Fairest book review

Fairest by Marissa Meyer

Book review by Mayte Van den Broeck

3/5 stars

This book is actually a novella about the villain of a series named the Lunar chronicles. The lunar chronicles includes Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter. They are all sort of based on fairy tales.

The story is about how a young, misunderstood, lonely, and scarred lunar princess named Levana turned into the most wicked and powerful queen Luna had ever had. The story passes over ten years.

I had some mixed feelings about this because, at first I actually felt sorry for the main character (though I didn’t really like her much). And then it was fascinating and a little bit scary how she changed over the years into someone so different. The change being brought on by several factors in her life. The book was written in a nice style, and it was a very fluent read. I did find myself bored quite often near the beginning though, because the story was too slow and uninteresting. If you like this book series, I would recommend A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.

Pride and Prejudice book review

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Review by Mayte Van den Broeck
4.5 stars

I first picked this book up because i wanted to start reading some classics, and guessed that this was a good place to start. I believe that it was.
This novel is about a family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, and their five daughters. Mrs. Bennet's goal is to marry off each of her daughters to eligible young men. The story is mostly focused on the civilised, comic sparring between The rich eligible bachelor mr. Darcy and the witty young woman named ms. Elizabeth.
Since this is the first novel of this style and age that I have read, I might be a bit unknowing and biased in my review. In the beginning of the book, it took a few chapters to get used to the writing style, though after that when i got the hang of it, it read fluidly, and I really started enjoying it. Most of the characters I really liked, and were each unique and interesting. The relationships were also changing all the time which was intriguing. Some of the characters were of varying degrees of annoying. Though Jane Austen easily turned the annoyance into humor in many cases. Overall, I very much enjoyed this book, and am determined to read more of this kind. Books which I might suggest which seem similar to this are Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, or Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

Stray Book Review

Stray by Elissa Sussman

Review by Mayte Van den Broeck

2.5/5 stars

I was in a bookstore with few English books. However, this book (which I’d never heard of before) was there. And well, the cover is really beautiful, and the book was in good shape. Along with that, the summary sounded very nice. So I bought it.
Stray is about a world where royal girls all have a path, they also each have an adviser who tells them how to stay on the path. Each has magic, though they are told that it is dangerous and that they must not want things or think wicked thoughts. Girls who are unable to fulfil their job, become fairy godmothers. If they fail being a fairy godmother, they become a teacher. The people who leave their path, or run away from it are called ‘strays.’ Aislyn is one of the royals, but she fails her path and becomes a fairy godmother. 

I gave this book almost three stars because the idea was so original, and unlike anything I’d ever read before. However, one thing that bothered me quite a lot was that most of the characters seemed as if they had bipolar disorder. Including the main character. The characters were happy and nice one moment, grumpy/sad the next. There wasn’t all too much character development either. This book reminded me a bit of a fairy tale retelling, though a mix of fairytales. It had certain elements of fairytales. Such as the Briars from Sleeping Beauty and a lone shoe from Cinderella (this one had a severed toe though). Overall this book had many good and bad aspects to it.