I’ve been sort of neglecting writing about books in the last 3 or 4 months. I haven’t been reading as much as I normally do and I also haven’t found a book that I really love and want to talk about. However I did buy 3 new books on the last week of last term, when I was down in Perth on a school sporting camp.
The first book I bought was Shadow Girl by John Larkin. I started reading this book a few weeks ago but I haven’t gotten into it and have yet to finish. It is about a girl who is/was homeless and how she became homeless and things that happened to her while she was. It is written in a strange format, with half the chapters written as an interview type way, with the author talking to the shadow girl. The other half is written in the shadow girl’s point of view about things that happened to her. It is weird way to write, I have never seen it before, and it is confusing me and I am unable to concentate while reading it.
The second book I got was Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. She also wrote the book I talked about in my first post, Carry On. I enjoyed reading her work and so I bought another of her books. The story follows Cath and is written in third person. She has a twin sister, called Wren, who has been her best friend since she could remember. When they both move out to go to college Wren suggests not sharing a room. So Cath ends up with a girl called Reagan. Cath is the kind of girl who would rather sit at home reading while Wren is a party girl, going out and getting drunk with her new roommate and BFF. Cath struggles at college, not used to being on her own so far from home and without her sister. Family problems arise and Cath finds herself stuck in the middle. Carry On and Fangirl have a weird relationship. They are kind of a series but at the same time not really. In Fangirl, Cath is writing a fanfiction, what she thinks the yet to be released final book of a fictional series should be like. Carry On is Rainbow Rowells fanfiction on what she thinks the last book of the fictional series should be. I imagined Cath’s fanfiction to be very similar to the way Rainbow Rowells wrote it and I was confused for a long time about the books relationship. (It took my sister a solid half an hour to explain all this to me)
The final book I bought was called If I Was Your Girl and it was written by Meredith Russo. It is about a transgender girl (so she was born a boy but now identifies as a girl), Amanda, and about her life after she moves to a new school. She moves because of what happened at her old school. No one knows what Amanda’s life used to be like and she has no intention of anyone knowing. She makes friends with a girl named Bee who she grows close to in their ‘Art’ lessons. (The teacher wasn’t at school, they were away on holidays, but the girls would have to go to PE so they pretend they have a teacher for a solid two terms) Amanda and Bee play the Honesty game and it ends with Bee coming out as bisexual and Amanda admitting she used to be a boy. Amanda is amazed to have found such a great friend but can she really trust Bee? I loved this book so much as it was not something I would normally read but it was interesting to learn and find out about subjects that people don’t really talk about like LGBTQ. It was kind of cliche with the whole new girl meets friends, gets accepted, meets a boy but then it also has the drama of her being transgender and no one knowing. She doesn’t know how to open up to anyone and is shutting everyone out, leading them to believe she doesn’t like them. But the truth always finds a way of getting out and jealously comes into play, Amanda is in for a whole lot more than she bargained. I don’t really fully support how the story ends I think their could have been some more on what happened, it was a little bit of a cliffhanger but there is no next book. Other than that minor detail I would fully recommend this book to anyone that wants to read a good book.