Novel Review: Wild Roses by Deb Caletti

Rating (Out of 5): ~2

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Simon Pulse)

Publish Date: March, 2008

Spoilers?: Not Really.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Teaser Tuesday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Seventeen-year-old Cassie Morgan lives with a time bomb (a.k.a. her stepfather, Dino Cavalli). To the public, Dino is a world-renowned violin player and composer. To Cassie, he's an erratic, self-centered bully. And he's getting worse: He no longer sleeps, and he grows increasingly paranoid. Before, Cassie was angry. Now she is afraid.

Enter Ian Waters: a brilliant young violinist, and Dino's first-ever student. The minute Cassie lays eyes on Ian she knows she's doomed. Cassie thought she understood that love could bring pain, but this union will have consequences she could not have imagined.

In the end, only one thing becomes clear: In the world of insanity, nothing is sacred....

Something Specific:

Quotes:

• "'Love is not something that can be measured, Cassie. Sometimes love just is. Sometimes it’s a force with its own reasons. Reasons we don’t necessarily understand, but with a power that is undeniable.” (Paperback, pg. 115) I like this thought. But, right before this, as they’re talking about giving up something you love when it gives you pain, Cassie says that it would depend how much she loves it versus how much pain it gives her, and I understand her side very well.
• "It was another one of those moments when I would have killed to hear what was said, but I also would have done anything not to hear it, ever. I was having a lot of those times lately, where what I wanted and what I didn’t want were the same thing.” (Pg. 224) I understand this very well.
• "'I try to do the right thing, but sometimes the wrong thing gets the better of me. The human condition.’” (Pg. 229)

The Cover:

I just think this cover is pretty. It kind of fits with the book, I suppose. The title works. The snow works. The heart works. I feel like the contents of the book could be represented better, but this cover works, and I think it looks nice.

Review:

I’ve read two other books by Caletti, one of which I really enjoyed (the Nature of Jade) and one of which I thought was more meh (the Queen of Everything), and this one ended up being rather below meh, and a very big disappointment since I had thought it would be very good.

Cassie Morgan lives with her mother and her mother’s new husband, Dino. Dino is a genius musical composer, and he’s going literally crazy. He’s beyond paranoid, sometimes goes a bit off the deep end for very little reason, is snippy often, and is also just a general ass about things. Cassie does not like Dino, nor has she ever, but she’s stuck living for a majority of the time with him, going only on weekends to her father’s house. And then Dino starts teaching Ian, a boy Cassie’s age, who is also a very talented violinist, hoping to get into a very big, hard school several states away.

The book opened very good, the premise was very good, and even the Dino storyline was rather good. I liked the time Cassie spent with her father, her mother was frustrating but understandable. It was Cassie and the romance that I didn’t like.

I guess it’s not really Cassie herself that I didn’t like; she actually seemed okay. But she gave several slut-shaming comments that bothered me. One pertaining to a girl in her school whose nickname, apparently, is Whore because her last name sounds similar, and because she supposedly wears revealing clothes that show her big breasts. Another was a jibe about girls who sleep around. They were both distasteful and offensive, they didn’t particularly seem to be needed, and they bothered me a lot.

The second thing that really brought me down was the romance. I was rather looking forward to the romance, and even at the beginning, when Cassie was forewarning about the first time she saw him and that it was practically love at first sight, it didn’t bother me. Caletti seems to have a way of making love at first sight, that people are destined to be a part of another's life, natural, at least to me. So I was okay with that. But then, pretty much the first time Cassie ever has a conversation with the boy, they kiss. And they kind of fight a couple of times but move on from it, and she acts like she’s devastated that he has to go away for school. And throughout the whole thing, the reader barely ever gets to read an actual, intimate conversation between the two that doesn’t last more than a couple of pages. They say they love each other rather early. And while their relationship does expand throughout a year, I never felt the connection. No swoon, no actual love, nothing. Their interactions were just so small and there were so few that actually seemed to mean anything. I was very disappointed by this.

But even while saying that, and overall being unhappy and disappointed with the book, there were good parts. The ending for Dino and Cassie and her mother was pretty good, I liked seeing Dino’s downfall and paranoia (even though I feel his storyline could have been made more intense), and there were just a lot of small thoughts that I enjoyed reading. I liked Cassie’s father and her Nannie (particularly her Nannie). That’s why the rating is a wavery 2 stars, no higher, but I don’t think it’ll waver lower (although it might go to a 1.5, with time). 

I still have three Caletti books to read from forever ago, and I hope to read one somewhat soon. And I can only hope that they’re better than this one.

Manga Review: Ceres: Celestial Legend, Volume 4, by Yuu Watase

Rating (Out of 5): ~3 (maybe 2.5)

Publisher: VIZ Media (Shojo)

Volumes: 14

Spoilers?: Some/Yes.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Here is another exciting installment in the popular manga series. After she sees Ceres and Yuhi fly off the Mikage Corporation building, a girl named Chidori wants to find the airborne duo. Locating them, she asks Yuhi to grant her crippled brother's wish to fly. They discover that he is part of the Mikage Corporation's genome experiment!

Something Specific:

Quote:

•  "Everyone should be fated to know a 'blissful suffering'. How well that describes... The bittersweet feeling that comes when you love someone..." This is something that Aya thinks at one point in the volume, and I... don't think I really agree with her.

 

Review:

This series is just not impressing me at the moment. There were even a couple of parts that frustrated me. I still have hope, though, that it will get better. Also, I’m hoping the next book to be easier to read, if only because it’s in the modern format that VIZ prints today, and not this American-reading-style, large and skinny way that they used to produce them.

So. In this volume: Suzumi got fixed, then we met this new character, Chidori, who looks younger than the rest but I guess is about the same age as Aya and Yuhi. She saw Ceres flying with Yuhi, thinks they can help her sick brother, and so has come to find them. There’s this one annoying part, though, when she first shows up, where she throws herself at Yuhi, and the others make fun, calling him a pervert and all that, when he’s clearly never met her before. I didn’t really find that funny; it also didn’t help that Aya was acting like she was disgusted by him, supposedly in a funny way, but also in a jealous way. The jealous part continues throughout the volume, and that just annoyed me to pieces, because she’s supposed to be fully in love with Toya.

I think I’m kind of starting to really dislike Aya. I’m not really sure how this came about. Maybe because she’s starting to act like she’s in love with Yuhi as well as Toya, and because she’s just generally not being helpful to anyone with anything. Also, this:

“I just wanted a little excitement at first. I’d flirt with him like a silly schoolgirl with a crush, and get all giddy when he humored me a little.” Aya thinks this at one point while staring at Toya, and it just pissed me off. Because that’s a total lie. Not once did she act like it was a harmless, petty attraction; the whole times she’s been acting like she’s in love with him, like she wants to be with him forever, yada yada yada. She can’t just now realize that she has a real attraction to him when she confessed her love in, like, the first volume. I don’t accept that.

The only good thing Aya’s done, I think, is decide to start getting along with Ceres, let her take over every once in a while when it’s needed.

Because, for some reason, I’m starting to really like Ceres. I think she’s supposed to be wrong, or cruel, or something, but I personally think she’s the only one who gets anything done. She’s useful in fighting, she isn’t hurt easily, and she doesn’t back down from anyone. Also, when she first came out and was with Yuhi, she confronted him about his sexual attack on Aya, telling him that that wasn’t right. Which, thank god, because no one else said anything. Aya didn’t even say anything. Yuhi, even, acted like he knew it was wrong, but excused it because he couldn’t help himself, which is just bullshit.

I don’t know why, but I just seem to be pissed off about this book. It just… happened, somehow.

Anyway, other things that happened. Aya’s family poisoned the town with her blood, because anyone who feels weird from it apparently has celestial powers inside themselves. That’s why Chidori’s brother is sick, only for some reason, he doesn’t have powers, Chidori does. As does this other girl in the hospital, who starts causing explosions all over the place. But don’t worry, Aya’s family takes the other girl with them, claiming they’re going to help her or whatever. Chidori decides to go with Aya and Yuhi, so she’ll be sticking around for a while.

Aki, on the other hand, is starting to experience weird blackouts and this weird attraction to his sister, and these moments (the blackouts, as he doesn’t remember them) where he believes Aya is his or whatever, and where he’s kind of violent, because his past self is starting to show up. The next volume, I believe, is going to have more of him, and that’s surely not going to be good.

There’s still tension between Aya and Toya, only now there’s also tension between Aya and Yuhi, and Yuhi and Toya. Also, Aki knows that Toya likes his sister. The whole love thing is getting rather ridiculous, honestly. Oh, and at one point, Yuhi was told that Aya will love him at some point, which just doesn't make sense to me. And I'm not sure if I want it to, because I think I prefer Toya.

Humor is still not working for me, just as the horror is still not. I'm really hoping that that gets better soon. The italics are still ridiculous and horrible and make the reading jilted, and it looks like it will continue into the other format. I’m not really looking forward to that. Here’s an example: “Their necks were broken when they tried to shield Shota and me. …They died instantly! …That’s how Shota got hurt!” (Also, be aware that those ..."'s are not my shortening the quote, those are actually in the book.) I don’t understand why shield needed to be italisized; it needs absolutely no emphasis, in my opinion. Also, why do those exclamation points need to be there? It doesn’t even look like she’s exclaiming, in the book. The writing is just not the best

So. I have the next volume, and I will be reading it soon. I’m not particularly looking forward to it, but I’m holding onto my optimism.

Manga Review: Ceres: Celestial Legend, Volume 3, by Yuu Watase

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Publisher: VIZ Media (Shojo)

Volumes: 14

Spoilers?: Some.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Aya Mikage leads a normal life until she turns 16. Then her own family tries to kill her Aya learn that she possesses the blood of the tennyo (heavenly maiden), and when severely shaked she will transform into Ceres. If allowed to live, she is destined to bring ruin upon the Mikage family. In this volume, Aya has a deadly encounter with a "firestarter," and Yuhi, in a moment of weakness, confesses his love for Aya

Review:

This volume went by much faster and easier than the previous ones, which was nice. That’s a good sign that the books are getting better, as I hoped/suspected they would.

So, there was more violence and death in this volume. There was also more romance. And some ‘funny’ scenes that were only there in an effort to lessen the ‘horror’ element of the series.

The violence and death are supposed to be really powerful, I think, but it hasn’t really affected me very much. It’s not good, and it’s changing things for the characters, but to me it hasn’t really seemed to be as horrifying as I think it probably should be.

Aya seems to be accepting Ceres a little bit, though, which is good. She needs to get over her reservations, and maybe just get the hang of having Ceres in her body. Honestly, Ceres doesn’t seem that bad to me. A bit too forceful in her ideals and not willing to change them even a little, but still not too bad. She’ll take care of things when they need taken care of, and she’s much more durable than Aya, so that’s a definite plus for me. Also, she doesn’t seem as sensitive.

Aya’s family, though, also don’t seem willing to change their ways any bit. They’re determined to get the celestial descendants, and they’re willing to kill in their efforts, and it’s just ridiculous. Also, they’re using Aki. I like Aki. I’m not really sure what’s going to happen with him, but I have hope that it’ll be good.

We met a new character, another descendent, in this volume, which ended rather terribly. I'm sure there will be similar encounters in future books.

The romance I am not a big fan of. I’m getting used to Aya and Toya, I even like Toya a bit. But then Yuhi confessed his love to Aya in this volume, and that just doesn’t work for me. I don’t believe that Aya and Toya can really love each other at this point, let alone throwing in Yuhi as well. It’s just too fast, with too little development, and I don’t believe any of them.
Also, the way that Yuhi goes about his confession, was not very good. It was very... forceful and it made me a bit mad, particularly how Aya did not fight back well enough, and how they didn't really confront the fact that he shouldn't have done that. That's all I'm going to say about that for the moment, though.

I usually don’t mind the humor from Watase. And it doesn’t really bother me too much here, aside from the fact that sometimes it’s not really funny. And it bothers me that Watase doesn’t seem to be able to make up her mind about whether she wants this to be horror or comedy. You can’t kill a character in one panel and then throw in a joke a page later. That just doesn’t work for me.

The volume ended with a dramatic cliffhanger, which didn’t really leave me in suspense. It was just overly dramatic, and I don’t have any doubt that the problem with be fixed in a little time while the other characters stress and dramatize the situation, and I just don’t really buy it.

So, it’s apparent that I’m not really feeling very warm and fuzzy about this series. It has its problems, and I’m not really connecting with it. But I still have hope. I believe that it’s going to get better, hopefully soon.