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Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne
June 06, 2012
Amazon | Goodreads
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you hurdle down the stairs and make a run for the corner.
Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.
But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.
Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.
In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.
Review: The premise of this novel was extremely intriguing to me. I love apocalyptic fiction and I thought that the wide age-range of the children involved in the central plot would make for some very interesting reading. I was disappointed with this novel for several reason and I ended up walking away from it with a vague “meh” feeling. There were things that I enjoyed and aspects I found problematic, so let’s talk about both.
First, let’s focus on the plot. The plot was interesting to me. Monument, the town where the story takes place, is rather small. The school bus that the characters were aboard when the crazy weather that begins the action of the novel, was caring a wide age-range of children. The children ranged from kindergarteners up through high school students. I thought this would make a very interesting group dynamic, and it did to a certain point. The characters had to learn how to deal with the younger children and their fears, plus care for them. What didn’t work for me here was the part of the plot, which is 99.9% of the novel, where the characters become trapped in a super store. The store is clearly supposed to be a Super Target or a Super Walmart. The characters had instant access to food, ways to cook food, bedding, clothing, medicine, and any other supply they could possibly need. This removed any sense of urgency from the plot. The children didn’t have to struggle for anything. The struggle is often what drives these kinds of novels, but there was no struggle. Everything was handed to the characters by virtue of being trapped in this store, and thus, the compelling part of the plot – survival – was gone.
The ending of the novel was supposed to be somewhat cliffhangery. This is the first book in a series, so it was supposed to leave you wanting to know what happens. Again, because there was no urgency in the plot, the impact of the ending was dulled. Additionally, I simply didn’t care what happened after the book ended and that was due to my second major problem with the novel: the characters.
The characters in this book lacked depth and I could not form any kind of connection with them. I found the majority of the characters to be completely unlikeable. They came across as spoiled, which could have been a good thing if the struggle to survive had been apart of the story. It would have afforded the characters a opportunity to grow. But they didn’t have that opportunity and remained virtually unchanged by the situation in which they found themselves. Because of the lack of connection with the characters, when I reached the end of the novel and should have felt compelled to read the next book, I didn’t. I really just didn’t care about what happened to this group.
I will say that the book read very quickly. I finished it within a couple of hours. This was just not the book for me. I wouldn’t recommend this book. There are far better, similar stories, such as Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer, that I would recommend over this book.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255, “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty
June 05, 2012
Amazon | Goodreads
Synopsis from Goodreads:
A captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922, and the summer that would change them both. Only a few years before becoming a famous actress and an icon for her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita to make it big in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle is a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip. She has no idea what she’s in for: Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous blunt bangs and black bob, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will change their lives forever. For Cora, New York holds the promise of discovery that might prove an answer to the question at the center of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in a strange and bustling city, she embarks on her own mission. And while what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, it liberates her in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of the summer, Cora’s eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive.
Review: Years ago, I fell in cover love with a book entitled The Center of Everything by an author I had never heard of, Laura Moriarty. Though I have been severely burned by cover love before, this was not one of those cases. The Center of Everything was one of the most amazing books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I went on to read subsequent books by Ms. Moriarty because of my love of The Center of Everything. When I was approached to review her latest book, The Chaperone, I jumped at the chance and I was not disappointed.
The first thing that I loved about this book was the setting. Though a specific year is never given, it is during the 1920s. Women have the right to vote but Prohibition is in effect. I love absolutely everything about the 1920s! It is one of my favorite time periods to read about and for novels to be set in. Moriarty did a fabulous job of capture this era. She truly evoke the time period through her elegant prose. She also capture the struggle between older generations and younger generations that pervaded this time period. Cora and Louise bring a personal touch to this tumultuous time period, but in ways that affected their everyday lives. Cora, though by no means old, is representative of that older generation of women who reject the new fashion of wearing makeup or trading in their corsets for a bra. Louise is of the younger generation that has trouble relating to why Cora, and those like her, see these societal changes as bad and to be rejected. Cora even acting as Louise’s chaperone is troubling to Louise because she has a completely different mindset about propriety and societal standards than does Cora.
Cora and Louise are such great characters and play off of each other tremendously. Cora has this amazingly heartbreaking past that she is contending with, but so does Louise. How they handle the tragedy that has befallen then is fascinating. Their pasts, as pasts are want to do, continue to invade and influence their presents. This creates a lot of tension between the characters and I enjoyed that. I also enjoyed them individually. Cora was so real and likeable. Louise, well I want to smack her a lot, but I loved her zest for life and her enthusiasm that just couldn’t be dampened.
The plot of the novel was good. I would say that I enjoyed the first half of the novel much more than I did the last half. I found the first half to be quite strong and I was very intrigued by the events that unfolded for Cora and Louise in the first half of the novel. The latter half lacked some of the urgency that the first half possessed. This made reading that last half a little tedious. That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, I simply preferred the first half of the book.
Overall, I did enjoy this novel. I would recommend it to others, though my favorite work by this author remains The Center of Everything.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”