Personal Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads Rating: 4.05 Content Rating: Light PG-13 Once upon a time, two best friends created a princess together. Libby drew the pictures, May wrote the tales, and their heroine, Princess X, slayed all the dragons and scaled all the mountains their imaginations could conjure. Once upon a few years later, Libby was in the car with her mom, driving across the Ballard Bridge on a rainy night. When the car went over the side, Libby passed away, and Princess X died with her. Once upon a now: May is sixteen and lonely, wandering the streets of Seattle, when she sees a sticker slapped in a corner window. Princess X? When May looks around, she sees the Princess everywhere: Stickers. Patches. Graffiti. There's an entire underground culture, focused around a webcomic at IAmPrincessX.com. The more May explores the webcomic, the more she sees disturbing similarities between Libby's story and Princess X online. And that means that only one person could have started this phenomenon---her best friend, Libby, who lives. (goodreads.com) In my family I definitely read the most… unless someone is just secretly reading all of the books from my shelves and I don’t know about it or they just have a massive library of their own hidden somewhere. But as far as I know I read the most out of everyone in my immediate family. However, that doesn’t mean that the others don’t read. I like to think we are a pretty literary family. Why am I talking about my family? Because my sister is the one who recommended today’s book to me! SHOUT OUT TO MY SISTER! HI MORIAH! Things you should know about my sister:
Knowing all of this, it should come as no surprise that she picked up I Am Princess X from our local library. This story, which is told with a combination of text and the webcomic that the story is about, has a lot of superhero vibe to it. As you can probably tell from my rating of this book, I’m really glad that my sister read it and let me read it after her. I thoroughly enjoyed both the story and the fun purple-tinted art. Based off my last review, you can probably figure out that I’ve come full circle as far as like illustrations in my books. When I was a kid and couldn’t actually understand written words I preferred books with lots of beautiful, well thought out pictures. Then, when I learned how to read better I preferred the words over the images. But now I’m finding that I’m really, really enjoying seeing illustrations in books again. I don’t know what it is but I love storytelling with artwork thrown in. It’s fantastic. I’m getting off topic. Let’s talk about Princess X. I really liked the premise of this book and the execution of the premise worked really well in my opinion. I loved how it kept it current with webcomics and online stuff. I also like how it had people create fanart merch for Princess X because, let’s be honest, if something online really got that popular you know there would be fanart. Not sure if people would buy the stickers and then paste them all over town, but that worked well for the plot so I’m not arguing. The characters were really great. May was fun, likeable, and interesting. She was determined and brave and I like how she was kind of sparked from her ordinary boring life to a courageous hero when she had the slightest suspicion that her friend might still be alive. Trick was fun too, and I think he was very realistically written. He was an annoying teenage boy without being so irritating that I hated him and he reacted in reasonable ways to the events of the story. Plus, his online handle was lame, which I think we can all find relatable. I don’t want to talk about too many other characters because I don’t want to spoil anything, but I liked pretty much everyone except the villain. Speaking of the villain: I wish we had gotten to talk to him a little bit more. We knew his motives and everything, but something in me wanted him to explain himself. Aren’t bad guys usually supposed to have a chance to justify their actions? Even if they are unjustifiable. And maybe he knew that. Maybe that’s why we couldn’t have him speak any more than he did. Because even he knows how bad he is. Still, I would have liked to see a little more of him either in the main story or in the webcomic part. The plot wrapped itself up very neatly, which was satisfying since it’s a stand alone. It might have been a little too neat, because something about it just felt like it was finished really quickly and didn’t leave me much to think about. Personally, I think a book should leave you with a little to consider and I could see an attempt at that, but the browser that is my brain was happy to just close down the tab of this story as soon as I closed the book. Does that make sense? Like it finished so perfectly that I’m afraid it won’t leave a big impression. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the ending! I really liked it! I’m just not sure it was the best that it could have been or that other, more critical readers, will like it. I am really glad that my sister recommended this book, though as I had a lot of fun reading it! I’ll have to take her book recs more often. Hopefully you enjoyed this review and maybe it will convince you to read a really fun book about a princess who wields a sword… and sometimes a multitool. Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23399273-i-am-princess-x
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Personal Rating: 3 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.72 Stars Content Rating: Strong PG Parallel stories set in different times, one told in prose and one in pictures, converge as a Ella unravels the mystery of the girl next door. 1982: Mary is a lonely orphan at the Thornhill Institute for Children at the very moment that it's shutting its doors. When her few friends are all adopted or re-homed and she is left to face a volatile bully alone, her revenge will have a lasting effect on the bully, on Mary, and on Thornhill itself. 2017: Ella has just moved to a new town where she knows no one. From her room on the top floor of her new home, she has a perfect view of the dilapidated, abandoned Thornhill Institute across the way, where she glimpses a girl in the window. Determined to befriend the girl, Ella resolves to unravel Thornhill's shadowy past. Told in alternating, interwoven plotlines—Mary's through intimate diary entries and Ella's in bold, striking art—Pam Smy's Thornhill is a haunting exploration of human connection, and a suspense-filled story. (goodreads.com) In honor of this book being halfway told by beautiful illustrations, I’ve decided to share how I came across this book and part of my reaction to it in picture form. Enjoy my fantastic art skills: After that you probably don’t even need me to give my usual kind of remarks on the book, but since Thornhill is also told with words I’d better use some too. Let me say that I have mixed feelings about this book. So if I seem a bit back and forth about whether I liked it or not it’s because I’m not sure. For one thing, I thought the story telling was very well done and the illustrations were amazing. I loved that it was a different format from your typical novel and I love the dark lack-of-color scheme. It just looks so enticing and spooky and wonderful. It is a visually appealing book and I love that. But the story, man! It was well told and I was interested all the way through. I was fully invested in the characters. And I can’t say much without spoilers, but yeesh! That ending made me made, sad, frustrated, oddly happy, and satisfied all at the same time (I had similar feelings after Avengers: Infinity War). I don’t know how that happened but I kind of like a book that leaves me reeling, you know? It makes the excitement more authentic I think. Basically, this book was about two girls with thirty-five years that separate them who both just want to fit in and have friends, but are having a hard time of it. The girl in 1982, Mary, tells her story in the form of a diary. She describes the horrors the other girls living at her girls’ home put her through and how she deals with that (not in a healthy way, I’m going to be honest). The girl in the present, Ella, has her story told through gorgeous illustrations. She is facing life without her mother and with her father absent most of the time. She just moved into a house right by Thornhill and she keeps seeing a girl on the grounds of the old school who she wants to befriend. And this was a really interesting story. This novel was meant to be spooky, I think, and I know a lot of other people who read it are complaining that it wasn’t actually that scary. Okay, but… try reading it at midnight with all the lights in the house off except your reading lamp. That’s when you get scared to look up from the book because you’re afraid of what you’ll see (or won’t see) in the shadows. At least, that’s how I read all scary things to maximize the creepiness. And it really worked for the illustrations toward the end of the book. Yikes. I will admit that it could have been a lot creepier, but I think part of it is that sometimes print isn’t the best format for a scary story. A movie of Thornhill probs would have had me cowering behind a pillow. I don’t do scary movies. The creepiness level of this book was like a mild version of Neil Gaiman, I think. It kind of reminded me of The Graveyard Book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Coraline a little. Anyway, it’s a really interesting book, for sure. It’s just odd. And sad. I don’t know if I recommend it or not. I would give you a warning for potential triggers for bullying and possibly suicide, so be wary of that. Otherwise, I mostly enjoyed this novel I think. Of course, you could flash beautiful covers and illustrations in my face and I’d probably say I liked nearly anything. Heck, if they made math books pretty enough I might have ended up doing something math related with my life. Eh, actually, I don’t think even books can be that persuasive. Thanks for reading my review! I hope you enjoyed it! What do you think of telling stories through illustrations? Have you read any other books told in this format, like maybe The Invention of Hugo Cabret or Wonderstruck (both by Brian Selznick)? I haven’t, but I’d be willing to try some more because I really liked it in Thornhill. Well, I am off to go make some creepy puppets and leave them around the grounds of an abandoned school. Ta-ta! Book cover source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33163379-thornhill |
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