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Recently I started reading both the After series by Anna Todd and the Lux series by Jennifer L. Armentrout at the same time. Initially, I was struck by a number of similarities in the tropes and story-lines followed, but where the After series became an obsession and I couldn’t put it down, the Lux series quickly became a disappointment and I struggled to finish it. It got me thinking… how did one get it so right while one got it so wrong?

First, a Warning About “After”

If you haven’t already read it, fair warning that “After” is a difficult story and deals with disturbing triggers of toxic relationships and emotional manipulation / abuse. I am a grown woman, with two young daughters and I would be very concerned if they were as obsessed with the book series as I was. It’s fine for me to be in love with the damaged boy that is Hardin Scott, but I come from it with an emotionally-mature and self-confident point of view. I would never encourage an impressionable young girl to read this and I can very much understand that for someone who went through that type of abuse, seeing glamourized in print is truly disgusting. It made me question writing this blog, but at the end of the day, I’m not responsible for everyone else’s emotional health and I truly enjoyed the series, so I am unapologetically supporting the crazy, wild and passionate love affair.

After vs. Lux – Story Overview (FYI – spoiler alert)

After is the story of Tessa, a university freshman, away from home for the first time in her life, who meets Hardin, a “rough-around-the-edges” boy. Throughout the series, we see their relationship fluctuate again and again from hot-and-steamy coming of age, to an unforgivable betrayal, to hateful, hurtful screaming matches, to pleading and pledges of redemption and back to hot-and steamy. Pretty much the entire series involves Tessa trying to break free from Hardin’s grasp, only to have him dig his claws into her and then break her heart and her spirit.

Lux is the story of Katy (who is frequently referred to as “Kat” or “Kitten”), who moves to a new town, which is, unbeknownst to her, inhabited by aliens. One of these aliens quickly befriends her and Katy inevitably falls in love with her best friend’s alien twin brother, Daemon. The story of the entire series revolves around Katy becoming a “hybrid”, and involves various forces and factions trying to contain them, use their mystical connection to their own purposes, and a war between alien / hybrid / human beings.

The Female Leads – Tessa vs. Katy

Tessa starts out just like almost any other YA heroine. She is a book-smart, organized “good girl”, innocent beyond anything you would expect of a first-year university student (I mean seriously? doesn’t anybody ever have sex with their high-school boyfriend or was that just me?). Tessa’s greatest qualities are that she loves so deeply that she can forgive just about anything and will do anything to help those she cares about and that she is resilient and somehow bounces back from the terrible, terrible hand life gives her at times. Tessa’s lesser qualities are that she is a doormat and repeatedly allows people to walk all over her and impose undue influence over her decisions. It starts with her mother, then Hardin, then her roommate, then her dad, then this guy she sort of sees in the middle. Tessa is never quite able to say “No” very convincingly. By the end of the series, Tessa’s world has basically imploded and although she goes on to make a life out of it, I would say that the foreshadowed concept that Hardin would “ruin” her is pretty on-point.

Katy pretty much stays status quo throughout the series. She’s very much portrayed as an average girl, just trying to do right by her mom, her man and her friends. She’s steadfast and consistent. Although she arguably becomes stronger throughout the series and certainly shows her own measure of resiliency, basically, she’s the same character at the end of the book series as she was at the beginning, just improved. Unfortunately, this makes Katy pretty forgettable.

The nod in this category does go to Lux, because although there’s not a ton of substance to Katy’s personality, at least she doesn’t throw everything away and at the end of the series, she is at least as well off as she was at the beginning, if not more powerful and stable.

The Male Lead – Hardin vs. Daemon

Anna Todd does a fabulous job of describing Hardin in a way that exudes sex, confidence and vulnerability – a potent cocktail indeed. Hardin is the prototypical contrast between that Uber-sexy, hot guy with all the right moves and lines and the broken, damaged boy who is needy, insecure and very, very vulnerable. He has clung to Tessa as his life-line and there are many times in the story where she is the only thing holding him afloat.

Daemon is portrayed as this sexy, powerful person… I say person, because the descriptions of him and his role in the Lux (alien) society suggest that he is a fully-mature, man while he also is a high-school student and falling in love for the first time… so it’s difficult to type either “Boy” or “man” when talking about him. Like Katy, Daemon is much more consistent a personality than his comparator. He is steady and stead-fast in his love for Katy, but he is not in any way “needy” or dependent on her.

I’m not sure which male lead has a more desirable personality, but for sure the nod goes to Hardin for the writer’s description of him and the many layers of his persona.

The Key Relationship

Tessa and Hardin are on-again / off-again so many times it’s enough to make you dizzy, but the very best parts of their relationship seem to be the in-between. I’ve always been a sucker for will-they / won’t-they (mostly when it ends up that they will) and this book series certainly delivers in that regard. Their relationship is smoking-hot, both in a literary way of describing their early encounters and Tessa’s introduction into various physical activities to the burning down of Hardin’s childhood home in a fit of anger. Is their relationship totally toxic and absolutely doomed? Yes… But something about them and their pure desire / need for each other just has me rooting for them all the more.

Katy and Daemon have a number of ups and downs in their relationship as well, as they fumble towards true love. But there’s a level of inevitability in this love story that makes it certain right from the beginning that these two will end up together. They take two steps forward and one step back for the entire series, but overall the conflicts between them quite frankly just become annoying, since they seem so petty in the overall scope of what they’re dealing with.

One of the interesting perspectives of reading the first book of each of these series at the same time was the parallels… Where both female leads were talking about what a jerk their male counter was and how what he had done was unforgivable and irreversible. But where Tessa’s complaints against Hardin seemed absolutely legitimate and warranted, Katy’s came of insincere and whiny. The only thing that Daemon did was be rude to her one time when she knocked on his door. One time… In the entire series… As far as I can see that’s the only thing he did to push her away and man, oh man, did he ever pay for that one. Hardin did so many terrible things to sabotage his relationship with Tessa.

In fairness, the Lux series has a lot more going on than the After series did in terms of dealing with alien / human / hybrid / origin beings, all of which are in conflict with each other and all leading up to a major battle over world supremacy. But in my reading, the core relationship is always key and the After series just truly captivated me more than the Lux series.

The “Bet”s

One of the parallel features of the first book in each series is the concept of an inappropriate “bet” wagered regarding affairs of the heart between the main characters.

In “After”, the final chapter (seriously, last chance spoiler alert), the “bet” is revealed that Hardin and his friends had a bet, as part of a game of Truth or Dare (of all crazy things), that he would take her virginity. It is a vulgar concept and truly horrifying, especially the details in the book (which aren’t divulged in the movie) about the “bloody sheets”… eeeeeewwwww!

In “Obsidian” (Lux #1), Daemon makes a bet with Katy that she would declare that she is “irrevocably in love” with him by New Years. Pretty tame and innocent stuff compared to the “After” bet. But this bet has two things working against it… 1. the “irrevocably in love” just SCREAMS “Twilight” to me, where I know the line is featured in the movie, even if I can’t quite remember if it’s word-for-word in the book. 2. It just doesn’t have the jaw-dropping, compelling “hand-me-over-the-next-book-in-the-series” drama to it.

Quotable Quotes and Cheesy Lines

The number 1, King of the Ring, terrible cheesy line comes from all the Lux novels, written possibly a thousand times through the series. And that is Daemon calling Katy “Kitten”… OMG! I get that it is sort of a term of endearment as kittens are cute and cuddly, but it is so demeaning… (although maybe not as demeaning as betting to take someone’s virginity – just sayin’). But it grated on my soul time and time again throughout the entire series… I almost giggled every time I saw it and if I had liked Katy as a main character any more than I did or if I had wanted to see her develop into a strong, independent woman, I would have been horrified.

The second cheesiest thing in the first instalment of Lux was Daemon bringing Katy a rose to school… I get that this is a pretty high school calibre move (and maybe I would have swooned over a guy doing it in high school if I could ever stop my cheeks from flaming in embarrassment). But Katy’s response “A fucking rose? really?” killed me…

The last cheese-worthy quote from Obsidian also comes from our heroine, Katy: “Daemon had to prove his feelings for me were real and he did… finally. He hadn’t been the nicest person when we first met and he had to really make up for that. Momma didn’t raise a pushover”… Once again, this had me screaming into my e-reader that he was slightly rude answering the door to a stranger… get over it!

On the other hand, as much as After did have some pretty lame foundations, two quotes I found actually compelling:

“It’s ironic really: the man who hates the world the mot is most loved by it”.

I LOVE this quote… It’s so sweet and poignant. And I do feel that it is a pretty true statement of the way the world works.

“He prays that she will take every single word to heart, and that maybe, just maybe, she will still love him after everything they have gone through. He hopes that she will be able to remember why she loved him, why she fought so hard for him”.

This quote just broke my heart for Hardin. It is a good representation of why even though he is a terrible person and the most horrible boyfriend, I can still hope that it all works out for him in the end.

In Conclusion…

In case I haven’t been abundantly clear, I LOVED the After Series, even though it is definitely problematic and damaged. The Lux Series was well hyped and has lots of books, but the overall characters were mostly cookie-cutter and for all the terrible things happening in their world, they were just too stable and consistent.

If you have read either of these or both of these series, let me know your thoughts… Also, always looking to add to my quotable quotes section. Thanks for reading!

First, a warm thank you to Mackenzie Lane (@mackenzieashtonlane / YouTube.com/mackenzielane) for setting up the 2019 #ohwhatfun readathon. Secondly, a most humble apology for any time on any platform where I may have or may yet refer to the readathon as “ohwhatafeeling” (mental block). Now, on to business…

TBR

So for those who don’t know, the premise of this readathon, running from December 14 to 21 is to choose either the list of “Nice” challenges or “Naughty” challenges. I’m starting with the nice challenges and will move on to naughty if time allows (yeah, sure!). My unique approach is to work on all five challenges at once, which means I have to have books at the ready all at the start.

Challenge #1 – Read a Book Set During Winter – Christmas Shopaholic by Sofie Kinsella

Challenge #2 – Read a Book With “Light” in the Title – What Light by Jay Asher

Challenge #3 – Read the 25th Book on Your TBR – An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Challenge #4 – Read an Entire Book in Christmas Pyjamas – Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

Challenge #5 – Read a Book Published in December of Any Year – Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Updates

I will be posting daily updates on my Instagram (@heathers.book.nook) and will update my blog when a milestone is reached.

So much reading … So little time. Happy Holidays and Happy Reading to all those participating.

Round-Up

Lesson Learned… NEVER start an 8-Day Readathon on the busiest work / personal week of the year…

It’s a sad state of affairs when you manage to do less reading on a readathon than you have any other time since tracking your reading.

That being said, I did manage to wholly complete one challenge and will update on the rest.

Challenge #1 – Read a Book Set During Winter – Christmas Shopaholic by Sofie Kinsella – I am 62% of the way through this book. It’s a quick read and I was hoping to be able to pound away a few hours yesterday to get it done, but that just didn’t happen.

Challenge #2 – Read a Book With “Light” in the Title – What Light by Jay Asher – If possession is 9/10ths of the law, then I should be 9/10ths of the way through this challenge. The only part I managed to accomplish was picking this book up from the library.

Challenge #3 – Read the 25th Book on Your TBR – An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir – I am 14% of the way through this book. It’s a much longer book than I thought. Fingers crossed I may actually still get this done by the end of the year.

Challenge #4 – Read an Entire Book in Christmas Pyjamas – Skipping Christmas by John Grisham – I am 11% of the way through this book. I thought for sure this would be my slam dunk because it seems to be a quick read, but the problem for me was that I wasn’t in my Christmas PJs very many hours of the week.

Challenge #5 – Read a Book Published in December of Any Year – Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher – 100% Done this challenge… yay! Whoot-Whoot! Bring on the ticker-tape parade.

Conclusion

It was so much fun being a part of the #Ohwhatfunreadathon2019, even if I wasn’t very good at it… I’ll be trolling for someone setting up a first week of 2020 Readathon for sure.

Happy December 1!

The weather here in Southern Ontario has been up and down all month, and December is starting much the same way November did, with a big winter storm. Bad for trying to get my Christmas shopping in order, but great for starting another month with a good boost to my reading / blogging.

So November by the numbers…
Total Books Read: 15
Total Books Finished: 12
Did Not Finish (DNF): 1
To be Continued in December: 2
Total Pages Read: 4070
Average Pages Per Day: 135

This was the first month I ever “read” via audio book… I will do a separate posting on how I feel about that experience. The purist in me felt that I was cheating by reading via audio book, but it is an easy way to get a few more books in a year. The following tracks my reading by media type. Hard-copy books (blue), E-Books (beige), audio book (grey).

A brief summary (no spoilers) and rating for all the books I finished in November, 2019 is below:

The Infernal Devices Series – Clockwork Angel, Clockwork Prince and Clockwork Princess – Cassandra Clare

I gave this series 4.5-stars as a whole, with Clockwork Angel being my lowest rating at 4-stars and Clockwork Prince being my highest at 5-stars. Clockwork Princess falls somewhere in between, as it had some of the absolute best moments of the series, and some of the usual let-downs as things finally wind-up. Shortly after completing The Mortal Instruments, I purchased The Infernal Devices, however my heart just wasn’t big enough at the time to embrace a new Shadow Hunter series.

Blame – Jeff Abbott

This was the first book read in my “Random Book from the Library” ongoing challenge. I’ve always liked the idea of finding a gem in the rough that I’ve NEVER heard of by just randomly picking a book from the library shelves or by starting at “A”… This book embraced both.

The story was much more compelling than I thought it would be, about a girl suffering from amnesia after having killed a close guy friend in a car accident. The story is largely about a calamity of events as the story of what happened that night starts to unwind.

I haven’t read a lot of books with an unreliable narrator, but this one was compelling in that she was so obviously unreliable in that you often were pretty sure that maybe she was stringing you along.

I gave this books 3.5 stars. Wasn’t entirely in my wheelhouse of books I like to read, but it was definitely an enjoyable trip into the less-frequented library shelves.

Zen-Sational Living: A Simple Guide to Finding Your True Self and Maintaining Balance – Sheila M. Burke

I don’t know what I expected of “A Simple Guide” with such an incredibly complicated title, but this book was disappointing. Usually I’m all-in on some good living zen advice, but maybe I just wasn’t feeling the topic this month or maybe this book really wasn’t that good. It took me a few tries over the past few years to get into it, and I’m pretty sure I only finished it this time through sheer will-power. I gave it 2 Stars.

The Art of Woo – Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas – G. Richard Shell

Once again, maybe I’m just too into fiction right now to really appreciate a good non-fiction book… Or maybe it’s because I tried to do this one via audio book… Either way, this book I just could not keep paying attention to and eventually I called it as my first DID NOT FINISH of the year. No rating.

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked – Adam Alter

This was the one exception this month to my non-fiction slump. I really enjoyed this book, although I’m concerned that maybe instead of scaring me away from the addictive behaviours it cautions, it actually drew me in more, with my new advances in blogging and instragram. Oh well, it was an interesting read and a good book overall. 3 Stars.

I’m Not Dying With You Tonight – Kimberly Jones

This was the first book that I finished as an audio book. At first I had a real difficulty with hearing the book in voices different than the ones in my head (cue mental health check), but I went for a long drive one day and found that with absorbing a big enough chunk at one time, the story held my interest. A decent story, but I do think that I may have liked it even more if I had read it instead of listened to it. 3 Stars.

Roar: Thirty Women Thirty Stories – Cecelia Ahren

This being the second book in my “Random Book from the Library” series, I wasn’t sure what to expect about this collection of short stories. But I LOVED IT! It was fantastic… By the halfway point I thought for sure this was going to be one of my favourite reads of the year. Unfortunately by the end I either got bored of the rah-rah-feminism vibe or the stories started to decline in quality and at the end of the day, this only got a 3.75-Star Rating.

Carve the Mark – Veronica Roth

This was the only re-read of the month. When I picked this book to re-read, I actually thought it was a different book, but 50 pages in I was pretty invested and decided to finish this series again. It’s not the most wonderful YA Fantasy book I’ve ever read, but the romance is pretty cute and I did enjoy this departure from some of the other materials I read this month. I gave it 3 Stars on the re-read. I seem to recall that the end of the series was disappointing so I’m mixed on getting back into book #2.

Get Your Sh*T Together: How to stop Worrying About What You Should Do So You Can Finish What You Need to Do and Start Doing What You Want To Do – Sarah Knight

Wow… that’s a mouthful. I didn’t even realize how long that title was. No need for a recap because that says it all.

I really enjoyed this book, which was the third book I finished in audio format. I think it’s the author who is also doing the reading, which is really fun. So much better than the other two audios and it really felt more like a podcast or just talking to someone (says something about my vernacular).

Anyways, this was a good, solid book and has interested me in trying the audio version of her other book “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck”… I’ve read that one, but I think hearing her cadence will be even better. 4 Stars.

I Hate Everyone… Starting with Me – Joan Rivers

This was the third installment in my “Random Book from the Library” series. I thought it might be a light, enjoyable read and I was right. It was fine, but not quite as funny as I had hoped. 3 Stars.

Wonder – R.J. Palacio

This was my second re-read of the month, and my first “Reading What the Kids Are Reading” book. My daughter read this book and watched the movie 2 years ago and I don’t know if I finished the book along with her or lost interest part way through.

It was a fine story, but fiction geared to that age group is maybe just not my thing. I don’t have the same “outrage” response that some of my other mommy peers do. 3 Stars.

There is nothing better than that story that captivates your heart… It’s even better if it’s part of a series that can keep you emerged and entranced for books at a time. The world in which you’ve found a home, the characters which you consider family, the storyline that you are so invested in that you forgo sleep and basic needs to consume faster than you ever thought possible. Only to hit that point when you realize….

This story is going to end…

Most recently that series for me has been “The Infernal Devices” by Cassandra Clare. Currently I’m about 3/4 done the last book of the series, and I am so excited to see what happens in the end… and yet so dreading the end of the series and so not wanting to waste a single second of the experience, that this last bit of book is taking FOREVER. I only read this book when I know that no one is around to disrupt me and when I’m sure I can get at least a chapter in. So many lesser books have come and gone and been marked up on the Goodreads big board in the meantime that anyone who doesn’t know me would think that I wasn’t really into it.

So this post will be updated occasionally, as I find those rare gems of a book / series that are just too good to finish. If any of my readers have similar experiences or recommendations, please leave them in the comments.

In the meantime, I think I can get infinitesimally closer to the end without actually reading the last page, so I’d better sign off and find a quiet corner to sneak away to.