The Secret of Ella and Micha by Jessica Sorensen -- Welcome Aboard or Walk the Plank?

One look at the Goodreads reviews would show that I'm in the minority by not liking this book--and that's okay.

I was so excited to read this book after reading the beautiful book that is The Coincidence of Kallie and Kayden, also by Jessica Sorensen. Admittedly, the blurb...was not the most exciting one.

Okay, okay, it was a very commonplace blurb. Like, I could put it on the back of any New Adult book and it would work. BUT STILL, I  held onto my hope, even though it was screaming obscenities at me to let it go and to find another book.

I should've listened to Hope, because this book was a major letdown. I had a constant headache due to the sheer stupidity and selfishness of our Little Miss Scarred Ella May [no, I have no sympathy for her--any sympathy I harbored for her died as the story progressed...that doesn't say much for you character, Ella, not much at all...]

Title: The Secret of Ella and Micha

Author: Jessica Sorensen
The Judgement: Scurvy Dog {I'm one step away from declaring this trash. I must've fallen for the cover. Wise men spoke true words: don't judge a book by its cover.}
           
Synopsis:

"Ella and Micha have been best friends since they were kids. But one tragic night shatters their friendship and their lives forever.

Ella used to be a rule-breaker with fiery attitude who wore her heart on her sleeve. But she left everything behind when she went to college and transformed into someone that follows the rules, keeps everything together, and hides all her problems. But now it's summer break and she has nowhere else to go but home. 

Ella fears everything she worked so hard to bury might resurface, especially with Micha living right next door. If Micha tries to tempt the old her back, she knows that it will be hard to resist.

Micha is sexy, smart, confident, and can get under Ella’s skin like no one else can. He knows everything about her, including her darkest secrets. And he’s determined to bring his best friend, and the girl he loves back, no matter what it takes. 

(New Adult Contemporary)
*Mature Content** Recommended for ages 17+ due to sexual situations and language." 

My First Thoughts: The only reason I picked up this book, as I said before, was because of the author. Because of her beautifully crafted tale of Kallie and Kayden. And that was the only reason. The cover didn't strike me as anything eye-captivating and the blurb was boring. So, sadly, I was just a weeee bit disappointed with the book [I had high expectations and then the cover and blurb dimmed 'em down...sad that an author I was hoping to be a favorite didn't deliver]

Captain's Log on The Secret of Ella and Micha: I have to get this out of the way first. The word "aqua" was used to describe Micha's eyes exactly 9 times. Now, question about the book: what color were Micha's eyes, kids? AQUA. YES THEY ARE AQUA. I GET IT. AQUA EYES. EVERYONE GOT IT? 'CAUSE APPARENTLY, YOU DON'T KNOW THEY ARE AQUA UNTIL IT'S BEEN SAID 9 TIMES!

Okay, okay, I'm okay. I'm done. *Exhale*

Okay, back to the book. The story is of a girl named Ella May [I've finished the book and I STILL don't understand where the "May" part of her name comes from. It ain't her last name, I tell you that. Maybe I missed the explanation due to being bored out of my  mind =_= ] and her struggle to admit her love for Micha [...whiiiich she doesn't struggle with much either so...]. No, there is no emotional grappling with her self-hatred over being labeled her mom's murderer. How to say it...It's like she says she feels guilty, her family blames her, but I never got the feeling that she actually, truly regretted leaving that night. There was no conviction in her dialogue and her's family's accusations seemed to roll right off of her. After a hidden night of crying, she's flirtin' and makin' out with AQUA-EYED Micha. Yeah, not seeing much suffering. I expected angst. I expected emotion. But what did I get? An empty gap of eight months that could've been filled with her journey to where she ended up. 

That was my biggest problem: the eight month jump. It was a poor move on Ms. Sorensen's part. One day, she's about to jump of a bridge and kisses Micha, next thing you know, she's turned over a new leaf and is supposedly a devil-Barbie [ I stereotypical slut-shaming in this book was TOO DAMN HIGH. Just because Ella dressed like a cheerleader from their high-school {again, I don't get it--is the girl not allowed to dress differently? Does the cheerleader have a copy-right on those clothes} everyone flips their lid when she returns, mocking her. Like really, I thought y'all were out of high school, but I guess not.] 

Also, Ella's company that she was "running away" from, well, I don't get why she wanted back in--they were all a bunch of douches--but that's the problem again with her: that's the person she used to be. And some of those traits returned slowly as she hung out with Micha. 

Aaaand now we get to Micha...the blonde sexy boy [he's definitely an immature boy, no man] with dem aqua eyes. Aka another person who garnered zero sympathy from me. He had his daddy issues but again, they seemed so...nonexistent. Another bad move on Ms. Sorensen's part was leaving another gaping hole in the story. This was another missed opportunity on the author's part--the readers' could've witnessed Micha's processing of his daddy issues. But all we got to see was seeing him return and--you guessed it--makin' out with Ella. But I couldn't like Micha as a character because he thought bringing Ella back to her destructive ['cause that's what she was] self was the best thing to do. I'd give him plus points for trying to make her come to terms with her "self-loathing" but that's about it. He was more interested in getting in her pants.

I have nothing much to say about this book anymore. There are no words left to translate my disappointment. To sum it all up, the plot of this book was not the drama I was hoping it was to be. There were too many moments we were left guessing about the characters. For a book told in dual point of view, I can't tell you many meaningful things about either of them. Whenever something important was happening to the other, all we are left with is reading about the other character =_= All I was left to read was a story about a girl who tried to get away from the guy, but in reality, didn't try hard at all, and they just had a bunch of fun, sexy times. I couldn't take the "serious" moments seriously at all. All in all, poorly written book. 

PS: I AM SO MAD AT THE TREATMENT LILA GOT IN THE BOOK. So many moments, Lila is treated as not being their. Ella and Micha, at multiple times get their nasty on RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. *cough* fucking assholes *cough* And she gets the invisible treatment AGAIN when Ella and Dean are fighting. AND MISS PRINCESS ELLA doesn't give an explanation about it afterwards. Ella: horrible. Lila: from the few glimpses I got, has a goldmine of a story, so I'm willing to give her and Ethan's story a try. They sound sooooo much better. Here's Hoping I won't be disappointed again...

The end result...sorry The Secret of Ella and Micha, but I'm gonna have to ask you to leave my Jolly Anne and WALK THE PLANK!

-Captain Kaelyn

On The Jellicoe Road By Melina Marchetta -- Welcome Aboard or Walk the Plank?

My mates, sometimes in our lives, we come across a book that changes our entire being, that makes you question nothing and everything, that makes you sit in place for hours on end to just...think...about life. A book that touches you so deeply, you cannot even see the impact it had on you. You KNOW deep down that something changed...but what? What is the name of this overwhelming emotion that surges from within you? What is it? What? And because you can't answer any of these questions, all you can do is cry, try to give the emotion form so you can begin to comprehend something. Anything.
                

Deep, right? You are/will be too if you read On The Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta.



Title: On The Jellicoe Road
Author: Melina Marchetta
The Judgement: LOOT!!! {This. This is what all I review strive to be. Not a part of the ship but a part of the loot, forever immortalized, forever enshrined, loved, gazed upon in awe. Truly a master piece. You have Neptune's grace.}



Synopsis:

"I'm dreaming of the boy in the tree. I tell him stories. About the Jellicoe School and the Townies and the Cadets from a school in Sydney. I tell him about the war between us for territory. And I tell him about Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river. Hannah, who is too young to be hiding away from the world. Hannah, who found me on the Jellicoe Road six years ago.

Taylor is leader of the boarders at the Jellicoe School. She has to keep the upper hand in the territory wars and deal with Jonah Griggs - the enigmatic leader of the cadets, and someone she thought she would never see again.

And now Hannah, the person Taylor had come to rely on, has disappeared. Taylor's only clue is a manuscript about five kids who lived in Jellicoe eighteen years ago. She needs to find out more, but this means confronting her own story, making sense of her strange, recurring dream, and finding her mother - who abandoned her on the Jellicoe Road.

The moving, joyous and brilliantly compelling new novel from the best-selling, multi-award-winning author of Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca."

My First Thoughts: I've said it in a previous post. This book was one I chose to read for an assignment in my senior year English class. Stereo typically, this does not spell out for a great first impression. But the key word is chose. I chose to read this book and by reading it, I've learned I can make a good choice now and then. The book didn't seem too special to me. I almost forgo-ed it for Room by Emma Donoghue [which I will read as well very soon, now that it's popped up in my view once more]. But something about the first paragraph of the synopsis spoke to me. A part of Taylor's complicated story came through and touched me, making me pick up this book and read it. Re-reading it all of yesterday just proved what a timeless book it is for me. I'm gonna have to pick up a physical copy soon because I wanna read this book over and over again. I learned things I didn't learn before, saw more into Taylor's world. I can't wait to read it for a third time a discover more. What a treasure this book is, unveiling more and more with each read. The story shifts ever so slightly but my world quakes with change. 

Captain's Log on On The Jellicoe Road: 

My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted.

Well. That has to be one of the most hooking first lines ever written. I really don't think anything can beat this haunting start that begs us to keep on reading and uncover the pain of the person counting.

Taylor Markham has led a...complicated life...that has left her hungry for love yet, at the same time, wary of it. From the start, she makes it no secret that she trusts no one, not even the woman you picked her up and took her in after her mother abandoned her on Jellicoe Road. 

I don't know where I fit in. One day when I was eleven, my mother drove me out here and while I was in the toilets at the 7-Eleven on the Jellicoe Road, she drove off and left me there.

Betrayed once by her mother and a second time by Jonah Griggs, someone she thought she'd connected to till he turned them in, she does not want to love Hannah. Yet she wants to love Hannah. But when Hannah leaves too, without a word, Taylor is shattered, her heart broken once again. Taylor had given her heart to Hannah without even realizing it and now it was irreparable. And she was already too fragile to take in anymore surprises.

I tell him of the time when I was fourteen, just after the Hermit whispered something in my ear and then shot himself, when I went in search of my mother, but got only halfway there. I tell him that I blame the Cadet for that. 

Or so she thought. Enter Jonah Griggs, the Cadet, one of the three who broke her heart and the one to put it together again. 

Trust me mates, the story is no cliched love story.

These two fought, they made up, and they loved. But their love is so much more. It's what repaired BOTH their souls. It's what helped them live on, move on from the horrors of the past.

But this book is so much more than just Jonah and Taylor. It Taylor and Webb, Taylor and Fitz, Taylor and Narnie, Taylor and Tate, Taylor and Jude, Taylor and Raffy, Ben, Jessa. So. Much. More. It's Taylor discovering herself under all that self-hatred, her thoughts of thinking she will always be left behind. It's all these people proving her wrong, that they love her so much and they will always be in her heart. 

I connected to Taylor on such a deeper level than I'd expected but now that I mull over it, it's no surprise. I myself am no stranger to self-loathing. And that's why this book was so much more than just a book for me. It's my saving grace. It's my guide to love myself and to believe that yes, I am capable of being loved. 

The best thing about this book besides it's existence is that it talked of the past. And I fell in love with those five so much. 

But there they were, on the steps of the Jellicoe General Store, where the Cadets always stopped to pick up supplies. Waiting. For him. 

"Who are they?" the Cadet sitting next to him asked. Jude looked at Webb's face, the grin stretching from ear to ear. 

"They're my best friends. I'm going to know them until the day I die."

My heart broke with each revelation, their pain my own. 

And when I walked away, I heard something hit the water and I thought I must have killed a fucker of a bird. I looked but I couldn't see anything.

Just like Taylor, I cried when I realized that one of them would die.

"You never got that fifth tin," Webb called to Fitz just before they disappeared through the trees.

"Not to worry," he said with a wave. "I'll go back for a shot on another day." 

But just like Taylor, I looked around and saw that there was a new generation now, one to continue the bonds of the old. 

And Tate just watched and listened and took it all in. 

"Can you hear that?" she said softly, touching her belly. "Because you belong too."

Do you all want to know my favorite part of this book, the one that hit me the deepest, made me cry the most?

 He sat in the tree, his mind overwhelmed by the idea that growing inside Tate was their baby. The cat purred alongside him, a co-conspirator in his contentment. Through the branches he could see Fitz coming his way, his gun balanced on his shoulders, whistling a tune. So Webb closed his eyes, thinking of the dream he'd had the night before where he sat on the branch of a tree and spoke to their child. In the child's voice there was so much promise and joy that it took his breath away. He told her about his plans to build a house. He'd make it out of gopher-wood, like Noah's ark, two storeys high, with a view he could look out on every day with wonder. A house for Tate and Narnie and Jude and Fitz and for their families. A home to come back to every day of their lives. Where they would all belong or long to be. A place on the Jellicoe Road.

Okay, okay, enough feels and tears. Now, finally...WELCOME ABOARD THE JOLLY ANNE, ON THE JELLICOE ROAD!!! More than that, WELCOME TO THE LOOT!!!

-Captain Kaelyn