Review: The Catastrophic History of You and Me

The Catastrophic History of You and Me

Author: Jess Rothenberg

Summary:

Dying of a broken heart is just the beginning.... Welcome to forever.   

BRIE'S LIFE ENDS AT SIXTEEN: Her boyfriend tells her he doesn't love her, and the news breaks her heart—literally.   

But now that she's D&G (dead and gone), Brie is about to discover that love is way more complicated than she ever imagined. Back in Half Moon Bay, her family has begun to unravel. Her best friend has been keeping a secret about Jacob, the boy she loved and lost—and the truth behind his shattering betrayal. And then there's Patrick, Brie's mysterious new guide and resident Lost Soul... who just might hold the key to her forever after.   

With Patrick's help, Brie will have to pass through the five stages of grief before she's ready to move on. But how do you begin again, when your heart is still in pieces?

21 February 2012

*

Every once in a while, you chance upon a book that writes such funny, witty and gorgeous prose, and yet, every sentence makes you want to cry. 

The Catastrophic History of You and Me is such a book. 

Brie dies of heartbreak at age sixteen, but life doesn't end after this. Forever after is a timeless vortex, not allowing you to truly move on before going through five more stages of grief. As it turns out, the afterlife is not all about dying, but rather, about understanding that there's more to life than death.

In the first stage Denial, there's loss and there's confusion. Brie suddenly finds herself in another world, a complete copy of her old life, yet filled with people who have died-- each in their own way, each in their own time. Then there's one 'handsome boy with a motorcycle jacket, the one who calls her 'Angel' with quirky cheese-themed nicknames.

After the initial stubborn Denial, comes Anger. Back on Earth, there's the boy who broke her heart. The friend who went behind her back. The father who, in sadness, turned to another woman. From far above, her seemingly perfect past life slowly unravels, as the people Brie loves unknowingly reveal the secrets and betrayals that they have kept from her. It's easy how lingering love can transform into hate in the very next heartbeat. Brie becomes a girl bent on getting her revenge, wrecking the lives of those who had hurt her.

But, anger always burns out, after which comes Bargaining. Brie makes a shocking discovery, realizing that the boy who broke her heart had his own bitter secret. Desperately wanting to undo all her acts of vengeance, Brie meets Larkin, a senior in her high school who died years ago in a raging fire. Larkin offers her a once in a "death-time" chance to go back to her old life for one day to change something. However, this opportunity comes attached with a price tag-- Brie would have to give Larkin a necklace, a deal which leaves all of us befuddled. In a sequence of fast-paced action, the story takes a turn, as Brie finally finds herself fully alone. She had hurt the one boy who had tried to save her-- the one with the motorcycle jacket-- and now there's no one left.

Sadness. Racing against time, Brie tries to find out the mysterious identity behind her constant companion. Digging up the past is a painful thing as she discovers shocking secrets and a love that had never left her side. Who is this boy who dresses like an 80s fellow and calls her 'Angel'? But, more importantly, where did he go?

Unwittingly, the story draws to an end in Brie's final stage-- Acceptance. With a clever turn of her pen, Jess Rothenberg hands us an ending that could be no more perfect than this. Rothenberg begins the story with the folly of love and ends it telling us that love is beautiful because of its silly faults. Brie herself starts the tale with pain and heartbreak (like literally) and ends it off with a hum of content. In her eyes, there's no sadness over what she has lost, only a crystal-clear reflection of that one boy who stayed with her all the way till the very end.

So when Brie falls in love with that boy at the end of the whole amazing journey, I was smiling and crying. It was because-- in life and death and everything in between-- Patrick had always been there. The one and only boy who had always been there for Brie; the one who gave up his life for her; the one who waited for her; the one whose will to live extinguished when she turned away. Ultimately, at the end of it all, Brie whirled around and saw with her heart that there had only been one boy for her all along. That is why you will smile behind your tears, simply because there is no other boy more deserving of Brie than Patrick.

This is no comedy, but a sad and piercing lesson enveloped in comic and light-hearted wit.

Heartbreakingly heart-warming, The Catastrophic History of You and Me teaches you all about love and why it's not only like a Shakespearean romantic tragedy but also like a dreamy fairytale. Friends, are for ever. Love, lasts forever!

Source: Purchased with precious money saved up over the course of a month :)

xoxo,

Sel

"Love is a piano dropped from a four-storey window, and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time." Ani DiFranco

Sorry, but this was the funniest book trailer I've ever seen! Patrick and Jacob looks terrible :O 

What do you think?

Review: Incarnate

 

 Incarnate

Author: Jodi Meadows

Summary:

New soul

 

Ana is new. For thousands of years in Range, a million souls have been reincarnated over and over, keeping their memories and experiences from previous lifetimes. When Ana was born, another soul vanished, and no one knows why.

 

No soul

 
Even Ana's own mother thinks she's a nosoul, an omen of worse things to come, and has kept her away from society. To escape her seclusion and learn whether she'll be reincarnated, Ana travels to the city of Heart, but its citizens are afraid of what her presence means. When dragons and sylph attack the city, is Ana to blame?
 
Heart
 
Sam believes Ana's new soul is good and worthwhile. When he stands up for her, their relationship blooms. But can he love someone who may live only once, and will Ana's enemies--human and creature alike--let them be together? Ana needs to uncover the mistake that gave her someone else's life, but will her quest threaten the peace of Heart and destroy the promise of reincarnation for all?

 

Jodi Meadows expertly weaves soul-deep romance, fantasy, and danger into an extraordinary tale of new life.


Published 31 January 2012

*

Disappointing.

This was a book that I just could not focus on.

Imagine. God, I had to skip the first ten or so pages until I chanced upon a remotely exciting character, Sam. Yet, here comes another boring male lead who heroically saves a girl, falls in love, performs kind deeds out of no reason, lies then does some hasty actions to cover up. Oh, and it turns out that he never really lied and everything ends up as a happily-ever-after.

No mind-blowing plot, no in-depth characters, no wondrous world-building. It's all the more sad as Incarnate was one that I saw with lots of potential.

What a new and brilliant concept of a city of reincarnated souls!

The first two pages illustrated to me a resplendent setting full of possibilities. And it went downhill.

Jodi Meadows should have focused more on the world-building. Because, she had me confused as to what world it was.

Vehicles with dragons. Heat detectors with centaurs. Machines with cottages.

It could have come off as a fantastic piece if well-executed, but it was not.

I had to skip chunks in between to arrive at the scene when Li (the mother of Ana) takes her away from Sam, and then jump to a dragon war, then go all the way to the end when Sam talks about playing the piano with Ana.

I wanted to crack my head open. What's this thing about love nowadays?

We read YA fiction because they open up a horizon of prose that can be painfully alluring, beautifully inspiring, meticulously crafted and light and free and brimming with youth at the same time. We can accept love wild and uncontrolled, we can accept love shallow and instant, we can accept love beyond all sensibility and reason, but we cannot accept love that has no meaning and essence.

Give me a book that has more than just a simple-minded romance, give me a book with a setting and a tale that challenges our imagination and brims our capacity to love.

I would still give Incarnate a chance. It might just turn out into something more.

Source: EPUB

Review: Vengeance (Transcend Time Saga, #2)

Vengeance

Author: Michelle Madow

Summary:

How far would you go to get revenge?

When Chelsea Givens discovered that her ex-boyfriend Drew dumped her to be with her former best friend Lizzie, she'd never felt so betrayed in her life. Then her new friend Shannon tells her she can help set things right. Chelsea's willing to listen, but what Shannon wants her to believe -- that she shared a past life with Drew -- is impossible. And what she wants her to do to get him back … well, it's downright crazy.

Could Shannon be telling the truth? And if she is, what lengths will Chelsea go if it means making Lizzie pay?

Find out in Vengeance, the second part of the Transcend Time Saga.


Published 8 December 2011

*

Vengeance is the short story that bridges the events in Remembrance and the final book in the saga.

*

HAPPY!

The sequel to Remembrance came fast enough, thanks to Michelle Madow! And, sure enough, Vengeance did not disappoint, and now I am more than excited for the last installment in the series.

The story is short, that I do admit, but it makes up for whatever flaws Remembrance had.

Fast-paced, smooth and straight to the point, Vengeance showed us another side of the tale through Chelsea's eyes. While Chelsea doesn't fully redeem herself in this novella, in my heart, she becomes a more realistic and wholesome character than Lizzy whom I still find difficult to empathize with.

Gladly speaking, the story goes on to a totally new level in these 50 pages, becoming much more of a delight than Remembrance. We are now hung in suspense because in this novel we finally see Madow's skills as a meticulous writer. After all, we never did know the exact ending and fate of the characters in their previous lives.

We know that Lizzy didn't end up with Drew then. So who did Drew end up with?

While we are toying around with different outcomes for the various characters, Madow hands us Chelsea's version of things. In her flashes of her past life, she sees her and Drew walking down the altar. Determined that they were meant to be together, Chelsea goes to great lengths to ensnare her love. The novella ends in a flourish, with her as confident as ever that she had saved herself from eventual heartbreak.

Or did she?

Ending with a cliffhanger, Vengeance has all of my curiousity and expectations aroused.

Hands down, the best fifty pages that completely made my day.


Source: From the author, Michelle Madow, for review purposes.

xoxo,
Sel :)

Review: Remembrance (Transcend Time Saga, #1)

Remembrance

Author: Michelle Madow

Summary:

New Hampshire high school junior Lizzie Davenport has been reincarnated from Regency Era, England ... but she doesn't know it yet.

Then Drew Carmichael transfers into Lizzie's school at the beginning of the year, and she feels a connection to him, almost like she knows him. She can't stop thinking about him, but whenever she tries talking with him about the mysteries behind her feelings, he makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with her. Reaching him is even more difficult because she has a boyfriend, Jeremy, who has started to become full of himself after being elected co-captain of the varsity soccer team, and her flirtatious best friend Chelsea starts dating Drew soon after his arrival. So why can't she seem to get him out of her mind?

Even though Lizzie knows she should let go of her fascination with Drew, the pair of them soon find that fighting fate isn't going to be easy.


Published 27 July 2011

*

This is a wonderful book for a debut author.

Remembrance has a promising concept of reincarnation which I've seen, but the plot was a bit of a disappointment.

The storyline was rather flat, focusing more on the characters' school lives rather than their previous reincarnations in the Regency Era of Jane Austen. 

The lives of the students were more than real and rather funny to read, but I do believe that that was not what many of us were looking for in a book about reincarnation. The characterization was also not strong enough, as Lizzie, Chelsea, Drew and Jeremy all seemed like generalized characters who did not bring out the maximum empathy in readers.

The love between Lizzie and Drew was a tad too unbelievable. There was little if not no love, more like chemistry and attraction, and that only. The way they transit from no love to love happens too quickly. I trust that if there were more scenes between them, we as readers may come to the understanding that their love was inevitable as well. But, in this case, I find myself hard to believe that the feelings blossoming between the two of them is true and undying love.

Despite it all, the idea was great! I loved the constant references to Pride and Prejudice (it's one of my favourite classics), which was a good direction for Remembrance to go in since many of us are fascinated with this time period and the lives of the ladies and gentlemen living in this century. As such, Remembrance should go more into Lizzie and Drew's previous lives and give a stronger reason as to why the two of them were reincarnated. With a stronger reason, we can finally comprehend how their love is timeless throughout the centuries.

However, overall, the story was a good read. The sad thing was that there was no particular point of climax, more like a stretch of narration, hence, giving me the feeling that the story has yet to unfold into its full glamour. When the novel came to an end, the first thought was that the novel had yet come to an end! There were so much more areas to explore and lives untouched!

Therefore, there is no surprise that I am looking forward to the sequel of Remembrance, which hopefully, will patch up the holes and hand us a brilliant plot which has been built up from the first book itself.

Source: From the author, Michelle Madow, for review purposes.

xoxo,
Sel