Post #10: Book 3 Review

For our last section of class, I chose to read books from different genres. I ended up reading three books: Eleanor & Park, Hollow City, and Watership Down. All three were wonderful books that I absolutely loved in different ways, because each book was different. I decided to start with a brief review of each book before I got into the nitty gritty stuff.

                Rainbow Rowell is fairly new to the writing scene, her first book, Attachments, published in 2011. On top of that, Eleanor & Park was her first young adult book to be published. Keeping this in mind, while reading Eleanor & Park I have to say, it was a very solid book. Rowell takes two outcast teenagers and turns them into an epic romance story. Usually, in the romance genre, the popular kid falls in love with the unpopular kid. It’s so refreshing to see that Eleanor and Park come from the same world. When Eleanor first moves in, she immediately has a target on her back. No one will let Eleanor sit with them on the bus and she starts to panic. In a moment of kindness, Park tells her sit down with him. After a rocky start, the two become friends and slowly, more than friends. They may have different family lives but, at school, Park is the quiet Asian kid and Eleanor is the weird red-head that wears funny clothes. Neither fit in but that’s why they go so well together.

Hollow City, the second installment in the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series was released in early 2014. Author Ransom Riggs is best known for this hit series and is planning to publish third book. Hollow City picks up exactly where the first book ended. The Peculiar children are on a mission to save Miss Peregrine, who is trapped in her bird form.  This book is very powerfully written. Riggs does a good job not depending on the old photographs he uses to set up characters and settings. Each character was well developed in the story. Jacob experiences a lot of growth throughout this book. This makes the book more captivating to read. At the beginning of the book, Jacob is unsure, lost and feels like an outcast. As his powers grow and sharpen, he also grows and becomes more confident. During one scene, Jacob is able to locate a hollow miles away and get his friends to safety. Jacob learns that he does fit in with the Peculiar children even if the come from different centuries. Riggs ability to show character development is marvelous and it captures every reader who picks up Hollow City.

Watership Down, by Richard Adams, was published in 1972. Adams also wrote Shardik, The Girl in a Swing, and Bureaucats. Watership Down, Adams’ first novel, follows the adventures of a group of rabbits that escape the destruction of their warren. The group, led by a sensible rabbit named Hazel, faces many struggles of the wild as they try to find a new place to call home. The genre of this book is fantasy. This isn’t some book where rabbits hop around and graze lettuce all day, it’s an intense and intelligent book and not just anyone should read it. It’s for young adults who are ready to dive into world of how the society of rabbits really works: deception, cunning, tyrannical, cruel, smart, and thrilling. One of the things that instantly made this book astounding was the strong characters. The reader is expected to keep up with many different rabbits and if it weren’t for Adams’ canny descriptions the reader would be lost and irritated. Each rabbit is unique in his/her own way, conveying a very specific skill or personality trait making them likeable and memorable. In the opening it is said Fiver can sense the future, this leads to the escape of the Sandleford Warren before its demise. Not a lot of author’s could pull this off, but Adams does it well.

                These books, though from different genres, do have many similarities in themes, concepts and main ideas. All three of the books incorporate romance but how they convey it is extremely different. In Eleanor & Park, the genre is romance so the entire book revolves around the love aspect.  Most of the book focuses on the love Eleanor and Park have for one another. Rowell writes about how Park feels about Eleanor, “He loved how much they loved each other,” (Rowell 301). She does an exceptional job of describing everything both teenagers feel throughout the entire book and that’s what romance should do. In Hollow City, a fantasy book, romance is more of a subplot to the story. Jacob and Emma fall in love but don’t know what to do because they are from different times and Emma was in love with Jacob’s grandfather. Jacob makes a point to tell Emma that he stayed as long as he did because of her. He says, “‘For you, you idiot! I love you!’” (Riggs 357). Although this is important it is not vital to what is happening with the war and Miss Peregrine. For Watership Down, a fantasy novel, romance is not a big part until the end. When the Watership rabbits realize they have no way to reproduce and keep their warren alive, they take it upon themselves to find female rabbits. The last half of the book is about their journey to obtain females to help them all survive. This is when romance becomes a main idea of the book. El-Ahrairah explains what it means to love, “I have learned that with creatures one loves, suffering is not the only thing for which one may pity them,” (Adams 234). This shows why The Watership rabbits went to the very dangerous Efrafa. They did it for love. Although these books come from different genres, they still have similarities in what they are about.

                It’s hard to think of ratings for these books. They come from different genres so rating them based on the same scale is nearly impossible. I would give Eleanor & Park a 4 star rating. Hollow City gets a 4 star rating as well. Watership Down receives a 5 star rating. It is now one of my all-time favorite books. I definitely would recommend this book to other readers, as well as Eleanor & Park and Hollow City.