Happy Fat Tuesday!! Hope you're all enjoying your last day of indulgence :)
Alright, so my reading was somewhat lacking this month. But, to be fair, it was a crazy busy month. That's no excuse, but the two books I did read were great!!
1. A Step Toward Falling by Cammie McGovern
So, as is normal, this has been on my shelf for about a year. I met Cammie McGovern at the 2015 Southern Festival of Books, which normally leads me to buy speaker's books if I don't know them already. [Fun Fact: her sister plays lady Cora on Downton Abbey...no, I'm not kidding :D]
A Step Toward Falling is told from the alternating perspectives of a young girl with a mental disability, Belinda, and another girl, Emily who goes to her high school. One Friday night, these two girls are both at the football game, and when Emily passes to go back to her seat, she spots a guy sexually harassing Belinda. And she doesn't do anything. Well, she does, she goes to find a teacher, and it turns out one of the football players has the exact same reaction. Frozen in fear when we'd like to think we'd do the right thing and act. After the janitor helps Belinda and everything is taken care of, she refuses to go back to school, and her mom and grandma have no problem with that. And as a punishment, Emily and the other passive football player are made to volunteer at an afternoon group for adults with disabilities.
This story took me a while to get into, to be honest. I was really excited to read it, but the beginning was just a little slow. I couldn't connect to Emily. However, as the story progressed and the characters started to develop, the story started to flow and move. I love the development, the different conflicts. This was a very high school, but in a great way. I think it was an accurate representation of how a high schooler in this situation might react and feel afterward. And McGovern's depiction of Belinda was beautiful and touching.
2. Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs (3rd in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children)
It's been a couple years since I read the first two Peculiars books, though I loved them, and the movie that came out the end of last year pulled me back into the world. They did a pretty great job, though they switched the ability of the main female protagonist :/
I can't really give you a synopsis of this book because it would make no sense if you haven't read the first books. So...go back and read the first books! You'll get to learn about a world of peculiar children and adults with all sorts of unique abilities living in protected time loops that have them repeat the same day over and over again so that they never age and are protected from the normals. The really unique part is that Riggs has included photographs to show off his peculiars and the worlds they live--both creepy and awesome! It's really an intriguing read.
Again, it took me a long time to get back into this series, but I think that's more because I haven't been in the world for so long. After I'd read about 50 pages, I was fully invested again. There's a dry, morbid humor to this novel, on top of young love challenged by the fact that Emma has been sixteen for hundreds of years and Jacob is really only 16. The innate goodness of humanity is challenged, as well as our perception of looks. It's true, looks can deceive. What we might have considered to be horrid monsters for the first two books might actually be okay creatures under the correct instruction. (read the books and you'll understand).
All that I have left in this series is the Tales of the Peculiars, which was a book that Riggs created as a history book inside the series, then he actually wrote it for our pleasure reading. Pretty neat extension of the series, if you ask me.
Next Up: History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera
Reading anything good?
HER
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