The Story

Imagine, if you will, that you are Miss Elizabeth Bennett, second oldest of five daughters in regency England. You don’t have a lot of money, but are a smart girl. So you must do what any girl in your position would do – try to find a man to marry both for love and for money.

In Emma Campbell Webster’s Lost in Austen, you get to test out your luck and your smarts to see whether you can score the man who will provide you with both love and a secure future, or whether you will end up alone or unloved for your (perhaps very short) life.

The Review

I got to have a fling with Henry Crawford! And then Fanny Price kidnapped me and killed me! And then I went back and started again, only to slip on ice and die that way! And another time, gypsies killed me!

Best thing about Choose Your Own Adventure books is that it can end differently every single time.

Here’s the thing about the book though. If a person knows P&P, then it’s way too easy to follow the story exactly, and seriously, what’s the point in that? If you wanted to do that, you should just pick up a copy of Pride and Prejudice. When you start purposely picking the wrong choices, then things start to get fun. And if you don’t die at least once, then you would miss out on the author’s snarky comments about your death.

Comparing it to P&P though, and having the book optionally follow P&P so closely, isn’t a good thing because although the author’s comments are snarky, her writing isn’t nearly as eloquent as Austen’s. It might have worked out a lot better if the book had been about a random girl who meets all of these Austen characters

The Bottom Line

Kind of wish this book hadn’t been about Elizabeth Bennett. It’s too easy to try to make the book end in the same way as P&P otherwise. But it was still a lot of fun, and yay I’m happy I finally read this book! I would definitely read it again.

Other Reviews

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The Story

It’s the beginning of WWII. Tally’s father, a doctor in London, has decided that the best thing to do for Tally’s safety is send her to a progressive boarding school that she was able to get a scholarship for. Although Tally is extremely resistant to this plan at first, she very quickly adapts and learns to love both the school and those at it.

Tally is one of those individuals who, when she gets passionate about something, can quickly convince everyone else to be as passionate as she is. So when the country of Bergania – a country where the king has refused to allow Hitler’s armys to march through – announces that they are having a dance festival to promote well-being among other countries in the world, Tally is adamant that her school joins in.

The prince of Bergania, Karil, hasn’t had a normal childhood – people don’t treat him like a normal person (due to his being a prince), and he’s never had any real children. When the dance festival happens, he wants nothing more than that join the children there. Of course, he didn’t expect that events would soon happen that would force him to join them, when he is placed in exile after the Nazis takes over the kingdom of Bergania.

The Review

I really wanted to like this book. It started off well enough – loved it at first… but about half way through I lost interest and had to force my way through the rest. It started off with such magic, but then lost it somewhere along the way. Not sure if that was meant to happen, because, I mean, if you think about it, when the children see how much WWII had an effect on every person, and when they are personally affected by it, obviously it’s going toseem like some of the magic has been removed from the world… but whether or not that was planned, it was a huge disappointment for me.

Which is unusual, because typically I love stories that take place during WWI and WWII.

There were definitely some good points about the book, even though I didn’t love it.

First, the outlook that Tally had on life was utterly charming – her devotion to her father, her determination to always make things better for other people and her unhappiness when she couldn’t make things better. She reminded me very much of Sara Crewe in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess in that respect.

Karil was also utterly charming. His longing for real friends and his discovery of what real friends could be like were the highlights of the book. His pain when he thought his friends had abandoned him was completely palpable, and I applaud Ibbotson for making that so realistic.

The settings that Ibbotson were also one of the highlights of the book – ah, the English countryside! The beautiful Bergania with the lovely dragonfly pool in it! Ah, it was all described in a way that actually made me able to picture it in my mind.

The worst part of not liking this book as much as I want to is that I can’t really put my finger on what I didn’t like about the second half of the book, other than the fact that it had lost it’s magic for me.

The Bottom Line

So, all-in-all, it had a lot of stuff going for it. It was a good book – I just felt indifferent to the second half of the book. Don’t know if I would recommend it, or if I will want to read more of Ibbotson’s works.

Other Reviews

Bookshelves of Doom, The Bookling, Book Nut. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

Three weeks after Rick got shot, he wakes up from a coma to complete chaos. There are no living people in the hospital where he had been – but there are plenty of the living dead. Unsure of exactly what happened in the past three weeks since he was shot, Rick goes out in search of his wife and son, in hopes that they escaped the zombie apocalypse, or that they are at least holed up somewhere safe.

After reuniting with his family in a small camp of survivors, Rick and the others struggle to cope with life – how to keep themselves safe, how to learn to depend on people they don’t know, and how to mostly stay alive.

The Review

The story in Days Gone Bye reminded me quite a bit of Max Brooks’ World War Z in the way it explored how the zombie apocalypse affected those trying to survive as opposed to focusing specifically on the zombies and our fight with the zombies. I love stories like that – and not just the zombie-centric ones – that takes a group of people, totally removes the safety aspect from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and explores how the characters cope… how some of them can’t deal with it, and their lives come crashing down on them, and how others find a way to survive.

It was that exploration of true humanity in the middle of chaos that made this story so enjoyable. Even seeing the petty jealousness of humanity, even seeing how selfish and self-centered people can be, there’s a hope that humanity will survive and that everything in the world is not evil.

The Bottom Line

Highly recommended for zombie fans. Highly recommended for Max Brooks fans. This was highly enjoyable, and I am definitely planning on reading more books in this series.

Other Reviews

…With Intent to Commit Horror. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.