Book Review: A Pretty Age by Barbara Mueller

ISBN: 1449779557
Published: January 7th, 2013
Publisher: Westbow Press
Synopsis from publisher:

In 1910, a missionary visitor arrives at Sophiny Mumm’s convent boarding school in Concord, Kansas. Sophiny is smitten. Her best friend Antoinette Dominguez is not—and begins a series of strange behaviors breaking all the rules. In an ensuing investigation of puzzling enigmas, Sophiny has to use all the resources of emerging women’s rights, family relationships, social networks, the new technologies (telephone, photography, and transportation), and patron saints. A Pretty Age exposes the violence still underlying the Midwest’s supposed civilizing forces at the turn of the century (1910) through the emergence of two convent boarding school students into a world where weapons may have changed but the danger remains.

Review:

It's a bit hard to describe A Pretty Age for me.  I guess describing it as a mystery book is the best way.  Sophiny's best friend Antoinette disappears from the convent school that they both attend.  Antoinette has been telling Sophiny that she plans to elope, and while this puzzles her, Sophiny isn't very worried about her friend at first.  Then, as time goes on and Antoinette isn't found or heard from, Sophiny begins to get worried and starts looking into things.  Things get a bit dark as she starts uncovering what has happened to Antoinette.

I wasn't too fond of this book.  I almost put it down about halfway through, but just as I was about to give up, the plot picked up enough that I kept going.  Still, I skimmed large portions of the book because I wasn't a fan of the writing style.  That's what kept me from getting into it.  The entire book seemed to drag on, and I felt like what could have been told in a few sentences was instead elaborated into several paragraphs.  It made it difficult for me to read and enjoy the book.

It really is a shame because the plot itself was intriguing, and I feel like I would have enjoyed it a lot more if the writing style had been different.  However, there were some aspects of the story I liked.  It had a very interesting setting.  I don't know if I've read any books set around 1910, and if I have, they certainly didn't take place in Kansas.  It was also really unique that a large part of the story takes place at a convent school, which is a setting that I've definitely never read about.  There was also quite a lot of talk about feminism and what was happening in the feminist movement in 1910 that I really enjoyed.  There are many strong female characters in this book, and that definitely helped me get through the book easier.

While the writing style made it difficult for me at times, certain aspects of the story were enough to make me still enjoy A Pretty Age okay.  I think there are definitely people out there who would enjoy it, but it's not for everyone.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com® <http://BookSneeze.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Summer Break Mondays

It's amazing how even when I'm not in school Mondays feel like the most stressful day of the week.  There's absolutely no reason they should really.  I never write on Sundays, so I suppose that writing again could be the cause.  Still, during summer break Mondays aren't all that different from weekends, so I don't really understand why I still dread them so much.

I haven't really done much so far today other than write.  That's still making up the majority of my days really.  I still want to get a bit more done today.  I'm really enjoying where I am in the story I'm writing.  I wish I could talk about it, but I don't want to do that yet.

For the moment, I'm going to go study Japanese.  I haven't made incredible progress in learning the language this summer, but I have been studying it at least a little every day.  I'm hoping I can keep that up when school starts in a few weeks.

Larry Stylinson

I don't talk about Larry Stylinson (or Lourry if you prefer) on here ever.  I have it in my Twitter bio, but I don't tweet about it much.  The only place that I really "talk" about Larry at all is on Tumblr, and that just basically consists of my reblogging pictures, gifs, etc.  There are a number of reasons that I don't talk about it much.  For one thing, I don't really talk about One Direction here on my blog or on Youtube that much at all.  Perhaps the biggest reason though, is because I feel like everything I could have to say has already been said by other people.  Plus, some people get really offended if they think that you've "broken the fourth wall," but honestly if anyone wants to find anything on the Internet, they can.  I don't know why some people seem to think that Tumblr is a magical land where you can keep anyone related to One Direction from seeing what you post.

I made a video about One Direction about a month ago and uploaded it to Youtube, but I immediately privated it for a variety of reasons.  I didn't even touch on Larry in that video though, so it's not even really the same thing.  Still, One Direction and Larry Stylinson are a huge part of my life and what I spend my time doing, and for that reason I feel like I should talk about it more here and on Youtube.  That's why I've decided to actually start talking about them more.  It will honestly hardly affect this blog at all, but I do want to make more Youtube videos about it.

I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to say yet.  There's quite a lot I could go into, and yes, most of it will have been said before.  However, I don't want that to stop me from talking about it either.  After all, almost everything has been said about everything at some point.  I was actually going to go ahead and make this a blog post about why I believe Larry is real, but I think that would be better suited for a video and I already filmed one this morning.  That will be coming soon.  It may be a little difficult as I have so much to say that I really don't know where to even begin.  I want to try this though.  I feel as if I've been too silent about my feelings on Larry on the Internet, and I really want to end that.

An Actual Summer Break

Ever since all of the wedding and concert excitement a few weeks ago, I haven't really been doing much.  Nothing really notable at least.  However, tomorrow will be exactly a week until my twentieth birthday, and that's kind of a scary thought.  It's hard to believe that I'll no longer be a teenager.

My days recently have seriously been filled with nothing but writing, reading, and watching TV shows.  I'm kind of thankful though because I really need this for at least part of the summer.  Doing a bunch of fun stuff is great, but I also need to use summer break as an actual break or I'm going to be tired out before school even starts.

Pointless Sentimentalities

I like to keep anything that is slightly sentimental to me.  I'd probably be a borderline hoarder if I didn't force myself to throw away the more mundane things that I have inklings to keep.  Granted, sometimes I just keep things (such as receipts) because they get put somewhere and then I never think to throw them away.  Still, I have a lot of things that most people probably would have thrown away by now.

In elementary school my friends and I liked to make up freeze tag games.  We eventually had so many different types of freeze tags that we couldn't remember them all, so me being how I am, I decided that we needed to write down a list.  I remember that I took that list to recess with me every day to make sure that we remembered all of the freeze tags when deciding what to play.  (And I typically wanted to play Halloween Halls instead of freeze tag.  We made up all our own games if you can't tell.)  I still have that list.  It's wrinkled more than it even should be because I had this fascination with how soft paper got if you wrinkled it up, so I used to purposefully wrinkle any paper that wasn't school work.  I'll probably never throw that list away, even if it's pretty useless these days.

That's just one of the small, sentimental things sitting around in my room.  I have the usual ticket stubs.  I even had a piece of bark from the tree that used to sit on my elementary and middle school's playground.  They cut it down the year after a graduated.  None of these things serve any purpose other than bringing back fond memories whenever I see them, and that's why I like them so much.  A lot of things have changed (especially since elementary school), but I can still look at those things and immediately remember a bunch of memories associated with those things, even if it's really only a list of freeze tags.