About a year ago, Megan witnessed a harrowing incident which made her unable to talk for the following 12 months. She blames herself for what happened, and there are demons inside her which bully her and tease her and encourage her to blame herself. Her mother struggles to look after her - she is a single mother with no family to help out, trying to hold down a job in the local cafe. Megan doesn't have many friends - the spiteful bully Sadie and her gang constantly talk nastily to her, knowing she can't reply. Her only friend is Luke - that is, until the bright and bubbly Jasmine starts at the same school. They instantly become inseparable friends, but when Jasmine starts to fall for Owen, Sadie's ex, Megan realises that it's not just friendship she wants with Jasmine. Then Jasmine starts to receive anonymous threatening notes and messages. Is Jasmine's life in danger, and can Megan be brave enough to cope with another awful incident in her life?
This book is surprisingly very readable. You want to find out what happened in Megan's life that made her stop talking. There are many issues that are covered in the book, mainly post-traumatic stress, and dealing with confusing emotions of who you love. These issues are dealt with gently and sensitively. The only thing I was slightly bored with was the set up of Megan living on a rundown estate, with yob boys hanging around, single mum, and the bully girls at school who seem to get away with all the nastiness they throw at Megan. But this is only probably because I've read a few books recently with the same formats - so much so that a couple of those books I got fed up with and stopped reading after a few chapters. But Abbie's easy style of writing and her way of enticing you into wanting to know what happens next, meant I quite enjoyed reading this - it only took me about 2 days to read.
What a wonderful, magical, original, beautifully told story! It has made such a welcome change to the sort of teen fiction that I've been reading recently. The sad thing is that it had been sat on my shelf for about 6 months and I was never keen on reading it. What a treat I was missing. The only way I can describe the writing is like a mixture of Perfume and Chocolat - it has the essence of a beautiful, unusual French piece of literature, with a magical fairy tale thrown in. Even though I loved the whole book, I found I enjoyed the second half much better, as it is more about Ava herself, rather than her family tree background which takes up the first half.
Ava Lavender was born with something rather unusual - wings. She was also one of twins - her brother didn't speak at all until he was nearly a teenager, and only then either in a different language or when he only had something really important to say. The problem was, that people didn't understand the importance of his strong link to his sister or the importance of what he had to say, until it was too late.
The book is about intense love, jealousy, being different, acceptance, strong bonds and desires, wickedness, misunderstandings - in fact everything life can throw at you, but in a magical fairy tale way.
Well, in comparison to the last book I read which I struggled through in over a week, this wonder of a novel took me just under a couple of days, and I missed it when I wasn't reading it. If you liked We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, or Solitaire by Alice Oseman, then I think you'll love this.
Jam (short for Jamaica) is a teenager with troubles. Her boyfriend of 41 days, English exchange student Reeve, has died. He was the love of her life, he filled her days and nights. Now he's gone and she's reached the depths of despair. She cannot get over her loss. So much so that her parents feel the only way they, and she, can cope is to send her to The Wooden Barn, a special boarding school for fragile teenagers. She is chosen as one of 5 students to take part in Special Topics in English, where their wonderful teacher, the kind and elderly Mrs Quenell, hopes they can work through their troubles through studying texts. Their text is Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. Mrs Quenell also gives each of them a journal which they must fill in as often as they can, and then hand it in at the end of term. It turns out that writing in the journal gives the students solace and comfort in more ways than they can imagine, and Belzhar (with the 'zh' pronounced as in Dr Zhivago) is born.
I just loved everything about this book - the characters, the plot, the storytelling. Meg Wolitzer has written a wonderful story about grief, acceptance, life and love.
I'd heard good things about this book. Book trade magazines had hailed it as one to watch out for, and another journalist said it was the best book she'd read this year. Hmm, I'm not so sure myself. From the first few lines I knew I probably wasn't going to 'get' this book. 'The house is falling, and Danny is falling, knees and elbows crumpling onto the floor' but then 'Danny curls his fingers tightly round the duvet, wanting to pull it over his head'. Hang on a minute, wasn't he just on the floor? Perhaps I'm being a bit picky right at the beginning, but the whole style of writing just jarred a little with me. The story is a bit 'over' imaginative, if I can possibly say that, as it's great to use our imagination in storytelling, but here we're expected to accept the weirdest things. It's like the strangest dream just written out in a book.
Danny's parents are obsessed with storms. Whenever one is approaching, they are out on the top of hills studying them. One night, there's a rather vicious storm, they go out to investigate, and never return. Danny is left alone. He soon discovers that by holding a stick broken off from a tree struck by lightning, he is able to speak with animals, birds, plants and rivers. With their help, he tries to track down the Book of Storms, which he hopes will tell him where his parents are, if indeed they are still alive. However, Sammael, a creature from another world, is the one that called the storm to make them disappear, and he wants what Danny has - the stick, and also wants to stop him from getting the Book of Storms.
I found it rather hard to read and understand, I felt nothing for any of the characters. One of the characters, a cat, just seems to disappear and be forgotten for a lot of the story. Was I supposed to read a bit deeper into the meaning? Does Sammael stand for something that I'm completely missing? I'm afraid I'll find it hard to recommend this one.
