I can't wait to hear Melissa Marr speak at TLA.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I have read several good books recently, this was the first page-turner I've read in a while. Every time I had to stop reading Wicked Lovely and return to the real world, I was frustrated by the interruption.

Whenever I like a book this much, I kind of just have a visceral reaction to it and it's hard for me to put my finger on what it was that I liked in order to write about it.

First of all, and somewhat surprisingly to me, I really enjoyed the setting. I had always been a little hesitant about urban fantasy, but there's something kind of great about reading about magic happening in a world you can actually relate to, not some distant world of princesses and knights and corsets and bows and arrows. It just makes the world seem like a place of possibilities.

I also enjoyed the characters, especially, I admit, the sexy, tattoed and pierced love interest. Marr takes a very pragmatic approach in describing relationships and sexuality, which I enjoy. The realism, set against the fantastical elements in the story, contributes even further to the whole "world of possibilities" effect. Marr's basically saying, "yep, this is the same world you live in, where people get tattoos, have sex, sometimes with people they don't care about, go to clubs, maybe drink or do more, etc. And it's magical."

I most enjoyed that there were a couple of times that this book could really have been trite, but instead Marr took the road less traveled. There could have been a love triangle complete with lots o' drama, but there wasn't. Seth could have doubted Ash's ability to see fairies, leading to a major falling out between them and a redemptive story arc in which his failure to believe her leads to near tragedy averted just in the nick of time when he finds evidence and swoops in to save her. But, he didn't. He believed her and they moved on with the plot.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

American Wife: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book was a really interesting read. It was a challenge, knowing that the book is Sittenfeld's imagining of the life of Laura Bush, to separate fact from fiction. I had to remind myself often that the words were Sittenfeld's, the thoughts were Alice and Charlie's, and that neither the words nor the thoughts were Laura's or George's. This was especially challenging in light of the fact that so much of it was clearly thinly-veiled fact. Charlie buys the Milwaukee Brewers, George bought the Texas Rangers; Charlie went to Princeton, George went to Yale; Charlie has a drug and alcohol problem, George had a drug and alcohol problem.

American Wife has two ingredients I really enjoy in a novel: exploration of familial relationships and long-term storytelling. I love when a novel follows a character throughout his or her lifetime (or even one that follows several generations of a family). I enjoy watching the character grow and seeing how all of the episodes of a person's life shape them and effect each successive episode. I liked that when Alice mentions she has her Giving Tree sculpture on her desk in the White House I felt invested in that, as a reader, because I'd also read about how Alice had made that sculpture.

This novel also grapples with the idea of identity and celebrity, which is fascinating to me. I really liked when Alice was describing her celebrity and how occasionally people would say to her, "wow, it must be weird to be famous," not realizing that just by making that statement, they too are contributing to the weirdness.

The greatest strength of this novel, however, is in its portrayal of Alice Blackwell as neither sympathetic nor hateful. She just is. Sometimes you sympathize with her and think "losing a loved one is so awful; having the public act as if they know you must again be awful," other times you think "ugh, how can she stay married to him?? What is wrong with her?" But you never fully swing one way or the other, you just accept that Alice has made her decisions for better or for worse and that she feels the same way about them. She's not asking for your sympathy or your condemnation when she shares the details of her life; she's just sharing.


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Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan

Runaways, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I always knew I'd like comic books (I really enjoy serialized entertainment; it's why I prefer TV to movies: the long story arcs, the fully developed characters, etc), but I have been hesitant to try them because comic book communities seem so daunting and insular. X-Men has always been a comic series that intrigued me, but at this point there are like six million issues. How do I know where to start? But, with this comic book being so recent and so handily packaged in bound volumes and being available to me without necessitating a visit to a comic book store (also daunting and insular) and so well-loved by and then written by Joss Whedon, I had to try it. And I loved it.

Runaways is the story of six kids who find out that their parents are super-villains (although, as is always the case with truly interesting villains, you might decide they aren't so evil after all; my opinion? Oh, yeah, they're definitely villains.). After witnessing their parents committing a pretty heinous act, Alex, Nico, Gertrude, Molly, Chase, and Karolina decide to run away from their parents and then take them down. Along the way, they discover various super powers of their own and action, adventure, comedy, and romance ensue.

Runaways, however, is more than a superhero story and it's more than a good versus evil story. It's a story about being a teenager, about family, about loyalty, about friendship. It just happens to be set against a fantastical backdrop. Karolina, for example, on discovering a secret about her own identity has a very normal reaction: let's not tell anyone I'm a freak, okay? Molly, the youngest of the group, struggles with the idea that the people who love and care for her can at the same time be hateful and uncaring toward so many others. And her parents do sincerely love her. All of the parents love their children and like all parents they are just "trying to do what's best for them." Only the Pride (as the evildoing parents call themselves) aren't trying to get their kids to eat their vegetables. And this motley crew of teens (oh, come on, motley crew? I couldn't resist it!) has to defy authority in a way most teens don't even have to contemplate. This isn't staying out after curfew; this is ruining or maybe even ending your own parents' lives.

As you will probably see time and time again in my reviews, I'm a sucker for a good examination of parent-child relationships and this is a good one.


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Welcome to the 21st Century (or 2.0th Century)

I've finally signed up for Delicious and Goodreads. I've added a Delicious linkroll and a Goodreads shelf to my blog, so that's fun. I'm still exploring the functionalities of both, but in the meantime, what's 2.0 technology without networking? So, you can find me on Delicious at becca130. Goodreads is a little trickier since they didn't give me the option of choosing an account name and you can't search for me by name without getting a thousand hits, so just let me know in the comments if you use it and I'll friend you!