand, there is a fantasy element to be dealt with. A fantasy based on science, chemistry, and transformation. Main characters take potions to transform into birds in both books. Main characters take potions to be invisible, etc. In this one, there is a potion or recipe for long-distance telepathy. I found this strange to say the least. One can experience the world through-the-eyes-of-another. I had a hard time comprehending how this works, why this works; it was convenient to the story obviously. But my main issue was how romance factored into it. It just didn't work for me. For example, why does the hero send someone across the ocean to "protect" the heroine from a rival love-interest (a classmate, a waiter). It is like he's refusing to see the actual real threat right in front of his eyes; the truth is that she is in danger, in a dangerous position because she's blinded from real threats as well. But no one is really able to do anything right then and there to take her from the situation because the whole plot depends on her being the bait.

© 2014 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Paperboy (2013)

Paperboy. Vince Vawter. 2013. Random House. 240 pages. [Source: Library]

Paperboy had me at hello. I loved, loved, loved, loved, REALLY LOVED this one. Yes, I'm going to gush about how wonderful and just-right this one is.

Paperboy is set in Memphis, Tennessee, in July of 1959. The narrator is a young boy (11, I think?) who stutters. He doesn't want stuttering to define him. He doesn't think that's fair. He is good at many, many things, like baseball. He is GREAT at baseball. He is good at typing, at writing. He loves words. But his stutter keeps him from loving speaking words aloud. It keeps him nervous and awkward around new people or strangers, people he feels will judge him based on his stutter alone, who will assume that his inability to speak clearly means he's unable to THINK clearly too.

So. The month of July will prove challenging to him for he has agreed to take over his best friend's paper route. Oh, he's not worried about the delivering part. He knows he's got that handled. He's worried about Fridays, about the day when he'll have to go to the door and TALK to people and ask for the money owed. You might think, in some ways, that it would be the first week that would be the most difficult, and that, all other weeks would just be easy after that initial effort. That is only partly true. He does make a friend, a wonderful friend. And he does learn a few life lessons that help him grow up a bit and cope a bit. And, I suppose, you could say that his perspective expands a bit in that he sees that the world is full of people who have problems, who have issues; that every person is dealing with something, struggling with something.

I think I loved the narrator best. The book is in his own words, he's recounting these events. There is something in the narrator's life, a secret that he discovers one day, and it could potentially be big and disturbing--just as there are other events in the novel that could be BIG AND DISTURBING. But this one thing that he wrestles with on his own, quietly meditating on it perhaps, was handled so tenderly and lovingly that it just worked for me. It made a novel that I already LOVED, LOVED, LOVED that much more wow-worthy.

I also loved other characters in this novel. Characters that might have seemed minor, but, were anything but. Characters like Mam, Rat (Art), Mr. Spiro, and, to a certain extent his Dad.

© 2013 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews