Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman Book Review

Callum is a nought – a second-class citizen in a world run by the ruling Crosses...

Sephy is a Cross, daughter of one of the most powerful men in the country...

In their world, noughts and Crosses simply don’t mix. And as hostility turns to violence, can Callum and Sephy possibly find a way to be together? They are determined to try.

And then the bomb explodes

I bought Noughts and Crosses years ago before I particularly liked YA. I had bought it as I had really enjoyed another book of Maorlie Blackman, The stuff of nightmares. I was hoping it might have some of the same creepy elements as The stuff of nightmares. I read the first few pages when I initially bought the book but it didn’t appeal to me and I haven’t picked it up since, until this year.

The themes and topics in this book, including racism and equality are not ones which are heavily explored in YA in the way they are in this novel and the subject could be considered a very sensitive one. However I do think the idea is very interesting and the world building within this book is done well.

Noughts and Crosses is told from the points of view of the two main characters, Callum and Sephy. Callum is a nought, a nought is someone who is pale skinned or white. Sephy, a cross who are dark skinned. The Crosses are the ruling class who control the country. The story starts by setting up Sephy and Callums relationship, their relationship is a rare one and may be considered wrong. The book in a way could be split into two pieces and some of the events which are gone over in the beginning of the novel, in my opinion, could have been left out. I felt it was a slow moving book and seemed to repeat itself a lot in terms of the continuous changing of opinions on both main characters parts. For example Callum would start off by thinking Sephy as his friend and different and then he would believe she was another Cross, he would then change his mind back and forth over and over. Although the idea of Callum struggling to know where his friendship lies is a good idea, I do not think this needed to repeated as much as it is within the book.

In regards to the characters I liked both at the beginning of the book. As it moved to the second part of the book I felt that Callum became annoying and was trying to show he had completely changed but this didn’t really work for me. Sephy during the second part of the book was consistent and grew stronger and more like able.

I found there wasn’t a strong sense of consistency in this novel in regards to the characters believes but other all it was an enjoyable read but I am not planning on reading the rest of the series. I gave the book three stars in goodreads.

The Hunger Games Movie Review

Before I say anything about the Hunger games movie I am just going to say I am a huge fan of the books and my favourite is The hunger games so I was hoping with every bit that this would not be a huge let down.

I usually rate movies on a scale from one to ten and my scale I gave the movie a 8.5.

I’m going to start with the things that I thought were down really well and represented the book in really good light.

I liked the physical appearance of all the actors in relation to the character they were playing (except for one but I will get to that later). I thought they matched the descriptions from the book really well. That also includes all the costumes, the people who did the clothing for the movie did an excellent job especially on all the capitol members. I thought district 12 looked more run down than I imagined it would but it did a good job at making an impact on the viewer. I loved that we got to see what Katniss doesn’t, in relation to the behind the scenes clips of the games. I also really enjoyed the time which they spent inside of the arena, it struck true to the book and there’s no scenes which I feel I really missed and wished they had included. I also really liked the way they portrayed Katniss’s and her mothers relationship and as well as her how protective she is with Prim and Rue.

Now onto the things that I wasn’t such a huge fan of.

President Snow is one of my favourite villains, I love how creepy he is, but I feel that they have chosen someone who looks far too old to portray him and I did not feel the chills I did when reading the books, hopefully this will be improved in Catching fire. One critism I have of Jennifer Lawrence, who played Katniss Everdeen, is that I wanted to feel just a bit more passion at some parts and at others I wanted more of the stubborn vibe she gives off in the books. I felt she wasn’t enough of a teenager in a way. My last issue was the girl who was on fire. This was the scene I wanted to see, the one I was most excited about. My main issue with the scene was that I felt she wasn’t on fire, she was the girl in front of the fire. And I wanted more fire. Katniss appearing like this in the parade, I feel, helped her greatly and to me it wasn’t good enough.

But overall I really liked the movie, it will be something I purchase on DVD (I’ve started to only purchase the DVDs of movies which are my favourites or which I really enjoyed). I recommend going to see the movie and I can’t wait to see what they do with the rest of the series. 

Books I Wanna Pre-order

This is something, I might do when I see a book I really wanna pre-order.

I'm not much of a pre-orderer (if thats a word), I think one of the only books I have pre-ordered with my own money was the fault in our stars by John Green and that was only because it was guaranteed to be signed by the man himself.

But these posts will be books I want to pre-order whether I do so or not.

My first post will feature two books, one adult and one YA.

The adult one happens to be by one of my favourite authours of all time, Stephen King, the book being The Wind Through the Keyhole. The YA book is Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore.

Firstly the Stephen King book, I have no idea what it's about and I got a sample from a waterstones this week but I have yet to read it. Although i have no idea of the premise it does not matter, I love Stephen King's writing, his mind, his ideas, I have so many of his books and have yet to read so many that he has a whole stuffed up shelf on my book shelf that I may post a picture of one day.

I'm not going to preorder this though, I have so many Stephen King books already.

Next Bitterblue.

This is the next, and final book (to my understanding) in the Seven Kingdoms series. This one is sort of a sequel to Graceling which is good as I haven't read Fire yet but I have it on my borrowed pile. I started reading the series thanks to my brother and so the reason I won't be pre-ordering is because my brother will be buying it himself and until the time my brother and I live in separate houses I am fine with sharing books with him.

That's about it.

DFTBA!

Buzz words and deal breakers book chat response

So this is one of my first posts and is a response post to Misty the book rats book chat. This months topic is buzz words and deal breakers. I didn’t think I had real specific buzz words but it turns out that I do, but I don’t think I have as many deal breakers.

First buzz words.

YA is obviously about as broad as it gets. Going down to sub genres is the word dystopian or contemporary are thrown around then my attention is caught. The minute and specifics can be mentioned in the summary or a review or just thrown out there in a random video. Anything to do with music, no matter how small, but if there’s a character who likes rock music it goes to the top of my wish list. Kidnapping, I will read about abduction and kidnap, whether it’s how the character is abducted or the aftermath or the whole thing. I don’t know why but stories about kidnapping capture my attention. A story involving a road trip is normally attracts me. Finally zombies, whether it’s a different spin on zombies or if there just merely a background aspect if there is a zombie in there somewhere then I have to read that book. I have a fascination with zombies, zombie books, zombie movies, zombie music.

Deal breakers

I feel like some of my deal breakers are going to be peoples buzz words but oh well! First werewolves. I have purchased and have some books centred around werewolves but there has to be something else in the summary to attract me to the book, and no clichéd tag lines (that is just for werewolf and vampire type not every book).  Next would be teen spies, I have read the first two in the Alex rider series but they didn’t draw me in and whenever the word spy is used I don’t get too excited. I also don’t get drawn to stories involving rape, although I have read a few books which spawn from a characters experience with this topic but I find it hard to read about personally, so as long as the story doesn’t recount the whole thing I can give it a go but I then start to tread carefully. Finally love triangles don’t tend to be something I am interested in reading.

Those are all the ones I can’t think of that are the most prominent.

Thanks

Jen

Book blogging time

Hello! My name is Jennifer and I thought I would give this book blogging thing a go. I read YA, mostly. Or teen books. I live in England and I'm 19, almost a non teen. Up until September I expect I will have plenty of time to read and blog as I'm currently recovering from a broken ankle. I'm normally a student, I study in London but I don't live there but until I can walk that's not going to happen.

You can expect reviews and possibly memes as well as other random posts about books. On top of these I am a keen writer so there may be the odd post about writing. Another hobby of mine is sitting watching youtube videos so possibly Nerdfighter related things. I love to watch television, shows like the big bang theory and how I met your mother, so they might creep in here too! My music tastes tend to be rock and an occasional reference might be made.

Onto the reviewing!