February '18 Reviews

The Girls: A Novel by Emma Cline, Review by Louise

It's about this girl at the end of the 1950s and she's fourteen. She has a whole summer ahead of her and she doesn't know what to do. She meets these girls that are different from everyone else, they're beautiful and they don't wear pants, just really long T shirts and stuff like that. She's really mesmerized by them and breaks off an old friendship to follow them out into the desert. The leader of the people out there is keen to get a record deal with one of his friends. In this scenario, if the cult was Christianity, the leader is God and the friend would be Jesus. A lot happens that I can't tell you without giving it away. The book is told as a series of fragmented memories.

Rated: 4.5/5 cults. "As far as cult book go it's pretty good!"

Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman, Review by Lara

It's about summer love. There's an age difference. It's not that big. One character called Oliver teaches Elio about love and life and how not everything in life goes your way. It's set in northern Italy. I think it's a really beautiful story.

Rated: 5/5 loves. "I think this is one of my favourite books now."




How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Review by Flynn

It's about psychology. It's quite good. he talks about how you should appreciate people and how give them sincere compliments. He talks about how flattery can be more harmful than good. Every person has their own need to feel important in their own way. It goes over a whole lot of theories and examples to do with social psychology. It was written in the early 1920s.

Rated: 4/5 emotions. "It's pretty good"


90 Packets of Instant Noodles by Deb Fitzpatrick, Review by Sam

It's about this guy who gets in quite a bit of trouble legally. He gets sent to a juvenile detention centre in this weird little country town where the legal system is super strange. They make a deal that he'll be isolated from society in the middle of nowhere in a shack for about nine months. He goes to the little shack, and he has a certain amount of money on a credit card the police gave him. He just buys fifty cent packs of instant noodles every day so he has money for other stuff. A big plot point is that he has a girlfriend where he used to live and he tries to keep in contact with her, but feels himself slowly distancing. Then he finds a massive weed crop in the middle of nowhere. So he calls up his friend to check it out. But his friend is being followed by the police.

Rated: 4/5 instant noodles. "Really the message of the book is that you can't trust anyone, but I tried to interpret it slightly differently, but that's kind of what it's trying to say."


The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick, Review by Kalani

It's a bit weird, because it plays with perspective but is written from the third person but not quite. Like imagine you're a fly on the wall but you can see into the person's head, see what they're thinking and their emotions. There are six main characters. It's after World War Two, but in an alternate reality where the Nazis won. Set in '62, it follows the lives of the six and for the most part.

Rated: 3.9/5 high castles. "Some parts are a little bit boring, whereas others are like, whoa! what's happening here!"


The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo, Illustrations by Sara Kipin, Review by Wei Li

The book is made up of a a set of fables, but the meanings aren't like "don't talk to strangers" but more "don't trust the people around you," or "things aren't always what they seem." The stories are really adorable, well, not adorable, but more mysterious/fantastical with really nice art. No pretty fairies, but dark things, like your father is the murderer, not the witch in the forest.

Rated: 5/5 thorns. "I really liked it because of the art on the borders of the stories. On every page you turn the art grows a bit."

The Secrete River by Kate Grenville, Review by Isabella

I have to read this book for school. At my school it is known for being awful, and it's true! It's set in the early nineteenth century. This guy from London, you get a whole background about his life there, being poor, hard manual labor. He comes to Australia and then you're halfway through the book by now. There's more manual labor etc, until he is assigned a plot of land and moves his family there. It's about him claiming the land, naming it Thornhill and shaping it. Really the plot is, he doesn't think the land is inhabited. But it's not empty. There is a local Indigenous tribe, and they're not moving and he's too proud to. It takes forever for it to actually get to the main tension of the book, which is his violent interactions with Aboriginal people.

Rated: 3/5. "You're not supposed to love the main character, the plot is awful and it's just really slow and boring too and just so awful and racist. I have respect for the author for tackling this history and topic, but I was very relieved when I finished it. "