contemporary – Page 3 – The Constellation of Moon

A Girl Like That Review

Posted on November 13, 2019

A Girl Like That by Tanaz Bhathena

A timeless exploration of high-stakes romance, self-discovery, and the lengths we go to love and be loved.

Sixteen-year-old Zarin Wadia is many things: a bright and vivacious student, an orphan, a risk taker. She’s also the kind of girl that parents warn their kids to stay away from: a troublemaker whose many romances are the subject of endless gossip at school. You don’t want to get involved with a girl like that, they say. So how is it that eighteen-year-old Porus Dumasia has only ever had eyes for her? And how did Zarin and Porus end up dead in a car together, crashed on the side of a highway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia? When the religious police arrive on the scene, everything everyone thought they knew about Zarin is questioned. And as her story is pieced together, told through multiple perspectives, it becomes clear that she was far more than just a girl like that.

Rating:

I can’t remember the exact reason why this book caught my eye but it had been a preorder that ended up in my too big pending to be read book list. And I felt like reading it and wow.

A Girl Like That packs a punch and a half. Seriously, this was a very powerful read.

We start with Zarin and Porius hovering over the car accident that has cost them their lives. I’ve only really ever seen this type of narrative of the spirit/soul witnessing something happening or that happened to their body and helping with the narrative work well once (in Gayle Foreman’s books) but it works here too.

That first chapter of the accident and the scene and just setting up the key players and our main cast of zarin and Porus gives you a glimpse into them and who they are. We then get a few points of view telling us how they either see Zarin, why they see her that way, or of Zarin or Porus telling us about hoe they came to be in the car that night.

For a very long time I had a theory about the car accident and kinda didn’t want to be right, and I weasn’t, which made this even better. Anyway, it is interesting to see Zarin trying hard to make herself be what she needs to be, but at the same time rebelling and wanting to be herself, to not ahve to hide so many things. She finds that letting others have an opinion of her gives her space to breathe, they are already judging her, so it means they pry less, they assume more and she has a little bit more freedom.

Because even though they say she is a girl like that, the kind mothers tell you to avoid being, the kind boys talk about; there’s is way more to Zarin than just being a pretty girl that goes out with boys despite the fact that they shouldn’t. And Porus can see somehow beyond that.

The relationship between Porus and Zarin was an interesting part to see develop and how it was developing from each side, there were points when I wanted to just grab them and go “now kiss” and times when I just wanted them to go on their own path or felt bad for one or both of them. I had so many feelings going on while reading this.

It explores a lot how subtle power can be, as the form of gossip and knowledge, as a way of knowing you are attractive and using that as power to get things you wouldnt otherwise, as reputation, and sometimes how manipulation can be power. It also poises the fact that men have more power in a society like that and what can entail. There is a lot of questioning why choices are made and what the consequences may be.

I enjoyed this book a lot, learned a lot from it and it made me question things a little more. I do recommend reading and expect some intense moments throughout the book, this isn’t a soft book but a gritty book about abuse, about reputation, about love, about friendship and beliefs.

Book Review, Books

The Place Between Breaths Review

Posted on April 1, 2019

The Place Between Breaths by An Na

From master storyteller and Printz Award–winning author An Na comes a dark, intensely moving story of a girl desperately determined to find a cure for the illness that swept her mother away, and could possibly destroy her own life as well.

Sixteen-year-old Grace is in a race against time—and in a race for her life—even if she doesn’t realize it yet…

She is smart, responsible, and contending with more than what most teens ever should. Her mother struggled with schizophrenia for years until, one day, she simply disappeared—fleeing in fear that she was going to hurt those she cared about most. Ever since, Grace’s father has worked as a recruiter at one of the leading labs dedicated to studying the disease, trying to lure the world’s top scientists to the faculty to find a cure, hoping against hope it can happen in time to help his wife if she is ever found. But this makes him distant. Consumed.

Grace, in turn, does her part, interning at the lab in the gene sequencing department daring to believe that one day they might make a breakthrough…and one day they do. Grace stumbles upon a string of code that could be the key. But something inside of Grace has started to unravel. Could her discovery just be a cruel side effect of the disease that might be taking hold of her? And can she even tell the difference?

Unflinchingly brave, An Na has created a mesmerizing story with twists and turns that reveal jaw-dropping insights into the mind of someone struggling with schizophrenia.

Rating:

This little book packs a punch. However, there’s a few things to consider before you read it. It is a book about mental health and schizophrenia. It is not a fluffy cuddly book. This one bites, and confuses.

The second thing is that the author has South Korean origins. Meaning that the Eastern (because “not Western sounds meh”) influences are heavy in the writing style of the book. Think Murakami, Yoshimoto, etc, who have a particular style of wiriting that isn’t what most Western authors do.

And why do I say both things before I even review the book? Because if you’re expecting a perfectly “coherent” fluffy book, this book is not it and it definitely isn’t a Western view of the world even if it is set in the US.

The author writes this book in seasons, in cycles. The book does its best to show you how schizophrenia entangles you and all the “ripples” it has. Your main character is Grace King who believes in logic and is fighting against her genes, while trying to work and help find a cure or something for schizophrenia. The story shifts between “season” chapters, that show slightly different things but they do make a cohesive whole. (I don’t want to spoil the book too much).

There are a lot of twists and intriguing bits in the story where at first you aren’t sure but as the story progresses you begin to realise how much Grace is fighting and what “enemy” she’s fighting.

In my opinion it was a very clever book with the way it sets thing and how it leaves you guessing. You need to be in the right midnset for it though, and it is worth (only after reading it) to go check Goodreads reviews, the author explains her purpose in writing it the way she did and a little better what is and isn’t in a reply to a reviewer.

Book Review, Books

The Burning Review

Posted on March 28, 2019

The Burning by Laura Bates

A rumour is like a fire. You might think you’ve extinguished it but one creeping, red tendril, one single wisp of smoke is enough to let it leap back into life again. Especially if someone is watching, waiting to fan the flames …

New school.
Tick.
New town.
Tick.
New surname.
Tick.
Social media profiles?
Erased.

There’s nothing to trace Anna back to her old life. Nothing to link her to the ‘incident’.

At least that’s what she thinks … until the whispers start up again. As time begins to run out on her secrets, Anna finds herself irresistibly drawn to the tale of Maggie, a local girl accused of witchcraft centuries earlier. A girl whose story has terrifying parallels to Anna’s own…

Rating:

This book sounded like the kind of grippy gritty books I have recently been into, so I grabbed it. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting (not to say it really wasn’t at all).

I expected the thing that Anna is trying to forget to be something else, so when it finally surfaces I was more like “oh, it’s that? meh” rather than “oh wow!”. Won’t spoil what it is, but this book certainly touches on topics like abortion, torture, abuse, bullying and the kind.

The witchy part was my favourite of it all. When they move to the new house Anna notices some odd marks scratched into the beams of the house and things like that, and turns out they’re witches marks, to try to disuade the spirit of the witch to come back and haunt the people that bought the house.

All the story of the “witch” was quite interesting, and it was intense. I was so angry for her, and I really liked that Thomas had an opinion and the part he “played” in it (yes, I wish it was different, but hey, this was way far back in time).

Another thing I really enjoyed was the friendships developed here. Partly it touches on how friends can turn on you and fall to peer pressure, which is something I had happen a lot during high school when I used to be bullied. My “best friend” would bully me in public then outside of school treat me completely different. Go figure! Regardless, it is interesting to see how each of the old and new friendships Anna slowly biulds develop, and that they are unique, most of the characters involved didn’t feel bland which was lovely because they were part of Anna’s world and not just plot props. Kudos for that.

The topic and the thing Anna deals with is important, I just imagined something else and it then fell under my expectations, but it hooked me so I read it before dinner the other day.

I guess you’d say my overall rating comes from having different expectations (my fault a little, part the blurbs fault) but it was an interesting book that I enjoyed reading.

Book Review, Books

Four Three Two One Review

Posted on February 18, 2019

Four Three Two One by Courtney C. Stevens

In this contemporary YA novel, a girl reunites with the three other survivors of a bus bombing that killed nineteen people, and together they face the secrets, struggles, and emotional warfare that each has been enduring.

Golden “Go” Jennings wasn’t supposed to be on Bus 21 the day it blew up in New York City. Neither was her boyfriend, Chandler. But they were. And so was Rudy, a cute stranger whom Go shared a connection with the night before. And Caroline, a girl whose silence ended up costing nineteen people their lives.

Though it’s been a year since the bombing, Go isn’t any closer to getting over what happened. Since Chan shuts down every time Go brings that day up, she decides to reach out to Rudy. Just like that, the two fall right back into their easy, deep connection. Facing the past head-on with Rudy has opened up a small window of healing Go never thought was possible. So she makes an impulsive decision: Round up the rest of the survivors and head to New York City. There they will board an art installation made of the charred remnants of Bus 21.

But things are never easy when it comes to rehashing the past. Uniting the four stirs up conflicting feelings of anger and forgiveness and shows them that, although they all survived, they may still need saving.

Rating:

This was a free proof provided by the publisher but the review is all my own, not paid or whatever.

Now that that is out of the way… When I saw this as a book blurb before it was even published I was intrigued. Four people survive a bombing, each has secrets they keep and they are all building up to going back into a remade Bus that exploded, that is now an exhibition.

I don’t usually read books about terrorism (domestic or otherwise), but I found the clashing of lives something I wanted to read. And Four Three Two One was very powerful. At the beginnign we get the “bus explodes” chapter, then we meet our characters months after the explosion and days before the exhibition opens.

There a lot of concepts happening here. There is the whole “what is love” question in there, and if the things that happen to us make us, defines us, or how they affect us. But there is also the survivors guilt being explored and how that redefines us, and how much it can affect not the survivor’s life but the lives of those around that person.

As all five main characters come closer and closer to getting to Accelerant Orange and to facing Bus 21, things get more and more tense. The first question that should probably be answered is, can they step inside the bus? It is known that people that had an aircrash may never fly again, or in this case never get on a bus again. So can they? (I won’t say if they can or can’t, that’d be a spoiler, but it is a question that sticks around). But it isn’t the only question to answer. There is a why are you (each survivor) going to the exhibition? What are you holding back? What is that “secret” you’re trying to protect everyone else from?

We know the “secret” one of them holds from early on, but that doesn’t prepare you for the other secrets that come up to the surface as they share a ride towards New York, and towards the exhibition of Bus 21.

No, this isn’t a popular book, sadly it is overlooked. But it is interesting and powerful and worth reading (it is also a relatively light read, in that it is easy to read, the writing flows easily but the topic is intense, there is talk about suicide, and well, terrorism). However, I enjoyed the execution of it, and how much feeling there was in it (and I’m not always fond of adding too much feeling to stories).

Go read it, give it a chance.

Book Review, Books

Fierce Fragile Hearts Review

Posted on February 16, 2019

Fierce Fragile Hearts by Sara Barnard

‘This time around, I’m going to be so much better. I’m going to prove to them that it was worth waiting on me.’

Two years after a downward spiral took her as low as you can possibly go, Suzanne is starting again. Again. She’s back in Brighton, the only place she felt she belonged, back with her best friends Caddy and Rosie. But they’re about to leave for university. When your friends have been your light in the darkness, what happens when you’re the one left behind?

Rating:

I know I am late to the party and that finished copies are already out, but Sara’s books are very intense and I had to be in the right mindspace for it. (And I am glad I waited or I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much).

We find Suzanne ready to rebuild and start “over” again in Bristol. She’s an adult now, at 18 and wants to be independent. And gosh, just this part of the story was heartbreaking, because ebing an adult is really difficult, and becoming independent completely and trying to make ends meet is also hard. I loved the fact that she doesn’t just magically afford every single thing and have it perfectly fine without any issues.

The rawness of the book is one of the best things, seriously. But it also means that this book should come with the warning of saying that it deals with mental health, drugs, alcohol, relationships and abuse. This is done in a tasteful (to my palate at least) way without being too preachy but also not just like “it’s drugs and rock n roll”.

There is a lovely old lady as part of this book, and I just loved this so much. Everything about it made me smile and cry and just it is beautiful (don’t really want to spoil a lot). There’s a cute dog. And friends, and how friendships change.

Sue also has to learn that she’s not the only one having issues, and hey, she can actually try to help her friends. And discovering how to help others and how to be a friend are part of what this book touches on.

Gosh, it even made me want to go visit Bristol and find the places it mentions. And now I am not making a lot of sense. But basically, this book will give you a lot of feelings and make you emotional, different emotions at a time like sadness, happiness and anger (there are others and at times I just laughed in the middle of the bus while I was reading, weird looks were given, I didn’t care).

Book Review, Books

Only Love Can Break Your Heart Review

Posted on December 26, 2018

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Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Katherine Webber

Sometimes a broken heart is all you need to set you free… Reiko loves the endless sky and electric colours of the Californian desert. It is a refuge from an increasingly claustrophobic life of family pressures and her own secrets. Then she meets Seth, a boy who shares a love of the desert and her yearning for a different kind of life. But Reiko and Seth both want something the other can’t give them. As summer ends, things begin to fall apart. But the end of love can sometimes be the beginning of you…

Rating:

I struggled a little with this book. It has some really really good things, but it also has some pet peeves so it was hard to rate it highly due to them (and there were sadly a lot).

One of the topics of the book is what the concept of love is, and another is grief. Both give it really good points, and they are explored in an amazing way. Each character affected by the death of Mika grieves differently and you can see this (and as the story progresses, Rei becomes more aware of it too) which I found really good. This grief not only affects each of them and who they are, but their relationships and as I mentioned above, it is done very well. (I would even add, the grief you feel for different deaths/loses is different in itself. You think you know what grief is after one and then another one happens and it is not the same!)

However, Reiko was an extremely spoiled person and that meant low points. Life is so “easy” and she just can’t seem to think outside her circle, even when things aren’t going the way they are meant to (or that she thinks they should be going).

The homecoming party was odd, and I know that it is part of what spurred the whole book but it felt a bit empty. However, things start to get better from this point on in the book. For most of the first half, all I did was cringe a lot about almost everything going on. And there is a huge case of parents that are there when needed as plot devise but absent the rest of the time, conveniently. (I understand it is hard to make parents be part of the story, but in this particular one, they should’ve been less a plot devise and more part of it, they could’ve played a bigger better part).

Still, I liked some parts and even had to share a quote (last paragraph of page 286, UK paperback edition) with my friends, because it was just very perfect and I had to. And I found the exploration of “who do we fall in love”, and how people change (or our perception of them, or even ourselves change) a refreshing topic and it was a lot less romance than I expected it to be (which in this case is a plus).

Moon recommends

I’d say to give this lovely book a spin. If you’re more curious on explorations about grief try Letters to the Lost and for some reason this book reminded me of Floored, so why not check that one out too?

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and that whatever the circumstances it was as good as it could be.

Book Review, Books

A Monster Calls Review

Posted on November 28, 2018

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

An extraordinary novel of love, loss and hope

12.07. There’s a monster at Conor’s window.
It’s not the one from his nightmare. But it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.

It wants the truth.

Now a powerful and haunting film, Patrick Ness’s modern classic is a heartbreaking but uplifting tale of healing and, above all, the courage it takes to survive.

Rating:

Nikki from Books and Lemon Squash recommended this book, and it had taken me a long time to actually decide to read it. Part of it is because I have read his other books and didn’t like them at all. But then, I was reassured the original bit of story wasn’t his, so I finally gave it a go.

This is the story of Conor, and the monster that comes to his window. This monster promises to tell him three stories and then Conor has to tell the last one, the truth. Because once he does, the monster will help him.

We see two things happening in this story, one is the stories the “yew monster” tells Conor, which frustrate him, and confuse him. There is no clear white and black in any of the stories, and this frustrates Conor, for he wants the predictable easy good vs bad in them. The stories do not comfort him.

And we have the reality, his mum and her treatments, her bald head. We see how he slowly becomes invisible to his school, and to the world. And how he sometimes sees himself as invisible. He’s doing the best he can, and holding on to hope.

But what is this nightmare, and how is the monster going to help? And what is the truth Conor refuses to accept or acknowledge?

It was an interesting book to read, especially as I recently lost my aunt to cancer, so it hit close to home and made me tear up a little as I knew where this was going and it was just that sadness seeping into me. But it was also good to read and I liked it.

Moon recommends

Why not support a Cancer charity like Cancer Research? Also, you can go read this particular book (I can’t really recommend any of his other books, alas).

Book Review, Books

The Poet X Review

Posted on November 22, 2018

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her own relationship to the world. Debut novel of renowned slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo.

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself.

So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out, much less speak her words out loud. But still, she can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.

Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.

Rating:

So, I have to admit I had put this book off because it is basically a story in poetry form and I wasn’t sure how well that would go down for me (I like poetry but I am picky, mostly because poetry in English is different to poetry in Spanish and I find it harder to connect with it).

However, I am glad I finally picked it up as it helped move from my slump (there is the reason for so many graphic novels and manga and Middle Grade books recently being reviewed). But back to the book, we meet Xiomara, and she lives with Mami and Papi, and Twin (Xavier).

And the poetry is good, and it doesn’t break the story too much (though I admit it took me a while to realise the “title” line wasn’t exactly always a title but at times the first line of the poem and then I had to go back and reread it as “part of the poem” rather than “the title”). It also was an interesting read.

I am not from Dominican Republic and I didn’t move to America, but I am Latin, and I moved to the UK, and I know friends and family that moved to America, so I am not that far from this story.

Actually I wish I could say I was far from it. But I also had a fierce mother who would expect a lot of me (she was a Christian rather than Catholic) but church was very important and we didn’t get the choice of not believing. Neither does Xiomara. (Yes, I know, I am talking about me, but you see, the thing is, as I read this book, I saw a lot of me in it. I didn’t write poetry, I wrote stories, and made friends online at a time when no one made friends online because that wasn’t an everyday thing as it is now. And I also tried hard to figure myself out and what my voice was. And my younger sister had all the leeway in things I didn’t).

That was the part I loved, the way I found a lot of myself in this book, and that the poetry worked well with it to make it the right way to have it. My only “but” was the poem in Spanish (it is my mother tongue), I read it in Spanish, not knowing there was a transalation on the next page and it felt like it had been written originally in English. And that bothered me, because it was the moment I was broken from the story. Because once I turned the page and read it in English, I knew the original wasn’t in Spanish, or if it had, it had been written in Spanish while the English “translation” was being written. Small thing I know, but it was a sad thing for me.

All in all, it was one of my favourite in representation and it was a refreshing new way of reading/writing a book.

Moon recommends

Reading The Poet X. Alas, I do not have much poetry or slam or anything like that to recommend, so I will have to leave it with just that as the main thing to go read.

Book Review

Lovely, Dark, and Deep Review

Posted on September 7, 2018

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Lovely, Dark, and Deep by Justina Chen

What would you do if the sun became your enemy?

That’s exactly what happens to Viola Li after she returns from a trip abroad and develops a sudden and extreme case of photosensitivity — an inexplicable allergy to sunlight. Thanks to her crisis-manager parents, she doesn’t just have to wear layers of clothes and a hat the size of a spaceship. She has to stay away from all hint of light. Say goodbye to windows and running outdoors. Even her phone becomes a threat when its screen burns her.

Viola is determined to maintain a normal life, particularly after she meets Josh. He’s a funny, talented Thor look-alike who carries his own mysterious grief. But the intensity of their romance makes her take more and more risks, and when a rebellion against her parents backfires dangerously, she must find her way to a life — and love — as deep and lovely as her dreams.

Rating:

You know how they tell you to write the book you’d like to read and haven’t found? For me this is the book I wanted to read but hadn’t found. However, I did not write, instead Justina did.

We follow Viola’s story through this book, she is a browncoat, which in geekspeak means a fan of Firefly, and is also crazy about doing bake sales for charity (that is something I am not that familiar with except as a concept but all the food she cooks throughout the book made me hungry and I wish we had some recipes to go with it). Then as she is having a normal day, she collapses and voila, turns out she is allergic to the sun (and light).

Now, in case you didn’t know, I am photosensitive myself (I was born like this) and I have written a little about it on a reality check post. And I really want to highlight that this book does a wonderful job at representation of photosensitivity. It is well researched, it is good at explaining how it affects and changes your life (it was very intersting for me, since I have adapted to it as I grow, rather than having to do so in one go, and I kept nodding at the things they would try and going “yeah, done that”) and it is also a good story. It follows her journey to coping with her new life, and how her family relationships change, but it also has a romance subplot which I enjoyed (even if at times it was quite sweet) that in itself deals with loss and grief.

Lovely, Dark, and Deep is a very uplifting book, it keeps reassuring you that you’ve got this regardless of how many lemons (or killer sunrays) life throws at you.

Moon recommends

That if you know me, or are curious about photosensitivity, you go and buy this book and read it. It genuinely is the book I didn’t know I needed. And if you’d like a younger and more sweet book, try The Ice Garden.

Book Review

Are We All Lemmings & Snowflakes? Review

Posted on September 1, 2018

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Are We All Lemmings & Snowflakes? by Holly Bourne

Welcome to Camp Reset, a summer camp with a difference. A place offering a shot at “normality” for Olive, a girl on the edge, and for the new friends she never expected to make – who each have their own reasons for being there. Luckily Olive has a plan to solve all their problems. But how do you fix the world when you can’t fix yourself?

Rating:

My first Holly Bourne book was It Only Happens In The Movies, and I absolutely loved it, it was a different kind of contemporary book. So when this little one came out and it touched on kindness and mental health I knew I had to read it.

It did not disappoint. Olive has issues, and she is sent to a camp as a possible treatment. There she meets other people with different mental illnesses, and she starts going off on her own theories of how to fix herself.

I love the part maths took here (and the character that brings them into place), and Olive was in part lovable, part I wanted to tell her to stop and listen and just not do what she was doing. But then I have had a lot more years of experience than she does in the book, and I did do some crazy things regarding my mental health when I was Olive’s age.

However, this book made me quite emotional and I kept wanting to read it and not stop. Plus it touches on being kind to yourself, and starting there but also on doing small acts of kindness to others. Which is always a good thing and it is lovely to see that promoted.

Moon recommends

Maybe just go read more of Holly’s books? I have reviewed It Only Happens In The Movies here so you can check that one out, or go buy this book.