Title: JamAuthor: Yahtzee Croshaw
Original title: Jam
Genre: Sci-fi
Series: --
Publisher: Black Horse
Format: Paperback
Pages: 398
Finished: 09/09/2017
Summary: We were prepared for an earthquake. We had a flood plan in place. We could even have dealt with zombies. Probably. But no one expected the end to be quite so…sticky…or strawberry scented.
My thoughts: Um... okay... So, this is an apocalypse survival story where, basically, the Australian city of Brisbane has been completely flooded by human eating strawberry Jam. We follow our main protagonist Travis, who used to be an unemployed, inactive young man that shared an apartment with two other guys. Now he's got his hands full with surviving the jampocalypse and he meets new people, like the angry and bitter Don, the curious and righteous Angela, and the hude and hariy spider Mary. Sounds bizarre? It is.
There is a fine line between humour/comedy and just plain weirdness. When does something go from being odd and funny to strange and perplexing? This book is a fine example for when that line is kind of blurred and sometimes crossed, but not always. The novel starts out better than it ends. There is a charm to the beginning that doesn't quite last for the 400 pages that it plays out on. So what's the beginning like? It's quirky, exciting, confounding, humorous and very, very weird. The characters are all eccentric and interesting, the jam is strange, and as a reader you are thrown over by how quickly the pace just picks up from page one and keeps going. I was not bored for a moment when reading this book, however even constant excitement can give a negative effect sometimes. At times I found it exhausting to read even 20 pages, just because it never slows down. We get no breaks. After a while you get used to it, but it can be tough during the first 50 pages or so.
The jam is fun and all, for about 100 pages. Then it started losing its quirky charm and became just jam. And with the charm of the jam fell the comedy of the plot as well. It sort of went from being a bizarre and funny adventure novel to a more serious dystopian/post apocalyptic type of theme. Even though a few characters really did grow on me, I stopped laughing out loud at the funny things they said or did. I guess I got too used to how the novel was written, and therefore it did not continue to surprise me anymore. A novel like this wins on surprising its reader over and over again, however since it's so long, it loses that effect about halfway through, even earlier for me.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did indeed pick itself up again after that dip in the middle. I started falling more for the loveable characters, and when the Jam did not succeed to entertain me, they certainly did. So in the end, I did really enjoy this, even though I sound pretty negative talking about it. It was weird, true, but it was good even so. I would recommend it to anyone who's looking to enjoy a fun, exciting, and strange adventure.
Rating: 3,5/5
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Title: Alla mina vänner är superhjältarAuthor: Andrew Kaufman
Original title: All My Friends Are Superheroes
Genre: Fantasy
Series: --
Publisher: Printz Publishing
Format: Paperback
Pages: 108
Finished: 10/09/2017
Summary: All Tom's friends really are superheroes. Tom even married a superhero, the Perfectionist. But at their wedding the Perfectionist is hypnotized by her ex, Hypno, to believe that Tom is invisible. Nothing he does can make her see him.
Six months later the Perfectionist is sure that Tom has abandoned her, so she's moving to Vancouver. She's going to use her superpower to leave all the heartbreak behind. With no idea that Tom is beside her she boards the plane: Tom has until they touch down to convince her he's there, or he loses her forever...
My thoughts: This is a book that makes me go "oh, alright" and then that's it. I didn't dislike reading this book, but neither did it have me blown away by its awesomeness. It was pretty ok. The writing style was a bit different from what's common; short sentences and a repetitive language. Nothing spectacular. The premise is original, but the execution is ordinary. It was a bit quirky, but not strange, and it was a bit cute with the romance side of it, but not something to drool over. It was a good thing that it was so short. Not that I didn't like it, but dragging the plot out might have made it boring.
I guess I liked it alright. I probably won't remember it forever.
Rating: 3/5
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Title: Niceville
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Original title: The Help
Genre: Historical, contemporary
Series: --
Publisher: Forum
Format: Hardback/audio book
Pages: 407
Finished: 21/10/2017
Summary: Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, who's always taken orders quietly, but lately she's unable to hold her bitterness back. Her friend Minny has never held her tongue but now must somehow keep secrets about her employer that leave her speechless. White socialite Skeeter just graduated college. She's full of ambition, but without a husband, she's considered a failure. Together, these seemingly different women join together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South, that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town...
My thoughts: What a great book... Really, it did exceed my expectations. This review is written a rather long while after I finished the audio book (yes I listened to the majority of it, and it was great, still counts as reading it, yesyes), and I still remember it with warmth and hold it in high regards. I read this book for English class together with my friend Matilda. I'd owned the book since a while back, and I was really happy to get the opportunity to read it so soon.
So why did I like it so much? Well, to give a quick roundup, I liked the plot, which was at first divided between the different characters to then merge together into one. It was so interesting and you really didn't know what was going to happen. With most books, you can predict if the ending is going to be happy or sad, but I didn't know with this one until the actual end. Keeping on my toes from page one to the last, I had a hard time putting it down. Moreover, the characters really stood out to me. They were like actual people, and not only characters created with the purpose to be "the evil character" or something. To be fair, some of the characters did appear to be downright evil to me, but they were still like actual people. We follow three main characters; Aibileen, a black lady who's been working as a maid for white families for many years, Minny, Aibileen's friend with an attitude who has the same job, and Skeeter, a white young lady whose eyes are about to be opened. The writing was good, the dialogues were realistic, and the whole thing was just a downright pleasure to read.
Rating: 4,5/5
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