Review of 'Marina in a Green Dress

(image taken from goodreads)

As a child, Walt Disney taught me that 'if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say nothing at all' (in the words of Thumper), so I'm going to keep this short and sweet. I picked up Marina in a Green Dress a couple of weeks ago as it was free to download onto my kindle and I wanted to go for something I hadn't really gone for before. Now I have to say I slightly regret it, and was pretty disappointed. The idea of a book based around a female protagonist who loves musicals sounds awesome, but in reality I don't think this one really worked out.

Jessica moves to London in the hope to get away from her restrictive Northern parents who believe that education and university ought not be everyone's top priority. She goes to see her favourite musical, 'Marina' on a regular basis, much to the chagrin of her boyfriend Steve. However, when a joke letter asking the lead actor of the play to meet her gets sent, Jessica's life changes irreversibly. It's up to you to decide whether it's in a good way, or this is taking her down a darker path ....

This just didn't hit the spot with me. I felt as though I could not in any way connect with the protagonist, which I find really spoils a book. Her thoughts and actions baffled me, and I more frequently felt as though i sided with the reason of other characters in the book.

Have you read it? Did you enjoy it more than I did?

Steph x

Review of "Out of Work"

You've probably noticed by now that a lot of the books I post about are, to put it lightly, a bit 'obscure'. However, I don't think this makes them any less valuable. As part of my course at university I get the opportunity to read a great number of texts that I otherwise would simply never come across, and although yes, I find some of them terribly dreary, a lot of them are incredibly eye opening. Take this book for example - written by John Law (Margaret Harkness) and published in 1888, it reads like a more easily understandable and shorter Dickens. As a lover of Dickens, I found this fabulous, especially as Law, unlike Dickens, manages to paint semi-realistic female characters! Also, it's full of thought-provoking quotations like the one above, which are alarming in that stereotypes along these lines are things that many girls and women of our generation have heard said to them in some way or another.

Polly Elwin lives alone with her mother and is engaged to be married to Jos, a young carpenter who has moved from the country to secure work. However, this proves harder than he had originally realised, and soon his decreasing funds loses him the respect of Polly's mother and he is no longer allowed to live in the house. Becoming more and more penniless, Jos comes across many issues in 19th C London, amongst them the possibility of a richer suitor seeking out his Polly ...

This book examines the poverty in London in the late 19th Century, alongside the riots it induced. Told from the perspective of an innocent man who is simply unlucky, the reader really gets to feel how inescapably consuming the problem of unemployment in England during this time was, and how helpless so many men felt. There was a great emphasis on the idea that a man had to earn a certain amount to be "worthy" of marriage, and this is one of the few texts one could regard as feminist from this time which i read that examines how destructive the ideals surrounding marriage at this time could be to men as well as women. Indeed, even the riots and the poverty of London is not only shown through Jos, but the women forced to sell their newborns for a matter of pence to keep the rest of the family alive, and so on.

Have you read it? What do you think of 19th century books about marriage?

Steph

"You Think You Know Me"* Review

It feels like forever (presumably because it has been!) since I've done a review. The last few weeks have been massively hectic - essay writing, seemingly endless amounts of family Christmas dos and illness meant that reading got put on the back burner. But, I'm back, and hopefully with more frequency. I was lucky enough to be sent You Think You Know Me by Choc Lit and I have to say it lived up to expectations! Suspense-filled, with a little bit of Bond-esque drama, you never knew who to trust .... Believe me, the quote above was how I felt for the majority of the novel.

Anna, a freelance journalist, moves to London in the hope of securing more work. Her university contacts triumph and she ends up securing an interview with Zachariah Shakespeare, an artist whose work is being shown at Seb Rice's (an old uni friend) gallery. However, when she attends a gallery showing she is watched by a mysterious man who provides a false name and appears to take a photo of her. She soon has to question everything: who is this man, and why is she so attracted to him? Why is her old friend Seb so interested in becoming close? And, most importantly, who can she really trust?

I really really cannot say very much about this one without providing a whole host of spoilers, and I want all of you lovelies to enjoy the book! But, I will say that if you have trust issues, beware: this novel will make you evaluate and overevaluate every impression of anyone you ever meet. However, it is a fab book; well-written, intense and hey, if good literature doesn't make you evaluate your life in a new light what does it do?

Have you read it? What did you think? 

Steph

P.S. Check out my 100 follower giveaway here

Review of "Waiting For Doggo"

I managed to wrangle a proof copy of Waiting For Doggo (which will come out in November) through a competition on twitter. Now that I've read it, I am SO glad that I did. It's been sitting in my summer "to read" pile for a couple of weeks whilst I've been attempting to work through a backlog of books. Now, if you've read any of my recent reviews you'll know I usually pick out my favourite quote; with Doggo I was too torn to choose. And when I came close, I realised I liked whole paragraph rather than sentences.

This is the first book in years that I've managed to read in just a day. Most authors nowadays are encouraged to write 300 page books, because these are said to sell well. Unfortunately that sometimes means that stories get dragged out to a point where there's a lot of meaningless drivel and not a great deal of substance. Coming in at just over the 200-page mark, Mills avoids this in Waiting For Doggo. I enjoyed every bit of it, and felt that there weren't any "filler" chapters which I wanted to just get through to get to the good bits. 

One of the reasons why I enjoyed Waiting For Doggo so much is that Mills has managed to create a realistic novel without it being bland (or too much like a rom-com, bleurgh). Set in London, Waiting For Doggo narrates the growing bond between an ad salesman and his dog, an ugly piece of baggage from his recent breakup. I knew this much before I started, and expected to hear a tale of a man who sinks into a depressive pit over his lost love and can only find happiness through the pet she left behind. Thankfully, Mills did not take this tedious and predicatable route with the novel. Instead, it is far more humourous. Plus, it is funny without being badly written, something which I'm finding is getting rarer in recent publications. 

This is also the first book I’ve come across in a while that doesn’t have any unlikeable characters. There are no smarmy goody-goodies (Fanny Price anyone?) that are supposed to be likeable, but are just so annoying, nor are there any real dark-hearted characters. The key protagonist, Dan, is a loveable guy who hasn’t had the greatest luck in the world. His unlikely, and often grumpy, sidekick Doggo is also a brilliantly constructed character. Doggo thankfully doesn’t get given any speech in the book, and yet the author managed to give him a vibrant personality which echoes throughout the text.

All in all, it's been my favourite summer read. I would advise anyone to pick up a copy when it comes out - it's fun, lighthearted, and leaves you feeling happy at the end. 

Steph