Book Review: Crave (Book #1 in the Crave series) by Tracy Wolff

Right off the bat, I have to say that while Crave definitely isn't a literary masterpiece when it comes to the quality of Tracy Wolff's writing; I still loved this book in a guilty pleasure sense, and I had a ton of fun reading it. Prior to reading Crave, I have to admit that I was half-expecting this book to be some kind of Twilight spoof. Even though Twilight is mentioned in this book, I would say that this series is definitely its own thing in terms of how it not only portrays vampires, but how it also portrays various other kinds of fantasy creatures, such as dragons. One of the things that Tracy Wolff does that definitely helps set the Crave series apart from the Twilight series is to have the Crave series take place at a boarding school. Plus, I definitely enjoyed the romance between Grace and Jaxon A LOT more than I ever liked the romance between Bella and Edward in the Twilight series, but that’s not saying much. While Grace and Jaxon’s relationship had its own unique kind of drama in this book, I definitely appreciate the fact that their relationship didn’t immediately feel nearly as angst-ridden as Bella and Edward’s did. Plus, while Grace did annoy me at times throughout the book, I’m really glad that she wasn’t as eager and willing to give up her humanity and become a vampire just to be with a guy that she’s only known for a couple of weeks like Bella was to be with Edward.

 

Another major plus that Crave has on its side, is the fact that the overall plot of the book played out very differently from the way that I had originally been expecting it to prior to reading the book. It was far from being predictable, as far as I'm concerned. While I don’t have a lot of issues with the overall pacing of the plot of the book for the most part, which is definitely a good thing considering the fact that this is a really long book, I do think that the pacing of the ending of the book drags a little bit.

 

One thing that I thought was really cool about Crave is Wolff’s portrayal of dragons. It’s established that the character Flint is a dragon, and while there’s a lot of things about this book that are definitely rather cliché, this is the first fantasy book or story that I’ve encountered where it’s established that people can also be dragons. Since this is the first story that I’ve encountered where it’s established that people can be part dragon, I definitely have to give Wolff credit for her including the character Flint in this series. I’m really hoping that Wolff will expand upon that aspect of Flint as a character, and the concept that people can be part dragon in general, as the series continues since she didn’t explore that very much in this book. Plus, I simply liked what we saw of the character Flint in this book.

Book Review: Midnight Sun (Book #5 in the Twilight Saga) by Stephenie Meyer

Right off the bat, I have to admit that Midnight Sun is definitely a very tricky book for me to review; mainly because I’ve always had very complicated feelings about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga. Plus, while I don’t think that Midnight Sun itself is perfect, I still loved this book in a guilty pleasure sense; and this book, and the Twilight Saga as a whole, definitely puts the “guilty” in “guilty pleasure”. I have to admit that a part of me had definitely given up hope years ago that Stephenie Meyer would ever finish writing Midnight Sun and publish it; so, I was very surprised when it was announced that not only had she finished writing it, she was also announcing the book’s release date (8/4/20). That being said, after having actually read Midnight Sun, I definitely think that this book was worth the wait.

 

While it has been, I honestly don’t even know how many years, since the last time I read Twilight (The Book), I did read Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined when the tenth anniversary edition of Twilight was released in 2015; so, I’m not entirely sure how much Midnight Sun compares to Twilight in terms of plot details and character development. That being said, I still thought that Meyer did a great job of adding new material and insight into all of the characters; especially when it came to Edward, and the other members of the Cullen family. Even for supporting characters, I’ve always thought that Edward’s family members were underdeveloped and underutilized characters in the main part of the Twilight Saga. That being said, I really felt like Meyer did a great job of using Midnight Sun as an opportunity to give the Cullen family some more character development, and offered the readers some more insight into them as characters. It was definitely a lot of fun to see a lot of interactions between Edward and the other members of the Cullen family in this book. Admittedly, I had been kind of worried that Midnight Sun would end up being a major rehash of Twilight, only written from Edward’s point of view. Thankfully, I ultimately don’t think that was the case. Meyer definitely did a great job of providing longtime fans of the Twilight series new insight into the events that take place in the first book in the series, as well as some great new insight into Edward as a character.

Bookstagram: My Insane (Overly Optimistic) August/September TBR!

Check out all of the books that I've included in my crazy huge TBR for August and September!

Book Review: Beautiful (Book #5 in the Beautiful series) by Christina Lauren

Right off the bat, I have to say that much like reading Beautiful Bitch was a somewhat weird experience for me, because I backtracked and read it after I had read Beautiful Bastard and Beautiful Stranger, reading Beautiful was also a somewhat weird, yet interesting, experience for me due to the fact that I’ve only read three of the books in the Beautiful series (Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Bitch, and Beautiful Stranger) at this point in time. However, I decided to jump ahead and read Beautiful now, so I could review it fairly soon after its release. Admittedly, I finished reading this book a little over a month ago, but I got so busy reading other books, working on other book reviews, and I’ve just been busy with life in general, so I’m only now finishing this review and getting it posted. I definitely feel bad about not finishing this review and getting it posted weeks ago. I should also probably mention that when I write a review for the last book in a series, I usually like to devote a part of the review to briefly discussing my overall thoughts on the series as a whole. However, since I’m jumping ahead and reviewing Beautiful before I read the rest of the series, I’m planning to read Beautiful again and write a follow-up review for the book where I discuss my overall thoughts on the Beautiful series once I’ve read all of the books in the series; that being said, here are my thoughts on Beautiful.

Having read three books by Christina Lauren prior to reading this one, I can honestly say that Christina Lauren have yet to disappoint me, and this book is no exception. I absolutely loved Beautiful, and I thought it was a phenomenal ending to the Beautiful series. As weird as this may sound, something that I used to do a lot whenever I was starting a new book, is that I would jump ahead and read the last few pages of the book after reading the first two or three chapters of the book. I was pretty much always very confused about what was going on whenever I would jump ahead and read the last few pages of the book, but I still loved doing that; because I found that it got me even more excited about reading the book whenever I did that. Reading Beautiful at this point in time definitely had the same effect. It definitely got me really excited to go back and read the rest of the series. For the record, the reason I don’t do that very often now is because I mostly listen to audiobooks instead of actually reading physical copies of books these days.

When it comes to what I thought about Beautiful, one thing about Beautiful that really stood out to me as I was reading it was the overall tone of the book felt very reminiscent of romantic comedies; much like I thought Lauren Blakely’s book, Big Rock, felt very reminiscent of romantic comedies due to its plot. The overall tone of the book didn’t feel all that dramatic and full of angst compared to the tone of Christina Lauren’s writing for Beautiful Bastard and Beautiful Stranger. For the record, I haven’t had any problems with the amount of angst and drama that the other Christina Lauren books that I’ve read so far have had. The overall tone of Beautiful simply felt much lighter compared to their other books. While there were definitely times where Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Bitch, and Beautiful Stranger made me laugh, this book definitely made me laugh the most, and that’s something that I really enjoyed about it.

Divergent: I finally read this book, but did it live up to my expectations? Well… (My thoughts on book #1 in the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth)

Let me start off by saying that the Divergent book series is a book series that I’ve really wanted to read and was really excited about for quite a while. I went into reading Divergent full of excitement and anticipation. Unfortunately, I ended up being very disappointed by this book.

One of the biggest problems that this book suffers from is a serious lack of world building. As I was reading this book, I kept waiting and hoping for Roth to provide some backstory for what happened that prompted their society to develop the social structure that they have with the five different factions: Abnegation (The Selfless), Dauntless (The Brave), Erudite (The Intelligent), Amity (The Peaceful), and Candor (The Honest). Also, how was it decided what the core values of each faction would be? There are some vague comments throughout the book about a war that happened at some point in the past, but it’s never fully explored or explained.

As I said in my reviews for Abigail Barnette’s books First Time (Ian’s Story) and First Time (Penny’s Story), it really bothered me that Barnette didn’t really provide a truly good explanation for why Penny had been waiting to lose her virginity in “Ian’s Story”. The explanation for that part of Penny’s backstory that was given in “Penny’s Story” ended up being very stupid and rather vague, which led to it also being incredibly frustrating and disappointing. I mention that only because much like the lack of a good backstory and explanation for something that played a huge role in the story hurt both versions of First Time, the lack of world building, backstory and depth behind each of the five factions really hurts Divergent as a whole.

Unfortunately for Divergent, the writing suffers a lot more due to its lack of backstory and world building since the book’s biggest flaws have to do with the key aspects of the story rather than being things that would be easier to forgive when it comes to any weaknesses that a story may have. Personally, I think the existence of good world building and thoroughly establishing backstory is especially important in books involving elements of fantasy or societies that are very different from the society we live in today. If an author neglects to give their characters and the plot a good and well written backstory, then the book really faces an uphill battle when it comes to being able to impress and entertain people, in my opinion.

Fifty Shades of Grey: If you haven’t already figured out that this book was a originally a Twilight fan fic, this chapter should convince you (My thoughts on Chapter 3)

Let me start off by saying that I’ve really been meaning to get back to doing blog posts on each chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey, but I’ve clearly been putting that off for quite a while since I posted my commentary on chapter two way back in March of 2015. This is due to several reasons. For starters, I don’t want to buy the audiobook version of the book, and it’s really become a challenge for me to discipline myself enough to sit down not just read this book, but any book for that matter. That’s pretty much the whole reason why I’ve really gotten into audiobooks these days. Listening to audiobooks allows me to “read” books while I do jobs around the house, run errands, which also involves me having to ride the city bus and walk a lot since I don’t drive, etc. Plus, I’ve never been a very fast reader to begin with, and listening to audiobooks enables me to “read” books relatively quickly. Anyway, I pretty much spontaneously decided to read chapter three of Fifty Shades of Grey and write a blog post on it since I had the day off from work this past Sunday, which hasn’t happened in quite a while; that being said, here are my thoughts on chapter three of Fifty Shades of Grey.

Right off the bat, I have to say that I was waiting until I read this chapter and was ready to comment on it to discuss the fact that Ana blushes at the drop of a hat. I always thought that it was a really ridiculous quirk for Ana to have. It doesn’t really add anything worthwhile to the story or anything interesting to Ana as a character and the book as a whole. It’s a very well known fact that Fifty Shades of Grey originally started out as a Twilight fan fic, but as I said in my review of Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined by Stephenie Meyer, I haven’t read the Twilight series in years; so I didn’t remember anything about it being established that Bella had a tendency to blush a lot. That originally led me to believe that E.L. James had added the whole thing with Ana having the tendency to blush at the drop of a hat in an attempt to “make the character her own” when she decided to take her Twilight fan fic (Master of the Universe) and retool it as the Fifty Shades trilogy. However, after reading Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, which is a gender swap of Twilight, it’s clear to me now that James didn’t add the whole thing about Ana having the tendency to blush a lot when she retooled “Master of the Universe” as Fifty Shades of Grey. I think it’s pretty safe to say that James got the whole idea for Ana’s tendency to constantly blush from Twilight, too. I say this because it turns out that I had forgotten that Bella blushes a lot in Twilight, and Beau, the male equivalent of Bella in Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, blushes quite a bit, too.

The difference between how James handles it in this book versus how Stephenie Meyer handled it in the Twilight books is that James takes it to the absolute extreme. Stephenie Meyer may be a rather mediocre writer, but at least she didn’t overdo it when it comes to how she portrayed Bella/Beau having that particular quirk. When it comes to how E.L. James handles Ana’s tendency to blush at the drop of a hat, it’s just beyond ridiculous and way too over the top. Kate reacts to seeing Ana blush in this chapter in a way that’s absolutely ridiculous, because her reaction makes it seem like Ana blushing is a rare occurrence, rather than being something that she does practically every five seconds. 

There’s nothing quite like a boatload of teen angst and crappy parents to make a good story (My thoughts on 99 Days by Katie Cotugno)

Let me start out by saying that while 99 Days by Katie Cotugno has been on the list of books that I’ve wanted to read for several months now, I originally wasn’t planning to review it any time soon. However, I was feeling bad about the fact that it took me so long to read First Time (Penny’s Story) by Abigail Barnette and write my review for the book; not to mention the fact that I’m currently in the process of reading A Game of Thrones. That’s definitely taking me a while since it’s: A) A very long book compared to all of the other books that I’ve reviewed so far B) I’ve been trying to do some research on the A Song of Ice and Fire book series to help me with writing my review, and C) I’m also trying to watch at least some of the first season of Game of Thrones before I write my review for the book and post it.

I’m definitely putting a lot more time and work into my whole process for reading A Game of Thrones and writing my review for that book than I have for all of my other book reviews at this point in time. Obviously, taking a break from reading A Game of Thrones for several days in order to read and review 99 Days is counterproductive to my finishing A Game of Thrones, but I really was feeling bad about not having reviewed more books by this point in time. I decided to read and review 99 Days now, because I figured that it would be a quick and enjoyable book to read and review; that being said, here are my thoughts on the book.

Right off the bat, I have to say that I definitely have mixed feelings about 99 Days. On the one hand, I felt like the story was rather cliché in some ways, and there were times when the whole Gabe/Molly/Patrick love triangle that 99 Days was centered around was a little exasperating. The backstory of what happened before Molly left town, and what things were like for her throughout most of the book reminded me a lot of Gossip Girl and the way the show began. If you’ve never watched Gossip Girl, it’s a teen drama about teenagers that pretty much all live on the Upper East Side of New York City. The show began with Serena returning to the Upper East Side from her self-imposed exile under somewhat mysterious circumstances. She originally left the Upper East Side after she slept with Nate, who was her best friend, Blair’s, boyfriend, and things weren’t smooth sailing when she first returned. Going back to 99 Days, because the backstory between Molly, Gabe and Patrick reminded me of Gossip Girl in some ways, I felt like the book was kind of lacking in originality. While 99 Days wasn’t the most original story in the world, it was still a very enjoyable book. Plus, Molly is a pretty likable protagonist for the most part, even though she did frustrate me at times.

It’s time to play a game of “People Watching: Extreme Edition” (My thoughts on The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins)

Right off the bat, I have to say that I loved this book. However, I have to admit that I’ve kind of been dreading writing this review since The Girl on the Train is a mystery novel. When it comes to books in the mystery genre, I think it’s really important for the reader to be surprised by the book and all of its twists and turns when they’re reading it. Personally, I was really surprised by some of the plot twists in The Girl on the Train, and I would hate rob people of the chance to also be surprised by this book.

When it comes to the people that I’ve encountered online who have said that they didn’t like The Girl on the Train, I’d say that the most common reason people give as to why they didn’t like this book is because none of the characters are entirely likable. I’d say that’s a perfectly valid reason for somebody to not like a book, TV show, or a movie. After reading the book, I have to say that I definitely agree with the assessment that none of characters in this book are truly likable, and I can see why that would cause people to not like this book.

Personally, a book, TV show or a movie having characters that aren’t necessarily very likable doesn’t always cause me to not enjoy it. I think a story featuring unlikable characters can still be very enjoyable, especially in the hands of good writers, and if the characters are intentionally being written as unlikable or bad people. For example, when it comes to my favorite TV shows, my favorite comedy is without question It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. All of the characters on that show are written as being rather horrible people, with Dennis quite possibly being a sociopath, and yet that’s a big part of the show’s appeal when it comes to people who like the show. A critic actually once described It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as being, “Seinfeld on crack”. As someone who’s also a big fan of Seinfeld and was never bothered by the fact that Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer were all rather selfish and horrible people, I think that’s the perfect way to describe It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in just one sentence, but I digress.

What can cause me to not like a TV show, movie, or this case a book, that has characters that aren’t very likable people, is when the characters aren’t written with the intention of being viewed by the reader as a bad or unlikable person. If they just end up coming across as being extremely unlikable due to bad writing, that can really ruin a TV show, movie, or a book for me. When I think about fictional characters coming across as being unlikable people due bad writing, the first examples that I always think of these days would be Ana Steele and Christian Grey from the Fifty Shades trilogy and Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James. While I’m not 100% certain, I’m pretty sure that E.L. James didn’t write the Fifty Shades trilogy and Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian with the intention of Ana and Christian being viewed by the reader as horrible and annoying people. That just happened because E.L. James is a terrible writer. To be fair, if you’ve read my review of Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian, then it should be clear that I actually liked Ana in that book and the book itself.

Twilight Saga: Get ready to see Twilight like you’ve never seen it before (My thoughts on Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined by Stephenie Meyer)

Let me start of this review by saying that prior to Stephenie Meyer announcing that she would be releasing Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined as a part of the tenth anniversary edition of Twilight, I had actually been thinking a lot about possibly reading the original Twilight saga again and reviewing them at some point. While I’m not planning to do that any time soon, I decided to go ahead and read and review Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined now since so many other people are also posting reviews for the book and talking about it lately, especially on YouTube. For the record, I haven’t read the Twilight books since the beginning of 2009, so my memory of the first book isn’t perfect, but I did watch the movie as I was reading Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined to give myself somewhat of a refresher; that being said, here are my thoughts on the book.

I’m going to just come right out and say upfront that I didn’t like this book very much at all. Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined is definitely my absolute least favorite book that I've reviewed for my blog at this point in time. While I was immediately intrigued by the concept of Stephenie Meyer releasing a gender swap version of Twilight as a part of the tenth anniversary edition of the book, I was also immediately skeptical about the idea actually being able to work as soon as it was announced. Maybe other people will disagree with me, but in my mind Twilight just isn’t the kind of book that would translate very well if someone were to do a gender swap version of a book and publish it professionally as an actual book. To me, Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined is basically a Twilight fan fic that was written by Stephenie Meyer. I might be more forgiving of the writing for this book if it had been written by a random Twilight fan and posted on a website where people can post fan fiction for various TV shows, movies and books. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with this book.

I should also probably mention that I didn’t buy the actual anniversary edition of Twilight since I already own all of the books in the Twilight saga. I did, however, buy the audiobook version of the anniversary edition of Twilight, because as I said earlier, I’m kind of interested in reading all of the books again and reviewing them at some point, and I’ve been listening to audiobook versions of almost every single book that I’ve reviewed so far. The reason why I’m interested in reading and reviewing all of the books in the Twilight saga is because it’s a very well known fact by now that the Fifty Shades books by E.L. James apparently started out as a Twilight fan fic. Whenever I see people talking online about all of the creepy and controlling things that Christian Grey does in the Fifty Shades books, there are pretty much always several people who will mention some of the things that Edward does throughout the Twilight series that they think is creepy and inappropriate for a guy to do in a relationship. Since I haven’t read the original Twilight saga in over five years, I don’t really remember the examples of Edward’s behavior that people usually give when they’re comparing Christian Grey to Edward, which is one of the main reasons why I’m kind of interested in reading the entire Twilight series again. 

Brace yourselves, Everybody! It’s time to talk about Fifty Shades of Midnight Sun (My thoughts on Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian by E.L. James)

I’d like to start out this review by explaining why I decided to read and review E.L. James’ new book Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian in its entirety rather than do a chapter-by-chapter commentary like I’m slowly doing with Fifty Shades of Grey. For starters, after listening to the preview of the audiobook version of Grey on iTunes, I decided that I liked Zachary Webber’s narration of the book enough to buy the audiobook version. I didn’t do that with Fifty Shades of Grey because I don’t like Becca Battoe’s narration of the Fifty Shades trilogy. Another reason why I decided to not do a chapter-by-chapter commentary of this book is because unlike the original Fifty Shades trilogy, this book isn’t broken into chapters in the traditional sense. Instead, each “chapter” is labeled with a date. For example, the first chapter of the book is label, “Monday, May 9. 2011” and all of the “chapters” in the book are pretty long. I didn’t take the time to figure out how long each “chapter” of the book is, but according to a commenter on Jenny Trout’s website, chapter six is eighty pages long.  I’ll discuss my thoughts on the format of the book is different from the format of the original Fifty Shades trilogy and the fact that the chapters in this book are very long later on this review; that being said, here are my thoughts on the book.

I’m going to go right ahead and say that I actually like this book more than the original trilogy, which is something that honestly really surprised me. Don’t get me wrong; E.L. James didn’t magically become a literary genius in the time that’s passed since Fifty Shades Freed was released. This book is still a pile of crap that has a lot of problems, but I do think that compared to the original trilogy, the quality of the writing for this book is at least a little bit better than the original trilogy.

Aside from this book being a shameless cash grab, I’m guessing the reason E.L. James wrote this book is because she wanted to try and convince the people who think that Christian Grey’s an abusive sociopath and that his relationship with Ana is an abusive relationship that they were wrong for thinking that. Unfortunately, I don’t think that she succeeded in convincing people that Christian Grey isn’t the horrible person they think he is. In some ways, Christian comes across even worse than he does in the original trilogy.

That being said, there were times throughout the book where I actually felt that Christian showed hints of being a good person that people could like and feel sympathetic towards him, especially in regards to his traumatic childhood. However, whenever I found myself thinking that perhaps Christian Grey isn’t truly a horrible person like I’ve pretty much always thought that he was, he would quickly go and do, say or think something that would make you feel like you were riding on the Space Mountain rollercoaster ride at hell’s version of Disneyland, and he would be acting like an even bigger asshole than I already thought that he was.

Fifty Shades of Grey: Cyndi Lauper should seriously make a song called “Ana just wants to be miserable forever” (My thoughts on Chapter 2)

It’s been quite a while since I posted my thoughts post on the first chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey, so I decided that it was time to do a post on chapter two. As weird as it may sound, I’m actually doing my commentary on chapter two as a part of my preparation for reading and reviewing the first book in Sylvia Day’s book series Crossfire, which in case some of the people reading this are unaware is called Bared to You. Since I’ve heard a lot of people compare the Fifty Shades trilogy to the Crossfire series, I thought it might be a good idea to read and comment on at least one more chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey before I read Bared to You; that being said, here are my thoughts on chapter two.

I’d like to start out by mentioning that reading this chapter in order to review it was a part of my third or fourth attempt at reading the first three chapters of the book. For the most part, my having to start reading the book all over again several times isn’t necessarily a reflection on the book itself. However, I do maintain my opinion that this is a pretty terrible book. I started reading this book the first time back in June I believe, and I was originally going to comment on more than one chapter at a time. Once I actually got started reading the book, I realized how horrible it was and quickly decided that commenting on more than one chapter of the book at a time would probably result in my posts being the longest piece of writing in the history of the written language. Just reading and commenting on one chapter of the book at a time leaves me with a great deal of things to talk and rant about. Unfortunately, I ended up having a lot of health problem starting at the beginning of July that I was dealing with all the way until around the middle of September, which didn’t leave me with enough time where I would be able to read the book and write posts on it since I was constantly surrounded by doctors, nurse, family, friends, etc. during that time. Once I got to a point where I had time to read any books and review them, I got really into reading Emma Chase’s book series Tangled and wanted to start reviewing those books, which are MUCH, MUCH, MUCH better than the Fifty Shades trilogy. Long story short, here I am again, finally commenting on chapter two of Fifty Shades of Grey.

Another reason why it has taken me so long to read and comment on this chapter, and this reason is definitely reflection upon the book is the fact that it’s fourteen pages long. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t consider having a chapter of a book being fourteen pages long to be all that long of a chapter. However, when it comes to this particular chapter, it seemed like the chapter was a lot longer than that as I was reading it though. There were times during my earlier attempts to read this book where I got so bored reading this chapter that I literally fell asleep reading it. I would say that it was mostly due to the fact that for most of the chapter I felt like I was reading a written summary of Ana’s daily life, which seems to focus mainly on her mentally dwelling on how embarrassed she felt about interviewing Christian and thinking bitchy thoughts about Kate as she tried to go about her usual routine of going to work at Clayton’s Hardware Store, working on her schoolwork, and hanging out with Kate and another friend of hers, José. 

Fifty Shades of Grey: My long descent into hell begins… (My thoughts on Chapter 1)

I’ve decided to read the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy by E.L. James for my next foray into reviewing books for my blog. Although, for the record I might read a different book before I read Fifty Shades Darker since I did read the first several chapters of this book several months ago, and I can already tell that this book is pretty bad, and I don’t know if I want to subject myself to reading the entire trilogy all at once instead of taking a break between each of the books. For the record, I’m fairly familiar with what happens in all three of the books since I’ve read a lot of Jenny Trout’s chapter by chapter recaps of the entire trilogy (Jenny Reads | Trout Nation). If you’ve never read them, I strongly recommend checking out Jenny’s recaps because they are incredibly hilarious, yet very insightful. I’m going to state right upfront that once I finish reading the book, I won’t be giving it a final score, because after reading Jenny Trout’s recaps for most of the chapters in this book, I think that even giving this book a 1 out of 10 would be too generous of a rating, and I’m sure that by the time I finish reading this book, I’ll have already ranted about the book more than enough, so officially giving the book a 0 for a final rating would just be beating a dead horse. That being said, here are my thoughts on the first chapter of the book.

After reading this chapter again in order to write this post, along with chapters two and three, which I read several months ago, I definitely don’t like Ana Steele as a fictional character, at all, and reading the first chapter again in order to write this post definitely didn’t change my opinion of Ana for the better. A major pet peeve of mine is when people are very judgmental about something or someone that they know very little, if anything about, so as I’ve reflected on my thoughts of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, I’ve tried my absolute best to not be too much judgmental of E.L. James since I’ve never even met her, but I have to admit that’s definitely been a real struggle for me at this point.

One question that’s really plagued me when it comes to the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy is whether or not the reader is supposed to actually like or care about Ana as a character, or Christian for that matter. Ana acts rather insufferable, self-centered and unlikable pretty much as soon as the book begins and she’s getting ready to go interview Christian Grey for her college’s school newspaper because her best friend Kate, who’s the editor of the school newspaper, got sick and therefore can’t go interview Christian herself. After complaining to the reader about Kate for about a page and a half, she then all of the sudden says that Kate is apparently her very best friend in the whole world. One thing that really bothered me about Ana in the first chapter is on page four where it says, “I ignore my pang of unwelcome sympathy.” as she’s complaining about Kate and how she has a paper to finish, final exams to study for and that she also has work later that day, while outwardly acting like she’s willing to go interview Christian for Kate. 

Revolution: Not since Power Rangers has a TV show forced me to completely leave my brain at the door in order for me to be able to enjoy it (My thoughts on season one of Revolution) (Part 4 of 4)

(Part Four: Conclusion/Follow-up)

All things considered, Revolution is very flawed, but as I said earlier, I definitely saw potential for the show to be good when I watched the first episode, which is why I was willing to give it another chance and watched the second episode. While the episode “The Children’s Crusade” is ultimately the episode that won me over as a viewer and convinced me to start watching the show on a regular basis, I feel like the show slowly started to hit its stride starting with the episode “The Plague Dogs”, especially considering the way they handled Maggie’s death. The show definitely got a lot better throughout the course of the entire season though, especially in the second half of the season.

If there’s one episode that I think more highly of compared to the rest of the season, it’s definitely “The Children’s Crusade” since it’s the episode that got me hooked on the show in the first place. It did a really good job of explaining why Rachel and Ben chose to get involved with something that went on to have catastrophic consequences for the entire world. They did it because they believed it was the only way that they could ultimately save the life of their unborn child, Danny, who needed a special kind of medical treatment in order to live. I’m not a parent so I’ve never been in a situation like Rachel and Ben were in, but for some reason whenever I think about that aspect of the episode, I can’t help but think of Star Trek and Spock’s famous line in the movie The Wrath of Kahn: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

I don’t think Rachel and Ben should have necessarily let Danny die just to spare the rest of the world from being hurt by the turning off all the power, but the whole thing definitely sounds a little extreme to me just to save Danny’s life. It reminds me a lot of Once Upon a Time and how Regina/The Evil Queen cast a curse that sent everybody in the enchanted forest to a town in “our world” where time was frozen, they couldn’t leave Storybrooke or remember who they were all to get revenge on Snow White for telling her mother, Cora, about her plans to run off with the man she loved, prompting Cora to kill him. Not only did it seem beyond extreme to me, it was definitely a serious case of misplaced blame, but I digress.

If Rachel and Ben took some time to think about it and negotiate with the people who wanted their technology, I just think they might have been able to come to an agreement that was less extreme. I suppose the writers having their decision to get involved with those people be motivated by them viewing it as the only way to save the life of their unborn child is a much better motivation than perhaps having their motivation be driven solely by greed or money. Regardless of the fact that I think their actions were rather extreme, “The Children’s Crusade” is still a great episode that answered some of the audience’s questions, had a nice blend of drama and comedy and was simply an altogether awesome episode. While I hold the episode “The Children’s Crusade” in very high regard, which is part of why I’ve mentioned it so many times throughout this review, I also think very highly of the season finale (“The Dark Tower”).

Nikita Exclusive: 24's Sarah Clarke Spies Top-Secret Role-TVLine

Nikita has recruited Sarah Clarke, the 24 alum fans loved to hate, for a top-secret role, TVLine has learned exclusively.

Clarke — who made a name for herself as CTU mole Nina Myers on 24 — will appear during the second half of Season 2 of The CW’s action-drama (airing Fridays at 8/7c). Yet all other details surrounding her role (character, episode count, first airdate) thus far are being kept under wraps.

Nikita Exclusive: Alphas Star Lays Down the Law

Neither do we know if Clarke will get to share scenes with her real-life husband, Xander Berekely, whom she met on 24 and who now plays Nikita‘s Percy.

Clarke’s recent credits include TNT’s Men of a Certain Age and playing mom to Bella Swan in the Twilight movies.

This article was written by Megan Masters.

Link to the original article:Nikita Exclusive: 24's Sarah Clarke Spies Top-Secret Role - TVLine