"Angels in the Snow" by Matt De La Pena - 3/5 It started well and had an intriguing premise but I grew bored. "The Lady and the Fox" by Kelly Link - 2/5
Rowell captures that hint of fear people have about growing up and everyone they once knew changing around them. There's something really sad about the possibility of the new and moving on and becoming someone else, not being who you once were. With a hint of melancholy, as all the best New Year stories should be. It was a funny, sweet, wonderful little story. It amazed me how much I fell in love with the two protagonists, how well-developed their characters were in so short an amount of time and pages. It tells the story of the midnight countdown on New Year's Eve over several years, revisiting the same characters in a non-chronological order and slowly filling in the blanks on their personalities and relationship. This was my favourite story and it probably wasn't a good idea for it to appear first because so many that followed received unfair comparisons with it. I'm not going to review every single story properly because some didn't pique my interest and some I skim-read, but here's what I thought. The story made me sit up and take notice in a collection that I wasn't sure would be my thing. She really hit me where it hurts (in a good way). Taylor's work came as no surprise but I didn't see Rowell's tale coming. Personally, I think this book starts and ends with the two best stories, from Rainbow Rowell and Laini Taylor respectively. And it is a pleasingly diverse set of stories, filled with people of all races, ethnicities, religions and sexualities *thumbs up* I'm not sure it's worth buying the entire collection but it would be sad for you to miss out on the better ones. But I did get some really nice surprises here. I'm more of a Halloween type of girl - and all the genres that could possibly go with it. I'm not much of a romantic or a Christmas person, to be honest. but a collection of holiday-themed romances would never have occurred to me as something enjoyable. Then if you'd asked me what kind of short story collection I'd like to have from these favourites of mine, you would have got all kinds of weird and wonderful suggestions from me. If you'd asked me beforehand to name a list of YA authors that I'd like to appear in a short story collection, many of the ones here would have made that list: Stephanie Perkins, Laini Taylor, Holly Black, Gayle Forman, David Levithan and maybe Rainbow Rowell (I like but don't love her books). Like almost all short story collections by various authors, this one is a mixed bag of hidden gems and ones I didn't even finish.
0 kommentar(er)
