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Unwritten: A Review

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Genre: Middle Grade, Magic, Fantasy, Adventure, Quest for Self, Modern, Fairy Tale

Pages: 198
ISBN: 9781631631771
Format: Paperback, eBook
Publication date: October 16th, 2018
Publisher: Jolly Fish Press
Type: Novel

*A special thanks to NetGalley and Jolly Fish Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.*

The Blurb:

Gracie lives with her mother in our world, though she suffers from “story glimmers”, which are memories from what happened in the book Gertrude Winters wrote about her. Indeed, Gracie and her family as well as her best friend Walter are all characters from Bondoff, a magical world that Winters created. They got out of the story, unbeknownst to the author, in order to save themselves from Cassandra, the evil stepmother who wants to get her hands on the magical book and control everything.

But is everything as it’s been told to Gracie? She wants to talk to Gertrude Winters to ask more about Bondoff and the book, but what she will find will be more dangerous and life-altering than she could have imagined.

Will Gracie come out it strong?

Is there a choice to make to be who you truly are?

Introduction:

You know when a book cover grabs your attention, then the blurb just compels you to read the book and the story just amazes you? That’s exactly what happened for me with Unwritten by Tara Gilboy. As soon as I saw it on NetGalley, I knew I had to request it. Fortunately (to me, at least, haha), my request was granted.

Thanks a lot, NetGalley and Jolly Fish Press!

The Positive Sides:

The best positive side has to be how this story tells of an identity quest. It asks important questions while never being boring and it gives the reader the sentiment/feeling of being in control of one’s destiny and actions, to choose who we want to be. Perfect and extremely moving!

As for the writing itself, it is sweet but honest with an emphasis (rightfully so) on Gracie’s turmoil of emotions. What a ride! Speaking of Gracie, I extend my thought to the characters because they felt alive to me. Gertrude did feel off sometimes and sounded trite in her dialogue, but Walter (Gracie’s friend), her mother, Cassandra, and the rest popped out of the story to me (see what I did here?).

Now, I can’t reveal spoilers (goddammit, how I hate those pesky nuisances!), BUT I can tell you two things:

1- The plot twist with Gracie halfway down the road is PER.FECT.ION!

2- The very last sentence gave me so many feels I had tears in my eyes! It sums up the story pretty well and it’s quite a nice touch there.

Moreover, the theme of Unwritten is fundamental and wonderful at the same time. Fear not, it is NOT force-fed to us, no. It flows with the rhythm of the story and it’s just so precious. It focuses on choosing who you want to be and staying true to that person. Amazing! And so vital.

Oh, and I wasn’t bored even ONCE! It captured my attention from cover to end, never failing. It held my interest all the while. There were enough action scenes (yes, where Gracie has to make quick and hard decisions) and emotional insights to her. I loved her relationships with the different characters and her own nature. She was fun and strong in her own right, looking for her true identity with admirable determination.

In the end, this is the story I was personally looking for as a child and teenager! Unfortunately, there was nothing like it at the time and I felt so alone. I believe this book can help others like me who are too different and have so many doubts about themselves and who they should be versus who they are. Needless to say that’s a huge point to me.

The Negative Sides:

What about them?

Where are they?

Honestly, I don’t know. I was waiting for a negative side to show up but it never did. In my opinion, it’s a flawless middle-grade book.

In Conclusion:

I have so many excellent things to say about this book, but since numbers help too, here you are: I give it a rating of 5 out of 5 no less. And trust me, if I could, I would give it way more! But alas, rating has to be contained to a specific number… I can’t rate 10 out of 5, even though I genuinely want to with Unwritten by Tara Gilboy.

To me, it’s such a good MG story, it goes with the likes of Percy Jackson and Harry Potter. If that’s not grand, I don’t know what is. But don’t take my word for it: try it for yourself. You’ll see, it’s pretty darn great!

Here’s a bonus great news I found on Goodreads from the author, Tara Gilboy, herself: Is this a stand-alone or the first in a series? “I’ve been dying to answer this question and wasn’t able to announce it until now! Yes, there will be a sequel! I am hard at work on it right now, and it will release in spring 2020!”

I couldn’t be happier! We’re getting a sequel, woohoot!

If you want to learn more about the author, you can visit her Web site, you can also follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads. You can visit her publisher, Jolly Fish Press. You can also add Unwritten to your bookshelves on Goodreads and LibraryThing.

The Benefits of a Kobo EReader

Hello everyone,

A few months ago I got myself a Kobo eReader. An Aura H2O second edition that is. There have been rare times where I’m immensely satisfied I purchased an item… Well, this is one of those times, folks.

Here it is (with Never Enough Time by R.T.W Lipkin as background—a great ARC of mine for which you can read the review here):

Now, what about its benefits? Let me tell you I found many!

The Pros:

My sleep has improved SO MUCH since I bought this sweet Kobo, no kidding. I used to toss and turn at night for AT LEAST an hour (it was usually for an hour and a half), but now thanks to reading on my Kobo every night before going to sleep, it only takes me 20 to 40 minutes. It’s a wonder!

But why is that?

It’s because it’s got ComfortLight Pro! This means you set a time for the screen to become a light orange, thus it’s sweet for the eyes. More importantly (and that’s the winning point here), this feature removes most of the blue lights! So it does make it easy on your eyes and relaxes you. Perfect for sleep!

It’s been a real game changer for me. Or should I say… sleep changer? ~~Please let’s never talk about this joke again.~~

The fonts are lovely and adjusting them is simple. Same goes for the paragraph spacing, a tool I particularly enjoy. I like when there’s a clear distinction between the paragraphs.

The search function is very useful.

It has Pocket Reader. If you don’t know what it is: a place (or account) where you can store Web pages and other important bits you find while browsing to read later on your account, then come back to it offline. Basically, you can read Web pages, watch embedded videos and other great stuff on your favourite eReader, yes! You can learn more here.

The Kobo shows you the percentage you’re in the book and your time spent reading a particular book and in total. It also lets you decide if you wish to see the percentage of completion or the page numbers, which is pretty neat and practical for book reviewers like me who prefer the latter.

One amusing thing Kindle doesn’t have, it’s badges (they’re called ”achievements”, but they look like badges!) When you’ve read 10 books, let’s say, you’ll have a full badge on your ”Achievements” page and you can share them on social media. What for? Boasting, I guess. I love checking what progress I’ve made now and then. There’s one problem though… It’s been acting crazy for the last three months. The system doesn’t give me the badges when they’re obviously complete and sometimes they’re filled to a certain percentage, then when I look again on another day the numbers have changed again! In other words, it was high fun in the beginning, but now it’s malfunctioning. And the worst part is they told me I would need to wait for the next update (which could be in months or even YEARS, they told me) to fix this issue. That’s frustrating.

Speaking of bad things, what of its cons?

The Cons:

It’s expensive. There, I said it. If you want good quality and all, it’s approximately $200 CAD and it’s without the official case which costs about $50. Pricey, pricey. There was a $30 discount when I bought it, but then I purchased the official case and it came near $250 in the end.

Oh and it’s also a bit slow, but nothing major. I bet the software is to blame because my Kindle contains way more books and it’s faster than the Kobo. Imagine that!

That’s it. There’s mainly one bad thing about the Kobo and it’s its price, in my opinion.

In Conclusion:

Though being fair, I think the price is worth it. I mean, sleep? I’m in! And I like all the control you get and how it shows you everything you need to know about your reading progress and habit.

If you’re looking for an eReader, may I suggest a Kobo one?

And if you already have yours, what do you think of the Kobo?

See you next post, lovelies!

(As a little bonus, here’s my official Kobo case (I’d have chosen the red one, but there was none where I went…))