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You are here: Home / Archives for book review

book review

Book Review: Empress of the World, by Sara Ryan

16th October 2011 By Julianne 1 Comment

 Photo by uitdragerij

When Nicola Lancaster arrives at the Siegel Institute Summer Program for Gifted Youth, she doesn’t plan on making any friends. Her only goal is to find out, by taking the archaeology class, whether she actually wants to be an archaeologist or not. She spends the introductory lecture drawing and writing notes about the other students, but Katrina sees her sketches and grabs her notebook, passing it around to some of the other students. It’s easy for Nicola to be friends with excited, friendly, Katrina, but she finds Battle Hall Davies more confusing, intriguing, and beautiful. Nicola is plain and boring, or so she thinks. Battle could never be interested in her…but of course she’s wrong.

A book about a girl who has decided to spend the summer at, well, school, may not sound exciting, but I really enjoyed Empress of the World. It’s quite a short book, with only 214 pages, yet it covers Nicola’s entire time at the Siegel Institute. It’s written in sections that have the date, time and location at the top, like diary entries, and there are quite often several days between these reports, which sometimes include passages in a handwriting-style type, like actual diary entries. Sometimes the gaps were a bit off-putting, but Nicola usually summarises what she’s been doing. I really liked the characterisation, Nicola was an engaging narrator, and I thought Katrina was fantastic, her weird fashion sense making her definitely my favourite character. The minor characters were nicely drawn, but not so intriguing that I wished they were the focus of the story instead. I have to confess that I didn’t entirely understand why Nicola liked Battle so much for much of the book. I think her personality was overshadowed somewhat by Katrina’s, it seemed less clear, but maybe that’s the point. She is supposed to be mysterious, someone that Nicola can’t quite work out. In the end I was rooting for Nicola to get the girl, anyway!

This is one of those books that I read and then thought “Was this really supposed to be controversial?”. Okay, there’s some drinking. And Nicola and Battle are both girls, and their relationship does get physical, off the page. But they’re at a summer camp for intelligent, studious teenagers! And they all do their homework! Some people’s children.

I wouldn’t say Empress of the World is a must-read, it’s a nice way to spend an afternoon or two, but I didn’t find it to be unputdownable. I don’t think it’s supposed to be a thriller, but it’s a gentle story of self-discovery and romance, not an emotional rollercoaster ride that keeps you turning the pages.

Sara Ryan has also written comics featuring Battle and Katrina: Me and Edith Head, a prequel to Empress of the World starring Katrina, and Click, which is about Battle with a small appearance by Katrina, and takes place in the time between Empress of the World and the sequel/companion book, The Rules for Hearts. I definitely want to read The Rules for Hearts – it sounds like a good story, and I think it would help me understand Battle more.

The BookDepository

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: American, book review, books, GLBT Challenge, LGBT, LGBTQ, review, Sara Ryan, summer, teen fiction, teenage, teenage fiction, YA, young adult

Book Review: Dramarama, by E. Lockhart

21st September 2011 By Julianne 2 Comments

mint chocolate chip
Picture by gemskiii

Sarah Paulson longs for a life more exciting than the one she’s got in boring Brenton. Her ‘friends’ are totally bland, and her parents don’t understand her dissatisfaction, let alone her love of musicals. Everything changes when one day, after her tap dance class, she sees an advert for a musical theatre summer school: The Wildewood Academy for the Performing Arts. At the audition, she recognises a boy she goes to school with, Demi Howard. He recognises her, and most importantly, the Lurking Bigness that she feels she has inside her, waiting to come out and take the world by storm.

Together they reinvent Sarah as Sadye, and she feels like she finally has a true friend. Then Sadye and Demi both get into Wildewood, and they can’t wait to get out of Ohio and go. But when they arrive and immerse themselves in the drama and glitter, everything becomes a lot more complicated than it was when they were best friends in Brenton. When Demi needed her as much as she needed him, and he didn’t have boyfriends, or lead roles in plays. After their first few arguments, Sadye starts to feel like she’s losing him. Will their friendship survive the summer? Will Sadye’s Bigness ever stop Lurking?

I loved finding out. In fact, I was so excited to finally be reading Dramarama I think I squeaked as I turned the first few pages. I loved Sadye and Demi immediately. I could really relate to both Sadye’s descriptions of her Lurking Bigness, and the trouble she has trying to release her potential. I thought Demi, with his incredible self-belief and talent, was a fantastic character. I also adored the whole world of Wildewood – lunch-table-top performances, rooftop evenings, gossip, glitter, and all. Sadye’s roommates are a diverse, fun bunch. I love E. Lockhart’s groups of friends. She gets the group dynamic so right. The teachers at Wildewood were completely believable, very flawed, but interesting. Special mentions also go to Lyle’s possibly-hopeless love for Demi (I won’t spoil it), the cuteness of Theo (oh E. Lockhart! How do you create so many varied and wonderful fictional specimens of attractive boy‽), and the Blake song.

I liked that Sadye struggled with fitting in, which at Wildewood is the same thing as standing out. I could see why she indulged in being cruel to her friends sometimes. And I could understand why Demi disagreed with Sadye’s opinions, even though I could also understand all the misgivings she had about her teachers, and I think I would have had them too. It was great seeing Sadye develop over the summer.

Some other reviewers didn’t like the ending, I know. I did think it was a bit rushed, because the pace was slower at the start of the book. It felt like there was a lot of build up, and then it was over quite quickly. I didn’t have a problem with what actually happened though, it seemed realistic and necessary for Sadye’s development as a person.

Dramarama is a fantastic read. Even if you don’t know much about musical theatre, I’d give it a go – there are YouTube videos for almost every song mentioned and every reference can be Googled, and it’s so much fun!

The BookDepository

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: American, book review, books, drama, E. Lockhart, GLBT Challenge, identity, LGBT, LGBTQ, musical theatre, summer, teen fiction, teenage, teenage fiction, theatre, YA, young adult

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Hi! I'm Julianne and this is my book blog. Click my picture to read more about me.

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