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Glitterland
Glitterland by Alexis Hall is $2.51! Apologies if this is a leftover Kindle Daily Deal from yesterday. This is one of Hall’s earlier books that received a cover redesign. Not sure how I like it, honestly. I think it’d fit more if the main characters were ice skaters.
From the acclaimed author of Boyfriend Material comes a deeply emotional romance about heartbreak, hope, and learning to love against all the odds.
Once the golden boy of the English literary scene, now a clinically depressed writer of pulp crime fiction, Ash Winters has given up on hope, happiness, and—most of all—himself. He lives his life between the cycles of his illness, haunted by the ghosts of other people’s expectations.
Then a chance encounter throws him into the path of Essex-born Darian Taylor. Flashy and loud, radiant and full of life, Darian couldn’t be more different…and yet he makes Ash laugh, reminding him of what it’s like to step beyond the boundaries of his anxiety. But Ash has been living in his own shadow for so long that he can no longer see a way out. Can a man who doesn’t trust himself ever trust in happiness? And how can someone who doesn’t believe in happiness ever fight for his own?
In the past, the universe is a glitterball I hold in the palm of my hand.
In the past, I am brilliant and I am happy and my every tomorrow is madness.
In the past, I am soaring, and falling, and breaking, and lost.
And now, there is only this.
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Next Year in Havana
Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton is $2.99! This book has dual timelines: 2017 Miami and 1958 Havana. Do her subsequent books do the same thing? Based on the descriptions, those seem more like standard historical fiction.
After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity–and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution…
Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba’s high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country’s growing political unrest–until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary…
Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa’s last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth.
Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba’s tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she’ll need the lessons of her grandmother’s past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.
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The Bees
RECOMMENDED: The Bees by Laline Paull is $1.99 and a KDD! I LOVED this book. There were comparisons to Cinderella and the Arthurian legend. On Goodreads, I gave it a 4-star rating and a mini review:
This book was unlike anything I’ve read before, and I found it both unique and mesmerizing. However, the last fifty pages seemed to lack the care and craft of the ones before it. The ending was over in a rush and I felt Flora’s story should have continued on with more detail. Regardless, I was impressed with Paull’s storytelling and her ability to make bee life interesting.
The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut set in an ancient culture where only the queen may breed and deformity means death.
Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. But Flora is not like other bees. With circumstances threatening the hive’s survival, her curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw but her courage and strength are an asset. She is allowed to feed the newborns in the royal nursery and then to become a forager, flying alone and free to collect pollen. She also finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers mysteries about the hive that are both profound and ominous.
But when Flora breaks the most sacred law of all—daring to challenge the Queen’s fertility—enemies abound, from the fearsome fertility police who enforce the strict social hierarchy to the high priestesses jealously wedded to power. Her deepest instincts to serve and sacrifice are now overshadowed by an even deeper desire, a fierce maternal love that will bring her into conflict with her conscience, her heart, her society—and lead her to unthinkable deeds.
Thrilling, suspenseful and spectacularly imaginative, The Bees gives us a dazzling young heroine and will change forever the way you look at the world outside your window.
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Anna and the French Kiss
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins is $2.99! Many reviews on Goodreads mention becoming a member of the Bad Decisions Book Club in order to finish it. However, some found the heroine a bit too cutesy for their tastes. I know Sarah loved this one.
Anna can’t wait for her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a good job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. So she’s not too thrilled when her father unexpectedly ships her off to boarding school in Paris – until she meets Etienne St. Clair, the perfect boy. The only problem? He’s taken, and Anna might be, too, if anything comes of her crush back home. Will a year of romantic near-misses end in the French kiss Anna awaits?
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Turning up the Heat Kara Kendrick’s
Garden of Her Heart by Shanna Hatfield
Glitterland was Alexis Hall’s first published book. I read it when it first came out and gave it like a B-/C+. I haven’t read the updated version and I only read it the one time.
I thought it was a really great portrayal of living with depression and also navigating changing friendships and friend groups in one’s late 20s / early 30s (don’t remember exactly how old the MC is). It just wasn’t very convincing as a romance. The love interest is a manic pixie dream boy with no real character development.
It’s told completely from the POV of one MC, and he’s depressed, snobby and takes himself so, so seriously that my eyeballs almost rolled out of my head. Read the sample.
Paris Daillencourt Is About to Crumble reminded me of Glitterland – totally different book but similar in that it’s a great story about living with mental illness but not great on the romance.
I felt similarly about Glitterland, and tbh the rest of the series too. Hall is so talented, and he did so many things well, but it just didn’t work for me as a romance. Tbh I haven’t read any of his later work because I was left unconvinced that he can spin me a romance I’d believe in. If he ever tried writing in another genre, though, I’d read it without reservations.
Darian worked better for me as a character than he did for cleo because the reader only sees him through Ash’s eyes, and Ash is a snob who spends most of the book looking down on Darian and treating him badly, so his perception of Darian is not very objective. I related to Ash because I too struggle with severe depression, but he is so awful to Darian, who is lovely and deserves better, so I was both sympathetic and furious with him the whole book.
Mental illness severely compromises one’s ability to be a viable romantic partner. Glitterland shows why, but it doesn’t really show Ash genuinely in a position to be a viable partner.
I agree with @cleo that Glitterland is an amazing book about depression more than it’s a romance, but I think it’s also a romance. I thought Darian (the love interest) didn’t have much character development because he didn’t actually need it, the growth all comes in the main character’s perception. And Darian seemed way too grounded to be a manic pixie dream boy, but however you’d characterize him I adored him. So for me this is one of the A books, even though it made me cry, which is hard for me to come back from.
I really enjoyed GLITTERLAND. It’s actually one of my favorite Alexis Hall books. It’s true that Ash is a huge snob. It’s true that he is severely mentally ill. It’s true that he really doesn’t deserve Darian, who is just a very lovely if slightly shallow guy. If you read this book, you are going to get very angry at times with Ash on Darian’s behalf. So why read the book? Well I think it’s actually quite funny. It really is. The entire book is basically Ash trying to maintain his ridiculous snobbery while simultaneously falling for a “glitter pirate.” I mean, there’s a scene early on in the book when Darian poses in front of like a dumpster or trash bin (metaphor!) or something and Ash just basically drools. I’m not saying that we should be laughing at Ash’s misery, depression, and mental illness. These are all very serious. But I think what makes this book work is the fact that even when Ash is very miserable and is being quite awful to everyone around him, there’s still laughter and joy in the world. And even Ash is able to stumble toward joy and fun more or less in spite of himself.
Has anyone read Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell? It’s currently $1.99 on Amazon US and I’m curious if it’s feminist or /wink wink “feminist”, you know? I love reading about etymology and how language evolves, but I don’t have the emotional bandwidth for a bait and switch on my favorite topic right now. So if any of the bitches could do me a solid, please let me know.
Reading Glitterland, I found Darian’s phonetic “Essex” speech really difficult to follow. Having to mentally translate it to understand it took me out of the story too often, so I ended up with a DNF. I’ve seen complaints about US authors rendering British speak phonetically, especially with Scots characters (especially Highlanders).