Reviewed by Ali

Reviewed by Hanna

“That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me. She meant to bestow a gift. When I cried inconsolably through my first hour of life, my tears were her inspiration. Shaking her head sympathetically at Mother, the fairy touched my nose. ‘My gift is obedience. Ella will always be obedient. Now stop crying, child.’ I stopped. So begins this richly entertaining story of Ella of Frell, who wants nothing more than to be free of Lucinda’s gift and feel that she belongs to herself. For how can she truly belong to herself if she knows that at any time, anyone can order her to hop on one foot, cut off her hand, or betray her kingdom-and she’ll have to obey? Against a bold tapestry of princes, ogres, giants, wicked stepsisters, and fairy godmothers, Ella’s spirited account of her quest to break the curse is a funny, poignant, and enchanting tale about an unforgettable heroine who is determined to be herself.”

I first picked up Gail Carson Levine’s Newbery Honor book, Ella Enchanted when I was thirteen. Since that first spellbound encounter, I have probably re-read the book fifteen times.

I still reach for this little masterpiece when I am feeling down, when I am unaccountably happy, when I am nostalgic, and when I find that another book is simply not doing it for me. Why? Because it changed my life. And continues to do so every time I read it.

Ella Enchanted is the story of Cinderella turned topsy-turvey and upside-down. It is a clever reworking of a classic tale that makes the original seem dull. And if you read it, it will teach you everything you need to know about life.

Here are the top ten things I learned from Ella Enchanted:

10.) Obedience can be a major curse.
9.) You should never trifle with mushrooms. They’ll make you act very strangely.
8.) The real Prince Charmings are the ones who write you beautiful letters while they are away in foreign countries.
7.) If you know someone who is a magically good cook, investigate. They might be your fairy godmother.
6.) If you are sent away to finishing school, and the boy you like indignantly demands to know why-”since there was nothing wrong with you to start with”-you can pretty much be assured that he’s a winner.
5.) When life hands you ogres, learn to speak Ogrese.
4.) Never trust a girl who chatters like a monkey and eats like an elephant.
3.) If you are going on a journey, you only need to bring five things: a book, a shawl, Tonic, a language dictionary-and a stolen wig to sell for food.
2.) You can never just watch your true love; you’ll always end up talking to him in the end.
1.) With enough determination, strength, love, and willpower, you can do anything; even break a curse.

But really. Ella Enchanted is an astonishing story of self-actualization, written in succinct, image-rich language, containing a wealth of knowledge about friendship, love, struggle, and inner-strength. It is a work of great imagination-truly enchanting from cover to cover. And every single one of us who writes or reads YA can learn a few things from Levine’s masterfully concise prose.

This book isn’t just for young girls-it’s for everyone. Although, guys: if you lack reckless confidence, you might consider reading it with something over the front cover.

Reviewed by Hanna

I recently finished reading Catherine Fisher’s Incarceron, a YA fantasy flavored with darkness, dystopia, and a touch of Steampunk. As Mary Quattlebaum of the Washington Post says, “…nothing, including the final scene, is as it seems in this eerie, elegant fantasy…Intricately plotted and richly imagined, this novel holds the attention as inexorably as Incarceron holds its prisoners.”

As you may have deduced, Incarceron-for which the book is titled-is a prison. And it is alive. Finn is a prisoner within it, and as he struggles to find a way to escape, he also wrestles with his conviction that, unlike most everyone else inside the hellish and endless Incarceron, he is from Outside. And when he finds a crystal key which doubles as a highly technical communication device, he begins to uncover the truth-and it is stranger than he ever imagined.

Claudia Arlexa is the daughter of the cold and calculating Warden of Incarceron. Outside, bound by a society intentionally stuck in a world without any progress-imprisoned by what the rulers call Protocol-she is desperate to escape her own prison: a life of manipulation (and marriage) at court. And when she steals her father’s crystal key, a copy of Finn’s inside the prison, she begins to uncover a web of lies and deceit that lead her to shocking truths… about everything she has ever considered certain.

Not only is the book fresh and dazzlingly original, it is stacked with layers of depth. While the plights of Claudia and Finn arrest the reader to the point of making the book almost unputdownable, Fisher builds up her fantasy world with a masterful hand, and sows in subtle hints of philosophy; questioning freedom, faith, self-understanding, and the presence of good an evil within each individual. While archetypal figures are sprinkled in as secondaries (ie., the Sorceress Queen, the obsession-driven Mentor, the foolish Prince, and the kind Scholar), Finn and Claudia are new types altogether, and raw enough to be quite real. Finn, for example, is a compulsive liar with a good heart; while Claudia is cunning and several times described as “haughty”. Neither one is portrayed as entirely good, and yet they are presented as the protagonists with which the reader should identify.

By both defying and embracing archetypes, Fisher creates a story that is surprising even without plot twists. (And be assured: there are still plenty of those.) The prose is sinuous, glittering, even breathtaking at times, making each sentence a pleasure to read. The book ends with a clear path pointing toward a sequel, but it still stands alone well enough. For those readers with darker tastes, this book is a wonderful choice. It hints vaguely at a Hunger Games-type feel, with its mix of old-fashioned atmosphere and high-technology, and should therefore appeal also to Steampunk and dystopian junkies. (Comparable authors include Garth Nix, Suzanne Collins, Nancy Farmer, and Scott Westerfeld.)

Though the United States only published the book this past January, Incarceron has been a worldwide, award-winning success since 2007; and its sequel, Sapphique, since 2008. Sapphique will be published in the U.S. by Dial Books this coming December.

Reviewed by Leah.

Claire and her mum don’t have the best of relationships and the only way in which they actually appear to communicate with each other is via the medium of the refrigerator door in the form of notes. The fact is Claire is far too busy being a teenager - out with friends, having a boyfriend and generally just having a life - whereas her mother is far too busy working to provide for herself and her daughter. Which means that their only method of communication is indeed on their refrigerator door. But one day, one note is going to turn Claire and her mums world completely upside down…

These days most of my book recommendations come from Amazon and Life on the Refrigerator Door is no exception. I’ve got no idea what I was looking at at the time but Life on the Refrigerator Door popped up as I was scrolling through books Amazon recommend and I fell in love with the hot pink cover. I also thought it sounded like a fab read partcularly since the last book I read to be written in a similar style was Cecelia Ahern’s book Where Rainbows End which I really enjoyed. I then helped a friend with her site and I picked this with the money I got figuring that the worst that could happen that I wouldn’t like it.

I must admit that I do feel a little cheated by the book. It’s 226 pages long but it’s absolutely not 226 pages full of writing. Because the book is told in notes there’s only one note per page and some of the notes are only a few lines long so I managed to finish the book in under an hour. It is a unique way of trying to tell a story but to be honest, after finishing it, I’m still not totally convinced it worked. I mean the quotes from the magazines say it’s “heartbreaking” and “guaranteed to make me cry” but I never felt either of those emotions whilst reading the book.

The idea of a mother and daughter being so far apart that they only communicate via notes is actually pretty sad. What mother or daughter cannot find the time to talk to each other for at least an hour a day? And, to be honest, the notes don’t even really have a ring of truth to them. They seem forced - despite the fact Claire doodles all over her drawings which is obviously an attempt from the author to get us to be able to know Claire a bit better and to make her more real to us. But for me it didn’t really work. I mean I’ve seen all the reviews everywhere saying the book is fab but I just didn’t get what was supposed to be so good about the book apart from the fact I managed to read it in an hour.

I have to say that even the life-changing note wasn’t really enough to make the book as good as I’d have liked. It again seemed rather forced and it was as if it was thrown in there to make the book more dramatic than it actually was. Also the lack of talking between Claire and her mum about the life-changing thing was shocking. They barely mentioned it and when it did come up, they avoided the subject like the plague. It really just seemed so unreal and there was no depth to the plot or to the characters. It could have been so much better had the author decided to put in some actual pages of words along with the notes rather than just a book full of notes. Unique it may have been but enjoyable it certainly wasn’t.