Book Review: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

When I started reading this I had no idea that with each husband, I’d grow ever deeper in love with Evelyn Hugo. This is a closer look at the life behind the glitz and glamour of Old Hollywood, where the cost of fame and fortune may be greater than you expected. It explores the manipulation of people without regrets, the lengths people will go to for fame, and at the heart of it it’s about a great, all consuming love affair. 

Evelyn is a star. A beautiful, shrewd star. As she tells her life story to Monique, a journalist she’s actively sought out to tell her story to, we see her shed the hidden layers and lies she’s held on to her whole life. What starts as a guarded confession to the great love of her life quickly turns into something far more encompassing, and demonstrates just what sacrifices Evelyn has made to hide her true self, and protect those she loves at all cost. She doesn’t regret, she doesn’t forget, and because of this you may think that Evelyn might be quite emotionless. But she’s far from it. She’s an actress, born to display only what she wants the world to see, yet we see moments of true vulnerability scattered throughout the story. She’s complex and unpredictable, with a strong sense of pride and self. She’s under no illusions that she’s a good person, and that’s what makes her so deliciously intoxicating to read about. She’s the heroine and the villain. 

I love the way the plot unfolds, told chronologically from the introduction of each new husband, scattered together with the present day and Monique’s story. Both characters bounce off each other well, as Monique struggles to assert herself against Evelyn’s dominant personality at first, before using her as an example to sort out her own life problems. I worked out the link between the two women quite quickly into the establishment of the story, but that didn’t spoil it at all. Far from it, I think the reader is suppose to know the real reason for the meeting between these two women before Monique is told the truth. It adds to the complexity of the characters, and enhances Evelyn’s moral ambiguity. 

The secondary characters who support Evelyn’s journey are also wonderfully fleshed out, especially Harry and Celia. Without them this story would be missing the heart that it needs as they help to show the softer side of her personality and shape Evelyn into a better person. There are moments of grief, laughter and love between them all that’s beautiful to read. It’s their stories, all woven together at times, that adds such a richness to the story. The husbands all pale into the background by comparison.

Highly recommend. This isn’t my normal genre, but I’m so glad I had the opportunity to read this. It’s utterly remarkable, and very well written.

Book Review: The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic

I’m unsure how to rate this really. On the one hand it was a quick read, and I enjoyed it, but it had an awful lot of flaws. 

The basic premise is runaway Neil gets picked up by a major university Exy team, who are all a bunch of misfits just like him. Exy is some kind of made up sport that’s a cross between lacrosse and football, and while they can’t seem to play without fighting, there’s a whole lot of trouble in Neil’s past just ready to catch up with him and he’ll need his teammates help to stay hidden. 

The plot and pace were both a little all over the place, and the writing feels very ‘new writer’. There’s no nuances to it, no subtlety that could have propelled this into an exciting read, and there’s a lot of idle chit chat. There’s also only one Exy game in the whole book. I found this disappointing as that section alone was more entertaining and exciting than the rest of the book put together. There’s lots of moping around from all the characters, lots of fighting and going to random clubs without having any clear agenda as to why other than to be sexually assaulted, and there’s lots of conversations using highly derogatory and offensive terms which I was deeply offended by. But not a lot of action, or development of the plot. By 75% of the way in, nothing had really happened and the characters were acting in exactly the same way as they were in the beginning. 

Also, not being from America, all my American sports knowledge comes from watching The Mighty Ducks and Field of Dreams as a youth. So unless there’s a giant corn field with the ghost of a dad in it, or someone’s attempting a flying ‘V’, I have no clue about sports like this. I have no concept of the world of collegiate sport and how it works. As it’s not elaborated on here I sometimes didn’t really understand what was going on. Sport scholarships aren’t really a ‘thing’ here. There’s also no discussion about what Exy actually is, leaving this very open to the reader to interpret. Again this left me quite confused at times as the characters start kitting themselves out in protective gear and fling sticks around. 

I suppose the best thing about the story is the complex relationship between all the different characters. They bounce off each other well, like a massive dysfunctional family, and all have a distinct voice. Andrew in particular is incredibly interesting and complicated to understand. His apathy for the sport he’s so good at and his intense relationship with Kevin is troubling and intriguing. Hs time with Neil is especially heated and full of an undercurrent of danger and tension, and I’d be interested to see where it leads. Dan is also a great character, acting as captain it’s her job to keep the group from tearing each other apart, acting as part mother hen and part dictator. Some of the others I found to be less rounded. Renee never seems to say much, and I felt was woefully underused given that she seems to take everything in and can see right through Neil. Allison and Seth are also largely underused, with Seth just coming across as a hothead most of the time. <spoiler>This makes his death by ‘overdose’ at the end largely uninspiring and underwhelming for me, as I wasn’t particularly vested in his character. We also never see Allison’s reaction to it, which would have been far more emotive than Andrew’s group, leaving the ending incomplete for me </spoiler>. 

As I say, this was a quick read and I enjoyed it for the mix of characters. But the plot would really need to ramp up for me to consider reading the next book.

Book Review: Critical: Science and stories from the brink of human life by Dr Matt Morgan

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

After the runaway success of [book:This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor|35235302] there seems to have been a glut of medical memoirs released, so what makes ‘Critical’ so different? This is centred around the role of an ICU, or critical care, consultant and is part memoir, part science as were taken on a journey through life within the most intense and life changing department in the hospital. 

It’s set out in a really nice way, divided into chapters reflecting on specific organs of the body (ie the brain, the lungs, the heart etc.) and goes on to explain some of the many reasons a person may be in the ICU because of that particular body part. It sets out the biology behind the conditions in such a way that most people would be able to get their head around them, and builds on knowledge gained in previous chapters to further explain certain ailments. It’s almost like a really good lecturer, who knows what he’s talking about, taking you through a medical class. 

Matt Morgan is also incredibly passionate about what he does, and his love and compassion for his patients jumps from the page. He explains what it is to feel failure, remorse and regret, and the issues surrounding mental health in doctors was particularly poignant. The most touching aspects were often centered around individual patients who really seemed to touch Matt personally. As medical professionals, we become so desensitised to health that we become at risk of losing a part of ourselves and our compassion. But Matt shows, in the care he takes when talking to bereaved relatives, when asking about a lost loved ones past, that he really does care. 

The section on brain stem death and organ donation was particularly hard for me to read for personal reasons. It’s a mirror image of my own past, and I thought it was touched upon in an extremely empathetic and endearing way - and I don’t think I could ever give a book any higher praise than that. This doesn’t play for laughs or attempt to trivialise what is to be a doctor, but rather bring to the attention of the wider audience what it is to work in the NHS in a high pressure and incredibly important job. 

A great read.

Book Review: The Test by Sylvain Neuvel

I’m not entirely sure what the hell I’ve just read, but this managed to absolutely blow me away in terms of twists and turns very early on. Without giving too much away, what starts as an immigration test decends into something far more realistic, and terrifyingly possible. 

It’s an examination on a future Britain that seems at once incredibly believable and tangible. A way to test and justify fairly who can enter the country in a near-technologically advanced universe. It’s fast paced, morally ambiguous with a lead character in Idir who’s amiable, polite and family orientated. I can’t quite believe what Neuvel has managed to get down in just over 100 pages, but it really managed to make me re-examine my own beliefs and the Subconscious acts of discrimination that I wasn’t aware of. There’s a tight evaluation on human psychology, social prejudice, even sexual discrimination all brilliantly shown via Idir’s thinking process. The feelings of intense stress, pressure and anxiety that Idir goes through are really well done, and PTSD is described in a sensitive yet deeply emotive and powerful way. It’s incredibly thought provoking, and raises a lot of issues relevant to the current climate around what it is to be British, and who ‘deserves’ to live here. 

If anything, I wanted more engagement from Deep etc as I felt his character was largely underused and underdeveloped, but this doesn’t detract from what is otherwise a really good novella. One to read in one sitting and ponder for days later.

Book Review: Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

I get where this novella was going - it’s a short but sharp examination of xenophobia and it’s ridiculously nonsensical commentaries from those who insist Britain must remain ‘British’. We follow family unit of mum, Iron Age obsessed dad and Sylvie as they join a group of university students on an ‘experimental anthropology’ expedition that sees them reenacting life in the Iron Ages on the Northumberland moors. Except this is more than just an experiment for Sylvie’s dad, who believes that this is how Britain should be, at its best. 

I just couldn’t engage at all with the writing style. It’s almost stream of conscious-like, and at times I had to reread sentences multiple times to understand what was going and who said what. It disrupted the flow of the story significantly for me, and I struggled a lot trying to connect with what was going on. I really think this would have benefitted from reading it all in one go, as there was never really a good point at which the story comes to a natural lull before the end and perhaps I might have gained more insight reading it this way. 

I liked Sylvie, and I felt sympathy for her situation as she comes across as desperately sad and scared, without anyway out of her situation because of a man who likes to hold all the power without any opposition (her father). At time’s we see her fight this, giving backhanded comments to get a rise from her father when surrounded by the university students, but it’s always comes with a later punishment. Her father comes across as extremely bitter, misogynistic and xenophobic. He clearly sees himself as a proper ‘man’s man’ who believes that women should stay in the kitchen while men go hunting, and Britain has been in decline since the introduction of other nationalities. He’s very black and white, and I think this lack of any subtle depth really didn’t help me warm to the story. 

A different read for me, that carries an interesting message, but the writing style was very off putting.

Book Review: The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

I have so much to say about this book that I’ve been holding back reviewing it until I had time to fully invest myself in my thoughts. I know it’s only March, but I think this is my favourite read of 2019 and it’ll be pretty tough to beat. 

In the third book of the Winternight Trilogy we follow Vasya immediately on from the conclusion to [book:The Girl in the Tower|34050917]. There’s no time to catch your breath, no month long interval, it’s straight into the heart of the action and issues surrounding Vasya and her family. There are riots and pitchforks, fires, and accusations of witchcraft and sorcery. And leading the rabble is a certain priest with a silvery tongue, guided by an ancient enemy now released from his prison. Arden has such a way with words I fell immediately back into this world, experiencing everything alongside Vasya and Solovey. The confusion, the chaos, the sights and smells of Moscow just jump from the page and I felt their anxiety and fear right there with them. When you’re crying before you’ve even reached 10% in a book, you know it’s touched you deeply. 

When this writing craftmenship is interwoven so perfectly with magical folklore and real, known, history it combines to make a truly exceptional read. I loved the introduction of the mysterious territory known as ‘Midnight’ and the field of horses. Getting to see some of Solovey’s, and later Vasya’s, mysterious past was bittersweet and touching too, and just added to Vasya’s strength of character. The descriptions of seasons past, as we walk this journey, is wonderfully descriptive and fully immersive again. The plot is always driven and forceful, and the pace continues throughout with multiple twist and battles. 

Vasya has also come so far as a character, and it was an absolute pleasure to see her develop further here. She’s constantly trying to learn who, or what, she is, while trying not to give in to the free spirit inside her that tells her to flee into winter. She’s willing to sacrifice everything, including her supposedly immortal soul, for her family, and I loved her for that. Her ability to admit her failings, while still yearning to be what she’s expected to be makes her vulnerable yet deeply endearing. She’s a complex woman with strong convictions and a moral backbone that is decidedly unique and wonderful to read. 

The priest Konstantin is another deliciously complicated character. His mixture of pure hatred and lust for Vasya has not quelled, fuelled by his relationship with a spirit who takes pleasure from suffering and internal torment. He’s a deeply troubled man with a gift for creating beautiful things, and although he hates Vasya he hates himself more. There’s a strange mix of pity and anger that I felt when reading about Konstantin. At some of the truly terrible things he does, I hated him like no other, yet Arden has this ability to make me feel sorry for him. It’s close to how Vasya feels towards him too, and to see both of their internal struggles towards the other is quite electrifying. 

I couldn’t write this review without touching on Vasya and Morozko’s relationship. At once deeply complicated, and now, rather fractured, we see each of them learn from one another, and what they are to each other. It’s touching and beautiful, sweet and passionate all at once, but never overpowers or is as important to the storyline as Vasya herself is. She never needs Morozko to fulfill her destiny, but rather must discover it for herself and rescue him. It’s a reversal of the stereotypical ‘girl in the tower’ (which makes it even more ironic given the title of the previous book in the series). I love Morozko. His icyness, aloofness, quite literally melts when Vasya gets through his defences. 

<spoiler>Solovey. How can I write about what happens to Solovey? Heartbreaking. And it’s never swept under the carpet or used simply as a plot device. The grief is always there, always apparent when Vasya looks at other horses. The guilt and ache she feels when riding the ‘fire bird’ feels so real, and respectful to Solovey’s memory, that I felt deeply touched by it. I haven’t sobbed over a book in a while, but this managed to grab hold of me very tightly and feel that grief personally. </spoiler>

A really wonderful, magic story full of folklore and history, love and friendship. A must read.

Book Review: So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

A fascinating read, still highly relevant today in our digital world. This covers the evolving issue of ‘public shaming’ and it’s growing significance in the online community via social media. We see people ruined, professionally and personally, over one photo, one comment or one ‘tweet’. 

It certainly made me think about my own online presence, and how I already actively hold a lot of my life back from overexposure online. That pack mentality can destroy everything, without any kind of barrier or behaviour to hold it back. Human nature can be very cruel, and overly zealous, especially when there are no sensors or rules in place. I was particularly struck with Lindsey Stone, who posted a distasteful picture of herself holding up the middle finger outside a war memorial. One silly action from a young, foolhardy girl led to her being fired from her job as a carer, and hundreds of thousands of death threats and vitriol from strangers online who knew nothing about her. Now she will be forever remembered for that picture, that mistake, and constantly haunted by the image online. It will effect her future, and we see her struggle with accepting this and trying to move on. The use of so called ‘reputation rebuilders’ was also really interesting, as they try and hide this negative outpouring by manipulating Google. 

I did find some sections a little ‘out there’, and not entirely relevant to what Robson’s was trying to get across (ie the group therapy stuff, which just came across as odd and out of place), however the overall message is clear. I liked the small section on prisoner rehabilitation particularly interesting (both through therapy, and alternative sentencing). 

A decent read on an insightful topic.