skip to main |
skip to sidebar
★★★★★★★★★★ (8/10)
This book was really cool. That doesn't really sum up The Lost Enchantress very well, but it's an accurate statement. It also doesn't explain why this was a eight-star book instead of a ten-star.
I'm a sucker for magic, especially when the author ties it to some type of mythology, which is why I purchased this book. I'm also a sucker for a this-may-not-turn-out-well love story, and The Lost Enchantress fits that bill, too. In more ways that one, I guess I was drawn to this book, and the cover art kind of sealed the deal. Who doesn't love curly letters and a pixie-dust encircled hourglass?
**I want to make sure you understand one thing first: this is a romance novel. I don't mean the kind of romance you get in a romantic comedy; I mean the kind you get from Danielle Steele with Fabio on the cover. When I picked up the book, it was in the bargain section with no sign over it to tell me it was in the romance section, and the LOC information on the copyright page just called it "fiction." Color me surprised when I find myself privy to scenes that should be kept the parties involved. This is why I docked a couple stars. This was more the publisher's fault, than Coughlin's, but the novel could have done without the two major scenes that made me a little uncomfortable.**
Now that that's out of the way, let's get to the fun part. This was a very clever story, with memorable characters, and a twist ending that I didn't really see coming. This is exactly the combination that makes me read the same books time and again. To start, The Lost Enchantress takes place in Providence, Rhode Island, which is a place I've never been to. Immediate interest because I depend on the author for background to the city and it's history. It also really brings home the story; even though Providence is the capital of RI, Coughlin makes it seem like you can still find a small town feel, and have room for adventure on the side.
As for characters, I thought the two main people were very well thought out. The story centers around Eve Lockhart, a top-notch journalist with a sad family history. She inherited a very powerful form of magic that she shares with her grandmother, but a horrible accident leads her to turn away from her birthright. Coughlin takes a great deal of care to make you understand Eve's position, and how she got to the place she is when the main story begins. I enjoyed the twists in Eve's life, and the courage it took to stay her course.
Next on the list is the opponent-turned-love-interest, Gabriel Hazard -- horrible name, but great character. There are a lot of interesting things that happen with Hazard, including his interesting ability to have blocked color from his vision. (You'll have to read to find out how that happened.) Coughlin chooses to use Hazard as an example of how finding the right person can change your entire life. This man was a loner for many years, and with good reason, but when he meets Eve, his entire outlook on life slowly changes until he comes to the conclusion that he can never go back the way he lived life before. It sounds very sappy in the summary of it, but when you read it, his story will sound much more romantic; it's an ideal that many people (the romantically inclined people at least) wish would happen in real life. That's the beauty of a novel, though. Many things that can't/won't/don't happen in the real world can be played out in fiction; it sort of fills a void between your life and your dream life. (Oops, getting sidetracked.)
Back to the topic at hand, though. I very much liked the way that Coughlin quietly steered Eve back into her magic. Magic was something that Eve had sworn off because she believed it was the cause of all the terrible things that had happened to her as a child. However, because of a centuries-old prophecy, it becomes impossible for her to ignore that magic any longer. To make things more interesting and complicated, her magic it tied to all of the people in her life, including Hazard, in a way that I really didn't expect. The villain was also very villainous and kind of gross, but I suppose that was the point. It's a story about finding out who you really are and finding peace with the past and the future. Again, this sounds very sappy as I'm writing it out, but Coughlin does a much better job than me at telling the story.
The Lost Enchantress is a wonderful example of a story that shows your past may come back to save you instead of haunt you. I was impressed with the depth of her characters, and the story kept me coming back to it whenever I had time (which isn't often since I'm in grad school now). This will definitely be a re-read in the future, and I would recommend it for its writing style and cohesion, although Coughlin does use the phrase "nerve endings" a little too often for my taste. Just keep my initial note in mind before you make your reading decision.
★★★★★★★★★★ (5/10)
I want to start by saying I've never been a big Hilary Duff fan. In fact, when I first saw this book, I was interested in the jacket description, but when I realized who the author was, I was a little wary about purchasing a book by an actor/singer/whatever that I didn't think too highly of. My boyfriend convinced me to give it a chance -- partly out of his being a fan of her music and partly out of his push to get me out of my comfort zone. It turned out to be a mostly good idea.
Elixir features a pseudo-famous teenager who has a love of photography and anonymity. Clea is the daughter of a high profile politician, and she has recently lost her father. The difficulty is that no one can tell her if he's dead or just missing, and if he's dead, no one knows how or why. Still, this isn't the point of the novel, although it plays a strong role in determining Clea's frame of mind. She starts finding one person over and over again in the photos that she takes, without remembering that she saw him anywhere when she was traveling. This leads her on a chase to track down this mystery man and find out what he knows about her father's death/disappearance. I won't say much more than this about the plot, because I don't want to spoil anything, and I think that my opinions would be more biased than I care to admit.
I can't really decide whether I liked this book or not. It's one in which I liked the idea of the plot, but the way it was written and the way it turned out didn't exactly live up to my expectations. It's very similar to the way I feel about J.R.R. Tolkien's novels: awesome story idea, but the execution leaves something to be desired in my reading mind. Point one that I had trouble dealing with is the dreamland time travel that Clea experiences. While I think that Duff's usage of reincarnation is very clever in this novel, I don't really agree with her putting into Clea's dreams; it seems too forced. There's also a problem with this because up until the dreams start, Clea has a sleeping problem. I find it hard to believe that a girl can go from having nightmares if she sleeps to having amazingly life-like fantastic dreams. Clea suffers from some type of trauma disorder; ever since her father went missing, she can't fall asleep without having a nightmare about what may have happened to him. Then, all of a sudden, seeing this man Sage in her photos changes her unconscious? I don't like it.
I won't go into details about my dislike of the name Sage. I will go into my general apathy towards Clea. I felt no sympathy for her, no empathy; I felt nothing for her. This was a strange sensation because I usually have some type of strong feeling for the main character. In this novel, though, I was more interested in her friend Ben. I was a little disturbed by her treatment of him, and his own decisions regarding his relationship with Clea and her family. He seemed to make bizarre choices, and those choices were never really explained. Not to sound cliché, but this was a very Edward-Bella-Jacob triangle, but without the major supernatural turn.
I did enjoy all of the traveling that Duff put into the novel. I'm assuming, though I can't be sure, that Duff has been to all of these places, so that depictions in the novel of Rio, Tokyo, Paris, and the other locations are hopefully true to life. Even if they aren't, Duff has a very good mind for locational details, and I really could see the picture she was painting, even if the plot didn't keep my attention. I really wanted to go to the mall in Tokyo, and go to Carnival in Rio someday. I think that if Duff could work with another author, and maybe a different editor, she could possibly make a fairly decent novel. At the very least, she has really good cover art.
By the way, Elixir is "Elixir of Life", and I think that may be where Duff lost me...
I gave this novel 5 stars, and those five came from the psychological reasons behind Clea's issues, the setting details, and the overall plot idea. The missing five stars happened because I wasn't impressed with the characters, and the execution of the plot left something to be desired. However, I have hopes that Duff could be a better author if she tried something without the occult involved. She could probably write a really good mystery novel if she put her mind to it; she's excellent when it comes to details. If you like Hilary Duff, this is probably a good read, but if you weren't a fan before this, Elixir won't make you one overnight.
★★★★★★★★★★ (5/10)
Who doesn't love a good mystery? I must say I do love a mystery novel, but Murder on the Eiffel Tower wasn't quite up to snuff. Maybe that's because I've read one too many Agatha Christie mysteries, so I can't really be called an impartial judge. I admit that the overall plot was very well thought out and the end was surprising, but getting from beginning to end was what troubled me the most.
I was initially attracted to this book because, in the jacket description, the main character was depicted as a bookseller, which he is. After all, if I'm buying a book, why wouldn't I like to read about a person that sells them? Murder on the Eiffel Tower starts right off with a death; that should have been enough to grab my attention, but it didn't. After this death, the author goes into background on the main character, Victor Legris. This is good background, things that I needed to know, and I was very happy reading it: his family history, how he grew up in England, but lives in France, etc. Still, all of this knowledge about Victor did not make me interested in him. There was nothing that set him apart, nothing that really made him special. So, there went one piece of the puzzle.
I very much liked the plot itself. It was a series of murders that all seemed to be committed by killer bees at World Expo that presented the Eiffel Tower. As the novel began, I really wanted to know if the murders were really committed by bees, or if there was someone behind the deaths. As I read on, I got bored. The pace was too slow for me, and I found that I kept getting distracted by other things: eating, laundry, walking the dogs. This is unusual for me, especially if I like a book; usually, I can't wait to be finished to find out what happens. In this case, I was reading it piece by tiny piece, just because I needed to finish it so that I could put its dust jacket back on and put it back on my shelf.
The love-story portion of the plot was a bit strange for me as well. I can understand infatuation at first sight, but the way that Victor goes about figuring out what his intentions and actions should be was too contrived. Also, based on what I'm told in the novel about Tasha, I don't think that Victor is anything close to her type. I suppose that maybe this was the point, but the age difference (in my mind), as well as the differences in temper and occupation, make it a very strange match. I would have liked Murder on the Eiffel Tower better if these scenes had just been taken out.
Pros: good plot, interesting situation, good character development. Cons: too slow, odd logic patterns, bad dating strategy. I can't recommend this book, but I'd say that if you're new to mystery novels, it's not a bad place to start. This would also be a good book if you just like history; I'm pretty sure that the details about the Expo and Paris at that point in time are correct, and it makes for a beautiful backdrop to a novel.
★★★★★★★★★★ (8/10)
As a general rule, I don't read Philippa Gregory's novels. After the disaster I had with The Other Boleyn Girl, I thought I'd never read another Gregory novel out of principle. However, I know it's a bad idea to hold a grudge, especially against someone I've never met, so I thought I would give it another shot. What I discovered was enlightening, amusing, and not half bad.
The White Queen is the first of two (so far) novels in what Gregory dubs "The Cousins' War" series. This refers to the wars in the mid-1400s between the royal houses of Lancaster and York (The War of the Roses). This novel in particular takes on the tale of Edward IV's wife, the lady Elizabeth Grey, and her journey from poor widow to Queen of England to widowed mother in sanctuary (twice).
What I noticed about my reaction was that, unlike with The Other Boleyn Girl, I had no real knowledge of the details of this period of English history, so I had no biases one way or the other. With The White Queen, I could read it was a completely blank slate, and I have to say now that Gregory has some great skill with a pen (or more likely a keyboard). She paints Elizabeth, not so much in a flattering light, but in a fair light. Of course, since this is told from Elizabeth's perspective, there is a sense of entitlement and righteousness when it comes to how she describes dealing with her enemies. Still, I feel that she is a character that I can sympathize with, until I saw how her ambition cost her the lives of almost everyone she loved. After that, I stopped sympathizing, and fairly wanted to slap her, except that she's a fictionalized version of a woman that's been deceased for more than 600 years. I'll change that to a mental slap in the face. That's better.
I won't try to summarize this novel, because you could honestly read a history book about the War of the Roses and get a fair idea about what happened (historically) here. I did enjoy the story of Melusina, a pagan water goddess whose legend was attached to Elizabeth's family. It put a little of the supernatural into the story that was well-placed, but the novel did not depend on it. While witchcraft or anything close to it was punishable by death (the favorite modes of execution being the dunking chair and burning at the stake), Elizabeth and her mother, and later Elizabeth's oldest daughter, do have some sort of powers. These could be just in their own minds, but I liked the way that Gregory incorporated them, and used them to sometimes explain certain historical oddities of the time period.
This is another novel to make you pity and envy the royals and aristocrats of the past. They lived privileged lives in times of peace, yet the politics they were faced with could be hurtful, painful, and one wrong move could and did throw the country into civil war. The ones who suffered the most were the children, who lost either their parents or their lives so that someone else could sit on the throne of England. I very much like this novel, and, now that I know what to look for in a Gregory novel (ie anything she wrote not involving Henry VIII or Elizabeth I), I can look forward to reading more of her works, and know that I will probably have a fun time while I read them.
