I've always enjoyed a good re-imagining of a classic story; whether based on a legendary myth or a popular work of fiction, I really love when a writer tackles the often difficult task of breathing new life into a well-known tale. Kenneth Oppel does so with expert finesse in This Dark Endeavour (HarperCollins Canada). The story is a prequel to the popular classic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; it follows the adolescent Victor Frankenstein in the events that propel him on the dark path that will lead to the creation of his infamous monster.


Victor and Konrad Frankenstein are twin brothers who, along with their distant cousin Elizabeth and best friend Henry, get up to all kinds of mischievous adventures on the grounds of Castle Frankenstein. When Konrad falls deathly ill and no doctor is able to find a cure, it is up to the other three to take drastic measures to save his life. Konrad enters the forbidden Dark Library, hidden in the basement of Castle Frankenstein, and finds the recipe for an ancient alchemical potion called The Elixir of Life. With help from Elizabeth and Henry, Victor must embark on a series of harrowing tasks to gather the necessary ingredients for the Elixir, before it is too late.


This book was so much fun to read; not only is it adventurous and fast-paced but the storytelling is really detailed. The plot progresses quickly and Oppel weaves in details through Victor's narrative in a way that really worked for me. Victor makes for a fascinating protagonist; he is a bit of an anti-hero and at times his behaviour is deplorable, but I still found myself rooting for him. He has some pretty fantastic moments of bravery and selflessness that help to prove his heart is ultimately in the right place (for now). I felt Oppel really hit the nail on the head when it came to striking the balance between Victor's good and evil sides.


This Dark Endeavour is one of my favourite reads so far this year; the gothic style, the historic setting and a compelling narrator all make for a really engrossing book. Though it does have the quick pace and plot-driven writing style common in contemporary YA fiction (one of the many reasons I love reading teen novels), for me there was a lot of complexity written between the lines in this book. The sequel entitled Such Wicked Intent is due out at the end of this summer and I plan to head out to my local bookstore that very day so I can get right back into the story.

This book blew my mind. Those five words sum up my feelings towards The Night Circus (Random House) by Erin Morgenstern so perfectly that I could just leave my review at that. However, I don't think that would be very satisfying for those reading my blog so I'll do my best to add a few more thoughts.When I first heard of this book I was so excited, it sounded absolutely magical and it was getting all kinds of crazy good reviews. Then, two of my friends read it, and both stated that it was over hyped and didn't live up to their expectations. I began to worry that I wasn't going to enjoy it either; we have similar reading tastes so it was a good possibility. I should never have worried though because I fell head over heels in love with this book.


The Night Circus tells the story of Le Cirque des Rêves, a mysterious traveling circus that is only open at night. It is full of magical wonderment, unlike any circus that has ever been seen before, and continually dazzles the audience night after night. The circus is really a front for an intense competition between two young magicians, Marco and Celia, who have been pitted against one another by their rivaling instructors. As the years go by, and the game becomes more and more imaginative and complex, Celia and Marco find that they are falling in love with one another. Their fate, and the fate of all who love the circus and call it home, becomes entangled in the deadly duel of magic that must be played out till its inevitable end.


For me, the best part of this book is the beautifully detailed writing. Morgenstern evokes the magic of the circus so perfectly that I felt I could see, smell, hear, taste all the delights of Le Cirque des Rêves myself. The best word I can think of to describe the writing is seductive, every time I was reading I felt entirely swept into the world of the circus. I longed to experience what I was reading for myself; the writing is so visceral that I felt so close to the action of the story and yet, as it is a book and not real, so very far away. I was jealous of the characters in the story because they got to experience this truly hypnotic circus. It reminded me of my jealousy towards the characters in Harry Potter because they got to attend Hogwarts. 


There is an interesting cast of characters, an odd collection of delightfully eccentric individuals brought together through the unique magic of the circus. None of the characters clearly claims the role of the protagonist, unfortunately creating a slight issue when it comes to character development that I think might turn some readers off. I personally wasn't bothered by this as Morgenstern evokes such a detailed world that I let my imagination fill in the rest. I also felt that the true protagonist of the story was the circus itself.

The Night Circus is not an action-packed, page-turner written to be devoured in a few short sittings. It is a luxurious, meticulous read; one that the reader must fully submerge themselves into in order to get the true experience. Utterly fabulous!

I wanted to read this book from the moment I first saw it when my class went to Random House on a field trip last summer. It was on display in the board room, and I had a few moments to flip through it and mentally add it to my long list of books to read. The Midwife of Venice is the debut novel by Roberta Rich and is published by Random House Canada. The story follows Hannah Levi, a young woman living in the Jewish Ghetto of sixteenth-century Venice. She is renowned for her skill as a midwife, so much so that late one night a Christian Conte comes knocking at her door, seeking her out to help his labouring wife. It is illegal for a Jew to give medical care to a Christian, the punishment being death, but the man is desperate to save his dying wife and Hannah's compassionate nature, combined with an opportunity for rich payment, wins out. Her beloved husband Issac has been kidnapped and sold into slavery in Malta, the money could be enough to pay off his ransom.


And this is only the beginning of the gripping story as Hannah finds herself entangled in the dangerous affairs of the affluent Christian family she agrees to help. Throw in an outbreak of plague, the safety of the entire Jewish ghetto and the matter of securing Issac's freedom, and you have an amazing historical page-turner.


I was positive I was going to like this book, I love historical fiction and I have always been drawn to books where midwifery is featured prominently. The Midwife of Venice did not disappoint. Hannah is a wonderful protagonist; she is fierce and determined but is still very human. She is motivated by her love for Issac and her sense of right and wrong; Rich does an amazing job of creating a strong female character who is still very much a woman of her time. In historical fiction, I find it can often be tricky to get the balance right but Hannah is perfect. I really connected with her and cared deeply about the outcome of the story. The novel also follows Issac in Malta, detailing his time working as a slave and devising his escape so he can return to Hannah. The love between these two characters is palpable without becoming hokey, and for me it was the glue that held the story together.


The Midwife of Venice is a fantastic combination of excellent prose and great readability; it's a fast-paced novel full of action and excellent detail of sixteenth-century Venetian life. There were certain aspects of the story that I felt could have been fleshed out a little bit more, but my enjoyment of reading this book far surpassed any small criticisms I might have had. If you are a fan of historical novels then you must read this book; it would also be the perfect choice for someone who is curious about historical fiction but doesn't know where to start.


All in all, a thoroughly satisfying read.

The first thing that everyone says about this book is how much it is like The Hunger Games; yes it is a young adult dystopian novel with a female protagonist but really, the similarities end there. While I do think it can sometimes be useful to compare books and/or authors, I also find it can really get in the way of a reader’s pure experience of the book in question. Divergent by Veronica Roth (HarperColins) is one of these books that suffers from such comparisons. It is really good; a fast-paced, adventurous story with a really unique and well-developed world that deserves to be read and enjoyed based on these virtues, and not on its ability to stack up to another series of books.

Divergent takes place in a futuristic Chicago, a society that is divided into five distinct factions where each citizen lives in adherence to the quality most valued by their faction. There is Dauntless who value bravery, Erudite who value intelligence, Amity who value kindness, Candor who value honesty and Abnegation who value selflessness. 16-year-old Beatrice Pryor was born into Agnegation, but has never truly felt that she belongs and the story begins with her making the mandatory choice as to which faction she will choose to live in for the rest of her life. If she leaves Abnegation for a different faction, she will never again see her family. Before deciding, Beatrice takes an aptitude test, designed to indicate which faction’s values best align with her own. However, it turns out Beatrice is actually Divergent, showing aptitude for more than two factions, which is a very dangerous thing to be. The test administrator warns Beatrice not to reveal her results to anyone, ever. The next day Beatrice decides to leave her old faction behind and pledges to join Dauntless, renaming herself Tris in the process.

The rest of the book focuses mainly on the Dauntless initiation process, a series of terrifying tests designed to push people to the edge of their fear and pain thresholds. If the initiates do not pass the tests, they will become factionless or they will die- which many believe is a more desirable fate than living as an outcast. During the course of the book Tris begins to uncover deadly secrets about their world, those who rule it and why being Divergent puts her in a very dangerous position. The resolution of these discoveries comes to an intense and heart-pounding climax in the last quarter of the book that played out really well.

There were some things that I wasn’t really feeling in this book though, the first issue being with the character Tris herself. I didn’t love her, which for me is important in a protagonist. I don’t have to like everything about a character, but I do need to care about them and feel a certain connection and with Tris, I just didn’t get there. I really wanted to and I’m hopeful that in the next book it will happen, but there was just something about her I found annoying. She was kind of a baby, really self-conscious and weak at times and uncaring and distant at others. I think Roth might have been trying to make her sympathetic by showing her flaws, but to me, she just came off kind of whiny. Hopefully in the next book she grows and becomes more sure of herself.

The second irksome part of this book was that it was predictable. Too predictable, to the point that it was actually disappointing. I was able to guess all the “twists” in the story well before they actually happened, so that when Tris had a revelation, it just made me like her less for not cluing in to things that were being laid out in a pretty obvious fashion by the author. I wish Roth had used more subtlety in this aspect of her writing, I really love being caught completely off guard in a book, especially one with so much action as Divergent has.

That being said, I did really enjoy this book, it was a quick, well-paced book with a fascinating world and I sped through it in a couple hours worth of reading time. I thought Roth’s imagining of a future society was really well-developed and clever; I found myself thinking on more than one occasion that this was a realistic portrayal of a futuristic world.  The ending was set-up perfectly for the sequel, it tied up the main storyline well and left a lot of openings for the next storyline to begin. I finished it wanting to read the next one right away, which luckily for me, is being released May 1st of this year. According to Goodreads, a third book is also expected and I think that is great, the storyline, and particularly the world, will lend themselves well to a trilogy. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that as the story continues, Tris will grow on me and the plot won’t be as predictable as in the first book. All in all, a great book that lends itself well to an escapist read.

One of my goals this year is to read more Non-Fiction books, so when I heard about The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary by Andrew Westoll (HarperCollins), I knew it was a perfect choice for me. I love all animals but I have always had a really special place in my heart for Great Apes, including chimps. I ordered a copy from a great bookstore in Kingston, ON called A Novel Idea and was sad that I had to leave town before it arrived. Next time my boyfriend came for a visit, he brought with him my copy of the book as a surprise. I was so excited I danced around my room, hugging the book to my chest. Jess really does know that the way to my heart is through books!

First and foremost, when reading this book I advise that you have some tissue handy because you are going to cry. The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary is about a champion of a woman named Gloria Grow who decides to turn her farmland into a sanctuary for chimps who have spent their lives in biomedical research facilities. While there, they were subjected to terrifying medical procedures, social isolation and depraved living conditions. The book is also a memoir detailing Westoll’s own time spent living at the sanctuary, immersing himself in the “retirement” life of the chimps and getting to know the people who have dedicated their lives to helping these animals find some dignity in their later years.

Above all else though, this book is about the chimpanzees themselves. It is their stories that really made me love this book and read it every spare second I had- including while waiting at the bus stop, frozen fingers be damed. Westoll vividly describes the horrors they knew as research chimps, the physical scars and ailments they bear after years of being experimented upon and of course, the psychological traumas that haunt them every moment (many of Fauna’s past and present residents display symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). However, the book really allows their resilience to claim the soul of the story. After years of being subjected to horrors that I couldn’t even fathom enduring, these amazing animals are capable of trusting, forgiving, loving and learning. Their story is an inspiration. I loved how Westoll expressed the unique personality of each and every one of these extraordinary animals; I felt a strong attachment to all of them as individuals. This is where that box of tissues comes in handy, not just because their stories are sad (and they are tragic) but because these animals are the strongest, most compassionate individuals I have read about in a long time. As Westoll himself writes, “They are better than us.” They really, truly are and that is what reduced to me to a tearful mess.

I could go on at length about the issues of vivisection and the use of animals, including chimpanzees, in research but I won’t.  Westoll does a superb job of expressing why using chimps (or any animal) for experimentation is horrible, but the residents of Fauna Sanctuary are the best advocates of all because they put faces, names and an incredible story of survival to the issue. I loved this book, I still think about it every day. Well-worth checking out.

It is hard to know where to begin with this book, but I will say this: I absolutely loved it. It was a bit of a long read for me, I am usually a pretty fast reader but this book was so lush and so detailed that I found it difficult to move at my usual pace. It is definitely the kind of book that appeals to me, at its core it is a story about the beauty, passion and magic of being a woman and the price that is paid for being as such. Combine that with the incredible historical setting and Hoffman’s detailed prose and you have a book that this reader just devoured.

So, without further ado and before I digress too much, here is my review for The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman, published by Simon & Schuster.

 The Dovekeepers takes place at Masada in the Judean desert, the last Jewish stronghold against the invading Romans in 70 C.E. After two long years of surviving and holding off the Romans, Masada eventually fell. The historian Josephus wrote that only two women and five children survived the tragedy.

The Dovekeepers focuses on the events that took place in the two years leading up to the massacre and is divided into four parts, each part narrated by a different woman. The women each have a unique voice and story to share but they are all bound together through their work at the dovecotes. Yael carries a terrible guilt; her father has always blamed her for her mother's death, which occurred during Yael's birth and she is burdened with carrying a child out of wedlock. Revka has lost both her beloved husband and daughter to brutal violence and is left to care for her traumatized grandsons. Aziza is a warrior, secretly raised as a boy who finds herself falling in love with a celebrated soldier. Shirah is a witch, a powerful medicine woman who is wise in the ways of ancient magic. Hoffman elegantly weaves their stories into one and does a remarkable job of giving each woman a powerful narrative, every time one character’s section was over I was terribly sad to leave her behind but was quickly drawn into the world of the next. Despite the oppression and violence the women are faced with, they are all strong, resilient and powerful in their own special way. I was deeply moved by each character’s story.

The writing is impeccably detailed, often this level of detail does not work for me but for some reason this book was different. Whenever I was reading, I felt so completely drawn into the world and so emotionally connected to the events that were happening within.

The book was tragic in that really beautiful kind of way that is difficult to describe, it made me feel proud and sad to be a woman all at the same time. The Dovekeepers tells a truly captivating story that is haunting, passionate and magical. A breathtaking book.