Booking It

Juliet Immortal is the first of two companion books, the second of which is called Romeo Redeemed. It’s a light YA contemporary romance novel with a Shakespearean twist. 

The protagonist is that Juliet, the Juliet of Romeo & Juliet fame. In Jay’s version, she was duped into committing suicide by an egomaniacal Romeo, so that he could use her death as part of a bizarre ritual to gain immortal life. Unfortunately, his plan backfires, and Juliet also gains immortal life, promising to use it to chase Romeo through the ages, intent on destroying him.

Unfortunately, I absolutely loathed this book. Because of my completionist tendencies, I felt obliged to finish it, but I definitely won’t be reading the sequel. There are a number of major issues that I have with the book.

Shakespearean adaptations are tricky to handle - I get that, but there is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. Jay does it the wrong way. A classic teen flick like Ten Things I Hate About You, which adapts The Taming of the Shrew with a modern high school context, is fun and funny. Juliet Immortal rests on a ridiculous premise, and also takes itself completely seriously. The idea of R&J locked in an immortal conflict between light and darkness completely unbalances the message of Shakespeare’s work, and Jay handles her plot threads in a messy and graceless way, complicating everything with clumsy prose. Her reading of Romeo & Juliet, the play, is not nuanced - she doesn’t bring anything interesting or surprising to the table, but just over-complicates things by introducing strange and poorly-explained concepts of reincarnation. The book doesn’t even adhere to its own rules.

The book also fails on the level of characterization. The Juliet of this novel tells the reader over and over that she’s amazing at her job; that she’s great at fighting for the light. But the way she acts in the novel completely contradicts that. She spends most of the book living in the body of a girl from 21st century America, and spends most of that time messing things up in the girl’s life. She makes a few half-hearted attempts to make things better for the girl, but most of her actions are petty and selfish, with the goal of squeezing make-out sessions in as frequently as she can. We’re trapped in Juliet’s empty, narcissistic head for most of the novel, and I found myself wishing repeatedly that she’d actually got the job done right when she killed herself. 

The romance aspects of the book were silly and melodramatic, with the kind of bizarre half-baked love triangle that I utterly loathe. The prose was clunky, awkward and self-congratulatory (I guess that makes it a perfect match for the main character). The pacing was strange - agonizingly slow, with a couple of quick, schizophrenic “action” scenes slotted in almost at random.

Ultimately, this is the perfect example of why people shouldn’t touch the Bard’s work. Romeo & Juliet isn’t one of my favourite plays, but it’s a complex and layered story about society, gender politics, and the power of language. Juliet Immortal is a poorly-thought-out steaming pile of mediocrity, with a detestable main character and the obligatory unnecessary sequel. I give it a hearty and resounding one star out of five.

I would recommend Juliet Immortal for fans of:

- Petty, immature protagonists who do not develop over the course of the story

- Bastardizations of classic literature

- Pointless make-out scenes imbued with no chemistry whatsoever

Top 12 Books of 2012 (Plus 12 More Favourites!)

My favourite “twelve” books of 2012! Includes some series, because I’m a cheater. Each one of these is highly recommended! Companion post on all the books I read this year can be found below.

2012 Books of the Year: The Complete List

All of the books I read this year! My favourites of 2012 are in the companion post above.

Books of the Month: October & November 2012

With an unfamiliar look of chagrin, he adds, “I don’t do well with ships.”

I smile. “I’d noticed.”

Title: Glitch (Glitch #1)

Author: Heather Anastasiu

Publication Info: 7 August 2012 by St. Martin’s Press

* This ended up being more of a rant than I thought it would.

I’ve put off writing this review for a long, long time. Like, since July. I finished the book on schedule, for once, but every time I sat down to review the book, I just couldn’t do it.

That’s because I don’t even want to think about this book anymore. I wish I had a Pensieve or something so I could just delete the memory of having read it. 

The book made me feel tired - tired of young adult literature, tired of dystopian fiction, tired of reading. And I never get tired of reading. It was a little terrifying that this book - an innocuous 300-pager with a pretty cover and a pedestrian premise - could do that to me.

To be fair, I’m not assigning all of the blame to this particular book. Around the time I read this, I’d also read some other terrible books, which can result in losing your faith in YA. This was just the book that broke the camel’s paperback, if you dig me.

Glitch is the first volume in an unnecessary series about a dystopian society. There’s the prerequisite controlling government, the prerequisite love triangle, a shoddily-constructed world, a “plucky” young heroine who likes drawing, and a dull cliche love interest of the rebel type. Nothing much happens. She discovers the “secret” of the dystopian world - oh no! Mind control is bad! And then makes lame strides towards escaping in a plot that takes the backseat to cheese-ridden make-out sessions. The character development is nonexistent, the plotting spotty, the world a series of cardboard elements pasted together with Elmer’s craft glue. There’s no sense of immediacy, no sense of pace, no sense of significance.

It’s not a good book. 

This is an example of the “dystopian” fiction that I hate. The reason 1984 is a good book is not because the main character gets some nookie (even though he does). It’s a good book because it sends a message about the dangerous trajectory of our society. Pardon my French (I usually don’t swear in reviews, like, ever) but what the fuck is up with YA literature? Since when is a novel ONLY SET in a quasi-futuristic dystopian society because the author thinks that’s a good place to set a lame-ass love story? 

And it’s not even a good love story. The author is like a five-year-old mashing her Barbie doll and Ken doll together. “See?” she says gleefully. “This is what looove is like, right? RIGHT? And they’re in the future! Because that’s supposed to add some dimension of quality to this book!” 

See that, people?? That’s an analogy! An extended comparison! It’s a literary device! That’s what WRITING should be like! I’ve just written a story about a Barbie makeout session and it was more compelling and better written than this piece of laughable commercial tripe! 

And you know what? People liked this book. If you liked it, great for you. Snaps. Clearly you are more open-minded about commercial fiction than I am. Or less picky. Or less “mean.” Or you’re just looking to be entertained by a book, which is fine! But I am NOT looking to just be entertained.

I want to feel like I’ve dedicated my time to something worthwhile. If I wanted to waste time doing something just to do something, I’d watch a Sandra Bullock romantic comedy. At least those can actually be funny. Glitch took itself 100% seriously, which is something I just can’t stand in a piece of commercial throwaway fiction.

I need to derive something from fiction, whether it’s beautiful prose or genuine emotion or some truth about the human condition. This book did not have that.

This book was hollow. It was the literary equivalent of eating cotton candy. Pretty but insubstantial, and with an unpleasant manufactured aftertaste. An assembly-line YA novel start to finish.

1 STAR

*Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for providing a digital copy of the book.*

“I would be a poor minstrel if flattery were not in my nature.”

What! I missed eleven days! And I had such good intentions going into this thing… Oh well.

“Run, run, run!” laughed a voice in the darkness. “Four-feet-two-feet, Down-there-on-the-ground-feet!”

I probed the wound gently with my fingers. It was deep, but blade had not struck bone. At least I could be thankful for that.

I snatched the chicken and marched off, the sound of his laughter ringing in my ears.