New Layout + New Affiliate + Review: Willow (Julia Hoban)

  A lot to say today but I'll try to keep it short.

  So if you're a regular visitor you would have noticed that the blog has changed, quite a bit. I know i do that a lot, sorry, but i promise i'll try to keep this new layout a longer time than with the last one.

  I don't know how is the weather where you are, but here in the South of France, we're kind of desesperatly waiting for the summer (it's been raining the whole week. i love rain, okay, but after five days it's actually getting on my nerves and i'd like the sun to come out for this last week of college...).

  Anyway, still talking too much to say nothing...So, the layout has changed; i thought that maybe it would motivate the sun to come out...just kidding. I hope you'll like it too, i find it rather cute with the bright colors and the glasses of lemonade. I can almost imagine myself at the beach with a good Elizabeth Scott or a Hailey Abbott (the perfect "summer" books to me).

  So, for the second topic of the day: I have a new affiliate!! Well, kind of.

  I've invited one of my best friends to help me with the blog and he accepted! If i'm so glad he did it's not only because it's funnier to share a blog with a friend, but because when your friend is pretty (really) good at writing reviews you can't refuse some help! I mean, i'm not good when reviews are concerned (i'm sure the rare "brave" readers who have read my reviews must be vigorously nodding while reading this message).   

  Review and me: not good.

  All that to say my friend will be reviewing some books for me and i hope you'll like them, i do.

So without further delay, welcome to

*claps* !! MIKA !! *claps*

And just for you here is his first review he made for Willow by Julia Hoban:

Release: April 2nd 2009 by Dial

Summary: Seven months ago, on a rainy March night, sixteen year- old Willow’s parents died in a horrible car accident. Willow was driving. Now her older brother barely speaks to her, her new classmates know her as the killer orphan girl, and Willow is blocking the pain by secretly cutting herself. But when one boy—one sensitive, soulful boy—discovers Willow’s secret, it sparks an intense relationship that turns the “safe” world Willow has created for herself upside down.

Told in an extraordinary fresh voice, Willow is an unforgettable novel about one girl’s struggle to cope with tragedy, and one boy’s refusal to give up on her.

Rate: 5/5

Review: I started this book apprehensively. Indeed, the main topic of the story is cutting, and how it can destroy a life or relationships of all sorts. My reading brought back some old painful memories, but at last, I really loved Julia Hoban's novel, for three important reasons:

The first one is that I loved all the characters, even minor ones. They all have their distinctive features, and some of them really bring a lot of light in a dark novel. Even if you have not being into cutting once in your life, I really think that Willow is a reliable and very touching character. I'm sure not everyone will understand why she is acting like she does sometimes; but in the end, Willow is a girl who loves the life, she is just unsure of the way she has to live it. Okay, this sentence is kind of weird, but let's get straight to an another character: Guy. Yeah, I know. A guy who is called Guy, most ridiculous thing ever, but I guess it's okay, given that this guy is actually great. I admit it, I've had a real infatuation for him. The way he helps Willow, throughout the book, is amazing. Even if sometimes it seemed to me that he was a little to harsh with her, I really enjoyed his passion and his involvement for this broken and vulnerable girl. And it looks like he has a killer body, which is a really good point, don't you think ?

The second reason is the relationship between Willow and her brother David. The scenes where Willow is describing her brother weeping in the kitchen was heartbreaking. They both share the same pain, the same incapacity to talk about the real problems but in spite of everything, they are staying apart, too afraid to face their own grief. Later in the book, they finally open their heart to each other, which is, in my opinion, one of the best passage of the novel, because it shows that David didn't had the time to grow as a person because of their parents' brutal death. Thanks to this scene, David becomes a really understandable character.

Finally, the third reason is simply the fact that this book has it all : you cry (a lot), you smile, you laugh with the characters, live with them throghout the 329 pages of the book. So, even if the writing was sometimes disturbing because the narrator is all-knowing, this novel was great. It's a book about life, life with pain, grief, mourning but also with feelings which are able to make dissapear almost all you sorrow. In this novel, we are not facing a happy ending. As the narrator says it at the end of the book, we are just facing a happy beginning, and it's probably the best lesson we can get from this novel.

MIKA.