Take a photo of a barcode or cover
ladyk23 's review for:
13 Little Blue Envelopes
by Maureen Johnson
After just finishing the fantastic but very heavy going Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series I fancied a light read that I could finish in a few days.
13 Little Blue Envelopes was the perfect candidate. It had been sitting unread on my shelf for YEARS, and I managed to finish it in 3 days! Which might be a personal record for me. Yes it may be a YA novel and only 300+ pages but let me feel proud of my achievement okay?
The thing I loved most about the book was definitely the descriptions of all of the places Ginny visits on her way through Europe.
Ironically I’ve only been to the first and last places she goes to, and all of the others are on the top of my “to do” list, so this was a wonderful reminder of why I want to see those places, and how much I want to go to them.
As with the last Dragon Tattoo book I caught sight of a review when I was updating my Goodreads (I really must stop glancing down when I do that), but in this instance I’m going to tell you what it said because while I can see where the person was coming from, I do disagree with their point.
They said that you didn’t learn anything about the central character from the start to the finish of the book. I do understand why they might think that initially, it’s very subtle characterisation, but that’s just Ginny. By the end I completely knew who she was, and more importantly why she made the decisions she did. And I saw a lot of myself in her.
My only real criticism is that there are certain lines of dialogue said by the English characters that just wouldn’t be spoken by an English person. The author has English friends, so why not get one to read it? I know I’ll be getting my American friend to read my novel, set largely in America with American characters once it’s finished for that very reason. It takes you out of the characters heads a bit because you know an American has written their dialogue.
However I do think that’s a very small criticism and I have still ordered the sequel so it didn’t dampen my enjoyment too much.
13 Little Blue Envelopes was the perfect candidate. It had been sitting unread on my shelf for YEARS, and I managed to finish it in 3 days! Which might be a personal record for me. Yes it may be a YA novel and only 300+ pages but let me feel proud of my achievement okay?
The thing I loved most about the book was definitely the descriptions of all of the places Ginny visits on her way through Europe.
Ironically I’ve only been to the first and last places she goes to, and all of the others are on the top of my “to do” list, so this was a wonderful reminder of why I want to see those places, and how much I want to go to them.
As with the last Dragon Tattoo book I caught sight of a review when I was updating my Goodreads (I really must stop glancing down when I do that), but in this instance I’m going to tell you what it said because while I can see where the person was coming from, I do disagree with their point.
They said that you didn’t learn anything about the central character from the start to the finish of the book. I do understand why they might think that initially, it’s very subtle characterisation, but that’s just Ginny. By the end I completely knew who she was, and more importantly why she made the decisions she did. And I saw a lot of myself in her.
My only real criticism is that there are certain lines of dialogue said by the English characters that just wouldn’t be spoken by an English person. The author has English friends, so why not get one to read it? I know I’ll be getting my American friend to read my novel, set largely in America with American characters once it’s finished for that very reason. It takes you out of the characters heads a bit because you know an American has written their dialogue.
However I do think that’s a very small criticism and I have still ordered the sequel so it didn’t dampen my enjoyment too much.