Tag Archives: novel

Review: Beautiful Oblivion

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Bear with me, as I actually read this novel over a month ago during SolSat’s absence.

Jamie McGuire is back (and not soon enough, if you’re as thirsty as me when it comes to the Maddox boys) and she’s come with the love story of another Maddox boy and his girl. Because, if you’ve followed the series closely, you know that when a Maddox boy falls, he falls hard.

It's that good, I get teary just looking at this cover.

It’s that good, I get teary just looking at this cover.

Beautiful Oblivion by Jamie McGuire thrusts the reader into the perspective of Camille “Cami” Camlin, a bartender at the infamous Red Door club. Interesting note: Cami made brief appearances in the other Disaster books. She’s in a steady relationship with a man named TJ, and her love life is on the rocks when Travis’ older brother Trenton begins to court her, regardless of her long-distance relationship and constant declining of his advances. Can the troubled Cami tame this Maddox boy, and can Trenton win the girl of his dreams?

Okay. I’m going to say it. Jamie McGuire can do, like, no wrong in my eyes. Beautiful Oblivion had me hooked from cover to cover, and I’m not just saying that. I remember drinking a lot of energy drinks one day, and I was consuming one in the middle of my pole dancing class, and my instructor asks me “Are you going somewhere after?” to which I replied with “No, I just want to finish this book before I go to sleep tonight.” True story. Like most (if not all) romance novels, the destination is always easily predictable and “the same”, but you don’t read a romance novel for the destination: you read it for the travel, and boy, was this travel ever exciting! The interactions between Cami and Trenton were always amusing and entertaining to read, and it was just the cherry on top of an already perfect highly-stacked cake.

It must be a Maddox thing, but I found Trenton to be incredibly interesting as a character: he was charming, witty, funny, and all of the above, but he had that Maddox fault about him where he was desperate and troubled and tortured to an extent, and those imperfections are what make him and Travis so real. McGuire has done an excellent job in making these really outstanding men seem real and almost attainable. I found Cami to be more bearable than Abby – another book heroine who suffers from “my first name and my surname sound the same”-itis – and thought she was interesting to say the least. Her juggling of Trent and TJ did piss me off, however. It was made better by the fact that she is fiercely loyal to her family, even if they don’t deserve it.

McGuire writes Beautiful Oblivion with the same easily read vibe that made her other Disaster books so damn great. She writes with this hidden flavour of “OMG I need to know more now” and that’s what really makes an author great IMSAHO.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on that swerve on the end. I can’t even handle it.

Solst-o-meter
Storyline: 8.5/10
Style of writing: 8/10
Overall: 8.25/10

For anyone who’s read the Disaster books, or even if you haven’t, Beautiful Oblivion is definitely a book I can see myself reading again, and again, and again. Another top read by McGuire with only more to come hopefully.

– by The Black Widow

Review: Red Hill

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As if surviving a zombiepocalypse wasn’t enough, I have another zombie related post for you!

Jamie McGuire, who is probably most well known for the Beautiful Disaster series, decided one day to venture out of her comfort zone and write a zombie apocalypse novel with several different concepts featured in it. The result? Red Hill. Will this measure up to the perfection that is Travis Maddox and his ungrateful lover?

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Instead of “Red Hill”, it should be called “Red Hill with kinda green grass”.

Red Hill is a post-apocalyptic novel which follows the lives of three characters: Scarlet, Nathan and Miranda. Scarlet is a divorced mother of two who dedicates her life to her children and her work. Nathan is an unhappily married man who soldiers on through his marriage and his unfulfilling job for his daughter. Miranda is a college student with a lanky boyfriend and some serious daddy issues. The three characters events and journeys to the deftly named hill are detailed in this novel along with how they survive and… romance! OMG! I didn’t know there was such thing in a zombiepocalypse!

I could not put this book down. Seriously. I think I finished it within 24 hours of purchasing it because I loved it that much. Maybe it’s because I’ve never read a zombiepocalypse novel before and this is my first time so I had no expectations – or Jamie McGuire is just that darn brilliant – but I actually loved Red Hill. The story was so captivating and the mix of survival, mateship and romance blended in together in this novel was pretty phenom.

The one negative that I would have to attach to this novel are the characters. I found it difficult to really connect to some of the characters (with Nathan and Miranda, to an extent being the exceptions). I found Scarlet to be somewhat unrealistic as she went from a panicky single mother who works as an X-ray technician to this total survivalist badass babe who rivalled Oliver Queen when it came to long-distance aiming. She was also really annoying. I thought Nathan’s character was definitely relatable and his dedication to his daughter would’ve made me cry if I had a heart. Miranda was a hit or miss. I liked her and kind of related to her with what she was going through (spoilers!) but at the same time, I don’t understand the purpose of going in her perspective. If I read the book solely from Scarlet and Nathan’s perspectives, the story would’ve been the exact same and I wouldn’t have missed out on anything.

Let it be known that my favourite character was Joey. ♥

McGuire wrote this true to her own writing style and it made it very easy. The descriptions used in the novel were easy to follow and the language used was easy to understand so the novel was open to the casual reader and also the extreme novelist.  If there was one thing to criticise about the writing – or the storyline, not really sure where to fit this – was Scarlet and Nathan’s interactions with each other. So not to spoil it for anyone, I found it to be unrealistic and a bit how ya goin’.

Solst-o-meter
Storyline: 8.5/10
Style of writing: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

Overall, I highly recommend the purchasing of this book as it appeals to the romance reader but also to the extreme action reader. And to those who are just as obsessed with zombiepocalypses like I am. Not that I ever want it to happen.

– by The Black Widow

Review: Forbidden Sister

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With a title like this and a book cover like that, I was expecting big things from this novel. I had heard of Virginia Andrews’ novel legacy but had never read any of her stuff so I was keen to dig in.

Forbidden Sister by Virginia Andrews follows the life of Emmie Wilcox, a young impressionable teenager who was pretty much raised as an only child after her stern military-esque father kicked out her older, rebellious sister Roxy. Emmie’s interest in her sister piques when she finds out that she is a high class escort who lives in the same city. Watch out Emmie… curiosity killed the cat…

Look at that seductive book cover...

Look at that seductive book cover…

I was satisfied with the book. It was very well written and the character of Emmie was semi easy to relate to.

But…

There were an awfully large amount of rhetorical questions posed in this book. I get that a few here and there can be very effective in conveying a message across, but there just seemed to be way too many rhetorical questions used on almost every page of the novel. The language Andrews used was very strong and sophisticated and it gave me as a reader a good sense of what to feel and what was going on. Other than the over-usage of rhetorical questions, I quite liked Andrews’ style of writing and would pick up another book of hers based on the name.

The storyline in Forbidden Sister confused me. I personally didn’t understand the main point of the book; it just seemed as if things would just constantly happen to Emmie but none of those things or “events” particularly stood out as the main point of the book. Don’t even get me started on the epilogue which didn’t give me closure at all. In fact, it left me hanging for more and left me with even more questions than before. I get that one of the main points of the book was Emmie finding her sister and re-establishing that sibling bond but I felt as if that point of the story was nearly overshadowed by other events in the book.

Emmie as a character was truly original when it comes to novels of the same genre and that made me like her; while I don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a military-esque father (or maybe I do, depending on how you look at it) I felt as if I could truly empathise with her need to succeed and achieve to please her parents. Being 15 was a good six years ago for me so going back to my young teenager years, I understood what was going through her head and why. Roxy, however, was the more intriguing character in my sweet and humble opinion; having watched Secret Diary of a Call Girl, I had a fair idea of what escorts personalities were like and what they did and how they would react to certain situations… or at least how Billie Piper would. The aura of mystery Roxy carried, coupled with her no-nonsense attitude, made her the star of the book.

Solst-o-meter
Storyline: 6.5/10
Style of writing: 7/10
Overall: 7/10

Overall, I found Forbidden Sister to be a good read. It didn’t really let me down (besides the epilogue but that’s a different story) but in saying that, it didn’t wow me. It was just a good read. I really hope that is not the end of Emmie and Roxy’s story… or stories.

– by The Black Widow

Review: Hopeless

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I’m not trying to sound like a broken record a la the last book review I did, but I finally got around to finishing this wonderful novel that I had been in the middle of for a good month. Now that this novel is finished, I’ve realised that I need to do some serious book shopping!

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Hopeless by Colleen Hoover details the life of 17-year-old Sky, an extremely sheltered young girl whose life is turned upside down when she meets Dean Holder, the resident bad boy with a bad reputation to match her, to be frank, slutty reputation… despite not being a slut.

This novel starts out pretty cruisy, until you get to the middle-ish of the novel where:

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Never in my 21 years of reading novels have I read a book that escalated as quickly as Hopeless. What seemingly starts off as a typical teenage romance novel turned upside down on its head and did a Booker T spinaroonie because the drama that followed was so… dramatic. Without revealing too much, the drama was so good.

The storyline was so predictable that it was unpredictable, if that makes sense. I read it thinking “Oh yeah, and now this is going to happen and this is going to happen” and while some of my predictions were correct, most of them were so wrong that I felt the need to say sorry to Colleen Hoover. Colleen, if you’re reading this, please forgive me for doubting your excellent storyline abilities. The characters personalities were expressed well in the novel through the use of descriptive writing and the image of Dean Holder was clear in my head. COUGH Steve Grand.

The relationship between Sky and Dean was cute, albeit a bit clichè. Two unusually attractive teenagers with troubled pasts fall for each other and are completely in love after a month or two of being completely inseparable. Sky was a hit-or-miss with me; she was either really annoying and “Wah feel sorry for me” one minute and next, she was this funny, sassy spitfire who I found myself to really like. Dean Holder was perfect… almost too perfect. He was so swoon-worthy that I didn’t feel the need to swoon. He had his shining moments just like Sky, though, so I will praise him as a character.

Colleen Hoover’s use of language in this book was almost flawless. The action in the novel was impeccable and the use of imagery and other descriptions painted a clear picture in my head as I read this novel. I can no doubt see why this novel is so acclaimed and why it’s a New York Times bestseller – the author is great and the story is even better. The fact that nearly all the loose ends in this novel were tied together in a nifty little bow by the end of the story demands a round of applause for Hoover who really, in my sweet and humble opinion, knocked this one out of the park.

Solst-o-meter
Storyline: 9.0/10
Style of writing: 8.6/10
Overall: 8.8/10

I can guarantee you, whether you’re a romance reader or not, that this is definitely a must read. I was so wowed with the entire novel as a whole that I don’t know what to do with my life now that I’ve finished it. I can also guarantee you that you will not want to put this book back down once you’ve gotten into it. It is that damn good.

– by The Black Widow