Review: Rooms by Lauren Oliver

Rooms by Lauren Oliver (reading copy) - Compulsive and powerful ghost story narrated by two spirits who inhabit the walls of an old house. It's a tale of family, ghosts, secrets, and mystery, in which the lives of the living and the dead intersect in shocking, surprising, and moving ways.

Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged family - bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving daughter Minna - have arrived for their inheritance.

But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house itself - in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a light bulb.

The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide - with cataclysmic results. From Goodreads.

Being the huge fan of Lauren Oliver's novels that I am, I was really excited when I first heard that Oliver wrote an adult book, Rooms, about ghosts and secrets and the past. However, I didn't enjoy Rooms as much as I hoped.

When Richard Walker dies, the family he has left returns to sort out his belongings and to discover what they have inherited, partly hoping they've inherited his wealth, partly wanting to be well away from the house and all it's memories. The lives of Caroline, Richard's ex wife, and their daughter Minna and son Trenton weren't happy ones when they lived together. Caroline drinks to forget and to cope, Minna struggles to find any kind of happiness, and tries to get what little she can in the wrong places, and Trenton, who feels worthless and unloved, believes there's only one way out. But they are not alone in the house. The ghosts of Alice and Sandra, previous tenants of the house, are living in the walls. The house is their body, and also hides their own secrets. The arrival of the family upsets their peace, with squabbles and noise and movement. The pasts and secrets of them all collide in the days the family are there, and all that is buried will come to light.

What I love most about Oliver is her writing style. I have raved about her writing and imagery countless times before, and the beauty of her words can be found within the pages of Rooms. However, the story just didn't interest me as much as I thought it would. I found it to be very slow, and most of the characters so self-absorbed. They all had their issues, and I did feel sorry for them, but I couldn't bring myself to really care.

Each person has a chance at narrating; Sandra and Alice each narrate their stories in first person, and we have third person narration from Caroline, Trenton, Minna, and occasionally, Amy, Minna's daughter. They each have a story, and we jump from one to the other, all the while following what's happening in the present. I'm not new to stories that jump about, nor averse to them, but it just didn't work for me with Rooms. I found the plot quite slow as it was, but it feels even slower when you jump from one person's past to another.

Sadly, Rooms just didn't work for me. But it is a really interesting premise, and I do think this is a story a lot of other people would enjoy. It just isn't my book, unfortunately.

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for the reading copy.



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Published: 25th September 2014
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Lauren Oliver's Website

Review: The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle (proof) - It's the accident season, the same time every year. Bones break, skin tears, bruises bloom.

The accident season has been part of seventeen-year-old Cara's life for as long as she can remember. Towards the end of October, foreshadowed by the deaths of many relatives before them, Cara's family becomes inexplicably accident-prone. They banish knives to locked drawers, cover sharp table edges with padding, switch off electrical items - but injuries follow wherever they go, and the accident season becomes an ever-growing obsession and fear.

But why are they so cursed? And how can they break free? From Goodreads.

A number of months ago, when discussing upcoming LGBTQ YA,  Charlie Morris highly recommended The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle, so I requested a review copy. I resisted reading it until recently due to not being able to discuss it for months if I read it sooner, but I kind of wish I had! It's SO good!

Every October is the accident season for the Morris family. They will bump, they will slip, they will trip, they will fall, and there will be torn skin, blood, and broken bones. Every October. No-one knows why this happens, but Cara and Alice, and their ex-stepbrother, Sam, must put up with the extra layers, the the padding around the house and the removal of certain electronic devices like the kettle their mother/guardian insists on. Because the accident season is no joke; family members have died. October is a time when everyone is on edge. So when Cara discovers that someone, Elsie, a girl from school, is in every single one of her photos - an elbow, the back of her head, a shoe - Cara starts to worry. Why is Elsie in every photo? Is she following her? And why has she suddenly stopped coming to school? It looks like she's disappeared, but Cara is determined to find her and get her answers, with the help of Sam and her best friend Bea. Secrets abound, but during the accident season, it might be safer if secrets stay undiscovered.

The Accident Season is incredible! It's atmospheric, haunting, and completely mesmerising! There is so much intrigue to the mystery behind the accident season and what's going on with Elsie. I couldn't stop turning the pages, desperate to know what was happening, what was behind everything. It's not a horror story, but it has such a creepy vibe, an eerie feeling that something is watching Cara, Alice, Sam and their mother/Melanie, causing these accidents at the precise moment. With every scrape, cut, bruise, broken bone and near-miss, it felt like watching a Final Destination movie. You read in a constant state of trepidation, with a sense of foreboding, knowing something terrible could happen at any moment.

I loved how I was never completely sure what was real and what wasn't, continually guessing. There was the accident season, there was Elsie's disappearance, yet still turning up in the photos, the changeling siblings - Fae creatures that Cara dreams about, whose looks and lives have similarities to Cara, Alice, Sam and Bea. Then small things, like a shop that can't be found a second time, or a frozen river when it's so hot out. Plus there's Bea's interest in tarot and her mystical stories, and strange things turning up in a wooded clearing. It's absolutely gripping, and I have no idea what to class this book as! Contemporary fantasy? Magic realism? Paranormal? Something else altogether? Either way, it's brilliant!

The various romances in The Accident Season are subplots, which was nice. The focus was firmly on the weird and the strange, and the romance aspects happened alongside all that. There is an LGBTQ element to the story, but it's not explicitly stated. Sexuality isn't discussed*, what is discussed is a character's feelings for another character, but nothing more than that, nothing about identities. It's about the romance, not sexuality. Some might argue that this should be developed further, but I feel the romance in the book is treated just as romance, rather than straight romance or LGBTQ romance. It's all the same, and I think this is great.

This review hasn't done The Accident Season justice. I don't know if I can. It's delightfully suspenseful, deliciously ominous, and incredibly exciting! I absolutely adored The Accident Season, it's an unbelievably good debut novel! I just wish it was longer! There is no doubt I'll be reading whatever Fowley-Doyle writes next. She's going to be one to watch.

*Although sexuality isn't discussed, I know it's important to see yourself represented in the books you read, so, although it's not actually printed, from what I've read, I would say the characters would identify as bisexual. But I'm not the author, so I could be wrong here.

Thank you to Corgi Children's Books for the proof.



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Published: 2nd July 2015
Publisher: Corgi Children's Book
The Accident Season Website
Moïra Fowley-Doyle on Tumblr

Review: Another Day by David Levithan

Another Day by David Levithan (review copy) - WARNING! I cannot review this book without spoiling the others in the series. Read no further if you're planning on reading this series and don't want it spoilt for you.

In this enthralling companion to his New York Times bestseller Every Day, David Levithan tells Rhiannon’s side of the story as she seeks to discover the truth about love and how it can change you.

Every day is the same for Rhiannon. She has accepted her life, convinced herself that she deserves her distant, temperamental boyfriend, Justin, even established guidelines by which to live: Don’t be too needy. Avoid upsetting him. Never get your hopes up.

Until the morning everything changes. Justin seems to see her, to want to be with her for the first time, and they share a perfect day—a perfect day Justin doesn’t remember the next morning. Confused, depressed, and desperate for another day as great as that one, Rhiannon starts questioning everything. Then, one day, a stranger tells her that the Justin she spent that day with, the one who made her feel like a real person... wasn’t Justin at all. From Goodreads.

If your heart can be stolen by a book, then mine was stolen by Every Day by David Levithan. It's a beautiful story that deeply affected me, one I'll always remember - one I still get choked up when thinking about it. Since hearing Levithan was going to write a companion novel from Rhiannon's point of view, I have been desperate to read it. Another day is also a beautiful story, but in a different way.

Rhiannon is stuck in an unhappy relationship that she kids herself is a good one. Justin is moody, inconsiderate and down right rude to her, but she makes her excuses for him. She feels she is proven right when she and Justin spend this one beautiful day at the beach; it's a good day, Justin is caring and attentive, and makes her feel special. But the days following, Justin reverts back to type; distant, uncaring, rude. He doesn't seem to fully remember the day they spent together at the beach. But then she meets a girl who tells her it wasn't Justin that day. She tells her she's A, a person who wakes up each and every day in a different body, and it was A she spent the day with. A wants to be a part of Rhiannon's life, but it's so much for her to take in, to deal with. But can she walk away from someone who's shown her exactly what's it's like to be loved?

My love for Every Day knows no bounds. Considering Another Day is the exact same story from a different perspective, I knew exactly what was going to happen, and I was hoping and expecting the same roller-coaster of emotions. I didn't really get that. There were a lot of emotions, but they were for different reasons. To be perfectly honest, I didn't feel Rhiannon's feelings for A were as believable as A's for Rhiannon. I just didn't really feel it - not until later, anyway. But it's still a really fascinating story!

What we get with this story that we don't with Every Day is Rhiannon away from A. We get to know her as a person and not just see her the way A does. And there's a whole lot going on in her life that A doesn't get to see. I need to start off by talking about Rhiannon's relationship with Justin, because it was messed up. Despite what her friends tell her, Rhiannon can't see that being with Justin isn't good for her, that he isn't good for, or to, her. Even though he does care in his own way as we see later, it's an abusive relationship. He makes her feel like she's in the wrong all the time. She's too needy, she's not attentive to him enough to see he has a problem, she's not there for him, she isn't spending enough time with him, she doesn't need to pounce on him as soon as he arrives at school, she talks about the future too much... Nothing she does is right or good enough, and she's constantly walking on egg shells around him because she just doesn't know how he's going to react. Their relationship is exhausting and stressful, not just to Rhiannon, but to her friends too as they can see how badly he treats her. Thank god for A turning up!

It was wonderful being inside Rhiannon's head, and seeing her thoughts as well as her reactions to everything that happens between her and A. Once she got over the initial shock and accepted what A was telling her was true, it was brilliant to see how quickly she came to terms with the truth - by which I mean in accepting A for who they are, rather than their situation. Their situation was always going to be a difficult one, readers of Every Day already know this. But seeing the moment when she finally accepted this wasn't a trick or a prank, but A's actual life, and how she then started thinking of A was great. It really got Rhiannon thinking about gender, but also people in terms of who they are as well as what they look like. She thought of A as male, even thought she knew and understood A was neither and both at the same time. She would change the pronouns for A depending on the sex of the body A was in, though would sometimes include the opposite pronoun with a question mark in brackets after. There's a great part where Rhiannon questions how different we would all treat each other if there were no he/she, his/her pronouns, but one for all, and how it must be for A that there isn't one that fits for...him/her.

There's this fantastic image she comes up with about cars and drivers in relation to people. We need to care less about the car - the body of a person/what a person looks like - and care more about the driver - who is on the inside. It's such a wonderful idea, and it's one she really tries to put into practise. But it's also one she struggles with. She loves A, but she can't help that she's straight and not attracted to girls, or that there are certain guys she just doesn't find attractive. So she can't kiss A sometimes. She feels bad about it for A's sake, but struggles with the idea of having to do something she's uncomfortable with. It's the person on the inside the counts, the outside shouldn't matter... but sometimes it does.

Although I wasn't as emotionally invested in her relationship with A in this book as I was in Every Day, it was still really sweet to watch it develop. It wasn't until close to the end that I really started to feel it, when she decided it was just too much, and then having to live with that decision and how hard it was for her. I felt it then, the love that felt missing before. And the ending was so bittersweet, and it did really get me - I did get a little choked up. It was wonderfully sad and lovely and sweet and painful. But... it looks to me like it's been left open. That there is the possibility of a third book. I don't know if that's the plan, or if it's so the ending isn't tied up with a neat bow, that life goes on for characters after the last page, and perhaps not how you expect. It keeps you guessing about how the story for Rhiannon might continue. Where will her future take her? It's fun to think about, though I'm not denying I would be thrilled if there was a third book in the making. I would love to read that book! But I'd also be happy if this is it. The ending as it is works for me. It's great.

A really wonderful companion to a beautiful book. If you loved Every Day, it's imperative that you read Another Day.

Thank you to Electric Monkey for the review copy.



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Published: 30th July 2015
Publisher: Electric Monkey
David Levithan's Website

My other reviews from the series:
Every Day (Every Day Book 1)