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3.34 AVERAGE
3.34 AVERAGE
I LOVED this book! It gave great character and life to flat, barely mentioned, un-personalized characters. Anyone familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet should most definitely read it!!
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
DNF before page 50; the attempted Elizabethan style of speech was clunky, often trying to Shakespeare-ize modern expressions with poor results. Also, it was kind of annoying making Rosaline a healer's apprentice, mostly because it seems like that's the only 'independent-minded lady' job that seems to show up in these period YAs; it's a tired trope now. I liked that Romeo was portrayed as kind of an idiot instead of the Great Romantic Hero, but after picking up hints of increasing silliness from a few other reviews, I'm comfortable dropping this right now. I have too much else to read.
This is badly written fanfiction, nothing more, nothing less. A twist on the classic Shakespeare tragedy that takes the character out of the lovable characters and turns the plot of the original play into insipid drama.
If there's anything to get out of this one, it's that it'll make you laugh at how bad it is.
If there's anything to get out of this one, it's that it'll make you laugh at how bad it is.
This was a fun, quick read. It told the story of Romeo and Juliet from the perspective of Rosaline. I did enjoy the Rosaline character, and I like the author's idea of making the female characters in Shakespeare's plays more powerful. I think I would have gotten more out of this, however, if I either remembered the details of Romeo and Juliet better or had read it more recently. It was a fun book though, and I'll probably check out Fiedler's retelling of Hamlet.
Okay, so at the library last night I picked up two loosely-based-on-Shakespeare YA novels. I have a weakness, both for Shakespeare and for YA fiction, so it was fairly inevitable. I haven’t yet begun Ophelia, but Romeo’s Ex: Rosaline’s Story I began and finished last night.
My first impressions were moderate- the author’s use of quasi-Elizabethan language seems more of a forced affectation than an effective way to tell a story. It’s understandably simplified for the sake of modern readers (I don’t really believe in reading Shakespeare’s plays- watching them and hearing the words spoken aloud leads to a much richer and easier to understand experience.), but it still feels pretentious, particularly when lines from the actual play are interspersed in the book- always, always, in italics.
Until two hundred pages into this 246 page book I was unimpressed, but still sorta enjoying it. Rosaline was far more of a modern woman than would be acceptable in 1595, and her affections seemed just as fickle as Romeo’s (seriously, she kissed Mercutio and Benvolio in the same night, each time affirming that she loved the man with all her heart). It was nice to see the notion reflected that Romeo and Juliet are foolish, and not the Most Romantic Couple Evah. (I still remember the arguments I had about that when I was taking my Shakespeare class up in Madison… several middle aged women were absolutely aghast at my irritation with the pair.)
But the story lacked heart. We’re told that Rosaline wants to be a healer when she grows up (regardless that in 1595 a 16-year-old was considered an adult), but her healing skill seem to involve only patching up Romeo’s friend Petruchio (yes, he of Taming of the Shrew fame) at the beginning, and then noticing- with alarming frequency- that people Are Not Dead.
For a play where Mercutio, Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, and Juliet all end up dead, only two of them are actually DEAD dead when Rosaline comes across them. Tybalt is in a coma- not from the sword-wound, but from hitting his head when he fell. Rather than telling the authorities, of course, Rosaline take him back to the healer and tries to cure him herself, while getting a replacement body to be buried in the Capulet tomb. While in the coma, Tybalt’s ghost watches over Juliet (which felt like a very forced way to keep an eye on the Romeo-and-Juliet part of the story while Rosaline’s stuff happens).
Don’t worry, she didn’t kill the replacement body- it was a man who was killed by a dog while trying to abduct 10-year-old Viola (from Twelfth Night- she and Sebastian are orphans being cared for by Benvolio).
Insert eye-roll here- but that wasn’t even the point where I lost my suspension of disbelief entirely. That may shock you, but I haven’t yet gotten to that point yet.
The story continued to be derivative in unnecessary ways. Rosaline had a balcony scene (with Mercutio), and planned a fake engagement with Benvolio to try to convince the families to stop feuding.
The truly ridiculous part comes directly after “for never was a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
So, Paris, Romeo, and Juliet are all lying dead in the crypt. The parents have sworn to call off the feud and erect statues. Then, everyone proceeds to leave the bodies there in their varying states of disarray, and go off and do… something. Benvolio, Rosaline, and Viola (for some reason), are there, and they’re trying to sneak Tybalt’s now actually-dead-body into the crypt. (Oh, did I mention that Tybalt’s ghosty-self went back to his body to die so that he could lead Juliet to heaven because Juliet’s ghosty-self was full of guilt over the suicide? No?)
They get inside and! Romeo and Juliet aren’t really dead yet! Rosaline can tell from some super-sense that Juliet is dying, but perhaps she can save them both!
And this is where I shrieked at the book.
Juliet is a breath from dying, Tybalt has been dead for at least an hour, and IN 1595, Rosaline decides she wants to DO A HEART TRANSPLANT.
I am not even joking. She wants to do a heart transplant using only Romeo’s dagger and Juliet’s wedding ring for a singular clamp. Now, I don’t know about you, but having a baby sister who has undergone several heart surgeries (no transplants) gives me the knowledge that THAT IS DAMN WELL IMPOSSIBLE.
After several pages, though, she’s convinced to not do it- why? Because Rosaline doesn’t know if Juliet could love Romeo if she had Tybalt’s heart.
WTF.
All of the good reasons she has to not do it- like… infection, blood types, white blood cells, SANITATION (these are people who thought bathing too often made one ill!), lack of training, lack of equipment… and she decides that Tybalt’s heart would prevent Juliet from loving Romeo.
So she instead make Romeo puke up all the poison, and he’s okay. They all sit there in the crypt until Juliet really dies (and no one else comes back), and 10-year-old Viola teaches herself to read, overnight, from gravestones.
Yeah.
Then, to teach the Monteagues and Capulets a lesson, Benvolio and Rosaline decide to make them responsible for Viola and Sebastian’s upbringing- because Viola looks so much like Juliet, it’s giving them a second chance.
Then Rosaline goes off to study medicine at a university in Padua. In 1595.
In a mere 46 pages, this book went from meh to WHAT THE CRAP IS GOING ON WHAT WAS THE AUTHOR THINKING!!!
I ranted for a good hour yesterday about it. ARGH.
good!! definetly a to-read if you like Romeo and Juliet, though I'm not so sure I liked the end with Romeo.
I love Shakespeare re-tellings. I love it when a tale gets re-vamped and a second chance. "Romeo's Ex" was excellently written, with a lovely twist on Shakespearean verse turned into prose and appropriate use of actual Shakespeare quotes in the text. It isn't easy to write like Shakespeare, so mad props there.
As for content, I love the idea of adding to Rosaline's story. She did seem to get something of a short straw in "Romeo and Juliet." She's mentioned a few times, never actually appears in the story, and then gets sent off to be a nun offstage. So giving her a story of her own is something I totally approved of and wanted to read. First person POV, switching between all the characters: great. I love that readers get to see things from Benvolio, Romeo, Mercutio, and Rosaline's POV. (I don't remember if Juliet got a chapter of her own or not...)
Okay, from here on out, there be spoilers. Enter at your own risk.
***********
To be honest, the only part of the book that I didn't like so much was that Rosaline, the main character, is so perfect. I mean, she is the main character, so it's totally to be expected that she is awesome and good and all that, and that's fine. It's the way everyone fell in love with her that sort of made me cry "Mary-Sue!" when reading. First Romeo, which is fine, because canon and duh, this is Romeo. But then Benvolio, who had just been thinking about wanting to be in love but not being able to manage it, sees her, and all of sudden he's head over heels. Even Mercutio, who has pretty much zero interest in love, finds himself having feelings for this girl, lamenting somewhat that "Romeo saw her first."
In addition to being highly desirable and beautiful, Rosaline is smarter than pretty much everyone in the book, and a skilled healer. She comes up with plans to save everyone, she chastises Juliet for her stupidity in falling in love with Romeo, and, of course, Juliet is shown to be cowardly for wanting to take her own life in the end. While I actually agree that Juliet makes some monumentally stupid decisions in the play, and that the overall plan of pretending to be dead and counting on Romeo (also known for impulsive, stupid decisions) to figure it out is one particularly egregious example, I don't think cowardice is the reason she did it. But I digress. Bottom line, Rosaline seems too good to be true for most of the book. Sometimes, I would be reading and I would just be like, "Is there nothing you can't do?"
But then... Mercutio. Oh the irony. Mercutio is the one who saves Rosaline from Sue-dom. She falls in love with him -a temporary, silly love, but it does show that Rosaline is capable of making bad decisions and ending up embarrassed when they backfire (as this one does, naturally: see above "Mercutio has pretty much zero interest in love"). And after her ill-fated attempt at romance with Mercutio, Benvolio has a chance to slide in and (in the fashion of Shakespearean lovers) make her fall in love with him in one night. So, overall, Rosaline is not immune to the fast-paced version of love that is so prominent in "Romeo and Juliet," which ultimately saves her from being a Mary-Sue in my mind. So yay!
For the rest of the book (mainly, the parts that aren't about Rosaline's questionable perfection), I quite liked it all. I liked Benvolio's POV. He sounds adorkable, in a ruggedly handsome way. And then there's Mercutio, who is unarguably my favorite character in the play, who gives us his POV with as much snark as I expected from him. I won't lie: I cried when he died.
Tyablt, whose POV I had never given much thought to, I must confess, was wonderful. I appreciate him now like I never have before. I practically giggled with glee when his floating spirit(grudgingly, so grudgingly) forgave Romeo and said "Oh fine. They can be in love I guess," with so much sulkiness. And then I cried when he died too.
(Alright, I cried when everyone died in this book. Except for that creep whose body they originally put in Tybalt's tomb. I was fine with his death. Creep.)
Also of note (for the cleverness of it, if nothing else) are the names of some of the minor characters. Viola and Sebastian, the pretty twins, are characters from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," Petruchio "Trooch" and Katherina, who Rosaline meets later in Padua, are characters from "The Taming of the Shrew," which is referenced by Petruchio's admission to Rosaline that his lady is "something of a shrew." Even the potion that Friar Laurence has the Healer brew for Juliet (to make her seem dead) is insinuated to come from "a lady in Denmark," which sounds to me an awful lot like a reference to Ophelia from "Hamlet," whose story Lisa Fiedler has re-told as well. (I haven't read that re-telling, but I definitely plan to.)
Anyway, this is a long, rambling sort of review but to sum up:
"Romeo's Ex" by Lisa Fiedler is a great book. The main character toes the line of Sue-dom, but manages to stay on the side of an acceptable protagonist in the end. There are lots of clever references to Shakespeare's words and other works. I would recommend the book to anyone who likes re-tellings of Shakespeare.
As for content, I love the idea of adding to Rosaline's story. She did seem to get something of a short straw in "Romeo and Juliet." She's mentioned a few times, never actually appears in the story, and then gets sent off to be a nun offstage. So giving her a story of her own is something I totally approved of and wanted to read. First person POV, switching between all the characters: great. I love that readers get to see things from Benvolio, Romeo, Mercutio, and Rosaline's POV. (I don't remember if Juliet got a chapter of her own or not...)
Okay, from here on out, there be spoilers. Enter at your own risk.
***********
To be honest, the only part of the book that I didn't like so much was that Rosaline, the main character, is so perfect. I mean, she is the main character, so it's totally to be expected that she is awesome and good and all that, and that's fine. It's the way everyone fell in love with her that sort of made me cry "Mary-Sue!" when reading. First Romeo, which is fine, because canon and duh, this is Romeo. But then Benvolio, who had just been thinking about wanting to be in love but not being able to manage it, sees her, and all of sudden he's head over heels. Even Mercutio, who has pretty much zero interest in love, finds himself having feelings for this girl, lamenting somewhat that "Romeo saw her first."
In addition to being highly desirable and beautiful, Rosaline is smarter than pretty much everyone in the book, and a skilled healer. She comes up with plans to save everyone, she chastises Juliet for her stupidity in falling in love with Romeo, and, of course, Juliet is shown to be cowardly for wanting to take her own life in the end. While I actually agree that Juliet makes some monumentally stupid decisions in the play, and that the overall plan of pretending to be dead and counting on Romeo (also known for impulsive, stupid decisions) to figure it out is one particularly egregious example, I don't think cowardice is the reason she did it. But I digress. Bottom line, Rosaline seems too good to be true for most of the book. Sometimes, I would be reading and I would just be like, "Is there nothing you can't do?"
But then... Mercutio. Oh the irony. Mercutio is the one who saves Rosaline from Sue-dom. She falls in love with him -a temporary, silly love, but it does show that Rosaline is capable of making bad decisions and ending up embarrassed when they backfire (as this one does, naturally: see above "Mercutio has pretty much zero interest in love"). And after her ill-fated attempt at romance with Mercutio, Benvolio has a chance to slide in and (in the fashion of Shakespearean lovers) make her fall in love with him in one night. So, overall, Rosaline is not immune to the fast-paced version of love that is so prominent in "Romeo and Juliet," which ultimately saves her from being a Mary-Sue in my mind. So yay!
For the rest of the book (mainly, the parts that aren't about Rosaline's questionable perfection), I quite liked it all. I liked Benvolio's POV. He sounds adorkable, in a ruggedly handsome way. And then there's Mercutio, who is unarguably my favorite character in the play, who gives us his POV with as much snark as I expected from him. I won't lie: I cried when he died.
Tyablt, whose POV I had never given much thought to, I must confess, was wonderful. I appreciate him now like I never have before. I practically giggled with glee when his floating spirit(grudgingly, so grudgingly) forgave Romeo and said "Oh fine. They can be in love I guess," with so much sulkiness. And then I cried when he died too.
(Alright, I cried when everyone died in this book. Except for that creep whose body they originally put in Tybalt's tomb. I was fine with his death. Creep.)
Also of note (for the cleverness of it, if nothing else) are the names of some of the minor characters. Viola and Sebastian, the pretty twins, are characters from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," Petruchio "Trooch" and Katherina, who Rosaline meets later in Padua, are characters from "The Taming of the Shrew," which is referenced by Petruchio's admission to Rosaline that his lady is "something of a shrew." Even the potion that Friar Laurence has the Healer brew for Juliet (to make her seem dead) is insinuated to come from "a lady in Denmark," which sounds to me an awful lot like a reference to Ophelia from "Hamlet," whose story Lisa Fiedler has re-told as well. (I haven't read that re-telling, but I definitely plan to.)
Anyway, this is a long, rambling sort of review but to sum up:
"Romeo's Ex" by Lisa Fiedler is a great book. The main character toes the line of Sue-dom, but manages to stay on the side of an acceptable protagonist in the end. There are lots of clever references to Shakespeare's words and other works. I would recommend the book to anyone who likes re-tellings of Shakespeare.
My sister's choice, but I thought it looked intriguing (ignore the somewhat lame title). It was well written overall and makes good use of both Shakespearean language/humor (does get edgy) and the Romeo and Juliet story. My main criticism is that it gets chaotic (especially as the Romeo and Juliet story hits its dramatic point), switching between perspectives and changing directions a little too often, and sometimes the characters are a bit inconsistent (although I do like the way she extrapolates them from Shakespeare's clues). It also mixes modern sensibilities with the 16th century setting in a way that sometimes works and sometimes reveals itself as incongruous; it's from kind of a feminist standpoint. But I guess she does that on purpose. It's a good story with a pretty good message.