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Book Review : Suddenly Royal by Nichole Chase

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  • Release Date: April 23rd 2013
  • Genre: New Adult/ Women’s Fiction
  • Pages : 464
  • Publisher: Avon

The story of an American woman who discovers she is a duchess  sounded a lot more interesting when I started this book than when I finished. This concept of normal women finding themselves mixed up with royalty is nothing new with movies like The Princess Diaries and The Prince and Me but I couldn’t find the same  charm in Suddenly Royal.

 

Samantha Rousseau is a graduate student working towards her PhD and taking care of her cancer stricken stepfather. Her life is turned upside down when it’s discovered she is a long lost duchess from the France-expy country Lilaria. Suddenly this American girl is plucked from obscurity and into the world of royalty, paparazzi and fame all while  keeping her eyes out for Prince Alex aka Prince Yummy.

Chase executed the premise well, explaining how the families are being brought together but there wasn’t much of a follow through as far as plot was concerned.

 I don’t know if it was the cookie cutterhero or the low ball conflict but the more I thought about it the more I realized this wasn’t the kind of story I expected. We get a lot of Sam going to Lilaria and about her responsibilities,  but honestly it wasn’t that interesting. . . just a lot of people telling her things.  I wanted something more akin to the  first season of Downton Abbey. I wanted more awkward dinner parties, culture shock,  witty banter and actual tension between the leads.

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Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Cycle #3)

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  • Release Date: November 21st 2014
  • Pages: 400
  • Genre: Fantasy
  • Publisher: Scholastic Press

The dreaded third book in a series review. It can be hard to review books mid-series, so this one is going to be brief and spoiler free for the entire series.

Blue Lily, Lily Blue in a lot of ways is a test to see how closely you’ve been reading the other books. It pulls a lot from a deeply established mythology to keep the plot going which was hard for me because I hadn’t re-read the previous books. I kind of had to catch myself up on what was going on.

My favorite parts of this series, that I noticed more so in the book,  is the dialogue between characters. They just have this great back and forth that is super entertaining. The characters in this series are some of the most solid and well developed characters I’ve read in YA. They all have so much agency that it’s almost like you’re getting four story arcs with each book.

I have started to notice how flowery the writing can be at times, particularly when a scene is from Gansey’s perspective. When Stiefvater is writing from Adam’s POV it tends to be more straightforward and I wish she would stick with it more. Sometimes that kind of writing would take me out of the book.

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Book Review : Oryx and Crake

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  • Release Date: March 30, 2004
  • Pages: 400
  • Genre: Dystopian
  • Publisher: Random House

I generally get most
of my Adult literary fiction recommendations from podcasts and one I’ve heard a lot
about is Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. I picked this up at my Indie book
store (shout out to Fountain Bookstore) after the bookseller told me how much she loved  Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale which I have but haven’t read yet….

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Book Review: Everyday by David Levithan

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I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present because that is where I am destined to live.” 

― David Levithan, Every Day

 

  • Release Date: August 28th 2012
  • Pages: 233
  • Genre: Paranormal Romance ?
  • Publisher: Knopf (Random House)

This novel is fairly different from the previous Levithan novels I’ve read so far. It’s very high concept and cerebral. The story follows A, a who wakes up every day in someone else’s body. A lives their life for one day before falling asleep and waking up in a new body the next day.  A is essentially a soul without a body, A has sentient thoughts and memories,  A has no gender or form. 

When I first heard about this book, I thought it would essentially read like a series of short stories, but there is a continuing plot. When A meets a girl named Rhiannon while in the body of her boyfriend, Justin A falls in love with her. Now, A is will do anything to get back to her and find a way for them to be together…

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Romance Review: Something About You by Julie James

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Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

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  • Release Date: January 1, 2011
  • Pages: 352
  • Publisher: Quirk Books
  • Genre: Paranormal Historical



Jacob has always felt that his life was just ordinary, especially compared to the stories he heard from his grandfather about the halcyon days and Peculiar children during World War II. But these strange stories are just stories though, right? After the traumatic death of his Grandfather, Jacob begins to see things– things that can’t possibly be real. Soon, Jacob finds himself traveling to the small island of Carinholm, Wales,  the place of his Grandfather’s stories, where he discovers the past and present may not be that far apart at all….

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