Take a photo of a barcode or cover
Review also posted at The Wandering Fangirl.
I've been reading a whole lot of YA recently, most of which seems familiar and uninteresting. Unearthly is leaps ahead of the pack simply because Clara, our heroine, is insanely likeable and easy to relate to. She's not perfect, but she's not so imperfect, either; she falls squarely in the middle somewhere along with the rest of us readers, and that's what I relate to the most. She's that girl who is unsure of where she is in life or what she's doing, but she's trying her best with it all.
As for the love triangle that's become so prevalent in YA fiction lately, I found it was done pretty well here. Both boys (Christian and Tucker) aren't as filled in as they should be, but there's still enough about them to see why Clara falls for both. The book summary, which tries to market the romance as good boy vs bad boy, doesn't do the triangle justice. Christian is the sort of boy all of us fell for in school once upon a time. Tucker is the boy we probably had as a friend and never thought of as romantic potential. Each has their own merits and faults, arriving at certain thoughts/plot points in what seems like a natural fashion.
That's what makes Unearthly so successful, in my eyes: it's all so natural, despite the decidedly fantastical power Clara has. I also appreciated that for being an angel, the book doesn't come down heavily on one side of religion or another. It simply shows us the world through Clara's eyes.
I've been reading a whole lot of YA recently, most of which seems familiar and uninteresting. Unearthly is leaps ahead of the pack simply because Clara, our heroine, is insanely likeable and easy to relate to. She's not perfect, but she's not so imperfect, either; she falls squarely in the middle somewhere along with the rest of us readers, and that's what I relate to the most. She's that girl who is unsure of where she is in life or what she's doing, but she's trying her best with it all.
As for the love triangle that's become so prevalent in YA fiction lately, I found it was done pretty well here. Both boys (Christian and Tucker) aren't as filled in as they should be, but there's still enough about them to see why Clara falls for both. The book summary, which tries to market the romance as good boy vs bad boy, doesn't do the triangle justice. Christian is the sort of boy all of us fell for in school once upon a time. Tucker is the boy we probably had as a friend and never thought of as romantic potential. Each has their own merits and faults, arriving at certain thoughts/plot points in what seems like a natural fashion.
That's what makes Unearthly so successful, in my eyes: it's all so natural, despite the decidedly fantastical power Clara has. I also appreciated that for being an angel, the book doesn't come down heavily on one side of religion or another. It simply shows us the world through Clara's eyes.
Review also posted at The Wandering Fangirl.
When you read a lot of a certain genre, you start to suss out the familiar tropes and themes that crop up in every novel. In the latest crop of dystopian YA that's popped up since The Hunger Games, it's been easy: young girl in a dystopian future, a populace that's brainwashed somehow, girl looking forward to whatever landmark she's about to hit, boy shows up, romance and having her eyes opened to the horrors of the world around her ensue. Sometimes a good boy/bad boy triangle pops up. Sometimes, books like Delirium come along, and while it does deal in many of the familiar themes, it does so in a way that feels a little fresher, a little different from the rest of them.
The fact that the entire novel is based on a romance threw me off at first, but it's the development of it that really hooked me and kept me reading. Yes, it's because of a guy that Lena starts to wake up to everything around her, but the emotional growth she experiences as the book progresses is lovely to watch, something a lot of dystopian romance novels miss when trying to hit their plot points along the way.
I think I'm mostly just glad there isn't a damn love triangle.
When you read a lot of a certain genre, you start to suss out the familiar tropes and themes that crop up in every novel. In the latest crop of dystopian YA that's popped up since The Hunger Games, it's been easy: young girl in a dystopian future, a populace that's brainwashed somehow, girl looking forward to whatever landmark she's about to hit, boy shows up, romance and having her eyes opened to the horrors of the world around her ensue. Sometimes a good boy/bad boy triangle pops up. Sometimes, books like Delirium come along, and while it does deal in many of the familiar themes, it does so in a way that feels a little fresher, a little different from the rest of them.
The fact that the entire novel is based on a romance threw me off at first, but it's the development of it that really hooked me and kept me reading. Yes, it's because of a guy that Lena starts to wake up to everything around her, but the emotional growth she experiences as the book progresses is lovely to watch, something a lot of dystopian romance novels miss when trying to hit their plot points along the way.
I think I'm mostly just glad there isn't a damn love triangle.
Review also posted at The Wandering Fangirl.
This is one of those times I'm supremely grateful for the friends I have on Goodreads, because I very nearly passed this over without a second thought until I saw the four and five star ratings people whose recs I trust gave it. On the surface, there doesn't seem to be too much to this book; Francesca is in one of the first girl classes at a formerly all-boys boarding school. Yawn, right?
Saving Francesca turned out to be so much more beautiful and intricate than that.
The boarding school and Francesca's struggles within are the supporting players to the turmoil, the loneliness, the sadness and occasional happiness she finds. I don't suffer from depression and I don't know anyone who has had a breakdown the way Francesca's mother has, but I found I could truly understand what she was going through. I could almost relate, I could sympathize, I was right there with her every step of the way, and it made the normal teenage things -- the crush, the new friends, finding out who she truly is -- feel so much more than the sum of their parts.
And sad as it may be at times, it never drags you down into the depths, but instead shows you enough of a glimpse to understand what it's like.
This is a gorgeous novel, one I would highly recommend to anyone. After reading [b:On the Jellicoe Road|1162022|On the Jellicoe Road|Melina Marchetta|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1212708945s/1162022.jpg|6479100] last month and having finished Saving Francesca, [a:Melina Marchetta|47104|Melina Marchetta|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1277655889p2/47104.jpg] has become one of my favorite YA authors. I'll be reading everything of hers I can get my hands on.
This is one of those times I'm supremely grateful for the friends I have on Goodreads, because I very nearly passed this over without a second thought until I saw the four and five star ratings people whose recs I trust gave it. On the surface, there doesn't seem to be too much to this book; Francesca is in one of the first girl classes at a formerly all-boys boarding school. Yawn, right?
Saving Francesca turned out to be so much more beautiful and intricate than that.
The boarding school and Francesca's struggles within are the supporting players to the turmoil, the loneliness, the sadness and occasional happiness she finds. I don't suffer from depression and I don't know anyone who has had a breakdown the way Francesca's mother has, but I found I could truly understand what she was going through. I could almost relate, I could sympathize, I was right there with her every step of the way, and it made the normal teenage things -- the crush, the new friends, finding out who she truly is -- feel so much more than the sum of their parts.
And sad as it may be at times, it never drags you down into the depths, but instead shows you enough of a glimpse to understand what it's like.
This is a gorgeous novel, one I would highly recommend to anyone. After reading [b:On the Jellicoe Road|1162022|On the Jellicoe Road|Melina Marchetta|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1212708945s/1162022.jpg|6479100] last month and having finished Saving Francesca, [a:Melina Marchetta|47104|Melina Marchetta|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1277655889p2/47104.jpg] has become one of my favorite YA authors. I'll be reading everything of hers I can get my hands on.
Also posted at The Wandering Fangirl.
I've heard nothing but good things about the second installment in this series, so I read the first with slightly lower expectations, and wasn't disappointed. It's a great set up novel, introducing us to Gen, who is delightful, and its his narration that keeps the book moving even though it's very Lord of the Rings: [b:The Two Towers|15241|The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2)|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298415523s/15241.jpg|2963845] in the fact that its a book about people walking somewhere. Seriously.
There were some aspects of the very end I found a little abrupt, and would have probably enjoyed the reveals a little more if I'd realized from the start that Gen was the most unreliable of unreliable narrators. He is a thief, after all.
I've heard nothing but good things about the second installment in this series, so I read the first with slightly lower expectations, and wasn't disappointed. It's a great set up novel, introducing us to Gen, who is delightful, and its his narration that keeps the book moving even though it's very Lord of the Rings: [b:The Two Towers|15241|The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2)|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1298415523s/15241.jpg|2963845] in the fact that its a book about people walking somewhere. Seriously.
There were some aspects of the very end I found a little abrupt, and would have probably enjoyed the reveals a little more if I'd realized from the start that Gen was the most unreliable of unreliable narrators. He is a thief, after all.