theshiftyshadow's reviews
329 reviews

This is the 3rd Rebecca Wait book I've read and it's another solid 4 star read. 

All 3 of the books I've read deal with pretty heavy subject matter, but Wait does it in such a way that they're never too dark, or difficult to read, but she doesn't go too light with them either. She always seems to strike just the perfect balance in terms of tone and knows where the line is between being a really good read, and being something that's going to leave you emotionally scarred after reading. 

Obviously there's a place for those kind of books too, but sometimes I just want to read something that takes it's subject matter seriously but doesn't want to traumatise you. That might sound strange when talking about this book, where everything revolves around this man killing his wife, 2 children, and then himself. But that's what Wait's books are like, there's a dark heart in them, but that's never the focus. I feel like her books are about the people in them, having experienced the worst things, getting to a better place, even if it's only taking the first steps on that journey, the focus is always about how they keep going. 

This felt like a 5 star read but because I'd seen the recent film adaptation I can't quite figure out if it'  a 5 star companion piece, or 5 stars all on it's own? 

It did add a lot of extra layers to the film, obviously giving us access to Irene's inner mind, but it also gave me a little more appreciation for the film too, which I liked anyway. 

Both book and film are definitely worth your time, I'd recommend both. And the audio I listened to was narrated by Tessa Thompson, so it really does feel like a double bill. 

I didn't like this at all.

I read Vanity Fair a few years ago and while I didn't really love it, I came away with the feeling that everyone except Becky was an insufferable idiot. Then I watched the ITV adaptation with Olivia Cooke as Becky and I realised that's the point! Everyone is an insufferable idiot except for Becky! 

What works so well about the original story, for me, is the time it's set in has an awful lot of ridiculous society rules and etiquette and Becky feels like quite a modern character in contrast to the others and her presence among them really amplifies how silly they all are. It's a satire, I'm sure. And what the TV adaptation did so well was break the 4th wall occasionally, so we feel like we're in it with Becky, she knows all these people are idiots, and she acknowledges we're smart enough to know it too, and you don't really feel too bad for any of them when she gets what she wants. 

 The problem then with this retelling, set in 90's era among the tabloid press and upper social classes of London, is that Becky seems like the worst character. She's conniving and cold, and while the writer tries to give her a backstory that explains her character, she tries a bit too hard, and the setting she puts her in, among tabloid journalists and the rich owners of the papers, doesn't provide the same ridiculous background for Becky to scheme her way to the top.

 It works in Vanity Fair because the massive class divide present in that story is enough in itself to a) explain Becky's exclusion and thus her motivations, and b) is wide enough to be amped up and ridiculed. Now obviously there's still a class divide at work in 90's London, and in the circle Becky finds herself moving in, but I feel like the writer doesn't really have a grip on that, or the characters that exist in it. Some of the changes she makes to characters and relationships aren't for the better. Amelia, for example, I always felt was kind of silly but mostly harmless, and although Becky takes advantage of her and uses her connections, she at least liked her, enough to want her to be a bit smarter about things, at the very least. Here though Amelia barely exists, and their relationship revolves around their individual relationships with George.

One thing that actually left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth was the missing child plot line, which was presumably based on the Milly Dowler case. I understand that the author wanted to set this retelling in the era of 90s tabloids, and that case, and the subsequent phone hacking inquiry, was a massive part of that era, and probably it's downfall, but I just didn't like how it was included here. 

I think there's just too much going on in this book. Do the modern day Vanity Fair retelling, or write about the rise and fall of someone within that 90's tabloid world. Trying to do both just seems like an unnecessary thing, and the book doesn't pull it off. 

(while looking for this book to log I noticed there's another modern retelling of Vanity Fair called The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp, where Becky and Amelia meet on Big Brother, which immediately sounds like a more appropriate setting for an update.)

(Realistically I'm probably never going to rate a YA book 5 stars, except for the one that I did..... so 3.5 is, relatively speaking, a very decent rating.)

I enjoyed this for the most part. Any issues I had with it stem from the fact it's YA and I am not the target audience for that, so they're not flaws as such. I find with most YA I've read that they always touch on some heavy issues but tend to only go surface deep, especially emotionally. I guess that's kind of accurate for teenagers, but as an adult reader I'm often left frustrated when scenes end too soon, or conversely, when a character has some overly profound thoughts on an issue. But as I said, that seems to be a common feature of this type of book and something I've come to expect the odd time I read one.

That said I liked the characters, and I liked the plot. I liked that the author didn't try overly hard to explain what was happening, but did enough to make it believable that it was. I really liked how they had Elena have to reassess her friendships/relationships along the way. The romance was nicely done, and I appreciated the acknowledgment that crushes are quite often based on the people we imagine someone to be, and how they took the time to allow Elena and Freddie to get to know each other properly. A lot of the interactions between the characters felt refreshingly healthy but in a believable way. 

At times it did start to feel a little repetitive, especially with other characters constantly telling Elena that she was making too big a deal of having to make a choice. That also got a little bit annoying simply because the choice she was making was genuinely difficult and could have monumental consequences, so she was making a perfectly acceptable sized deal about it, in my opinion. But I guess the point, or message, or whatever, of the book was about letting people make their own choices and the repeated conversations were there to drill home that idea, rather than to make light of Elena's choice. 

Bit of a strange one. Really easy to read, well written and I liked all the individual characters, but once I finished it, it left me with nothing. It felt almost like a series of short stories about these individual people, that were then very loosely tied together with this overarching heron plot. Each time it moved to a different character POV I was disappointed to leave the last one behind, but then I'd get really into the new section, only for it to end and jump to another. The heron plot does flow though all of them, but other than being, I assume, a metaphor for the environment or climate change or whatever it was, it didn't feel that important. 

I think some of this went over my head, or I'm assuming there was relevance to Hamlet being the play of choice, and not being familiar with that play, I'm missing something. 

Beyond that I found this an interesting read. I'm familiar with the general history of the occupation of Palestine, and the ongoing conflict there, but I've never seen or read anything that depicted life carrying on as (relativel) normal in these places. I liked the questions it asks about art as resistance, does it work or does it dull the anger enough that it kills rebellion? 

Above all, I think what this book does really well is show the longterm effects the displacement of a people can have on a population. The main characters in this book are all Palestinian, but because of the Nakba they are all a little bit, or a lot, disconnected from one another. Whether it's from living in the WestBank vs Israel, or living in a camp vs having certain privileges, or being the foreign born child of someone who left and only comes back on holidays vs someone who chooses to stay. 

From a modern point of view this feels like satire, but I have no idea if that's how Austen intended it. 

Fanny is the biggest drip of a character I've ever encountered, Edmund is a plank, and the only two characters that seem like a bit of fun are derided as villains. 

I could imagine this being adapted for TV or film in a similar way to the film Love & Friendship, very tongue in cheek, very self aware, and it being so ridiculously silly that it would be extremely enjoyable. However, as a book, even in audio, it's a bit of a bore.

I really liked this book but I didn't feel a lot while reading it. It's impact was more in a thoughtful sense. 

It uses the murder of Denny, a 17 year old Vietnamese Australian boy, as a framing device to explore intergenerational trauma, the refugee experience, addiction, community, and family relationships. He's beaten to death in a restaurant with multiple witnesses present but nobody will talk to the police, and the police don't really care. 

The main focus is on Ky, the sister of Denny, as she tries to speak to witnesses to find out what happened the night her brother died. Chapters alternate between her and multiple other characters, mostly the witnesses, and then also her family. It's very well structured and as we learn about each person, and why they lied or won't talk to the police, we get a much broader picture of the community they live in, and their experiences in Vietnam, in refugee camps, and then as second class citizens in Australia. 

It's a pretty easy read considering the subject, and as I said, I didn't really feel a whole lot while reading it, which is why I've gone with 4 stars rather than 5. It did however leave my mind spinning off in lots of different directions which is, for me, still a sign of a very good book. 

This review is spoiler free but I will probably talk around a thing, and it may be obvious what that thing is, so if you really really don't want to know, skip the review, but do read the book. 

I went back and forth on rating this because I did absolutely hate the thing that happened half way through, and for a while I thought what was feeling like a 5 star book was going to end up much lower. After finishing it, and sitting on it for a while, I accepted that my feelings were more about the character than about the author for having written it. Ultimately that's a sign of good writing, I think, caring about characters so much that I feel things for them like they were real people I know.  So ultimately I have no reason not to give it 5 stars.

I listened to this on Audiobook, and it blew me away. It's read by Emily Wheaton, whose voice is so easy to listen to, and I found over and over again that I was just lost in the story. At one point I wanted to know what would happen quicker than the audiobook was revealing it, but it felt like a crime to speed it up, or switch to a physical book. Likewise I couldn't just stick this on while I was doing something else, it felt like a story that needed to be given my full attention at all times. 

I will be getting a physical copy to keep and read again myself. It feels like a book that will reveal more things on a second reading. It's also full of stunningly beautiful writing. Hanne's connection to the natural world, and her love for Thea, along with her realising that love, are all so beautifully written. The supporting characters are all so well drawn too, I couldn't help love all of them, well, nearly all of them. 

Something that's never occurred to me before is the idea that before a certain point in time there would have been queer people who wouldn't have had the language to understand themselves. I know we still live in a pretty heteronormative world, but there are words, and labels, and acronyms, and endless amounts of information and vocabulary for people to know who they are. These characters exist in a very religious community so probably if it had been public knowledge things wouldn't have gone well, but the way their love story plays out it's lovely that it's never really questioned as being wrong, or a sin. Even when Hanne hasn't quite realised what it is she feels for Thea, or when Hans eventually understands Thea's feelings, it's all just understood as love. I think that's a brilliant way to place a story like this in a historic setting without having to add in the judgment of others, or introduce the negative language associated with that, even if it would be historically accurate. 

I've seen this book referred to as historical fiction, and magic realism, which I guess aren't inaccurate labels, but I think it rises above genre classification, and is a beautifully written story about love enduring.