Sav’s Review

Making Turquoise is a modern day Romeo and Juliet. This book is gritty, painful, and also hopeful. It leaves the reader feeling a bit of sorrow but also faith that life will get better.

This book is mainly about Hayley and Liam. They grow up as friends and fall in love, but their relationship faces many hardships, such as classism, rivalry, and loss. But, when it seems like they couldn’t get further from each other, Hayley’s brother, Callum, is murdered. The two prime suspects are Aiden, Liam’s brother, and Liam himself. At every turn they are being pulled away from each other but they always end up gravitating back together. This is the ultimate story of will they or won’t they?

What I like about this novel is that we get a full back story to Hayley and Liam, we watch them grow up together and make the life choices we all go through. They make mistakes and choices that help define who they are. The timeline is clear and we get to see where each character is at point A and then at point B, we get a full snapshot of their evolution. These characters could easily be you or your neighbor.

This novel is based in Scotland, which is a new setting for me. Making Turquoise taught me a few key cultural differences between Scotland and the United States. Football is like a religion over there. In fact, it causes a huge divide between Hayley and Liam’s families. Liam’s family are Celtic fans and Hayley‘s family are Rangers fans. I understand sports rivalry but it is not even close to the same where I am from. The football fever in Scotland is so ingrained in Scottish culture that it causes fights in the streets. This was a very intense concept for me and I am glad that I was able to learn about it.

I was also blown away by the fact that you can get arrested in Scotland for just carrying a knife. It is like an actual offense to carry a knife over there. I walk around with pocket knives any time I have to walk somewhere in the dark, just as a precaution. I know in my mind that obviously different countries have different rules, but it’s just crazy to think of how something nonchalant over here is a criminal activity over there.

Needless to say I am a huge fan of reading different cultural perspectives.

This book also jumps right to the action. You are there with Hayley and Liam from the very beginning and it doesn’t get dull in the middle. McFall knows exactly what to include in a love story, and she also knows how to create tension. From page one this book is interesting.

Also Making Turquoise asks a lot of questions about what it’s like to be a teenager in love. We get a bit of the sweetheart angle, we cover acceptance, and the process of changing. Liam and Hayley have a lot to overcome together and separately. It feels like an authentic teenage experience to me, I am still with my high school sweetheart and I can tell you that it has come with its challenges. Luckily, not as severe as Hayley and Liam’s relationship, but it does capture that essence that I went through as a teen.

I really enjoy how this novel tackles big topics such as classism, sibling relationships, and drug use. (I will add in a warning right here that this novel gets heavy. It delves deep into various types of abuse and even death. This is not a light read, it will make you hurt) Liam and Hayley are in two different class brackets and their families make that very clear. I would say Hayley is more middle class and Liam is lower class, and it becomes a point of contention between the lovers. They realize that their families will never accept their relationship because of they key differences in family dynamic. Also, the theme of brotherhood is so powerful in this book. Hayley’s twin brother Callum is immensely protective of her from day one. And, Liam’s brother, Aiden, is much the same as but also different from Callum. Aiden is fierce and mean-spirited, living under a façade of being protective of Liam. I enjoyed watching McFall draw this brotherly contrast. There is a perfect comparison of true brotherly love and false brotherly love.

I will admit some of it was too real. It was hard to read in places because the situations are believable. There’s this piece where Liam walks in on Aiden shooting up drugs and the quote goes like this:

“I went. I was too frightened to stay in the room, but I sat in the hallway, just outside his door, spilt cola soaking up in to my jeans, and I listened. As long as I could hear him breathing, I knew he wasn’t dead.

I was more scared of my brother than I’d ever been in my life. Because the man in his room was a stranger and I wished I’d never met him. I wished I was on the walk with Hayley, pretending I was Orange, pretending I was blue.”

For me, this part really hurt. I have seen people change from drug abuse and it just felt so real.

I did get irritated in a few parts because Hayley is supposed to be smart but she just does dumb stuff. She would do something I thought was stupid like walking through the wrong part of town and I’d have to stop reading to take a breather. I just don’t understand how a smart character would suddenly make really dumb mistakes. While I was irritated with this, it did do a good job of illustrating that Hayley is more book smart and her brother is more street smart. So I was able to forgive the little irritation.

I give Making Turquoise a 4/5 stars and I will definitely be recommending it to my friends. I want to send a huge thank you to Claire McFall for reaching out to me on Twitter, this book was a joy to read.

I would also like to point out that all of the proceeds from Making Turquoise will be donated to food banks during the coronavirus crisis, so your purchase will be going to a great cause.

This might seem like an odd choice for a ‘Fave Five’ but I have an admiration and fascination with WWII literature. This time period inspired some of the strongest tales of perseverance the world has ever seen. I took a couple classes in college about the Holocaust and WWII so I have read my fair share on the topic. It’s just something important to me that I’d like to share.

5. Maus by Art Spiegelman

Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek’s harrowing story of survival is woven into the author’s account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century’s grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.

(Description from Amazon)

For me, Maus was especially hard to read because it’s about a son trying to connect with his father over the horrors of the Holocaust. We see the trickle down effect that history has, and it’s interesting and terrifying.

4. Mischling, Second Degree: My Childhood in Nazi Germany by Ilse Koehn

The memoirs of a German girl who became a leader among the Hitler Youth while her Social Democratic family kept from her the secret of her partial Jewish heritage.

(Description from Amazon)

This book is fascinating because it gives you an inside glimpse of the Hitler Youth. Ilse doesn’t realize that she is a Jewish descendant, she thinks she’s just another German girl. It creates an interesting and dangerous narrative that is unique to anything I’ve read before.

3. From the Ashes of Sobibor by Thomas Toivi Blatt

From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival is an invaluable, firsthand account of a child’s survival in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland during World War II. When the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Thomas Toivi Blatt was twelve years old. He and his family lived in the largely Jewish town of Izbica in the Lublin district of Poland—the district that was to become the site of three major Nazi extermination camps: Belzec, Sobibor, and Majdanek. Blatt tells of the chilling events that led to his deportation to Sobibor, and of the six months he spent there before taking part in the now-famous uprising and mass breakout. Blatt’s tale of escape, and of the five harrowing years spent eluding both the Nazis and anti-Semitic Polish nationalists, is gripping account of resilience and survival.

(Description from Amazon)

This book was hard to read because it’s so real. Blatt was just a child and he is forced to make decisions and alliances we couldn’t even imagine having to make today. Blatt’s story is inspirational and one of the greatest stories of human resilience that I’ve ever read.

2. Night by Elie Wiesel

Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were deported to Auschwitz and then Buchenwald. Night is the shattering record of his memories of the death of his mother, father, and little sister, Tsipora; the death of his own innocence; and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man.

(Description from Amazon)

Night is one of the most renowned pieces of literature about Holocaust survival, and there is good reason for it. This book is frighteningly surreal, you can feel every point of pain and fear. Night asks questions about evil that we can’t even begin to fathom. It says a lot about human nature, in good ways and bad ways.

1. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

When Death has a story to tell, you listen.

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. 

Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

(Description from Amazon)

If you’ve read some of my other posts you probably already know how much I love this book.

While fictitious, this novel captures raw emotion that I haven’t read anywhere else. This novel is so unique because it’s narrated by death itself, to me that was so powerful and painful. This novel will make you cry but you will fall in love with this story.

“It’s alright,” she says, weakly. “I won’t bite.”

The Girl With All The Gifts is a fresh take on the zombie genre. We follow Melanie, a zombie hybrid, on a truth seeking journey with her beloved teacher, a mean-spirited military sergeant, a cold-hearted scientist, and a young soldier. In this novel we encounter ‘hungries’ aka zombies, junkers (psychotic survivalists), and the hybrid children like Melanie. During their journey we will learn about how children like Melanie came to be and what that means for the fate of the world.

This novel is so unique, it is not something I have read before and it is so refreshing. The zombie genre is a very saturated market, but The Girl With All The Gifts nails it. This book is an entirely new perspective, the only book similar to this one is Warm Bodies, and it holds no comparison in my eyes. Having the perspective of a zombie hybrid, a character that could bridge the gap between zombies and humans is fascinating. And, while Melanie is a ‘monster’, she proves that sometimes monsters are more human than we could imagine.

M.R. Carey creates characters that you both love and love to hate. Melanie is such a sweet and lovable girl it’s impossible to hate her, and her savior, Miss Justineau is a total badass. I sat on the edge of my seat the entire time because I was afraid of what would happen to them.

But, none of the characters are perfect they know their limits. Miss Justineau is an excellent friend and teacher but she has her own secrets and her own flaws. There’s this quote where Melanie is describing Miss Justineau and it is perfect, it goes:

“Miss Justineau is red. Like blood. Like something about her is wounded, and not healing, and hurting her all the time.”

This is a great example, Carey has not created flawless god characters, he’s created regular people in extraordinary circumstances. It is more believable.

Melanie is a perfectly rounded character with the ultimate flaw, but Carey makes her into a normal child. She wants what every other child wants, to be loved, to be normal. But, Melanie is smart enough to know that she is a danger to the people she cares about and she is precautious beyond her years. Throughout the book she’s forced to wear a face mask to prevent her from infecting anyone and at one point when they’re putting the mask on she says:

“It’s looser than before,” the hungry kid says. “You should tighten it.”

I love how this illustrates Carey’s masterful way of creating an intelligent and caring character. Melanie feels very much like a child, a lot of authors mess up and either dumb down or make their children way too smart. Melanie has a genius level IQ as part of the story, but her actions are still those of a child.

Carey also uses this cool technique where he is essentially comparing Melanie to Pandora from Greek Mythology, but it’s not blatant. Melanie is obsessed with the Greek tale and it runs perfectly adjacent to Melanie’s story. This quote perfectly describes Melanie’s situation,

“And then like Pandora, opening the great big box of the world and not being afraid, not even caring whether what’s inside is good or bad. Because it’s both. Everything is always both. But you have to open it to find that out.”

It’s just so perfect and I’m impressed that Carey could use such a perfect analogy. It makes me wonder whether Pandora was the inspiration for Melanie or if it was something he found along the way.

This novel asks the question, what is humanity? And I think that Carey gives a complicated but concise answer. What makes someone human? We don’t exactly know but it’s almost like Carey is saying that children hold the answer. That the next generation will decide what makes us human. I say this because even the least lovable of characters in this novel seem to recognize at some point that Melanie isn’t just a “monster”, that she is something else entirely. A form of humanity that we don’t and can’t understand. The soldier even sympathizes with the monster children and he says,

“They’re just kids, and their childhood has probably been as big a load of shit as his was. In a perfect world, he would have been one of them.”

I like that Carey asks this big question, he also asks another huge question. What length will humans go to, to save themselves? The mean doctor says to Miss Justineau,

“It’s no exaggeration to say that our survival as a race might depend on our figuring out why the infection has taken a different course in these children–as opposed to its normal progression in the other ninety-nine point nine nine nine per cent of subjects.”

If humanities only chance at survival was through the experimentation of children, would we do it? And I think that Carey has the answer laid out for us. This novel isn’t just your run of the mill zombie novel, it asks questions, huge questions about what it means to be human. I like that it has such a massive amount of depth to it. I like coming away from a novel and having questions about myself and those around me. It made me think.

Carey orchestrates a beautiful story and wraps it up in a way that terrified me but gave me hope. Carey answers the questions, and they may not be the answers we want to hear. I loved it and I thought it was the perfect ending.

I give The Girl With All The Gifts a perfect 5/5. This is the kind of zombie novel I didn’t know that I needed. I highly recommend this if you love zombies and anything that questions what it means to be human.

Zone One is what you would get if zombie novels were pretentious. I have never read a zombie novel where an author has actively made me feel like they are trying to be the elite zombie novelist. It’s elitist ficiton.

This book is about Mark Spitz who is in a military-ish sweeper group, who are in charge of clearing out buildings in Zone One, also known as Canal Street in New York. We join Mark Spitz over one weekend job where we learn about his past and his present. There are two types of zombie in this novel, very much like Severance, the typical modern day zombie and the Straggler, a zombie that does nothing but inhabit a place familiar to its old self.

The number one problem on the list of problems with this novel is the pacing. This book creeps along at a pace that is just unbearable. Whitehead has this way of describing the world in this novel that over-details everything without any specifics. It is really strange, Whitehead spends a lot of time explaining places or objects, like Starbucks, but without using their brandname. He will go into such extreme detail that you know what he’s talking about by the second sentence but it takes up an entire page. I call this detailed without specificity. He just wastes so much time describing simple things.

In any beginners course on writing you learn to “show not tell”, but Whitehead does mostly telling. He tells you every little thing with very little dialogue or scene-work. It’s like a fictional stream of consciousness. He feels like he has to elude to stuff instead of outright saying what he means, it makes a long book even longer.

And while we’re on the topic of length, this book is 323 pages, so I mean it is a long book in tempo only. I could read a book this length in a day, but it took FOUR freaking days. I was so bored and I plowed through with no regard to my sanity. I was so relieved to finish this book that I set it down and smiled.

I have no idea if this ridiculous pacing issue is something I can entirely blame on Colson Whitehead or if his editor just failed him. This book was not interesting until the last 60 pages. I feel like this book would have been so much better in novella form. It’s so long winded that it is a slog to get through. I only finished this book because I bought it for this particular review series.

Another issue that I have is that Zone One clumsily slips through time. You don’t exactly know where you are or where you have been because the timeframe is very confusing. I’m still confused about the storyline because some events just seem to happen and I can’t tell linearly where they go. You bounce around in a manner that is impossible to follow.

Then there’s this weird detail about Mark Spitz checking out a zombie in a thong on page 17 that entirely weirded me out.

“One of them wore the same brand of panties his last two girlfriends had favored, with the distinctive frilled red edges. They were grimed and torn. He couldn’t help but notice the thong, current demands on his attention aside. He’d made a host of necessary recalibrations but the old self made noises from time to time.”

This quote is so strange and weird that it drug me out of the story. How odd to mention zombie panties…

Anyway, let’s move on from that disturbing image to the two pieces I enjoyed.

Whitehead tries to do what Ling Ma attemtpted in Severance by creating the different zombies. Unlike Ma, Whitehead includes the typical zombie and the frozen straggler zombie, which does add something to the plot eventually. Unfortunately all it really does is open up more unanswered questions in the end. Not something I like, loose ends irritate me. But, I do admire that Whitehead tried to do something different and put a spin on the typical zombie archetype.

I also enjoyed the military twist in this novel. They are a makeshift military society and it gave an interesting read through touching on PTSD adjacent PASD (Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder), and other aspects of daily military life. So that was interesting.

With everything in consideration Zone One earns a generous 2/5 stars. I wanted so badly to one star this novel, but it makes a valient attempt at being unique, the hammer just doesn’t quite hit the nail.