Once Upon a Bookshelf

Ava Nickerson is in her late twenties, is a successful career woman, and is the eldest daughter of a mother who has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Ava’s younger sister, Lauren, flies back home as soon as the two sisters hear about the diagnosis. After a late evening, Lauren stumbles upon a contract that their mother had drawn up with neighbours who had moved away years ago - betrothing Ava to the neighbour’s son.

Lauren is now determined to have some fun while she’s in town, and hunts down the guy Ava is apparently betrothed to, in order to introduce them again, all in the name of a little payback.

As much as I rant about chicklit, I can’t help hoping that I’m going to read something like Ally Carter’s Card series or Shanna Swendson’s Enchanted, Inc. series. So I keep coming back for more. And it’s hard to find something as good as those two series’. And then I get angry about flakey characters and start ranting about the same things over and over again.

Overall this wasn’t too bad. Not as good as Carter’s or Swendson’s books, but still, not too bad. Ava, the main character, wasn’t flakey, but she was … well, it’s frustrating to read about a brilliant career woman who needs to be made-over (of sorts) before getting her happy ending. And I’m all for extreme low-maintenance, but it came across like the author was saying that people who are great in business are dowdy, weary shabby clothes that don’t fit or flatter, don’t try things on before buying them to see if they fit, etc etc. Just basically don’t care about things other than work. Contrasted with Ava’s sister, it made it even more obvious - Lauren was a fashionista, completely ditzy, in crazy amounts of debt because she can’t see something she wants without buying it… It was like the author took two ends of the stereotype spectrum with the sisters and it was a bit too much at times.

And in regards to Russell, the guy Ava is betrothed to… He was, in short, the stereotypical dream man. Enjoys shopping - is the one to suggest going in the first place, for that matter. Buys her a pair of Prada shoes after one date. Not to mention all the other clothes he randomly gives her. And as much as I would like a guy to buy me a pair of Prada shoes, he was … well, rather boring.

The book was like a cross between Shopaholic (and those who enjoyed the Shopaholic books would like this one) and the myth of Pygmalion. BUT, at least the author grasped this, and made a statement in the dialogue between two characters as to how like Pygmalion the story was.

A true modern-day fairy tale, Impossible tells the story of Lucy, one girl in a long line of women who have been cursed by the Elfin Knight. Many generations ago, the Elfin Knight fell in love with Lucy’s ancestor; because she refused to be his True Love, he cursed her and all of her daughters. Each one would conceive a baby (the father being not of their own choosing) before they turn 18, and then go mad soon afterwords. To defeat the curse, there are three tasks that must be fulfilled - to make a shirt without any seams or needlework, to find an acre of land between saltwater and the sea strand, and to plow and sow the entire acre of land with a goat’s horn and a single grain of corn.

In a way similar to your typical fairy tale, Lucy has been given three impossible tasks to perform in order to break the curse. There are many other fairy tales where the main character has to perform a seemingly impossible task in order to escape from a contract, or to gain their heritage. Likewise, the number three figures prominently in so many fairy tales, whether it’s three children, three tasks, or three bowls of porridge. It felt like Werlin definitely did her research, which made this book more enjoyable.

In all of the blog reviews I’ve read about this book, the blogger has absolutely raved about Impossible. On one hand, I can understand why they would do so. On the other hand … there were things in the details in the book that bothered me. Don’t get me wrong, I still highly enjoyed the book. I got quite immersed in the book while I was reading it. But every once in a while, I would come across something that made me cringe a little bit.

Take, for instance, the antagonist’s last name - Seeley. It was like getting hit on the head with a pile of bricks that screamed “Hey! This is the bad guy!” It possibly wouldn’t be obvious to someone who hasn’t read a lot of fairy stories - but someone who has read a couple with fairies in them is going to know that there are the Seelie and Unseelie courts of fairy, and even though the Seelie court is supposed to be the “good” court, dude these are fairies and if you offend them… WELL.

Then there was the fact that in the prologue, 10 years prior to the rest of the book, it’s Lucy’s seventh birthday. And she gets a complete set of the Harry Potter books. Would you buy The Deathly Hallows for a seven year old?

Other than the slight distractions, I did enjoy the book. It wasn’t over-the-top with fantasy, so I can see it appealing to those who have never really gotten into fantasy before. And the fairy-tale aspect will definitely alluring to those who are mythology, fairy tales, and general fantasy fans.

(Side note, what is it with these books lately where the teen protagonist gets married? Bella and Edward get married after Bella graduates from high school… Lucy and Zach get married while Lucy’s still a senior in high school. Are there any others that I’m missing?)

I went to see Ghost Town this afternoon with a friend - there wasn’t much out that we had either heard much about, or particularly wanted to see, so it was a toss up between this one and Burn After Reading. Boy, am I glad we decided to see this one.

I’ve only ever seen a few things that Ricky Gervais has been in, but I know that he’s a very funny actor. As far as Greg Kinnear goes, well at times I quite enjoy his work, and at others … I don’t. Happily, this was one of those times where I quite enjoyed his stuff. Gervais and Kinnear played so well off each other, their bantering was by far the best part of this movie. And there was a lot of bantering. It was all completely laugh-out-loud, can’t-drink-my-iced-tea-for-fear-of-spitting-it-out funny.

The rest of the movie was alright, as was the rest of the cast – the female lead (played by Téa Leoni) was pretty good, and there were A LOT of familiar faces in the minor characters, but they faded into the background when Kinnear and Gervais were on screen.

This was a very funny movie, and is definitely something I would recommend to someone to pass a couple of hours quite happily.

This is one of those books I have to revisit every few years to recapture its magic. And magic it certainly has - one of my favourite types of magic. The magic that is implied but never seen - the magic where (in this book, for instance) you know leprechauns exist, but you never actually run into them. They’re there, just hiding around the corner, and you know you can catch them if you’re sneaky about it, but they always disappear just before you see them. The magic, also, where you know that things were made for you, right from the first instance you lay your eyes on them. There is always some sort of magic implied in LMM’s stuff - the best characters always believe in or talk about some sort of magic, and that is usually just enough magic to make it more entrancing.

Jane of Lantern Hill is the story of a young girl growing up in Toronto. Living with her mother, aunt and grandmother, Jane is an awkward young girl who doesn’t do well in school and who can never seem to please her grandmother. One day Jane discovers that her father isn’t dead, as she had previously believed, but is living in PEI where Jane had been born. Her mother had taken Jane to Toronto when she was three years old, and had never returned to the Island. Despite her anxiety when her father sends for Jane to visit him during one summer (believing, as Jane did, that her father had never wanted her), she soon grows to love the Island and her father. True kindred spirits, they are, right from the beginning. Through that first summer, and the one following, Jane grows into herself - she is no longer awkward, she gains a thirst for knowledge that helps her in school, she is no longer cowed by those who used to hold sway over her.

This is one of my favourite LMM books. I positively love reading about Jane’s transformation throughout the book - from being a small timid child to a lovely girl who is so sure of herself and who demands the respect of those very people who had always looked down on her previously.

There is also the factor of Jane’s parents still being in love with each other after all these years, even though each believed the other hated them. I guess I have a soft spot for those types of stories but they are beautiful - that the people involved never stopped loving each other through it all. And Jane’s dad, Andrew, is such a wonderful character. As soon as Jane meets him on the Island, you know he’s going to be brilliantly wonderful. Flawed, yes, but still romantic in the sense where he knows what magic is.

Brilliant book, and it totally filled my Jane craving.

In The Heretic’s Daughter, Kathleen Kent tells the story of her ancestor Martha Carrier, one of the women convicted for witchcraft in Salem during the Salem witch trials of 1692-1693, through the eyes of Martha’s daughter Sarah. Over the course of a couple years, we see how events - starting with a breakout of small pox - can cause people to turn on one another, how resentments can grow, and how rumours can ruin the lives of people.

This was a slow-moving book, but that in no way took away from the power of the book. I had tears in my eyes at numerous points in the last three chapters of the book. It was raw, poignant and heartfelt. I can’t imagine having to live through what all those people had to go through, and even reading about it just about broke my heart. To imagine having your friends and neighbours, and in some cases your family, turn against you and allow you to be condemned to hang as a witch… it’s just so depressing.

But not everything about the book was depressing. It was wonderful to see the layers of the relationships between all the family members peeled away as the book progressed. How the book starts with Sarah resenting her parents, to respecting, loving and understanding them by the end; how we understood by the end why Sarah’s father was always so standoffish; how Sarah’s mother really counted on Sarah to do the right thing. Kent wrote about real family dynamics that made that part of the book so relatable for anyone, and I think that definitely made the book that much more powerful. Because, when Sarah’s mother tells Sarah that Sarah must tell the judges whatever they want to hear, even if it means telling them that her mother is a witch… it breaks your heart. Can you even imagine having to tell people that your mother is a witch during the witch trials?

Part of what made this book so heart-wrenching was the fact that it is not only based on real-life events, but also on real people, people who really got condemned and hanged because they were believed to be witches.

This was Kent’s debut novel, and I’m definitely looking forward to what she does next.