Ten Second Reviews

The Best Lies

By Sarah Lyu

Remy's life changes when she meets Elise.  Charismatic Elise, who is determined to right the wrongs of the world, and bring Remy along with her on her quest for justice.  But Elise's history is darker than Remy realizes - and when Remy tries to get away from Elise's plans, the night ends with Elise killing Remy's boyfriend Jack.  But is Elise the aggressor or the victim, or both? This one had some promise.  I thought it was going to be like a real Basic Instinct or Single White Female (note that I haven't actually seen either of these movies, but in today's cultural world, do you even have to, to know what they're about?) but it turned out to just be sad, a tragedy about an abused child who winds up lashing out and then taking a really wild left turn into murder.  Even though the book leads with the shooting, it didn't feel earned by the end.  As ominous and weird as Elise was, the fact that she was actually being beaten bloody by her father meant that whatever else she was, she wasn't a liar, and she wasn't ridiculous for wanting justice/revenge. So the finale where she kills Jack because he threatened to tell people she set a house on fire if she didn't let Remy detach, just feels really out of character.  Not to mention that I cannot for the life of me figure out what any of these people see in Remy.  At several points, I thought the reveal was going to be that Remy was actually the killer, because she was so frigging obsessed with whatever person happened to be cool in her direction most recently. 

Carry On

By Rainbow Rowell

So sue me, I ended up being curious enough from Fangirl to read Rowell's take on Harry Potter fanfic.  In some ways, it's a lot like In Other Lands, another post-HP take on the idea of a child being indoctrinated into a magical school and growing up and making friends (and making out, which is also very important).  Carry On did not thrill me? I mean, you kind of know where everything is going, and who the "Big Bad" is and frankly, things don't happen at all until Baz appears, 150 pages in to a 500 page book.  Because we're meant to think this is the last of a series, there's a lot of describing previous years' adventures, however, because this isn't in fact the last of a series, none of the adventures can be significant at all to this years' adventure, so they're a little bit pointless.  As is the character of Agatha.  I think I sort of get what Rowell was going for, a reversal of the idea that the Chosen One has a Chosen Girlfriend, but Agatha's role seemed limited to being the Debbie Downer of the group - just real unhappy, and ironically enough, existing only to be moved around by the other characters and her life threatened.

In the end, I felt oddly let down by the ending - leaving your magical protagonist powerless and with wings and a devil's tail which have to be made invisible every twelve hours, and permanent magical deadzones seems kind of a downer to me. I don't know if the forthcoming sequel would solve any of those problems, but after reading Carry On, I have little interest in finding out.  It's just not my bag.

Fangirl

Fangirl

By Rainbow Rowell

Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life-and she's really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it's what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can't let go. She doesn't want to.
Now that they're going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn't want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She's got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can't stop worrying about her dad, who's loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

This was one of those that I wanted to like more - in fact, I did like well enough, until the second half of the book and I just kept feeling disappointed by the characters. It just felt like things kind of... petered out at the end.

We're introduced to "Cath" Cather, and her co-dependence on her twin sister, Wren from page one, as Cath moves into her college dorm.  I suppose the book could be about separating from your twin, growing up and staying friends, and managing your relationships, but it kind of just feels like Cath replaced Wren with co-dependent relationships with roommate Regan and especially with boyfriend, Levi.

[Sidebar: I really disliked Levi.  He was intrusive, demanding, and the age difference (and especially the maturity difference) between him and Cath gave the whole thing a much creepier vibe than I think the author intended.  It reminded me of Twilight: why would this older guy who appears to have his shit (mostly) together, be interested in this weird, asocial, mouse?  I just never got the sense that they were romantically compatible.  And also, it is fucking weird to start dating your older roommate's older ex-boyfriend while you literally live in the same room. It felt more like a relationship of opportunity than anything else.  "This guy is friendly to me and won't leave me alone, I guess I may as well date him."]

I spent some time in my last review hating on Cath, and I suppose I may as well continue here too.  I swear it was a total accident that I am reading two books with such related underlying themes (draggy girl who uses her fun twin sister as a crutch and has mommy issues tries to cope with her sister's emotional separation) although it's fun to spot the similarities and differences (different sisters wind up needing hospitalization! grandmothers have to fill in for absent mothers! fathers are helpless and hapless! you kinda root for the other sister!).

This may be my personal bias, but the Simon Snow excerpts sounded more interesting than the Fangirl story, and I'm clearly not the only one, since Rowell's gone on to write separate books just on the fanfiction.  It's obviously a Harry Potter take-off, but Harry Potter is one of the most successful stories ever, for good reason.  It's captivating!

Meanwhile, in Fangirl, it feels a little bit like Wren is meant to be the bad sister, just because she wants to get away from the human leech that is Cath.  I don't know if Rowell's intent was to suggest that both sisters are coping horribly with their mother's departure in different but equally terrible ways (Wren by drinking and partying, Cath by never leaving her room), but after a few weeks distance from the book, what it feels like is that Wren got punished for wanting to be more social, with a trip to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, and Cath was, well, kinda vindicated that she'd been right about Wren and her father all along. Which seems unfair, since Cath was just as messed up as any of them, and yet she's the only one who doesn't wind up in a hospital.  It just feels to me like Cath needed to do a lot of growing up herself, and I just didn't really see that she did. 

17: A Book Set On A College Or University Campus