Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Landline by Rainbow Rowell
Series: N/A
Source: Bought
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: July 8, 2014

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it’s been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply — but that almost seems beside the point now.

Maybe that was always beside the point.

Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her — Neal is always a little upset with Georgie — but she doesn’t expect to him to pack up the kids and go home without her.

When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.

That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts . . .

Is that what she’s supposed to do?

Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?

"So you think most people bet everything, their whole lives, on hope. Just hoping that what they're feeling is real."

Landline was a book that gave me several different conflicting emotions. I love Rainbow Rowell, because she can give me all of these emotions in such a simple way, but with this book it just seemed like they didn't fit together very well. Since this is the very beginning of my review, let me start with the ending of the book. It seems fitting, don't you think? To start with the ending?

Whether or not it makes sense, that's the way I'm starting. (Minor Spoiler, so skip over it to the next paragraph, if you'd like.) I liked the fact that Georgie and Neal get back together in the end, but it didn't really seem right. I kind of felt like it shouldn't have happened, like maybe they really would have been happier without each other. It seemed just a tad bit forced, and I don't like the idea of forcing romance where there isn't any. It just didn't fit for me.

But aside from that itty bitty problem, I actually enjoyed Landline while I was reading it. I liked the main character, Georgie. She was really sweet, and very depressed. Her prose just dripped with sadness and nostalgia, which I really loved. It seems amazing when you can feel the character's emotions just by the words that were used to describe them, so A+ for Rowell's writing skills.

I also liked the seamless way that the past and the present just blended together... like everything was happening side by side, in some kind of time loop. Which, in theory, I guess it was. The concept of the magical phone was really interesting - I didn't know how to react to it at first. But as I read on, I realized that it's not made out to be some sort of fantasy or anything, and Georgie thinks that she's totally crazy at first.

She's actually a bit afraid of the phone, and that was interesting. I liked her conversations with past Neal, but they really made me wonder about her current relationship with Neal, and at some times it just seemed really odd. It definitely raised a lot of fascinating moral questions; like was she pushing him to marry her in the past? Did she call him in the past as well, but this version of herself is just getting around to it? Is it inappropriate for her to talk sexually with the 25 year old version of her husband when she's forty now? Should she have told him about the time-traveling phone?

All in all, Landline was a pretty interesting read. I liked it, and it made me feel kind of nostalgic for the things I've never had. It was a good book.
 

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
Series: The Bone Season, #1
Source: Provided by the publisher for review
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: August 20, 2013

It is the year 2059. Several major world cities are under the control of a security force called Scion. Paige Mahoney works in the criminal underworld of Scion London, part of a secret cell known as the Seven Seals. The work she does is unusual: scouting for information by breaking into others’ minds. Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare kind of clairvoyant, and in this world, the voyants commit treason simply by breathing.

But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city—Oxford, erased from the map two centuries ago and now controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly—as soldiers in their army.

Paige is assigned to a Rephaite keeper, Warden, who will be in charge of her care and training. He is her master. Her natural enemy. But if she wants to regain her freedom, Paige will have to learn something of his mind and his own mysterious motives.

The Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine—a young woman learning to harness her powers in a world where everything has been taken from her. It also introduces an extraordinary young writer, with huge ambition and a teeming imagination. Samantha Shannon has created a bold new reality in this riveting debut.

I had this really great intro planned, but unfortunately, I didn't write down when I thought of it; so it's just completely buried in the crevices of my mind - a truly scary thought. So that's been lost. But I have a new one... kind of.

I guess I'll start out by saying that I did enjoy The Bone Season - and the reason the rating is only because of how slow the reading went. Otherwise, it would have been a solid four stars. But as is, it's only 3.5. I guess it was just a little hard for me to process everything as I was reading it - I had to keep taking breaks. But other than that, I really didn't have any problems with it.

I liked the futuristic world building, which was rich and interesting. It's always a good thing when the author makes such an effort to make the world something special. The descriptions and experiences were weird and lucid and beautiful.

Also, the dystopian society was very interesting. I'd have never thought of such a complex world of seers and Rephaim; not to mention the tinfoil hat-ness that made my inner conspiracy theorist so happy!

On another note, the relationship between Paige and Warden really confused me. For most of the book, it felt like Paige really hated Warden, but it also felt like she just had to help him, no matter how much she despised him. Which was kind of amazing. We rarely see badass female characters that have a sense of compassion, and I loved that Samantha Shannon gave us that. She was softhearted, but she tried to hide it behind a tough exterior.

Warden, on the other hand, was much harder to get a read on. He was compassionate as well, but he just wasn't around near as much as Paige, so I didn't really form a big attachment to him. He was okay, but not that fabulous. I liked them together, and that kiss was fantabulous, but I'll have to read more about him before I truly make a decision on his character.

All in all, The Bone Season was an interesting read. I liked it, even if it was a little slow. And I really liked the fact that the ending was a huge surprise. I wasn't disappointed about it at all, but it was definitely a shock.