Book Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Book Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

I really enjoyed so many things about this book, beginning with the pacing of this book, a slow meandering through the disastrous consequences befalling Feyre for killing a faerie. Feyre is a compelling character. She drew me in with her haunting voice already replete with despair from the beginning. But she is a survivor, and survive she does. And the supporting cast of characters, Tamlin, Lucien, Rhysand, are deliciously complex with a villain worthy of the title. This story reminds me so much of the Beauty and the Beast tale, which I'm a sucker for.

However, I am less thrilled with the graphic and explicit sex scenes, few though they are. I know, I know: many find them titillating. I find them tedious and unnecessary. I'm of the opinion that less is more: I'd rather leave such intimacies to the participants than to be a voyeur. And disappointingly, this seems to be a trend in the YA genre, one that I'm not a fan of to be honest. I realize that "adult" is explicit in the YA moniker, but I'm finding I can recommend fewer and fewer books to my teen students (who are NOT adults yet) despite them being drawn to the topics and writers who produce these books. Admittedly, I'm old-school and lean toward the modest. Is there no place for we who favor modesty anymore?

I am hooked, though. I will and look forward to reading the next two books in the series.

Book Rewview: Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Book Review: Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

I received an ARC of this book, and this is my honest review.


I was excited about the opportunity to read Catherine House. There seemed to be a lot of hype surrounding this debut novel by Elisabeth Thomas, and I love a Gothic story.

Catherine House details the college career of Ines, a troubled teen accepted into the elite and renowned Catherine House for an accelerated three-year degree path, strictly isolated from the rest of the world but also completely free of charge. Ines and her cohort of friends indulge in school-sanctioned parties replete with frat-style binge drinking and indiscriminate sexual liaisons while negotiating ultra-challenging academic work and aspiring to the New Materials concentration, a coveted discipline studying plasm, the nebulous substance interconnecting all things. All of this is fascinating given the overall theme of isolation.

There are elements of Catherine House that I really enjoyed: the characters are interesting, flawed and broken. The house itself becomes a character, which is a device I have a particular affinity for. I was genuinely surprised by the ending. And, the novel reminds me a lot of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, a novel that has haunted me since I read it about 11 years ago.

However, on balance the book fell flat for me. Ines's mysterious past has a lot of holes. I felt I needed more of them filled so that I could understand her more fully. I simply could not relate to her incredibly sad antipathy and, because of that, I wasn't sure how much I cared about her. And, I really wanted to care for her because it seemed that so few people in her life did.

The mom part of me was angry at the lack of rules and boundaries for the students' social lives, and while I appreciated part of Catherine House's ethos is the mind-freeing nature of not having imposed rules and boundaries, the resultant free-for-all of behavior was concerning to me. Real colleges and universities have rules and boundaries for interpersonal behavior and resources for handling the ups and downs. Further, the cultish school culture is very concerning in large part because there appears to be very little outsider concern about the students at Catherine House.

I can definitely see the draw the book might have for other readers; it just didn't wow me. I appreciate the underlying themes: isolation, withdrawal, brokenness, scientific advancement (at what cost) are important and relevant discussions. But, I needed more.

Overall, I rate Catherine House 3/5 stars.

Book Review: A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner

I'm normally not a fan of stories about 9/11, mostly because I cannot bear the pain of recollection these stories cause me. This is not to say that I do not remember the lives lost and destroyed by the horrific attacks on America that occurred that day. It's that I'm still healing. I still choke up talking to my current students, who were not even born when 9/11 happened in 2001, about the things we all witnessed on our televisions, things that rendered us all temporarily impotent in the face of evil.

So, I was surprised when I picked up this novel and was about four chapters into it when I realized it was a historical novel about not only the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City, but simultaneously about a parallel story in 2001 connected to one another by a scarf. By the time I made this discovery, I was already hooked into Clara's story, her devastating loss and grief. So, when I realized that Taryn's story was of her devastating loss and grief from the Twin Towers' collapse on 9/11, I was unable to put the book aside. I pushed through my own grief at recalling the events and visions that remain with me today. And, I'm so glad I did.

Meissner is a masterful storyteller, weaving two separate, but eerily similar stories of women losing men they love, on whom they were pinning all their dreams for the future, in the horrific, human-caused catastrophes resulting in monstrous, senseless loss of life. Clara's and Taryn's stories are different, but remarkably similar, and I was mesmerized by the weaving of the novel's story between the two women's efforts to come to terms with their mourning and forge ahead with their lives. The scarf tying them together, a beautiful blue fabric background hosting marigolds, becomes a symbol for fragility and survival, strength born from weakness, the story of many women throughout the human experience.

I give A Fall of Marigolds a four out of five stars only because I wanted more! I wanted more from the ending--well maybe not more, but a different ending. I know this is not fair, to project my desires onto the book, the characters, or the writer, but I wanted somehow for Taryn's daughter to meet Clara's daughter. Fanciful and perhaps a bit cliche, but it was what I wanted for these two brave, broken women.

I am grateful to Meissner for tricking me into breaking my rule about not reading about 9/11. I think reading A Fall of Marigolds helped me heal a bit, too, right alongside Clara and Taryn. But just a little.