Book Review: The Angel's Game

Before We Begin: A Little About our Book Reviews

Disclaimer: If you are looking for reviews that discuss the juxtaposition of imagery and mood, the symbolism behind the broken flower pot in the garden, and the existential interpretations of a character’s motivation then this site is NOT for you. We’re just a couple of gals who love reading and know what we like and what we don’t. Simple as that.

How We Pick Our Book Selections: Whatever we feel like reviewing. There won’t be a rhyme or reason to what we pick except that it will either be something we have read, heard about, or wanted to read. There are plenty of new book reviews out there, so we’ll probably focus more on older books. Do you have a suggestion of a book you think we should review? Let us know in the comments. Disagree with our review? Let us know in the comments – nicely, of course. (You don’t want to get Christy mad – she’s brutal.) Do you have a bottle of good vintage Bordeaux you’d like to get off your hands? You can send that directly to Kristi.

At the end of each review will also be a Random Movie Recommendation for the month – just because. Some new releases and some oldies but goodies.
So without further ado, this month’s pick is…..

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. (Warning: Contains Spoiler Alerts)
Why we picked this book? Okay, we did pick a newer book but we had a good reason. As you can see on the sidebar, Shadow of the Wind, is on both our TOP 5 Books of all time. We just HAD to read this book. Expectations were high - so what did we think?

Christy (henceforth known as C): His writing is so dark and eerie - very Gothic but not, you know, horror.

Kristi (henceforth known as K): Yeah, I love that style of writing. (NOTE: C & K both loved The Thirteenth Tale which was also a dark Gothic story involving a writer.) I started out loving this book and wanted it to be as amazing at Shadow of the Wind. He (Carlos Ruiz Zafon) has such a way with words.

C: I absolutely loved it until the end when it got – well, it felt like everything just stopped. I thought maybe something got lost when they translated the book and I didn’t feel that with SOTW.

K: I started really not loving it about three-quarters of the way through when it felt a little too similar to SOTW, only more confusing. Also, I got really frustrated with the MC toward the end. If he wasn’t the one that killed everyone else in the book, then he made some really dumb decisions. Like, everyone he visits dies minutes later and he decides it’s a good idea to leave Cristina alone in his house because he doesn’t think anything will happen to her?? Come on. But if he killed her - well, then that would fit.

C: I hadn’t thought about that. I would like it if he was the one that killed everyone because then at least it would all make sense.

K: The ending seemed symbolic of something but I don’t know what – it went right over my head.

C: Yeah, I wasn’t sure about that either.

C & K spend several minutes discussing the implications if David Martin was the killer through the whole book but decide that it doesn’t matter. We did love the secondary characters, especially David and Isabella’s relationship. Overall, we rated the book as follows:

C: An apple. I thought the first half of the book was a Georgia Peach and the last part was a Rotten Banana, so I’ll go with the apple since it’s in the middle. But after SOTW, I really wanted this to be the best Georgia Peach of all time. Sadly, it wasn’t for me.

K: An apple. I agree that it’s worth reading and maybe someone reading it without such high expectations would like it better. His gorgeous writing is always going to earn him at least an apple – but I was so hoping for a Georgia Peach.

C: Well, we agreed on our first pick.

K: Yeah, that’s not so controversial. What book have we read that we completely disagreed about? (C & K have discussion)

Coming Next: We picked a book for next month that we completely and totally disagree on – one of us LOVED the book and one of us felt like poking out her eyes with her knitting needles after reading it. See you in October!

Random Movie Recommendation: Julie & Julia.
We saw this movie a few weeks back and we both loved it. If you can relate to food, books, or struggling to reach your goals, you’ll enjoy this movie. ASIDE: Christy hated the book. A rare exception where the movie is better than the book.

Get Ready!!

Ok folks, after many weeks, we are finally ready to give you our first review.
We'll be reviewing The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. We apologize it took so long, but as you get to know us, it's just another one of our fun perks.
We're very excited to get this up and running and hope you'll enjoy it. And now that we're in the swing of things, maybe the next one won't be 6 months out!!!
Stay tuned and we should have our first review in the next few days!!!

Thanks for reading!!!