The Tattooed Heart, Michael Grant

Pages: 390

Publisher: Electric Monkey

Release Date: 27^th August 2015

Edition: UK paperback, purchased

Other titles by this Author: Gone, Hunger, Lies, Plague, Fear, Light, BSRK, BSRK: Reloaded, BSRK: Apocalypse, Eve and Adam, Messenger of Fear

He is the Messenger

Be afraid

A group of people were walking slowly up the road towards us. Four of the men carried something, and I could already guess that it was a funeral procession.

“Why are we here?” I asked.

“This is the victim,” Messenger said. “Our business is with the ones responsible. The wickedness we pursue is not murder, but murder’s source.

It is hatred we pursue. Hatred.”

Messenger and Mara serve the balance. They seek out injustice and punish the wicked. But their world is changing and everything depends on the decisions Mara makes. The Messenger’s apprentice is about to face her greatest test…

I bought Messenger of Fear last year with no expectations, only the knowledge that I had enjoyed what I’d read of the Gone series, and it ended up being one of my favourites of the year. The Tattooed Heart was equally as brilliant.

In the beginning of Mara’s apprenticeship with the Messenger of Fear, she was mainly discovering what on earth had landed her in such in punishment, trying to get to grips with the new life she faced and learning the ropes of being a Messenger. In this we see her more sure of herself in the duties she will face, the powers she has the decisions the severe punishments she will have to dish out. Even though her confidence is rising, the surrounding consequences are hitting home. The loneliness and the expanse of time she will be lonely for are weighing down on her, affecting everything she sees as she follows the case of a young drug addict, ODing alone and desperate and a boy riddled with bullets in an effort to protect his female classmates from those wanting to forbid them from going to school.

I really like how Mara’s story runs alongside several smaller plots of the cases she has to follow to determine the guilty party and offer them a game. It allows issues such as abuse, racism, manipulation, rape, morality, prejudice and many others to be discussed without it feeling like it’s thrown in your face, although there are a fair few scenes that are still difficult to read. The realisation that you can never really know what the repercussions or chain reaction even the smallest action can cause is scary and really makes you think twice about what you say and do, especially when it comes to the feelings and lives of others.

Mara genuinely regrets what she did to take her on this journey by this point, but she still has some residual feelings that led her to that place: an overwhelming desire to be loved. And to love in return, of course. I really liked how that played out for Mara. She could easily have taken the route of selfishness and desperation to provide her with what she thought would soften the edges of her new life, but what she actually did really showed just how much she had transformed over the course of the story. It actually even made me well up a little! She suddenly became worthy of getting to the other side of being the Messenger of Fear, in the many, many years when that will happen.

The Tattooed Heart is a touching and bittersweet ending to a fantastic duology and though Mara and Messenger’s story concluded wonderfully, I definitely wouldn’t say no to more from them!

Sophie 

From Page to Screen: Blue is the Warmest Color

Original title: La vie d’Adèle

Released: 22^nd November 2013

Running Time: 179 mins

Rating: 18

LÉA SEYDOUX ~ Emma

ADÈLE EXARCHOPOLOUS ~ Adèle

JÉRÉMIE LAHEURTE ~ Thomas

SANDOR FUNTEK ~ Valentin

MON WALRAVENS ~ Lise

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

(from imdb.com)

Adèle’s life changes when she meets Emma, a young artist with blue hair, who allows her to discover desire, assert herself as a woman and as an adult. In front of others, Adèle grows, seeks herself, loses herself and ultimately finds herself through love and loss.

TRAILER

VERDICT

Julie Maroh’s graphic novel is one of my favourite reads of this year so I knew I had to watch the adaptation as I knew that it had been both revered by critics and received serious criticism from the LGBT community. I thoroughly enjoyed Blue is the Warmest Color, but I did have a few issues.

I was a little hesitant about watching a film that was both incredibly and in French, and I handled them both pretty well actually! I usually watch films as a background which I couldn’t do with this one. I like to listen to what’s going on and look up whenever I fancy it but that’s just impossible for a subtitled film – I wouldn’t have had a clue what was going on. I’d never seen a subtitled film before but I found it pretty easy to adjust to and I found myself just taking in the words on the screen as part of the image which was cool. On the other hand, three hours is a long time to concentrate like that and I had to switch from watching it on the Netflix TV channel to my iPad so I had something in my hands. I don’t think that Blue is the Warmest Color is unnecessarily long but I don’t know if I’ll be dedicating so much time on it in the near future.

The length of this film allows Emma and Adèle’s love story to be told against a completely ordinary background. We saw their relationship through from first meeting to tearful goodbye and it felt very intimate and real. It never felt like the actresses playing Emma and Adèle were acting; I was just watching Emma and Adèle’s story play out. There was very little background music and no evocative montage scenes, just the natural movement of their relationship. There are constant close ups of their faces, intrusively personal shots and lengthy, explicit sex scenes. It wasn’t until the sex scenes that I realised how male the gaze is on Emma and Adèle’s relationship. The scenes are almost pornographic and they felt like they lasted for ages; for me, it took the emotion and the connection between Emma and Adèle out of the equation after a while and I just wanted to carry on with the story.

This is no doubt that this a beautiful film that’s very worth watching but don’t be expecting it to be the same as the graphic novel. There’s a really pivotal moment in the graphic novel where Adèle’s parents discover her relationship with Emma and it alters everything but there wasn’t a moment like that at all, in fact, both sets of parents completely disappear from the movie after maybe two appearances. And the entire second half of the story was utterly different and I didn’t feel nearly as satisfied with the film ending as I did with the novel ending. Though it was much less dramatic and a lot less sad it also didn’t have nearly as much impact than the original.

All in all, Blue is the Warmest Color is a wonderful film that’s definitely worth watching, but in my opinion, the graphic novel is still better. You should do both, but read the original first!

Sophie 

Another Day, David Levithan

Pages: 400

Publisher: Electric Monkey

Release Date: 30^th July 2015

Edition: UK e-proof, NetGalley review copy

Other Titles by this Author: Boy Meets Boy, The Realm of Possibility, Are We There Yet?, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (with Rachel Cohn), Wide Awake, Naomi & Eli’s No-Kiss List (with Rachel Cohn), Love is the Higher Law, Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green), The Lover’s Dictionary, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares (with Rachel Cohn), Invisibility (with Andrea Cremer), Every Day, How They Met and Other Stories, Two Boys Kissing, Hold Me Closer

Eagerly anticipated companion novel to the internationally acclaimed bestselling title Every Day.

Every day is the same for Rhiannon. She has convinced herself that she deserves her distant, moody boyfriend, Justin. She knows the rules: Don’t be needy. Avoid upsetting him. Never get your hopes up.

Then, out of the blue, they share a perfect day together – perfect, that is, until Justin doesn’t remember anything about it. Confused, and yearning for another day as great as that one, Rhiannon starts to question everything. And that’s when a stranger tells her the Justin she spent that time with…wasn’t Justin at all.

Every Day captured so many hearts with the tale of A, a boy who lives each day inside a different body and what happens when he falls in love with a girl called Rhiannon. Another Day launches us into the confusing life of Rhiannon as she tries to wrap her head around the most complicated love story she’s ever encountered.

I have to admit that when I started Another Day I hardly remembered Every Day. It wasn’t until I started reading that a few things came back and others felt familiar, and I’m glad it went that way. Rhiannon’s story begins on the day that A wakes up in the body of Justin, Rhiannon’s boyfriend and they spend a magical day at the beach together. The story runs alongside Every Day and I genuinely think that, even though they of course had slightly different focuses and an alternate perspective, I would have found it very samey otherwise.

The thing I enjoyed most about Rhiannon’s side of the story was seeing her relationship with Justin first hand. He really isn’t very nice. He clearly has a lot of issues, personal and family ones, but the way he spoke and treated Rhiannon made me RAGEY. As Rhiannon fell out of love with him and more and more in love with A the conversation of gender came up a lot and the discussion was really interesting. Rhiannon spent a lot of time wondering whether her love for A could traverse gender and physical attraction and how automatic her gendered language and assumptions are. It’s definitely an interesting topic that deserves for exploration.

Another Day is a beautiful story of love, gender and identity.

Thanks to NetGalley and Electric Monkey for the review copy.

Sophie       

Letterbox Love #100

Letterbox Love is a way to show you all of the lovely, lovely books I’ve gotten in the post, bought and everything else over the last week. Summaries are taken from the cover, or Amazon/NetGalley/Goodreads in the case of e-books, unless otherwise stated.

For review:

Unbecoming, Jenny Downham (hardback)

Three women – three secrets – one heart-stopping story.

Katie, seventeen, in love with someone whose identity she can't reveal.

Her mother Caroline, uptight, worn out and about to find the past catching up with her.

Katie’s grandmother, Mary, back with the family after years of mysterious absence and ‘capable of anything’, despite suffering from Alzheimer’s.

As Katie cares for an elderly woman who brings daily chaos to her life, she finds herself drawn to her. Rules get broken as allegiances shift. Is Mary contagious? Is ‘badness’ genetic?

In confronting the past, Katie is forced to seize the present. As Mary slowly unravels and family secrets are revealed, Katie learns to live and finally dares to love.

Funny, sad, honest and wise, Unbecoming is a celebration of life, and learning to honour your own stories.

I’ve heard endless wonderful things and I’m super excited. Thanks ED PR!

Sophie 

First Class Murder, Robin Stevens

Pages: 315

Publisher: Corgi

Release Date: 30^th July 2015

Edition: UK paperback, purchased

Other Titles in this Series: Murder Most Unladylike, Arsenic for Tea

Daisy’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, Hazel, we are up against an extremely cunning murderer – a worthy opponent for our third case! I have the feeling that this may be the Detective Society’s most exciting adventure yet!’

Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are taking a holiday on the famous Orient Express. From the moment the girls step aboard, it’s clear that everyone in the first-class carriage has something to hide.

Then there is a scream from one of the cabins, and a wealthy heiress is found dead. But the killer has vanished – as if into thin air…

Daisy and Hazel are faced with their first locked-room mystery – and with competition from several other sleuths, who are just as determined to crack the case.

Hazel and Daisy are stepping aboard the Orient Express for a well-deserved holiday from being detectives with Mr Wong. Until there’s a mysterious murder, that is.

First of all: I want to go on the Orient Express, always have done, and now I want to even more (weirdly). Just had to get that out of the way.

The sudden death of Mrs Georgiana Daunt sends those in the Calais to Istanbul carriage into a tail spin. There’s a murderer among them and even though it’s the most difficult case Hazel and Daisy have faced yet, they’re determined to be the first to crack the case. As well as being forbidden to detect by Mr Wong and being closely watched by a surprising familiar face on the train, they also have to contend with a locked-room murder, lots of big personalities for suspects and confusing evidence.

But solve it they did. It was really cool to see Hazel prove to her dad that she knows what she’s doing and that she’s not just a follower of Daisy as she often gets accused of throughout the novel. We also got to learn a little more about Mr Wong (there was one snippet of blasé information that Hazel shared which threw me for a loop – lots of Googling ensued) and it hinted at how Hazel would have been brought up before coming to Deepdean. And sadly, her and her dad were still faced with racism, even in the elite carriages of the Orient Express – a holiday that requires wealth and luxury. It continues to make me sad, but I’m glad it's there. I hope that maybe some kids reading this who might have been brought up with racist attitudes in their households will see how disgusting it is when reading through hazel’s eyes. We can only hope!    

Once again I failed to solve the murder – I’ll never make it as a member of the Detective Society… - and thoroughly enjoyed it. First Class Murder is a charming, funny and addictive instalment in the Wells and Wong Mysteries and I’m ready for the next one, please and thank you.

Sophie