*all images via GoodReads
I’m a couple of days early with this post, so I’ve only got three books down this month! I am however in the middle of two, both of which may make an appearance in next month’s post. But for now take a gander at the books I blitzed through in April.
Warm Bodies | Issac Marion
This one admittedly caught my eye after I spied the trailer on YouTube, thought it was a really interesting concept and then had people left, right and centre recommending the movie and the book! So this really had to live up to the hype.
Warm Bodies takes the zombie genre and flips it on it’s head. It’s the story of ‘R’, a zombie boy living out the remainder of his existence. ‘R’ is a weird one though. Yes, he has no pulse but he’s a dreamer and thinks a little differently to rest of his kind – not that they care, they’re dead lol. In the ruins of the nearby city ‘R’ meets Julie, a human, and for some strange reason decides to save her instead of eating her. The two develop an odd friendship and she starts to rewire his undead brain.
The book started off ok, it was interesting enough to hear about this strange normalcy the zombie had adopted. The story only really picked up once Julie appeared in his life though, their relationship felt oddly realistic – well as realistic as you can get with a zombie and a human. Now have to watch the film to see if it’s as good!
So Yesterday | Scott Westerfeld
I read some of Westerfeld’s in my teen years and vaguely remember enjoying his stuff. So Yesterday is the story of Hunter Braque, he’s a ‘cool-hunter’ working for a big agency in New York that seeks out the trends and makes some money out of the products of cool…which is how he meets Jen. She’s an ‘innovator’, someone who doesn’t follow trends but makes them. Before too long a mystery crops up. Hunter’s boss, Mandy, goes missing he and Jen are suddenly thrown in the dark marketing underground full of weird products, fake clients and unexpected danger.
I’m set to review this pretty soon for Blogger’s Bookshelf, but in short this was a really surprisingly enjoyable read, really fast paced, and the concepts were interesting to me, especially as a someone who wants to work in the ad industry in the future.
Why We Broke Up? | Daniel Handler
The clue of what this book is about is in the title, told through the eyes of Min Green, this is story of how and why she broke up with Ed Slaterton. Min details their relationship from start to messy finish in letters to Ed that she’s putting in a box along with trinkets and ‘souveniers’ from their time together. Such items include a movie ticket, a box of matches, books, and a pair of ‘ugly’ earrings, and each item has a story to go with it.
The story itself is slow, Min – writing in the present tense throughout the novel – is emotional and sometimes those emotions come out as her words spilling out all over the page. Ed is also a hardly likeable character to me. He’s co-captain of the football team, a notorious ‘player’ and actually quite rude. It’s hard to see what Min even saw in him and by the end of the book she’s left thinking that too. On one hand I understand that this is a story of young love and how fast it can escalate and drop in a heartbeat, but I just couldn’t feel a thing for these characters in the end.
The one thing I did love about the book were the illustrations by Maira Kalman. You are shown each item before you’re told the story, so you’re left wondering what it’s significance is in the plot. The illustrations themselves are beautifully done, and made me wish I bought the actual book instead of the Kindle copy!
If you’ve read any of these let me know what you think! And don’t forget to follow Blogger’s Bookshelf to see mine and the team’s reviews!
R.xoxo
