books – Page 15 – Lyndsey Hall

Beautiful People – August Edition

Well, hello there beautiful people! (Geddit.) My July Beautiful People post was pretty late so, lucky you, here’s another one in very short succession.

If you’ve never heard of Beautiful People, it’s a linkup for writers where we delve into our characters’ minds and answer ten questions set by the lovely and magnanimous Cait @ Paper Fury and Sky @ Further up and further in. Hop over to these fabulous ladies’ blogs if you want to join in!

As my finished MS is currently waiting in the wings for a Pitch Wars mentor to fall in love with it and choose me as their 2017 mentee, I’ll be using my new WIP, Cockle Shells and Silver Bells for BP.

My MC’s name is Em, she’s an orphan who grew up on her great uncle’s farm in North Yorkshire before inheriting a seafront mansion on turning 18. Cockle Shells and Silver Bells is a YA magical realism reimagining of The Secret Garden.

What are they addicted to/can’t live without?

Books! As an orphan who was home schooled because the nearest school was miles away, Em lives to read and uses them as an escape from her sheltered, quiet life in the remote Yorkshire moors. It’s all very Bronte.

Name 3 positive and 3 negative qualities about your character.

I’m not sure I can really separate them into columns of positive and negative, but I’ll give you a few of Em’s personal traits.

She’s shy and hates big crowds, she much prefers solitude after years roaming the moors alone.
She’s very closed off from others after losing her parents in a car accident ten years ago, she doesn’t open her heart easily, only her great uncle Archie has found his way in and even that took years!
She loves animals and wanted to be a vet when she was younger, she’d still love to work with animals, but in a career that doesn’t involve having to put them down.
She has buckets of creativity and always has a project on the go, whether it’s her gender bent Pride & Prejudice fanfic on Tumblr, redecorating the family estate, or tending to the garden.
She’s lead quite a sheltered life so far, but she’s open to new experiences and just needs someone to show her the way.
She loves learning and was a very keen student when she was being home-schooled. She did exceptionally well in her exams and would still like to go to university one day, but she decided to take some time out to experience life and accept her inheritance first.

Are they holding onto something they should get rid of?

Only fear and grief, nothing physical. She lets the pain of losing her parents as a child stop her from making new friends or really letting anyone in. Hopefully by the end of the book she will have learnt from that!

If 10 is completely organized and 1 is completely messy, where do they fall on the scale?

Like 9 maybe, she’s not perfect and can still be a normal, messy teen at times, but she’d definitely more sensible and organised than your average 18 year old.

What most frustrates them about the world they live in?

That bad things happen for no reason at all, and often to good people, while great things happen to terrible people too.

How would they dress for a night out? How would they dress for a night in?

She’s a big lover of comfy pyjamas and onesies for nights in, preferably with animals all over them and fuzzy slippers. She’s never been on a night out, but she does have some pretty cute tea dresses from the vintage shops in York and Harrogate.

How many shoes do they own, and what kind?

Not many, and most are wellies or walking boots. She’s got a couple of pairs of Mary-Janes for special occasions, but she’s not a big fan of heels.

Do they have any pets? What pet do they WISH they had?

She has the farm animals, and when she moved to the Haigh Manor she discovers a white cat who visits regularly and prowls around the gardens. Em names her Clemence and put water out for her.

Is there something or someone that they resent? Why and what happened?

She doesn’t really know who to direct her anger at from her parents’ deaths, but she wanted to stay in France where they lived, she didn’t want to be taken away from their home and her friends. She was mad at Archie at first when he picked her up and brought her back to Yorkshire with him, but really she knew it wasn’t his fault. She’s just mad at the world for what happened, she can’t understand the random chaos that is life and prefers to protect herself from ever getting hurt again.

What’s usually in their fridge or pantry?

At the farm the kitchen was well stocked with their own produce – dairy products, eggs, freshly baked bread and various meats. At the manor, the pantry is similarly filled (shipped over from Archie’s farm before she arrives), with added jams and preserves, handmade by the housekeeper Maggie. Em isn’t a huge eater, but she is partial to a spot of tea with bread and jam.

And that’s all folks! Did you enjoy learning more about Em and my new WIP? She’s a salty one, I’m really looking forward to spending more time with her while I write this novel, it’s been on hold for a few weeks while I prepped for Pitch Wars, but I think I’m ready to dive back in.

Watch this space!

Lyndsey

Review: The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

I finished The Raven Cycle series! I really enjoyed the series as a whole, and the final book was no different. If you haven’t read any of the first three books you can check out my reviews: The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily, Lily Blue. Obviously, there are spoilers for book one in the other two reviews etc. so only read on if you don’t mind being spoiled!

Onwards to my review of The Raven King…

TL;DR The gang’s search for Glendower comes to an end, Blue tests the truth of her prophecy, Piper Greenmantle tries to auction the demon off to the highest bidder and Ronan discovers the connection between his dream thief abilities and Cabeswater. Oh, and there’s lots of kissing.

Where do I start?? This was probably the strangest book in the series, and that’s really saying something. This series is one of the weirdest, eeriest and most magical I’ve ever read. It wasn’t perfect, but I almost loved it more for that.

The main plot lines from the previous books all come to some kind of resolution, even if it’s not quite what we hoped for or expected. The ending leaves a lot to the imagination, but for a series where imagination has been essential throughout, and dreams are an integral part of the narrative, I expected nothing less.

The hunt for Glendower comes to an end, our ships are all ready to make sail (I won’t tell you which ones do!) and the events set into motion in Blue Lily, Lily Blue finally come to a head. The demon found in the caves by Piper and Neeve draws a crowd of magical artefact enthusiasts to Henrietta, but its power puts the entire town in danger and only our favourite foursome can stop the creature.

There are plenty of shocking revelations about the group and their abilities, their ties to Cabeswater, and what Cabeswater really is. I was quite satisfied with what we learned in The Raven King, even if we were left with lots of questions to ponder on our own. I know a lot of readers found the ending really anticlimactic, and this book is certainly not my favourite of the series, I found it less action packed and gripping than the other three (Blue Lily, Lily Blue is my favourite, in case you’re wondering), but I still consider it a worthy finale in many ways. I don’t mind being left with questions, it means I’m still thinking about the book days later, rather than completely forgetting about it the instant I put it down.

Perhaps one of the reasons I wasn’t as frustrated as others when I finished this book is because I read it so long after it was originally published, had seen online how disappointed lots of readers were and could manage my expectations accordingly, and Maggie has recently announced a Ronan trilogy, which will hopefully answer some of my questions. Ronan and Adam have been my favourite characters from the beginning, so I’m really excited to read a trilogy focused on them rather than Blue and Gansey.

My favourite part of the book has nothing to do with our fantastic foursome, or the psychics from 300 Fox Way, or even the Grey Man. My absolute favourite part was when Henry Cheng (one of the Vancouver crowd who idolise Gansey) talked about the language barrier between his thoughts and his words:

“It wasn’t that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought.”

And how his mother, Seondeok struggled to make herself understood in English and would always say “It is that…but also something more.”

“Something more explained perfectly why he could never say what he meant – something more, by its definition, would always be different than what you already had in your hand.”

It sums up beautifully what it’s like to speak another language and feel like you’re not quite yourself in your second language. You can’t say what you mean with as much clarity and simplicity as in your native language, and you feel like your personality is being filtered through your limited vocabulary. I speak Spanish and on my year abroad in Spain I didn’t feel like myself at all, there’s something about the words we use and the way we express ourselves with language that’s absolutely intrinsic to our identities.

I gave The Raven King 4 stars, as I say it’s not my favourite, in fact I’d go so far as to say it’s my least favourite of the four (and I struggled with a few things in The Dream Thieves) but for one of my new series obsessions that’s definitely not to say it was a bad book or I didn’t love it. The setting and characters are everything in The Raven Cycle, and the moody atmosphere coupled with the mystical elements give it such an intense and claustrophobic feel. I’d definitely recommend reading this series if you love YA fantasy and any of Maggie Stiefvater’s other books.

Have you read The Raven Cycle? Are you dying for the new Ronan trilogy, like me?

Lyndsey

I am a member of the Book Depository affiliate program, so if you click through and buy any of the books mentioned in this blog I might make a little commission, but I am not paid to review books and all reviews are my own opinions!

Burn, Rewrite, Reread Book Tag

The lovely Shouni @ Through the Book Portal tagged me for the Burn, Rewrite, Reread book tag, which is like a literary version of Snog, Marry, Avoid, and who doesn’t love that show?

Rules:

Randomly choose 3 books (Tip: Use the “Sort > Random” option on your Goodreads’ Read shelf.).
For each group, decide which book to burn, which one to rewrite, and which to reread (a lot like Kiss, Marry, Kill).
Repeat until you’ve completed three rounds (or six).

Round One

Burn: The Bane Chronicles by Cassie Clare

Rewrite: Flawed by Cecelia Ahern

Reread: And I Darken by Kiersten White

This was an easy choice, but only because I absolutely loved And I Darken, and Flawed had such a fascinating concept. I wouldn’t really burn The Bane Chronicles, but I did find as I was reading that it didn’t grip me like most Clare books, and I could tell it was co-written by other authors whose styles were slightly different. I still enjoyed it mostly, but out of these three it’s definitely my least favourite.

Round Two

Burn: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Rewrite: The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Reread: A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

OK, so this round was incredibly difficult and I feel horrible about my choices, but them’s the shakes. These are three of my favourite books ever, and I really don’t want to have to burn any of them, so I’m only choosing Oscar Wao because it’s been years since I read it and it was for Uni, but I loved every minute of it back then. A Court of Mist and Fury was my favourite book of last year, and possibly ever, it left me with the biggest book hangover I’ve ever had. So, that’s the reasoning behind my awful choices…

Round Three

Burn: Rapture by Lauren Kate

Rewrite: The Assassin’s Blade by Sarah J. Maas

Reread: The Fate of the Tearling by Erika Johansen

This was a tough choice between The Assassin’s Blade and The Fate of the Tearling for reread, but ultimately I went with rewriting The Assassin’s Blade for obvious reasons if you’ve read it *no spoilers*. I think we can all agree we’d rewrite that story if we could. If you haven’t read The Queen of the Tearling series go read it now, it’s a fascinating concept, somewhere between a dystopian and a high fantasy. I won’t give too much way, but it’s another one with a huge twist I didn’t see coming, and the ending is just heart-wrenching.

That was actually really fun, despite the traumatic image of anyone burning books. Feel free to have a go if you like the sound of this tag, it’s a great way to remind yourself of the books you’ve read. I’ll tag a few people just to get the ball rolling…

Lyndsey