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Hazel (1853 KP) rated You Were Here in Books
Dec 7, 2018
<i>This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review </i>
On the five-year anniversary of Jaycee Strangelove’s brother’s death, she goes to visit one of his favourite haunts – an abandoned Victorian mansion that used to be an insane asylum. However, this year she is joined by four other people who, although they do not show it, feel as broken as Jaycee does.
<i>You Were Here</i> by Cori McCarthy is primarily about Jaycee’s dangerous attempts to feel closer to her daredevil brother. Using his old diary as a guide, she is determined to find evidence that her brother had been at the various decrepit places that he wrote about breaking in to. Her behaviour seriously worries others, which is why Jaycee ends up with four unlikely characters tagging along: Natalie, her ex-best friend; Zach, Natalie’s immature boyfriend; Bishop, a guy suffering after a break up; and the selectively mute Mikivikious, her brother’s childhood friend.
Each character is struggling with their own problems, yet they take the time to make Jaycee realize that her brother is gone and she needs to move on. However there is a lot of fighting and sabotage of relationships along the way.
Each character progressively tells the story by alternating chapters. Whilst this is fairly common in fiction – both young adult and adult – McCarthy’s method stands out amongst the others. Bishop likes to express his feelings through art and therefore does not have any written chapters to his name. Instead a few photographs of his artwork are included. Similarly, Mikivikious, a character who barely talks, shows his point of view through a short graphic novel sequence (drawn by the illustrator Sonia Liao). It is really interesting to read(?) parts of the story this way, and it also makes the reader connect to Mik’s struggle to express himself verbally.
It is difficult to like any of the characters to begin with – mostly because their flaws are revealed but their history is yet to be disclosed. Jaycee, the main character, is particularly hard to like. She is depressed and lonely with a serious self-destructive streak. This causes her to be rude, hurtful and sarcastic to everyone around her. It is actually surprising that anyone cares about her at all.
Due to not connecting with any of the characters, I was not all that impressed with this book. I understand the point of portraying certain people, especially Jaycee, in such a negative way, however it made me not really care about the outcome. Future readers need to be aware that the storyline can be very dark and morbid at times. There are also sexual references and foul language.
On the five-year anniversary of Jaycee Strangelove’s brother’s death, she goes to visit one of his favourite haunts – an abandoned Victorian mansion that used to be an insane asylum. However, this year she is joined by four other people who, although they do not show it, feel as broken as Jaycee does.
<i>You Were Here</i> by Cori McCarthy is primarily about Jaycee’s dangerous attempts to feel closer to her daredevil brother. Using his old diary as a guide, she is determined to find evidence that her brother had been at the various decrepit places that he wrote about breaking in to. Her behaviour seriously worries others, which is why Jaycee ends up with four unlikely characters tagging along: Natalie, her ex-best friend; Zach, Natalie’s immature boyfriend; Bishop, a guy suffering after a break up; and the selectively mute Mikivikious, her brother’s childhood friend.
Each character is struggling with their own problems, yet they take the time to make Jaycee realize that her brother is gone and she needs to move on. However there is a lot of fighting and sabotage of relationships along the way.
Each character progressively tells the story by alternating chapters. Whilst this is fairly common in fiction – both young adult and adult – McCarthy’s method stands out amongst the others. Bishop likes to express his feelings through art and therefore does not have any written chapters to his name. Instead a few photographs of his artwork are included. Similarly, Mikivikious, a character who barely talks, shows his point of view through a short graphic novel sequence (drawn by the illustrator Sonia Liao). It is really interesting to read(?) parts of the story this way, and it also makes the reader connect to Mik’s struggle to express himself verbally.
It is difficult to like any of the characters to begin with – mostly because their flaws are revealed but their history is yet to be disclosed. Jaycee, the main character, is particularly hard to like. She is depressed and lonely with a serious self-destructive streak. This causes her to be rude, hurtful and sarcastic to everyone around her. It is actually surprising that anyone cares about her at all.
Due to not connecting with any of the characters, I was not all that impressed with this book. I understand the point of portraying certain people, especially Jaycee, in such a negative way, however it made me not really care about the outcome. Future readers need to be aware that the storyline can be very dark and morbid at times. There are also sexual references and foul language.
Louise (64 KP) rated Izombie: Volume 1: Dead to the World in Books
Jul 2, 2018
I first heard about this book from Elena reads books and was instantly intrigued!This book sounded fun, I haven’t read much about zombies and also just wanted to read more comics/graphic novels. It was totally fascinating from the start and definitely different.
Gwen appears to be you average everyday person at the start, other than working as a gravedigger she is normal, except she’s not! She is a zombie! but not your stereotypical zombie – she doesn’t walk around groaning, her face and body are not decaying. As long as she eats one brain per month she will not turn full zombie. However eating brains comes at a cost, first of all the brain has to be pretty fresh (hence being a gravedigger), she obviously can’t get caught, they taste bad….oh and she gets stuck with the deceased’s memories for a period of time. The last brain she ate was from a young family man who was killed by a serial killer. Gwen takes it upon herself to investigate why the man was murdered. Also there are a group of female vampires who don’t kill their victims they just feed little and often from men that attend paint balling in the woods. However there is always one that can’t play by the rules and is starting to attract attention from these ancient monster hunters.
There were so many different types of character/monsters in this book, we had zombies (obvs)Ghosts, Vampires and even a WereTerrier which I thought was kind of cute. This is a more of a fluffy zombie book and totally different from the walking dead. I liked all the individual characters but there wasn’t a lot of development and I think this was because there was too much trying to happen in one volume. We had the story of Gwen, it would then jump to the Vampires and then to the hunters, which made the plot line a bit disjointed. Some of the characters….Mainly Dixie was portrayed as being self-centred, all she thinks about is herself and Gwen is unable to rely on her even though she is her best friend. All the females in the book all seemed to have perfect bodies… I wish they just made some females different shapes and sizes. I really liked the art style and colours that were used to set the tone of the book. This was a great introduction to the story and I will be continuing on with the second volume.
Also there is a series on Netflix adaptation that is loosely based on the comic, I might start watching it as my partner has watched it and said it’s alright. Have you watched izombie? whats your thoughts on it?
Overall I rated this 3.75 out of 5 stars
Gwen appears to be you average everyday person at the start, other than working as a gravedigger she is normal, except she’s not! She is a zombie! but not your stereotypical zombie – she doesn’t walk around groaning, her face and body are not decaying. As long as she eats one brain per month she will not turn full zombie. However eating brains comes at a cost, first of all the brain has to be pretty fresh (hence being a gravedigger), she obviously can’t get caught, they taste bad….oh and she gets stuck with the deceased’s memories for a period of time. The last brain she ate was from a young family man who was killed by a serial killer. Gwen takes it upon herself to investigate why the man was murdered. Also there are a group of female vampires who don’t kill their victims they just feed little and often from men that attend paint balling in the woods. However there is always one that can’t play by the rules and is starting to attract attention from these ancient monster hunters.
There were so many different types of character/monsters in this book, we had zombies (obvs)Ghosts, Vampires and even a WereTerrier which I thought was kind of cute. This is a more of a fluffy zombie book and totally different from the walking dead. I liked all the individual characters but there wasn’t a lot of development and I think this was because there was too much trying to happen in one volume. We had the story of Gwen, it would then jump to the Vampires and then to the hunters, which made the plot line a bit disjointed. Some of the characters….Mainly Dixie was portrayed as being self-centred, all she thinks about is herself and Gwen is unable to rely on her even though she is her best friend. All the females in the book all seemed to have perfect bodies… I wish they just made some females different shapes and sizes. I really liked the art style and colours that were used to set the tone of the book. This was a great introduction to the story and I will be continuing on with the second volume.
Also there is a series on Netflix adaptation that is loosely based on the comic, I might start watching it as my partner has watched it and said it’s alright. Have you watched izombie? whats your thoughts on it?
Overall I rated this 3.75 out of 5 stars
The Craggus (360 KP) rated The Queens Corgi (2019) in Movies
Jul 8, 2019
The Queen's Corgi is a vicious mongrel
There’re so many problematic aspects to “The Queen’s Corgi” it’s kind of baffling it ever made it to cinema screens. A cute cartoon fable about the Queen’s beloved pets may seem like a slam-dunk for the Saturday kid’s club crowd and, if you’re determined to see it, it’s definitely worth waiting for it to reach the bargain screening circuit. Nobody should pay full price to see this.
At its core, it’s a story of Rex (Jack Whitehall), an adorable but arrogant Corgi who lets being the ‘top dog’ go to his head and ends up in the doghouse, stranded outside the Palace and at the mercy of the ferocious leader of the pack at the local dog pound. So far, so predictable.
Where “The Queen’s Corgi” surprises is in its decision to include in cutesy cartoon the divisive figure of President Trump and his current wife, especially as it involves the real-life self-confessed sexual predator in a sub-plot about mating his (fictional) Corgi with one of the Queen’s pets, a storyline rife with casual coercion and canine sexual assault. From that tawdry and uncomfortable opening, we progress onwards to the meat of the plot which sees Rex encounter an underground dogfighting ring operating at the Pound.
Add in a couple of pretty scary sequences involving nearly getting run over, a surprisingly graphic near-drowning and an attempted murder by arson and you start to understand why this European production has been rated PG when its subject should be an easy-U. It earns it.
Some of this will, of course, pass over the heads of younger children, at least on a conscious level, but there’s such a nasty undertone to the whole movie that you should be thinking twice about seeing it. To UK children, of course, Donald Trump is something of a distant, already cartoonish figure, possibly a bit of a bogeyman but the casual humanisation and normalising of a figure like Trump is a dangerous and slippery slope (as Jimmy Kimmel can attest to) and sets an unpleasant precedent for future ‘family entertainment’. The fact that it pokes fun at him up to and including him getting bitten in the dick by a Corgi doesn’t mitigate his appearance, it just makes it more inappropriate.
I’m genuinely surprised this has been allowed to pass without comment from the Royal Household but perhaps they hope it will quickly fade into obscurity, even though this would benefit from a more activist Royal prerogative – this is one movie that should be sent to The Tower for the rest of its life.
At its core, it’s a story of Rex (Jack Whitehall), an adorable but arrogant Corgi who lets being the ‘top dog’ go to his head and ends up in the doghouse, stranded outside the Palace and at the mercy of the ferocious leader of the pack at the local dog pound. So far, so predictable.
Where “The Queen’s Corgi” surprises is in its decision to include in cutesy cartoon the divisive figure of President Trump and his current wife, especially as it involves the real-life self-confessed sexual predator in a sub-plot about mating his (fictional) Corgi with one of the Queen’s pets, a storyline rife with casual coercion and canine sexual assault. From that tawdry and uncomfortable opening, we progress onwards to the meat of the plot which sees Rex encounter an underground dogfighting ring operating at the Pound.
Add in a couple of pretty scary sequences involving nearly getting run over, a surprisingly graphic near-drowning and an attempted murder by arson and you start to understand why this European production has been rated PG when its subject should be an easy-U. It earns it.
Some of this will, of course, pass over the heads of younger children, at least on a conscious level, but there’s such a nasty undertone to the whole movie that you should be thinking twice about seeing it. To UK children, of course, Donald Trump is something of a distant, already cartoonish figure, possibly a bit of a bogeyman but the casual humanisation and normalising of a figure like Trump is a dangerous and slippery slope (as Jimmy Kimmel can attest to) and sets an unpleasant precedent for future ‘family entertainment’. The fact that it pokes fun at him up to and including him getting bitten in the dick by a Corgi doesn’t mitigate his appearance, it just makes it more inappropriate.
I’m genuinely surprised this has been allowed to pass without comment from the Royal Household but perhaps they hope it will quickly fade into obscurity, even though this would benefit from a more activist Royal prerogative – this is one movie that should be sent to The Tower for the rest of its life.
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