Girls on Film – Book Review

January 21, 2016 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

There is a difference between old money and new money. When someone thinks of old money, they think of New York City, the Upper East Side, and all those powerful businessmen and women with their hands in everything. Basically, think the world of Gossip Girl. Now, new money is different. New money is Hollywood actors and models and all those people who rose to fame recently. There’s no family history of owning property or starting businesses from the ground up. No building an empire or a legacy that lasted many generations. It’s completely different, and those with old money can feel that those with new money don’t appreciate the value of said money like they do. Think Beverly Hills, with all the agents and record companies. Two different atmospheres, two very different outlooks on life, all rolled together into one.

This is the second book of The A-List series, and the drama only gets more intense as the series goes on. We have already been introduced to Anna, our Upper East Side WASP from New York who made the big move to California to live with her father. There she meets the Unholy Trinity in the form of Sam, Dee and Cammie. Three very different girls but best friends that will do anything for each other, or so we thought. With Anna in the mix, we see that the three best friends may have a rift in their otherwise tight knit alliance, and soon those lines may change.

We see that Sam may actually like hanging out with Anna, even if they had a bad first impression. Throughout this book, you see the two of them starting to get along much better when Sam isn’t with her two best friends. The infamous Sam Sharpe actually has a heart, and somehow Anna has been able to bring that good side to the forefront. Sam may have known that Cammie was a major bitch to begin with, but now she can see that sometimes her behavior is unwarranted and downright cruel. Anna is learning quickly that sometimes she needs to play dirty in order to survive in her new zip code, but as long as she remembers who she is and where she came from, she won’t turn into one of them.

Technically this is a re-read for me, even though the last time I read this book I was either in middle school or high school. It’s been years, trust me. I don’t know what it is about this series, but I just can’t stay away from it for long. I also don’t want it to end so that’s probably why I’ve been stalling in reading the rest of the books that I haven’t read yet. In this book, Sam really impressed me with her change of character, even if it wasn’t permanent. I like that we see a softer side to her, and that she and Anna can put aside their differences to come together and work together to do what needs to be done. I would much rather see these girls become friends to be an unstoppable force, but then where would all the drama be? To me, Ben is completely out of the picture and is so irrelevant to me. I don’t care if Anna really likes him, maybe even loves him, and he still winds up to make appearances in this series. To me, the story of each of the four girls is so much more interesting to me and I would rather delve deeper into their thoughts and their psyche than Ben’s.

Rated: 5/5 Stars

Absent – Book Review

January 21, 2016 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

What would happen if you were to die tragically, but could never cross over to the other side? Having to “live” – the term used loosely of course – the rest of your strange existence out in the high school where you lost your life sounds like a horror movie in and of itself. You have to watch everyone else go on about their lives, when you can’t go on with yours.

Sucks, doesn’t it?

By the time the story begins, our main girl Paige is already dead, wandering the halls of her high school listening to what people have to say about her death. It doesn’t help that she can only stay on the grounds of her school. Anytime she tries to go past the parking lot, she is whisked away to the spot on the roof where she died. Why does it happen like that? Nobody really knows. None of the rest of the ghosts there can understand why they are stuck there, or why they have to revisit the spot where they lost their lives when they try to leave the school. At first it just sucks, but then she starts to hear that there is a rumor going on about her death. Some people are saying that she did it on purpose, like she would end her life in front of her Physics class like that. She’s pissed, especially because it was just a freak accident. She didn’t want to die that day, and she certainly didn’t want to kill herself on that day. So why are people so quick to believe it?

It doesn’t help either, that she can’t clear her name, with her being dead and all. Or can she?

Paige isn’t entirely sure how she ended up discovering it, but once she did, she just couldn’t help herself. She found out that she could temporarily inhabit another person’s body. She could be alive again, all her thoughts and memories and actions her own, even if just for a moment. So, of course, once she heard that rumors were going around about the circumstances of her death, she got busy trying to get everyone to see the truth. It was a strange sensation to her though, because she could feel them fighting against her sometimes. It was like they knew that something was wrong and they didn’t want another spirit inhabiting their body. In all honesty, they reacting in a way that anyone else would normally react, but to Paige it felt like they were fighting what she needed to do. Sometimes she was stronger than them, other times they just gave in and let her do what she needed to.

I considered this book to be very moving to me. Paige had to learn how to accept what happened in her life, and somehow come to terms that people were going to believe what would seem to be completely preposterous to her because they didn’t know the entire story. The kids in that school had a rumor on how Brooke, one of the other ghosts that Paige is stuck with, died that Brooke never tried to fight. It was as if that was how these kids had to deal with two girls dying in their school mere months apart from one another. It was one tragedy after another and it rocked their world. It especially devastated Paige’s best friend, who for a while was actually angry at Paige for dying, like she did it on purpose. Maybe that was how the rumor started in Paige’s eyes, especially since it seemed like her best friend didn’t care at all about her anymore. But every single person who knew Paige had to come to terms with the fact that she was dead, that she wasn’t coming back, and learn how to live without her.

The ending of this book was really heartwarming, and made me believe that good things can actually come from dying. They never show what happened on the other side, when they felt the mural painted in the hallway and how warm and alive it felt to them. But maybe that’s a good thing, and maybe that’s just how the book should have ended. It ended with the hope of knowing that things were going to get better for Paige, better for Brooke, better for their friend Evan who has been there longer than anyone else in that school has. Even though they were dead and were stuck in that school, they had one another, and were finally able to move on to a whole new adventure.

Rated: 5/5 Stars

Just Ella – Book Review

January 19, 2016June 4, 2019 by Leelynn @ Sometimes Leelynn Reads ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

“I’d done something everybody had told me I couldn’t. I’d changed my life all by myself. Having a fairy godmother would have ruined everything.” – Ella Brown

Everyone knows the story about Cinderella. She was a beautiful orphan in the care of her wicked stepmother and stepsisters, and her fairy godmother helped her get ready for the Prince’s ball. There she winds up meeting the Prince, they fall in love after dancing the night away, only to have her run back home when the clock strikes midnight. He eventually finds her by having every single single girl in his kingdom try on the glass slipper his mystery girl lost the night of the ball, and then they live “happily ever after.” That’s the way the story ends, or so we thought.

Unfortunately for our main girl Ella, she did not live happily ever after at all, and her Prince Charming was anything but. The story takes place months before the wedding, and Ella is forced to learn how to become more of a lady. Of course it’s going to be a challenge, especially growing up having to become a slave to her stepmother after her father died. In this world, there is war, refugees, and the only happily ever after is in the outlandish rumors going around the castle about Ella’s background. No, she did not have a fairy godmother to help her get to the ball and woo the Prince, but the entire palace sure believes that story. She made her own dress, used her cleverness to obtain glass slippers, and got to the ball by walking part most of the way to the castle. She changed her own fate, and the fact that everyone didn’t know the truth about what happened, and chose to believe a fairy tale rather than find out the reality of the situation stung even more.

Ella is a very strong feminist, and in this book it shows why that concept is important. We see Ella getting everything about being a princess wrong, and that’s not because she isn’t trying. It’s really because, in this kingdom, being a princess involves not being able to have an original thought, or even know the truth about what’s happening around the little bubble they forced her into. The Prince turns out to be extremely boring and one dimensional, unable to hold an actual conversation with Ella during their chaperoned meetings. She finds him dull, and realizes that she fell in love with the idea of him on the night of the ball, so long ago to her. She didn’t fall in love with the prince himself, and she had to figure out a way to get out of such a loveless and destructive marriage.

In the end she figures out a way to escape, even though she was forced into the castle’s dungeon for a period of time. Speaking out against the marriage, and showing that she was not the dainty little girl the palace wanted her to be was what got her into trouble, but that didn’t stop her from removing herself from a dangerous situation, one that made her feel threatened and uncomfortable. She ran, all the way to the edge of the kingdom where the refugees of the war were staying, and she made herself into a woman of knowledge and skill. It was hard work, maybe even harder than what she had to go through growing up, but she loved it. She excelled at it, and it fulfilled her life in ways that she didn’t even dream of. She made her own destiny into one that she could have never had if she went through with her marriage to the prince, and even though she could probably never go back to that part of the kingdom, she was better off for it.

I felt like this book was pretty interesting, even though it was short to me and ended somewhat abruptly. It really changes the preconception of the Cinderella story, the one that little girls are used to seeing from Disney. There is so much more to this book than what Disney showed us, and in its own little way, they flip the well known story on its head and change the way we see Cinderella. She changes from this girl who had a fairy godmother and talking mice helping her to become a princess to an assertive, no-nonsense teenager that would rather watch a jousting tournament than be inside stitching a new dress. This is a good introduction into the world of female protagonists who just don’t like being told what to do, and I feel she has the potential to join the ranks of my favorites, like Rose Hathaway and Hermione Granger. Not bad company to keep.

Rated: 4/5 Stars