BrittaneyNichole’s #CBR5 Review #4 Neferet’s Curse by P.C. and Kristin Cast

This is a short novela that is part of the House Of Night series.  I actually really enjoyed it.  I wasn’t expecting to because Neferet is a character I can’t stand, but this book actually made me like her a little bit.  Neferet is the main villain in the House Of Night series and this is the story of her life before she became a vampyre.  

This book takes place in Chicago 1893.  Neferet’s real name is Emily Wheiler.  Her mother just died recently and her dad is making her take her mother’s place.  Throughout the book the father becomes more crazed with Emily and starts to envision her as her mother.  There’s a scene at the end of the book where he rapes her, that was tough to read.  Emily tries to think of plans through the book to escape living with her dad.  Eventually she plans to marry Aurthur, which causes her old friends to go against her.  One of her friends was hoping to marry Aurthur, and Emily managed to get to him first leaving her friends angry.  Shortly after being abused by her father Emily escapes the house and runs to Aurthur hoping to move in with him immediately, but before he gets home she is turned into a vampyre.  Aurthur is disgusted by Emily becoming a vampyre and changes his mind about the marriage. Now that Emily is all alone she goes to the vampyre school The House Of Night.  The teachers tell her that she can now move on from her old life and start new.  Emily changes her name to Neferet but still feels as though she can’t move on, so she goes back to her house to kill her father.  

There’s a lot of interesting detail in this book about why the character Neferet is so entranced by the white bull, which was interesting to learn after reading so many of the past House Of Night books.  I recommend this book.  It’s pretty interesting, and it helped me to actually appreciate a character that I originally couldn’t stand. 

BrittaneyNichole’s #CBR5 Review #3: Hidden by P.C. and Kristin Cast

This is book number 10 in The House Of Night Series.  I started reading these books when I was a teenager and I really enjoyed them, but now I find that the books are annoying.  The most annoying thing about these book with each new installment is the lead character Zoey Redbird.  She’s supposed to be the character that you root for, and I did in the beginning, but now I just want to punch her in the face.  I find the supporting characters to be more enjoyable even the villains.

The House Of Night Book series is about Zoey Redbird, a girl who becomes one of the most special vampyres in the whole universe, and her journey to figure out how to defeat darkness with the help of her new vampyre friends.  This book, Hidden, takes place when everyone starts to believe Zoey and her friends about Neferet being the ultimate villain.  The events in this book are basically everyone’s reaction to discovering this.  Some people become more evil and psychotic and other start to become nice and want to help Zoey find Neferet and bring her to justice.  Since that is all that happens in the beginning of the book it was incredibly boring to read.  Some of the chapters where just people sitting around and whining about theories of what to do.  No real action takes place against the villain until everyone learns that Neferet has kidnapped Zoey’s grandmother and is slowly killing her.  The final few chapters of the book are about how Zoey and her friends manage to rescue Zoey’s grandmother, and that part of the book is definitely worth a read.

I wouldn’t really recommend this book.  Even though it’s only around 300 pages it takes a while for anything important to actually happen.  It took me way to long to read this book because I kept getting bored with it.  I’m sticking with this series though.  I need to know how it ends.  I feel like I might be disappointed by the ending, because each book since the 8th installment seems to just get worse and more boring.

BrittaneyNichole’s #CBR5 Review #2: Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo

I honestly wouldn’t have ever read or heard of this book if I wouldn’t have had to read it for a class.  I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it since the first two books we had to read weren’t all that interesting.  Pedro Paramo kept my interest through the whole book.  Everything was interesting and there was always a new twist that kept me wanting to read more.  I couldn’t put this book down.

Pedro Paramo is the story of Juan Preciado’s journey to find his father as it was his mother’s dying wish.  The book takes place in the Mexican village of Comala where his father, Pedro Paramo, grew up.  As Juan meets people through the story they give him a lot of information and tell him stories about his father, but they also seem to disappear at random times.  This is because many of the people in this town are dead.  They appear to Juan as ghosts because they are unable to move on to the afterlife.  Juan Preciado dies half way through the book, and the second half takes place while he is in his grave listening to and meeting others who met his father.

This is Juan Rulfo’s only published novel.  The main theme’s are war, perversion, and solitude.  The stories told in this book are occasionally out of order, but they all tie together in the end.  I had to read this book through twice to fully understand the order of the stories told by the people in the town.  This book does have incest scenes, something that I’ve found out is a common thing in most magical realism novels, especially ones written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  This book isn’t the best magical realism novel I’ve read so far, but it’s definitely in the top 5.  I recommend it.

BrittaneyNichole’s #CBR5 Review #1: The Jet Sex by Victoria Vantoch

The Jet Sex: Airline Stewardesses and the Making of an American Icon is a study of stewardesses from the 1940s until the 1970s. This book goes into detail on the requirements stewardesses needed to get jobs as well as their fight to bend the rules. Before I read this book, I didn’t know stewardesses had to be registered nurses. They also had to leave the job once they were married or became pregnant. This book also goes into how stewardesses had a large impact on the women’s rights movement.

The Jet Sex is a very well researched book with many interesting footnotes if you want to learn more. This book was originally Victoria Vantoch’s dissertation which came out in 2008 titled, “Ambassadors of the Air: The Airline Stewardess, Glamour and Technology in the Cold War, 1945 to 1969.” The dissertation looked into how airline stewardesses helped the women’s rights movement in the context of Cold War ideology. This book expands more into the creation of the job of airline stewardess, and the ways that the woman fought to earn the job as well as keep it.

The Jet Sex sometimes reads like a textbook, but overall I really enjoyed reading it. This book doesn’t only teach things about airline stewardesses, but there is also information about women finally being able to become pilots themselves. The Jet Sex also goes into the changing of plane technology and how it helped to provide more comfort as time went by. This book is very well written and informative, I recommend it to anyone interested in feminism or the history of flight.