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Book Review: Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick

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Book Review: Gorgeous by Paul Rudnick

GorgeousI’ll be honest: When I first heard about Gorgeous, I was quite skeptical about the chances that I’d actually like it. I mean — magical dresses? The fashion world? Um, no.

Fortunately, I decided to check it out anyway, and to see for myself what all the buzz was about. And I’m happy that I did. Gorgeous is definitely about inner beauty, the traps that fame can bring, and finding out who you are and what you want. It’s sweet and funny all at the same time, and never drags for a second.

So what’s it all about? In a nutshell:

Becky Randle, age 18, grew up in a trailer park in Missouri. As Gorgeous opens, Becky’s reclusive, morbidly obese mother has just died, and Becky is left on her own. Becky has never had what you’d call confidence — she’s self-conscious about her looks and her economic status, and mostly moves through life with her head down, trying not to be noticed. Becky considers herself plain and mousy, and nobody really disagrees with her on that. Her one true friend, Rocher (yes, named for the chocolates!) is her biggest supporter, but Becky is absolutely adrift after her mother’s death…

…until she finds a mysterious phone number hidden away amongst her mother’s belongings, calls it, and is invited to New York, all expenses paid, where some sort of secret — or perhaps an opportunity — will be revealed. Before her death, Becky’s mother made her make a promise:

“[S]omething is going to happen to you. And it’s going to be magical.”

She was gripping my hand very tightly and looking right into my eyes. “And it might be scary and you might not know what it means, not at first. But it’s going to change your life, forever. And Becky, I want you to swear to me, because I love you so much, and because you deserve everything, you deserve the whole world, so Becky, when the magic shows up — I want you to say yes.”

So Becky says yes, and finds herself in New York in the secret compound of mysterious superstar designer Tom Kelly, who offers Becky a deal: He’ll make her three dresses, which she’ll wear when and where he dictates, and in return, he’ll make her the most beautiful woman in the world. Becky decides to take a chance — it’s that or go back to Missouri and spend her time as a supermarket cashier — and thanks to a magnificent red dress and some killer shoes, is in fact tranformed into Rebecca Randle. Rebecca really is the most beautiful woman in the world, and becomes an instant superstar. One catch? She’s still Becky on the inside. So long as other people are with her, Becky sees Rebecca when she looks in the mirror — but alone, she sees plain old Becky, who still has lank, uncooperative hair and gains weight when Rebecca overindulges on sweets.

But wait! There’s a final condition to be met. Becky’s glamorous life as Rebecca will end after one year unless she manages to fall in love and get married before the year is up. Becky is, of course, a little angry about this requirement — really, marry at age 18? But life as Rebecca is a non-stop whirlwind full of celebrities, special treatment, and all the attention she could ever want. Everything is possible, and after a chance encounter, Becky decides to aim high: She decides that she’ll marry Prince Gregory, heir to the British throne  — and a nice, funny, adorable guy to boot.

Needless to say, complications upon complications ensue. Can Rebecca really be accepted by the royal family and the British people? Can she pull this off before the year is up? And wait — it’s not enough to just get married. Can Rebecca really have fallen in love with Prince Gregory, or is this just the next natural step on her meteoric rise to fame and fortune?

Enough with the plot details! I won’t give anything else away. Gorgeous is a delight to read, in so many ways. Author Paul Rudnick is a deft writer, putting words in Becky’s mouth that actually feel right for an 18-year-old girl. Becky has a terrific sense of humor, and even as beautiful Rebecca, it’s when she lets her inner Becky out — full of snark and wit — that she’s most likeable and captivating.

I won’t say how the royal pursuit turns out… but much of it hinges on Becky’s dilemma. If Prince Gregory does in fact fall for her, how can she ever know if it’s really the true Becky he loves? Would he love her if she didn’t look like Rebecca? And if she can get everything she dreams of, will it really make her happy if it’s all based on a false face and body?

Becky is a fabulous character. She’s a daughter who loves and cherishes her mother, and it’s her commitment to her mother’s memory  — as well as the promise of answers to the mystery of her mother’s life — that drives Becky forward and motivates her to stick with the crazy life offered by Tom Kelly. Becky is smart and wickedly funny, and sees Rebecca’s instant power and influence as a means to an end, hoping to model herself after her mother’s idol, the late Princess Alicia (this novel’s stand-in for Princess Diana) and use her worldwide celebrity to advance the causes of those who need help.

I loved Becky’s friendship with Rocher, who is crass, brash, and a constant supporter of Becky — despite her tendency to gush over celebrities and cause minor and major uproars at the nicest of events. Prince Gregory is a prince of a guy, and I could understand how Becky would fall — not just for his royalty and status but for his self-deprecating humor, compassion and caring.

Gorgeous is a lovely modern-day fairy tale. Yes, it does require quite a suspension of disbelief. (Magical dresses!!!) I’m not sure that the revelation of the hows and whys makes a whole lot of sense — but from an emotional point of view, it’s actually very sweet and moving. Ultimately, Becky has to decide for herself what kind of person she wants to be, and whether having outer beauty is worth the sacrifice of being herself. There’s a strong message in Gorgeous about the downside of celebrity and the rewards of honesty, without every being trite or hokey. And as a parent myself, I appreciated how central the role of family is in this story. Ultimately, it’s Becky’s mother’s love for her that drives the action of this story, and Becky finds her own answers and acceptance by understanding who her mother was and what she really wanted for her.

Gorgeous is aimed at the young adult market, but I’d have no hesitation in recommending this smart, funny book to teens and adults. Check it out! It’ll definitely make you laugh… and you might even find yourself a little teary-eyed along the way.

Book Review: Joyland by Stephen King

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Book Review: Joyland by Stephen King

Joyland

Don’t let the pulp fiction sensationalism of the cover fool you: Joyland is, at heart, quite a lovely and nostalgic book.

Devin Jones is one heartbroken 21-year-old in the summer of 1973. No sooner does he take a job at a North Carolina beachside amusement park than his long-term girlfriend — his first love — dumps him for another guy. By letter. Left to lick his wounds, Devin immerses himself in the carny world. He learns the Talk, gets a crash-course on how to be a ride-jockey, and spends sweltering days “wearing the fur” — that is, dressed up as Howie the Happy Hound, mascot of Joyland, dancing the hokey-pokey with delighted crowds of kiddies.

Joyland is a sweet non-Disney-fied world of fun — non-corporate, old-timey, with an ancient owner who really just wants everyone to be happy. There’s a shadow beneath Joyland’s wholesome facade. Rumor has it that a ghost haunts the Horror House, ever since the murder of Linda Gray four years earlier. The crime was never solved, and so Linda waits… for justice, for vengeance, for recognition, for release. Or so the story goes.

Meanwhile, Devin finds friends and a place to forget his sorrows for a while, and come fall, when he should be returning to college, he makes the decision to join the year-round staff of Joyland and stick around for a while. Despite his deep-down loneliness, Dev finally begins to come out of his shell, thanks mostly to the unexpected connection he finds with a beautiful but isolated woman and her wheelchair-bound son. But he can’t quite shake his interest in the fate of Linda Gray, and the more he digs, the more he realizes that the murderer might still be around — perhaps even at Joyland.

So what did I think?

I guess it goes without saying that Stephen King can write. I mean, he could probably write a computer technical manual and you’d either be in tears or screaming in terror by the end. In Joyland, King’s writing is full of his trademark sense of longing for a time gone by. The story is told by Devin from the vantage point of a man in his sixties, looking back at a pivotal moment in his younger days, the summer in which he left behind his childhood innocence for good. We are immersed in the experience of a young man in love, and can feel his longing and his pain with each step, with each memory, with each sad song playing on Dev’s record player in his boarding house room. The writing is down-to-earth and yet lovely at the same time:

I’m not sure anybody ever gets completely over their first love, and that still rankles. Part of me still wants to know what was wrong with me. What I was lacking. I’m in my sixties now, my hair is gray and I’m a prostate cancer survivor, but I still want to know why I wasn’t good enough for Wendy Keegan.

The murder mystery itself is only a small part of the book. Devin’s compulsion to solve the murder is a thread that connects his experiences, but in actuality I’d say only about 25% or so of the plot really focuses on the crime and the ghost. Much more important is Dev’s involvement at Joyland, the friends he makes, and the bond he forms with Annie and Mike Ross. There’s a Summer of ’42 vibe in parts of the story (if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know what I mean — I hope). Granted, Joyland takes place 30+ years later than the movie, but there are similar themes: innocent boy, one perfect summer, mysterious (beautiful) older woman… well, I won’t elaborate, but that’s what I kept thinking of as certain events developed in Joyland.

As for the murder, the climax is exciting — but feels a bit well-worn as well. The location, the circumstances, even the weather all feel a bit familiar, like something out of a drive-in flick from a few decades ago. Maybe that’s what Stephen King was shooting for? After all, the story is truly heavy on the nostalgia, with a wistful sensibility for the time and place it portrays. So perhaps the ending was designed to feel old-timey as well, in keeping with the overall mood and setting of the book? Something to ponder, anyway. The identity of the murderer wasn’t terribly shocking, if you go with the assumption (as I did) that he would have to be either a character we’d already met or someone closely connected to Joyland. I won’t give anything away here, but I will say that by the time the murderer is revealed, there really was only one other person it could possibly have been. Still, it unfolded in a believably scary and threatening way, and I enjoyed every bit of the big reveal and its aftermath.

Overall, Joyland is a terrific read. Devin makes a sympathetic, insightful narrator, and through his eyes, Joyland — which I suspect would appear a bit corny and shabby if we saw it on our own — appears to be a place of wonder and delight. The sensation of first love and first heartbreak are rendered with painful vividness, as is the simple pleasure to be found spending time in the company of good friends, walking on a deserted beach, or making a child smile.

My only quibble with this book is about the cover. Published by the Hard Case Crime division of Titan Books, the cover — with the tagline of “Who dares enter the FUNHOUSE OF FEAR?” — seems to promise a very different book than what Joyland actually delivers. The cover art is terrific — oh, that red-head in the little green dress! What horrors has she witnessed? Who is chasing her through the park? What did she photograph that’s so shocking? The problem is, none of these questions are relevant in the slightest, and the picture only has the vaguest of connections to the actual events in the book.

I’m no designer or artist (so be nice!), but I started playing around with old-timey amusement park photos, and I think either of these might do more justice to the actual story of Joyland:

ferris-wheel-4468_640 ferris-wheel-100234_640_2

Sure, neither screams “Stephen King” at you — which the real cover surely does, in its own way. Still, I think I’d have liked this book a smidge better if my expectations were more in line with the reality of the book from the start. Joyland is not pulp fiction, and it’s not even that much of a crime story. It’s nostalgic fiction about the end of innocence and the farewell to first love; it’s about growing up and confronting life; and it’s about people and connections.

Cover quibbles aside, Joyland is a perfect summer read. It’s quick, it’s absorbing, and really, what says summer more than a beachside amusement park?

Book Review: The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman

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Book Review: The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

This sad, sweet book is a reflective look back at childhood, a meditation on innocence and trust, and a sorrowful examination of what is lost in the process of growing up.

In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the unnamed narrator, middle-aged and giving off a sad-sack vibe, returns to his childhood town for the funeral of one of his parents. Needing escape from the formalities and niceties involved in the official mourning process, he drives off toward the site of his ramshackle boyhood home, now a sparkling new housing subdivision, and then is drawn further down the lane. As he travels down the rough country road, memories start to spark — memories of a girl named Lettie, who befriended him at age seven and since moved away. To Australia, perhaps? He’s not sure, but upon arrival at Lettie’s family farm, memories of a pond (that she called an ocean) resurface, and soon, an entire hidden chapter from his childhood comes back to him.

There’s a sorrow that permeates the childhood memories, even before the main events of the story begin. The boy has a nice home and pleasant parents, but is a loner, constantly immersed in books and without any friends. The action kicks off after the boy’s lonely 7th birthday, for which his mother prepares a lovely party and invites the boys from school — but no one comes, which doesn’t surprise the boy:

They were not my friends, after all. They were just the people I went to school with.

This small, sad incident sets the tone for one of the book’s themes. Part of childhood and growing up is coming to understand that parents can’t always protect us from the bad stuff. Life is hard, and loving parents are not infallible. Much as they try, parents can’t keep out the disappointments and harshness that intrude from outside the walls of home.

Moving from the sadness of the failed birthday party, a different sort of world is quickly revealed. There’s an elemental sort of magic involved, and horrible creatures too. The boy’s life and family are threatened by what appears to be an unstoppable evil, masquerading as something lovely and lovable. The world itself seems to be at risk, and great sacrifice and bravery are required. We see it all through the eyes of a man remembering what it felt like to be a child, to be powerless and scared, and to have to carry on anyway.

Ocean is, simply put, quite beautiful. It’s also, in parts, just terrifying. I was reminded in some ways of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. As with the Other Mother in Coraline, the boy in Ocean finds himself at the mercy of a parent who suddenly becomes “other”. Is there anything scarier than seeing one’s ultimate source of safety and love turn into a source of menace and actual danger? The writing here is magnificent, so that as a reader, I could feel the terror of facing harm at the hands of the person who should be a protector.

With his home no longer safe, the boy seeks protection from the Hempstock women, a trio who appear to be a grandmother, mother, and daughter — but who are in reality forces of nature, timeless and powerful, seemingly an eternal type of earth mothers. They have a gentleness about them that partners with their fierce protection of the boy and his world. They are fearless, facing down the “critters” that don’t belong, and carefully snipping time and events to remove the bad parts and make it all work out as it should. The Hempstock women have a purity and earthiness about them, living on their old-fashioned farm, where they drink milk fresh from the cow and eat rough, homemade bread. Even their food and clothes portray them as people out of time, embracing nature and simplicity, separate from the modern world around them.

Again, a Coraline reminder — as menacing creatures rip shreds of the world away, leaving an awful nothingness in those places, I was reminded of Coraline’s attempt to run away from the Other house and finding a world dissolving around the margins. Reality is less firm than we might think, apparently, and when the vast void shows through, it’s horrible to behold.

The narrator of Ocean contemplates sacrifice and its burden — and while it’s specific to the events of the story, it could also apply to the burden all of us might feel growing up aware of what our own parents’ sacrificed in order to give us a better life:

A flash of resentment. It’s hard enough being alive, trying to survive in the world and find your place in it, to do the things you need to do to get by, without wondering if the thing you just did, whatever it was, was worth someone having… if not died, then having given up her life. It wasn’t fair.

On the surface, the narrator is a typical middle-aged adult, beaten down by a life with mixed successes and failures, in which he’s made art, but has also had a challenging personal life and only occasional happiness. Somewhere lurking within him is a secret knowledge of a hidden reality, mostly lost to him but resurfacing on his occasional visits to the Hempstock farm. He represents, in many ways, any adult who has lost touch with childhood belief and imagination, who finds a hint of it resparked by revisiting its source — perhaps a certain place or a book or a favorite toy — and suddenly remembering the joy and pleasure of a child’s view of the world:

I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy. The custard was sweet and creamy in my mouth… [P]erhaps I was going to die that night and perhaps I would never go home again, but it was a good dinner, and I had faith in Lettie Hempstock.

At under 200 pages, Ocean is a spare, compact, poetic book, with a purity of language. The writing is elegant and simple; not a word is wasted, and there’s not a thing missing. Ocean is marketed as a book for adults, but despite the terror of certain parts, I think there’s an ageless appeal to it as well, so that it might also work for older children — although I don’t think they’d appreciate the bittersweet element of childhood remembered from a distance, which adds such beauty and sadness to the book.

This review is already longer than I’d intended, yet I don’t feel I can really do justice to this book. I wonder: Did I really understand it? Did I miss something important the author was trying to convey? Is the meaning I found here at all in line with the author’s intentions? I have no idea.

And yet…

In reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane, I found myself both shaken by the boy’s fear and moved by his innocent sense of trust and belief. Even when his parents fail him, the boy has an unshakeable belief in the power of simply holding the hand of someone he trusts, and it’s quite wonderful to behold.

There’s an aching beauty throughout, and something so incredibly sad in the figure of the man drawn back to the Hempstock pond at key moments of his life. Like all adults, he faces daunting questions: Did I measure up? Did I do with my life what I should have done? Was my life worth it? He doesn’t find easy answers, but his pilgrimages to the past seem to bring him peace at key times.

Ocean is a deep, lovely, contemplative work. I imagine that I’ll want to revisit this book repeatedly, to pull apart and tease out all its themes and all it has to offer. Neil Gaiman writes beautifully, with an enchantment to his words that’s an experience in and of itself. I leave you with a magical moment:

I have dreamed of that song, of the strange words to that simple rhyme-song, and on several occasions I have understood what she was saying, in my dreams. In those dreams I spoke that language too, the first language, and I had dominion over the nature of all that was real. In my dream, it was the tongue of what is, and anything spoken in it becomes real, because nothing said in that language can be a lie. It is the most basic building brick of everything. In my dreams I have used that language to heal the sick and to fly; once I dreamed I kept a perfect little bed-and-breakfast by the seaside, and to everyone who came to stay with me I would say, in that tongue, “Be whole,” and they would become whole, not be broken people, not any longer, because I had spoken the language of shaping.

Read The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s a unique experience, and one of the most beautifully crafted works I’ve read in a long time.

Book Review: A Small Death in the Great Glen by A. D. Scott

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Book Review: A Small Death in the Great Glen by A. D. Scott

A Small Death in the Great GlenThe staff of the Highland Gazette produces the same little newspaper week in, week out. Classifieds on the front page, sporting and racing results on the inside, updates on farming, women’s club meetings, and the like filling up the rest of the four-page spread. Certainly no investigative reporting, nothing controversial, nothing that the “big city” papers in Edinburgh or Glasgow might cover. But when a young boy is found dead in a canal, the new editor-in-chief demands more from the small team of reporters, and they soon become enmeshed in an investigation that threatens the stability of their insular town.

Set in the the Scottish Highlands in the mid-1950s, A Small Death in the Great Glen is a murder mystery, but at the same time is a compelling portrait of a time and place. Ten years after World War II, the effects of the war are still being felt. An abused wife tries to live with her husband’s rage and frustration, recognizing that he came home from war different from the person she’d married. The Italian immigrant who runs the town’s café (with the only cappuccino machine in the Highlands!) is accepted by the community — but with limits. When a Polish sailor jumps ship in the harbor at the same time that the boy’s murder occurs, the strangers in town are immediately suspect, and the underlying mistrust of foreigners — even those who’ve lived and worked alongside the townsfolk for a decade — lead to ugliness and division.

The focal point of the story is Joanne Ross, who shocks her family by taking a part-time job at the paper as a typist — women are supposed to be at home! What next, wearing trousers? Joanne needs escape from her bitter home life, and finds it at the Gazette, where she is pushed to think for herself and actually write newsworthy content. As Joanne grows professionally, she has to face facts about her marriage and make choices that, in the mid-1950s, are not at all easy for a woman with two small children.

The mystery at the heart of A Small Death in the Great Glen is compelling and has several surprising twists. The history and mythology of the Highlands come into play, as do the various factions and prejudices beneath the surface of a seemingly harmonious town.

Apart from the investigation of the murder itself, there were really two elements in this book that gave me the greatest enjoyment. First is the setting itself: I’m a sucker for Scotland, particularly the Highlands, and this book is filled with descriptions of the glens and braes, the rocky terrain, the natural surroundings, that are so vivid that I could practically feel it.

Pleasure came from the small things; tickling for trout, watching the birds, the eagle hunting, stalking the deer. Cloudscapes of great beauty highlighted the four-seasons-in-one-day phenomenon that was called weather in Scotland, but often it was dreich for days, sometimes weeks, on end.

(My Thursday Quotables selection for this week is from A Small Death in the Great Glen. See it here for another snippet of description of the Highland landscape.)

The second element that really elevates this book above a standard mystery is the glimpse into the inner workings of a small community, at once tight-knit and full of resentments and judgments. Thanks in large part to my obsession with Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, I have a familiarity with the Highlands of centuries past; A Small Death in the Great Glen is a lovely insight into 20th century Scotland and what life would have been like for people in the post-war era of that time.

I don’t usually read mysteries, but I’m glad that the Highlands setting drew me to this book. I enjoyed the people, the relationships, the investigation, and the portrait of the intermingled communities that make up the society of this small Scottish town. When I first picked up A Small Death in the Great Glen, I hadn’t realized that it’s the first book in a series. Two more are currently available, with another due for publication later this year. No worries, though: A Small Death in the Great Glen stands on its own just fine. If you enjoy mysteries — or, like me, just want a little taste of the Highlands, give this one a try!

As for me, I’m looking forward to reading the next book, A Double Death on the Black Isle, next time I crave a visit to Scotland.

Book Review: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

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Book Review: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

The Eyre Affair

As soon as I read the cover blurb for The Eyre Affair, I knew I was a goner. From The Wall Street Journal:

Filled with clever wordplay, literary allusion and bibliowit, The Eyre Affair combines elements of Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But its quirky charm is all its own.

I mean, come on! Was this book written just for me?

What’s it all about? I’ll borrow the Goodreads synopsis:

Welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Brontë’s novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide.

In the world of Thursday Next, the hush-hush web of government intelligence includes SO-27, the branch of Special Operations focusing on Literary Detection. As a LiteraTec, Agent Next tracks down all sorts of nefarious literary criminals, but none so heinous as the mysterious mastermind who literally rewrites the world of fiction by altering original manuscripts. Add to the mix a Crimean War that’s raged for 150 years, Next’s ChronoGuard father who pops in and out whenever he’d like (usually with a history-changing agenda or two — like, say, the invention of the banana), a powerful corporation named Goliath that runs, well, everything, and a strange device called a Prose Portal that may be the key to finally winning the war… and you have a delightfully bizarre novel that plays with words and books in the strangest, twistiest of ways.

The glory is truly in the details. On a rare day off, Thursday attends the weekly performance of Richard III — which is this world’s stand-in for Rocky Horror. In a truly amazing sequence, we’re treated to the spectacle of full-on audience participation, including the donning of sunglasses, stamping and barking, and a wild battle scene in the aisles and entryway of the theater.

The whole audience erupted in unison:

“When is the winter of our discontent?”

“Now,” replied Richard with a cruel smile, “is the winter of our discontent…”

The Eyre Affair is filled with so many adorable details, it’s impossible to capture even a smidgen. Coin-operated mechanical devices on street corners recite verses of Shakespeare on demand. Taking an unpopular stance on the “who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays?” debate can lose you friends and has been known to start riots. Characters names include Victor Analogy, Braxton Hicks, Jack Schitt, and Acheron Hades. Guess who the bad guys are?

Possibly the only note that rang false for me in this book is the introduction of vampires and werewolves (in a chapter aptly titled “Spec-Ops 17: Suckers & Biters”. I mean, sure, in a novel in which bad performances of Shakespeare carry fines and John Milton conventions are commonplace, why not? Still, this piece of the story seems unnecessary and a bit out of place. While handled with humor, the inclusion of these over-used supernatural creatures is a clunky touch and is not in keeping with the overall off-beat originality of the storyline.

I leave you with the brief explanation provided for the department vacancy offered to Thursday:

Your post was held by Jim Crometty. He was shot dead in the old town during a bookbuy that went wrong.

How can you not love a book in which all of society is crazy about books? Where people from around the globe make pilgrimage to see the Jane Eyre manuscript? The Eyre Affair is silly, quirky, and an absolute delight.

Book Review: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

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Winner of countless awards, among them the 2009 Man Booker Prize, Wolf Hall is well-known and highly esteemed. So why did it take me so many years to finally read it?

It’s a daunting book to begin, that’s for sure. In my paperback edition, the two pages of the Table of Contents are followed by five pages of the Cast of Characters, and then by two more pages containing family trees (the Tudors and the Yorkist Claimants, to be exact). Did I need to memorize the ancestries? Was I supposed to already know the paths of descent from Richard Duke of York and Owen Tudor? In general, when I see a book that requires that much supporting information up front, I want to run for the hills. Or pick up something simpler, at the very least.

In this case, I’d already vowed to read Wolf Hall during a vacation, and after committing to it publicly (well, okay, here on my blog), I felt a certain amount of pressure to see it through.

So — worth it? Yes, and here’s why:

Wolf Hall is the story of Thomas Cromwell, a man who rises from an obscure beginning as the son of a blacksmith to become one of the most powerful and influential advisers in the court of King Henry VIII. The entire book is told from Cromwell’s perspective; we see the people and players that he sees; we visit the inner chambers of the castle when he does. As Cromwell’s access increases, so does ours as readers. We only meet Henry when Cromwell does, and we see Anne Boleyn’s ascent at first from a distance, as bewildered by the king’s obsession with Anne as Cromwell is, then become more intimately involved as Cromwell becomes a key participant in the machinations needed to overthrow not just a marriage but an entire religious institution.

The Cromwell we come to know in Wolf Hall may or may not be entirely historically accurate. His rise to power is well-documented, but his early history and his inner life is not. Author Hilary Mantel gives Thomas Cromwell a depth and vibrancy that make him a sympathetic main character. We see him as a devoted family man, albeit as one who is often absent. Still, his devotion to his wife, his children, and his broad collection of wards and adoptees is shown to be his defining virtue. Likewise, he is committed to his patron, Cardinal Wolsey, and he forgets nothing — neither good nor bad — in his endless reckoning of favors owed and granted. Cromwell’s shrewdness and intelligence are clear. He is an intellectually gifted man who had a rough start in life, and so he is both gentleman and ruffian, a man who can out-think anyone he encounters, and at the same time a man to strike fear into the hearts of those who cross him.

Wolf Hall is a complicated book. This is not a bodice-ripper masquerading as history. The details can be overwhelming. There is an enormous number of players to keep straight, and it’s not enough to know who’s who; we readers also need to know the relations, the power dynamics, the titles, and the land holdings. This is not a love story. It’s about power, it’s about politics, it’s about playing a deadly game with the lives of the innocent and not-so-innocent at stake. Hilary Mantel piles detail upon detail, but never in a way that is incomprehensible — although, yes, it is a lot to keep track of.

Mantel’s prose is not straightforward. Sentences break off suddenly. A random example, from early on in the book:

They arrived on a Sunday, two vengeful grandees: the Duke of Norfolk a bright-eyed hawk, the Duke of Suffolk just as keen. They told the cardinal he was dismissed as Lord Chancellor, and demanded he hand over the Great Seal of England. He, Cromwell, touched the cardinal’s arm. A hurried conference. The cardinal turned back to them, gracious: it appears a written request from the king is necessary; have you one? Oh: careless of you. It requires a lot of face to keep so calm; but then the cardinal has face.

The pronouns throughout Wolf Hall are a bear to figure out. Mantel uses “he” throughout the book to refer to Cromwell, even when he is not the person most recently referenced. This drove me crazy at first. I’d have to stop and backtrack, realizing that the sentence I was reading was not about the person I thought it was about! Once I finally got that it’s all about Cromwell, all the time, the “he”s were a bit easier to decipher. But boy, did that throw me for a loop at the beginning.

Wolf Hall will not be for everyone. But I did enjoy it very much, although it was perhaps not the wisest choice for vacation reading. I typically choose books that require little commitment for my vacation reading — books I can easily swoop in and out of at a moment’s notice while doing other things. Wolf Hall is not one of these books. It requires concentration and thought, and while I definitely liked the challenge, it was a bit overwhelming at times.

The title itself is confusing, and only gains meaning toward the end of the book (unless you’re a total Tudor-era enthusiast and know the names of every estate in the realm). The challenge for an author writing about this era is in keeping a sense of suspense or surprise when the major events are so very well known. If you’ve read The Other Boleyn Girl or watched The Tudors, then you already know how the king’s efforts to divorce Katherine and marry Anne will work out. What keeps this book interesting is the writing itself, as well as the use of a lesser-known figure as its point-of-view character. Learning about Cromwell is fascinating; seeing the inner workings of the court through his eyes is enlightening, and keeps the familiar acts and players from seeming worn out or stale. Yes, I do know what happens — but it doesn’t matter. The portrayals of Cromwell, Henry, Anne, and the others are rich and nuanced, and kept me hooked.

Wolf Hall is the first book in a trilogy. Book 2, Bring Up The Bodies, is also a Man Booker Prize recipient. Book 3, The Mirror and The Light, is anticipated for publication in 2015, as far as I could tell. I plan to read Bring Up The Bodies later this summer, and as it covers the fall of Anne Boleyn, I fully expect to be engrossed.

I highly recommend Wolf Hall, although it definitely helps to have some knowledge of the Tudors ahead of time. And if you’ve watched Showtime’s version of The Tudors, I dare you to read this book and not picture Natalie Dormer every time Anne Boleyn is in a scene.

Book Review: Fathomless by Jackson Pearce — **This review contains spoilers**

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Book Review: Fathomless by Jackson Pearce

Fathomless (Fairytale Retellings, #3)I can’t write about Fathomless and express what I thought and felt reading this book without including SPOILERS — so consider this fair warning! This review will include plot spoilers, including the major twist that readers discover toward the end. If you don’t want to know, stop reading now! Seriously, final notice!

Are you still here?

Sure you don’t want to look away?

Really, really sure?

Okay….

Fathomless looks like a mermaid story, right? I mean, look at the cover. That’s a mermaid. Absolutely, without doubt.

Except the girls/creatures in Fathomless aren’t actually mermaids, or at least not the fairy tale and Disney versions of mermaids. For starters — no tails. Not at all. They have legs and feet, just like when they were human. And that’s a key point as well. You know how Ariel is the daughter of King Triton? No mermaid royalty here — these girls were once human, but have somehow been transformed into creatures who live in the ocean, happily swimming with their sisters all day long and bit by bit forgetting their previous lives.

Our main mermaid girl is Lo, who lives under the sea (not in a pineapple…) off the coast of Georgia. She still yearns vaguely for the lights of the human world, but grows more and more content with her underwater life with each passing day. She knows that she was once someone else and had a different name, but can’t remember those details any longer. She and her “sisters” share the belief that they were brought to live in the ocean by an angel, and that someday, when they’ve turned into one of the beautiful but vacant old ones, they’ll leave the ocean and become angels themselves.

There’s another path that the ocean girls believe in, even thought they’ve never seen it happen: Legend says that an ocean girl (sorry, I have a hard time calling them mermaids) can regain a human soul and a human life by getting a human boy to fall in love with her — and then drowning him. At that point, she takes his soul and can go back to living on land as a regular girl again. Okay, yeah, she’ll also have murdered someone to get there, but why quibble?

Celia is our main human point of view. She’s one of triplets — her sisters Jane and Anne are identical, and Celia is the odd girl out. All three have powers of sight: Through touch, Celia can read someone’s past, Jane reads the present, and Anne sees the future. The sisters live in a small Georgia beach town in their prep school dorm, supported by a distant uncle after their mother’s death and their elderly father’s descent into the fog of Alzheimer’s.

Celia and Lo collide one night when guitar-playing cute boy Jude falls off a pier into the ocean. Lo pulls him from the sea, Celia performs CPR, and Jude comes back to life. He falls for Celia, but he remembers hearing a song while he was being rescued — and Celia doesn’t sing. Celia and Jude form a relationship, but at the same time, Celia is drawn back to the beach to seek out the mysterious girl she saw disappear back into the ocean.

Lo is able to leave the water, but each step on land is torture for her, leaving her in agony and with bleeding feet. As Celia and Lo begin to know one another, Celia touches Lo and is able to see her past as a human. As Celia uncovers Lo’s history, Lo begins to remember her life as Naida, a normal human girl with a home and a family. Lo and Naida are presented as two separate personalities struggling for dominance; sometimes we see Lo’s perspective on life in the ocean, and sometimes we get Naida, who considers herself a prisoner and yearns to be free.

So far, so good. In fact, I liked Fathomless quite a bit for about the first 2/3 of the book. And then it took a twist that more or less ruined it for me.

To backtrack a bit, according to Goodreads, Fathomless is book #3 in author Jackson Pearce’s Fairytale Retellings series. I’ve read the previous two books, Sisters Red and Sweetly, although it’s been a few years since then and I’d forgotten a lot of the details. I remembered the vague plot outlines, and remembered that I’d found the books enjoyable, but didn’t remember much more than that.

So… I picked up Fathomless while under the impression that the author had written a series of separate novels, with a common theme of being inspired by different fairy tales. And then 2/3 of the way through Fathomless, I was smacked in the head by how wrong I was. All three of these novels are connected, and let me just say: Weird.

All of a sudden, in the middle of a book about quasi-mermaid-creatures, there are werewolves. Yup. Werewolves. Apparently, werewolves steal girls away and stick them in the ocean as some sort of incubator — and when the girls are done, they come back out of the ocean and join the werewolf pack. Or something. Sisters Red was about a Buffy-ish werewolf slayer fighting hordes of evil monsters. In Sweetly, as I’d completely forgotten until reading a synopsis last night, a Hansel and Gretel retelling ends up having werewolves behind the town’s evil secret as well. And now, here they are again, finding twins, killing one outright and biting the other, then putting her into the sea to cook or stew or whatever it is they’re doing down there. Supposedly, it has to be twins – something about sharing the soul, blah blah blah. To be honest, my eyes had started to glaze over at this point in the story so the twin rationale kind of escaped me. Or was just ridiculous to begin with. One of the two.

I liked the story of Celia and Jude well enough, although the two other triplets, Anne and Jane, seemed a bit amorphous to me. We learn about some of their habits, but their inner workings are a little vague and seem altogether too inconsistent for me to ever to get a true sense of who they are, what they want, and what role Celia plays in their lives. But their story, as interwoven with the story of Lo/Naida and the ocean girls, gets lost somewhere along the way, and the entire thing just falls apart by the end.

The werewolf twist comes out of nowhere and makes no sense. I was kind of enjoying the twist on the Little Mermaid fairy tale up to that point, and found some of the descriptions of the ocean world to be quite lovely. But the entire plot just falls apart when the werewolf element is introduced — at which point, I realized that the pieces that seemed to promise an interesting take on a traditional tale, such as the mermaids being formerly human girls, were all for nothing. If the author is trying to build an entire world in this series, then the connection needs to be stronger to make it work, rather than randomly introducing werewolves into a mermaid story. Better yet, in my opinion, would have been creating these stories as stand-alone fairy tale retellings that provide unique takes on traditional tales, without trying to force a big-picture framework onto them.

I see that book #4 in the Fairytale Retellings series will be published this fall. Called Cold Spell, it’s a retelling of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson. Which would be great… except I’m guessing there will be werewolves.

No thanks. I think I’m done with this series.

Book Review: This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith

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Book Review: This Is What Happy Looks Like by Jennifer E. Smith

This Is What Happy Looks LikeTalk about the perfect summer book! I dare you to read This Is What Happy Looks Like without dreaming about beaches, fireworks, ice cream cones, and a salty sea breeze or two.

In this sweet, romantic young adult novel, Ellie and Graham meet by accident (or rather, by e-accident). When Ellie gets a random email from a stranger asking her to walk Wilbur, the dog-lover in her just has to respond and let the sender know there’s been a mistake. (Otherwise, poor Wilbur!). What follows next is a charming email exchange that starts light and flirty and ends up as a soul-baring correspondence, in which these two share everything except their full identities.

Little does Ellie know that Graham is actually Graham Larkin, movie star and teen heart-throb (I picture the teen-aged Zac Efron), sighed over by millions of teen girls around the world. Graham’s a bit new to the superstar gig and is hungry for real connection, and for once, he’s found someone to talk to who isn’t wowed by the Hollywood glamor. So when Graham’s newest movie needs to find a new filming location, Graham’s quick to jump in and suggest the small coastal town of Henley, Maine… where a certain someone happens to live. Graham hasn’t told Ellie who he really is, and he’s hoping madly that their amazing virtual connection will translate into real life.

Ellie, meanwhile, lives a contented life with her mother in Henley, but dreams of going to Harvard to study poetry this summer, if only she can scrape the funds together to pay for it. She’s not particularly starstruck, and is more annoyed by the film crews taking over her hometown than eager to catch a glimpse of the stars. But when Graham finally catches up with Ellie, after a brief delay caused by a teeny case of mistaken identity, it’s clear to see that Graham and Ellie do have chemistry, and then some. The question is, can a small-town girl and a Hollywood star find romance and a relationship, despite the never-ending cameras and paparazzi just dying for some good gossip?

This Is What Happy Looks Like is light and breezy, and there isn’t much doubt that there will be some sort of happy ending. I mean, a book with the word “happy” in the title can’t exactly get too tragic, can it? Still, it’s not all fluff. Ellie and Graham both have family issues to sort out, and there’s some real heart in their thoughts about the paths their lives have taken so far, how they want to live, and what role their parents can and should play in their lives.

A plot thread concerning Ellie’s estranged father is a bit extraneous to the main storyline and seemed liked needless filler to me. While providing much of the fodder for any sort of obstacle to the romance (and every good romance needs to overcome an obstacle or two, right?), the pieces about Ellie’s father — her search for him, her assessment of his role in her life, and her mother’s backstory — didn’t feel as important to me as they’re made to be in the story. In fact, I think the story might have worked a bit better without this element entirely.

Beside that, however, I really enjoyed TIWHLL (sorry, can’t keep typing that title out any longer!) Especially coming on the heels of my previous read, which was beautiful but incredibly painful, it truly felt like a breath of fresh air to read this summery romance. Light and airy, full of characters with good hearts and good intentions, this really is a terrific summer read. I wanted only the best for Ellie and Graham — and I absolutely pined for a summer vacation on the coast of Maine, preferably with my feet in the surf and an ice cream cone in my hand. Bliss!

Book Review: The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

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Book Review: The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay

The Sea of TranquilityThe Sea of Tranquility is a searing story of two damaged souls who connect with each other when there’s no place else for them in the world.

Nastya was a 15-year-old piano prodigy, sparkling and full of hope, when she became the victim of a random, brutal attack that stole away from her everything that mattered, including her music. As the books opens, three years have gone by, and Nastya is starting a new phase of her life. Hopelessly damaged and mute by choice, she moves to a new town to escape her past, marching silently through her new school in stilletos and slutty clothes, just daring the world to try to approach. Full of rage, Nastya runs until she’s exhausted each night, bakes endlessly to keep busy, and immerses herself in thoughts of hate and revenge.

Josh is a 17-year-old boy who’s lost every member of his family over the years. Completely alone, he’s considered untouchable at school — he’s the boy who is synonymous with death. Josh is emancipated just shy of his 18th birthday, financially secure but living a haunted, lonely life in his family’s home, with no one but himself for company.

When Nastya and Josh meet, they each see in the other the possibility of companionship without demands. By finding the one person just as messed up as they consider themselves to be, they’ve found someone they can be around without having to deal with well-meaning questions, pity, or empty promises of an improved future. Josh knows he has no one and never will. Nastya knows that her life truly ended three years earlier. But together, they can find a few moments of relative normalcy as they escape from the prying, uncomfortable eyes of the rest of the world — the people who get to be happy and live without tragedy and trauma.

In The Sea of Tranquility, Katja Millay doesn’t flinch from showing us the truly ugly, horrific scars — physical and emotional — that violence leaves behind. Nothing is sugar-coated here; Nastya is a walking freak-show when we meet her, so devastated as a person that she presents herself to the world in the harshest light possible. Josh can see past her surface, but only because he also is someone who’s had to build a wall of indifference and defiance around himself in order to walk through a world full of happy, clueless people.

Josh and Nastya’s growing connection feels real and well-deserved. One thing that always bothers me in fiction — and this comes up a lot in young adult fiction especially — is when two characters find themselves in deep and instant love within moments of meeting. They may announce that they feel this way, but often it doesn’t feel true or justified. In The Sea of Tranquility, the last thing Josh and Nastya want is to be in love. Everyone Josh loves dies; he’d rather stay alone than risk losing someone again. Nastya feels that the real her died years earlier; she’s so full of hate and self-loathing that the possiblity of loving or being loved just isn’t there. As they begin to develop feelings for one another, they fight it. They value the comfort and safety they feel together, but it’s a tenuous safety, and at the first sign of seriousness or emotional risk, it may all fall apart.

Something truly lovely in this book is the cast of supporting characters. Josh’s best friend is a boy named Drew, a swaggering, attractive, blond “Ken-doll” who flirts constantly and can (and does) get any girl he wants — but as we find out, the image is mostly for show. Drew is a true and loyal friend with the heart of a romantic, who uses his reputation as a cover to hide behind while he pines for the girl he let slip away. Drew’s family is wonderful. His parents host Sunday dinner each week, with doors open wide to whichever of Drew’s stray friends happen to need a place to be, no strings attached. Both Josh and Nastya end up taken in by this warm family and find a sort of refuge there that they can find nowhere else.

Nastya allows herself to speak to Josh, but permits no questions about her past, what happened to her, and why she is the way she is. As Josh’s feelings for Nastya deepen, his frustration grows, and finally she must decide whether to walk away or let him in:

I’m not sure how long we site in Josh’s truck, holding hands, surrounded by darkness and unspoken regrets. But it’s long enough to know that there are no stories or secrets in the world worth holding onto more than his hand.

This is not an easy book. Every move and word of Nastya’s is soaked in pain, and I found myself choked up and on the verge of tears repeatedly throughout this reading experience. The author provides a harsh, sad look at the lives of broken people, and doesn’t allow for easy answers or solutions. The ending is not neat and perfect — but it feels right. Nastya will never be who she was. The attack that stole her life can never be undone. Josh will never get his family back. But for each of these characters, there’s hope, and by the end of the book, they manage to take steps toward a future that might actually include happiness and peace.

Beautifully written with memorable characters, The Sea of Tranquility is a book that’s often hard to take but is absolutely worth it.

 

Review copy courtesy of Atria Books via NetGalley.

Book Review: Invisibility by David Levithan & Andrea Cremer

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Book Review: Invisibility by Andrea Cremer and David Levithan

InvisibilityTalk about difficult teen years. Stephen is 16 years old, lives in Manhattan… and has been invisible since birth. That’s right, NO ONE has ever seen him, and he’s never even seen himself. He has no idea what color eyes he has or what he looks like when he smiles. For most of his life, Stephen lived with his nurturing mother, but as Invisibility opens, it’s been a year since his mother’s death and Stephen is completely and utterly alone. His absent father pays the bills and is available via email, but Stephen lives solo in his apartment, observing people in parks and museums in lieu of companionship, and shopping online for all his basic needs. Stephen’s only knowledge about the cause of his condition is an overheard argument between his parents, in which his mother referred to a “curse”. Neither parent will discuss it with Stephen, and so he spends his days in solitude, with no hope of improvement and very little to live for.

All that changes when Elizabeth and her family move in down the hall. Elizabeth (who thinks she might prefer to be called Jo), her brother Laurie, and their mother have relocated to New York from Minnesota after Laurie was the victim of a traumatic hate crime. Elizabeth has had her faith in friendship and good will destroyed, and yearns for the anonymity of starting over in a big city.

Both Stephen and Elizabeth have their worlds turned upside down on the day that they meet in the hallway. For reasons that Stephen can’t understand, Elizabeth can see him. Of course, Elizabeth has no idea that there’s anything at all odd about this sweet, cute boy, until Laurie accidentally meets Stephen some weeks later and the shocking truth is revealed.

From there, Elizabeth and Stephen launch themselves into a quest to get answers and find a way to break the curse. With Laurie as a sidekick and supporter, they find Millie, a “spellseeker”, who explains why Elizabeth can see Stephen and introduces them to the world of cursecasters and spellseekers.

Did your eyes just glaze over a bit there? Because mine did at this point in the book. More on this in a moment.

The book, at this point, enters into a mad introduction to the world of spells and curses. Apparently, Elizabeth is a natural talent at seeing spells, and may even be one of the incredibly rare spellseekers who can not only see spells and curses, but can draw them off and dissipate them.

Hoo-boy.

Let’s be clear, there really is a lot to like about Invisibility. David Levithan is an incredibly gifted and talented writer, and once again he joins up with a writing partner to coauthor a young adult novel. In this case, he and Andrea Cremer write alternating chapters, he as the voice of Stephen, she as the voice of Elizabeth. David Levithan has taken this approach with great success in previous novels such as Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (reviewed here) and Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List. Here, however, the voices of the two authors don’t blend particularly well: I didn’t always feel that I was reading one coherent novel, rather than two separate narratives. Chapter segues are occasionally jarring, and the timing from one POV chapter to the next doesn’t flow as naturally as it should.

And then there’s the plot. I enjoyed the beginning very much. Stephen’s situation is fascinating. David Levithan does a lovely job of portraying his loneliness and sorrow, being the perpetual outsider stuck in a hopeless life. Where it all becomes problematic for me is when the focus shifts away from Stephen and onto Elizabeth and her new special magical talents.

My main quibbles with Invisibility are:

  • Whoa! Head over heels happens a bit too fast! Stephen and Elizabeth meet, and then, wham! They’re in love. No build up, not a whole lot of warning. It doesn’t feel earned. Frankly, from Stephen’s perspective, it’s a bit more understandable. After all, he’s never even spoken to a girl in his whole life, and here’s the first person he’s ever encountered who actually can see him! That’s got to feel pretty incredible. But for Elizabeth? I just didn’t feel it. Yes, she’s fascinated by Stephen’s unique situation, but to fall in love so suddenly? I didn’t believe it.
  • Also in terms of Elizabeth, here she is, newly arrived from Minnesota to New York — and yet she does almost nothing to meet people, explore the city, or establish herself. Conveniently, it’s summer when she moves in, so there’s no school — but this makes it feel that she and Stephen develop a relationship in a vacuum, and I had to wonder how much her own isolation factors into her readiness to be “in love”.
  • The book jacket copy stresses that Elizabeth “wishes for invisibility” and the ability to blend in — but since we never see her interact with peers other than Laurie and Stephen or even have the opportunity to blend in (or not), I didn’t feel that the story lived up to the description in this regard.
  • Once the topic of cursecasters and spellseekers is introduced, Elizabeth’s abilities become the focus of the story, and I felt that Stephen’s experiences get lost in the shuffle. To me, he is far more interesting than Elizabeth, but he becomes a passive participant in the drama as Elizabeth is the one who drives the action.
  • Okay, here’s the eyes-glazing-over part. The whole cursecaster/spellcaster business feels so… done. Once this element was introduced, my interest in the book really dropped off. Stephen’s situation is so interesting — but then to move into a story about ancient powers, a musty old collection of books, the ability to “see” curses and draw them out… maybe this is the only way to provide an explanation for Stephen, but I felt like I was reading a really different story than the one I started with. Witchy powers of one sort or another seem to pop up in every other YA novel these days; I didn’t think this was going to be another one of those.
  • Perhaps if I hadn’t read David Levithan’s Every Day so recently, this might have felt fresher. In Every Day, the main character is also an outsider due to a weird, inexplicable circumstance that forever separates the main character from the chance of a normal life — until everything changes and the character finds new purpose after falling for that one special girl who can see beyond the surface. So yes, parts of the set-up of Invisibility felt a bit too familiar. Different stories, but not such different predicaments.

I do want to praise the snappy writing, the clever dialogue, and the humorous moments that pop up from time to time to lighten the mood. I couldn’t help giggling in certain places, such as :

“News flash,” he says. “I’m gay, not a witch. Gay and witch is Dumbledore, and last time I checked, he was still just a guy in a book.”

Be still, my Harry-Potter-lovin’ heart! I also enjoyed the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shout out to David Levithan’s excellent novel Will Grayson, Will Grayson, co-written with the amazing John Green. Little moments like this definitely added an element of fun to what is overall a pretty heavy mood throughout the book.

Invisibility has a dramatic climax, with plenty of action and some truly horrific events along the way. In particular, a nasty trail of curses inflicted on random people in Central Park is chilling in its violence and devastation. By the end, Elizabeth and Stephen reach a form of resolution, although not a solution. I do like that the ending is imperfect, rather than having our lovebirds overcome all adversity, beat the odds, have true love triumph, and all the various plot points that have become so clichéd by now. Instead, they find a way to move forward, but their problems are far from over.

I appreciate having an open-ended finale to the story, one that leaves the reader room to ponder what may happen and what the characters’ lives might be like going forward. I’m hoping, though, that this doesn’ t mean that there will be a sequel. Not everything needs to be wrapped up with a perfect happily-ever-after. There’s hope, despite the certainty of further challenges, and that feels fitting for Elizabeth and Stephen’s story.