Tagged: lena
Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
(Cover picture courtesy of The Caster Chronicles Wiki.)
There were no surprises in Gatlin County.
We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere.
At least, that’s what I thought.
Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
There was a curse.
There was a girl.
And in the end, there was a grave.Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she’s struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.
Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.
You know what the funny thing is about this book? While it was absolutely dreadful I could not and still cannot muster up the effort of actively loathing it. It’s not even worth the effort.
My number one problem with the book is the writing itself. I had a very hard time believing that this was written in the point of view of a teenager boy because honestly, these two authors had no clue how to write male points of view. Throughout the whole novel while Ethan and Lena are kissing behind lockers, going out driving, etc. Ethan never once thinks of taking things to the next level. Are you kidding? As much as I hate to stereotype, we’re talking about a teenage boy here. Do any (straight) teenage boys you know wax eloquently on the styles of dresses girls wear without even a hint of lust? Ethan was just a conduit for the two female authors to write the story. The real story was supposed to be about Lena.
Unfortunately if you totally ignore Ethan, Lena really isn’t all that interesting. I mean, she acts scared about going Dark and says she’s scared but I just never really connected to her through that fear. I didn’t really feel any of her emotions. She was just an idealized girl-next-door like pretty much every other YA love interest/lead. There was nothing really special about her, even when she made her supposedly ground-breaking choice on the night of her sixteenth birthday.
Can we also talk about the cliché overload? I’m from a small town that’s pretty much the epitome of the small town Hell stereotype and yet I found the portrayal of Gatlin disgusting. Ethan thinks he’s above everyone in the town, even going so far as to say he doesn’t speak with a traditionally Southern accent because his parents were educated. I don’t care how educated you are, if you live in a region your whole life you’re going to pick up some sort of accent. The behaviour of the townspeople is absolutely ridiculous and unbelievable. I know what small towns are really like and although they can be incredibly, ridiculously vicious toward any outsiders, I highly doubt that even with the help of evil the events in Beautiful Creatures would not happen in this day and age. Possibly 50-100 years ago, but not now.
The only thing even remotely interesting throughout the novel were all of the magical elements, even though they were not clearly explained. I like the idea of Casters being able to choose to go Light or Dark at their sixteenth birthday. I don’t like how poorly the curse on Lena’s family was explained because I still am not totally clear on why they are not able to choose hundreds of years after the event. Kind of vindictive spirits, don’t you think? Although the idea was somewhat unique, not much could salvage Beautiful Creatures.
For all my criticisms, I still can’t honestly say that I hate this book. It was poorly written, badly paced and the characters were all Mary Sues but it was so boring that I had to really struggle with myself just to finish it. I couldn’t even ‘hate-read’ it (to use the trendy term). I just really don’t care about this book and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
I give this book 0.5/5 stars.
Carrier by Vanessa Garden
(Cover picture courtesy of A Reader of Fictions.)
For fans of The Walking Dead and The Hunger Games comes a YA novel about freedom, choice and family — and the terrifying disease that makes them mutually exclusive.
From the day she was born, Lena has viewed the world through the jagged window of a razor-wired fence. The hundred-acre property she shares with her mother in the Australian outback may keep her safe from the Y-Carrier disease, but it is no longer enough to hold Lena’s interest, and her mother’s increasingly tight grip on her free will is stifling.
Just as her curiosity blooms and her courage rises, she meets a boy through the fence — the first boy she has ever laid eyes on. His name is Patrick and he comes with a dangerous yet irresistible invitation of adventure beyond the fence, an invitation to which Lena cannot say no.
But Lena’s newfound freedom is short-lived and she soon discovers that the Y-Carrier disease is not the only enemy she faces on the outside. Her new enemies want something Lena has, and they are willing to do anything to get it…
[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
If you’re thinking this is a zombie book, I’ve got news for you: it’s not. You never, ever see a zombie. No, instead this is something a lot more interesting, something that hasn’t really been done before.
We have Lena, a seventeen-year-old girl who has lived only with her mother and cousin, fearing what lurks beyond the fence that keeps the family safe. Now that her cousin Alice is dead it’s just Lena and her mother and the two, like quite a few teenage daughters and mothers can’t stand each other. Lena wants to get out and explore the world. It’s been a while since she’s seen a Carrier (only males carry the disease but they live; females die from the disease) and she wants to go out and explore. She knows how to hunt from killing rabbits inside the fence but her mother refuses to let her go. So when she sees a boy she decides to make her move.
Now I know all of this sounds pretty cliché but I can assure you that there are quite a few plot twists along the way. The plot is incredibly fast-paced and just when you think you know what’s going to happen, Vanessa Garden changes everything on you. At the same time, the plot twists actually make sense within the context of the story. They’re not totally out in left field, I promise.
The characters are by far the best part of the novel, especially Lena. She’s strong and determined but not afraid to admit she’s out of her element when she meets Patrick. He’s the first boy she’s ever seen (aside from her magazine crush) and you can guess how much awkwardness ensues. And the thing is that the awkwardness is believable. They’re two teenagers that have had exactly zero experience with the opposite sex. What do you expect to happen, really?
Overall, Carrier was a pretty good novel. It didn’t have the ‘wow’ factor that Vanessa Garden’s first book Captivate did but it’s a good standalone novel. It doesn’t release until March 1, but if you’re at all intrigued by the blurb or my review I think this is the book for you. It’s certainly worth a try.
I give this book 4/5 stars.
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
(Cover picture courtesy of Lauren Oliver’s website.)
They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I’ve always believed them. Until now.
Now everything has changed. Now, I’d rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.
And now since opera usually says things best, here are some lines from Verdi’s La Traviata:
Love is a heartbeat throughout the universe,
mysterious, altering,
the torment and delight of my heart.
It sounds better in the original Italian, but you get the point. Love is important; it’s in our everyday lives and it is one of two main forces that motivate people’s actions. (The other is greed.) But what happens if you remove one of those forces from the entire adult population of a country? You get Delirium, that’s what.
The main character, Lena (short for Magdalena) lives in a world where love is called amor deliria nervosa and is the only recognized mental illness anymore. That’s why when people turn 18 they must get an operation to ‘cure’ them. After that, they are safe from love and all the nasty consequences that usually come around because of it. But they never get to feel the ecstasy it brings either.
You can probably guess where this is going, right? You’d be right if you said that Lena will fall in love with a mysterious boy who is originally from the rebel movement but snuck his way into the city. Yes, I totally saw that coming as I was reading Delirium, but there are a few plot twists and Lauren Oliver at least tells the story well.
She does rely on the forbidden love factor a little too much if you’re reading this as an adult, but teens will love it. Lena is going through her first love, which is both awkward and amazing at the same time. For a teen that just experienced love for the first time or has yet to experience love, this is the perfect description of what it is like. So although I rolled my eyes at some parts of Delirium, on the whole it’s a well written story. It’s well written enough that I’ll be reading the sequel, Pandemonium, at any rate.
And for those of you that forget what love is like to the young, go see what Mozart says about it in his classic opera Le Nozze di Figaro:
I give this book 4/5 stars.