Date Finished: December 6, 2017
Page Count: 391
Genre: Fantasy/Realistic Fiction
This book
was a super magical experience for me, containing all the family drama and
unexplained phenomenon of supernatural power to make me eat it up right until
the end. At the climax however I became disappointed with the turn of events,
so I’m gonna have to say this book was okay overall. Yeah, it’s high on my
recommendation list, but I got some salt from those revelations that I want to
give to you before you go to the library to pick up a copy of the book. I mean,
come on Emily Henry, when you spend the better half of your book setting up the
supernatural and all that’s unexplained I expect not everything to be revealed
to be ordinary human feeling and experiences in such a way the it no longer
feel magical. Come on. But I digress, why not start this review off by talking
about the positives of the book first?
As I previously stated before, the characters of June and Saul were lots of fun in the story, and I
found them to be the highlight of the story. Their thunder got stolen however,
when more was revealed about their families, the curse each family carried, and
the fact that June’s father hid a ton of stuff from her. I loved the whole:
family doesn’t trust the kids with their darkest secrets and the kids end up
running into a ton of trouble, plot line. It reminds me a bit of, Star vs. the Forces of Evil which is an
amazing ongoing show that doesn’t get the attention it deserves, but the stuff
that happens in SvtFoE happens to a lesser degree in, A Million Junes. If I tried to explain why this is I’d no longer be
writing a review for A Million Junes
but I digress. I was super interested in seeing how the family conflict would unfold
eventually and what explanation there would be for why the O’Donnells and
Angerts were cursed, and it was the whole reason I was invested in the plot. Unfortunately,
this is where I end the things I really enjoyed about the book and it’s time to
move onto the disappointments.
Remember
when I said that I like the family conflict a couple sentences ago? I was super
excited about that because I was expecting some supernatural disturbance within
the family due to the hatred they had with each other causing them to become
cursed, which was what I was hoping and expecting to happen. I thought Feathers
(the good ghost) and Nameless (the bad ghost) was some sort of guardian and
judge/avenger in the situation and either were inhuman or humans that gained
spirit form/were being punished for stuff. You wanna know why those two were
hanging around and stuff? It was because Feathers was a member of the O’Donnell
family and Nameless a member of the Angert family that were in love and
Feathers (not her real name) accidentally drowned which Nameless (his name was
Abe) got blamed for it and beat up by Feather’s dad. Feathers still had
attachments to the world (or people still had attachments to her, I don’t remember
or care) so she could still return to the physical world as a spirit and look
around. Abe/Nameless was screwed up though and when he died he couldn’t move on
so went back to haunt/kill the O’Donnell’s for having been unjust.
I was okay
with this. I mean, the romance bother me slightly, but the fact that Henry
killed off Feathers and left Abe/Nameless to be mentally and physically screwed
after it all took guts, and she did connect that with June and Saul’s
relationship so it felt well executed to me. What screwed all this up was when
June went to break the curse she went to this stupid place that was the
afterlife or something and meet up with Feathers. Feathers talked in riddles
and explained how there wasn’t really any curse, just people who carried their
hatred for the Argents and people who had shame because Abe/Nameless was
ashamed of his relationship with Feathers. All June and Saul had to do to get
rid of their curses was forgive their families and wash off in this magic member
reliving pool. BORING. Don’t build
up all this magical supernatural drama and then say, “people where upset and
their upset feeling were so powerful it allowed them to avoid death and wreck
shop for the people still alive, (bias paraphrasing)” that won’t work out well
in anything other than anime, and it was such a disappointment and not the type
of solution I wanted!! Some people may be happy with that, but I wanted
something otherworldly to be the ultimate cause/soultion which didn’t happen
like I wanted it to. Failure to meet my expectations has caused me to find the
ending of the book forgettable compared to the beginning, and ultimately made
me become dissatisfied with the overall story. Feathers (which now that I think
about it was named something like Issa, maybe) and Nameless/Abe were still
cool, but they were less cool once everything got explained. If somethings were
still left unknown then maybe I’d care about the book more and be less salty
about then ending (though I’m not “death by salt” salty). I also found June and
Saul to be less interesting when they were in love, but I’m not gonna talk
about that because they were too uninteresting to talk about any more than just
a mention. I swear, they couldn’t seem to do anything without thinking
about each other and it was so annoying. Don’t write characters that depend on
a love interest and then act lovey-dovey romantics all the time. It’s just
sickening for me to read. Then again don’t listen to the thoughts of a
single reader, follow the masses to fill your wallet to the max, the economy
demands it!
Actually,
Feather/Issa (left) and Nameless/Abe (right) were so interesting that I just
had to draw them surrounded by Whites for the book review. Nameless/Abe is killing that poor chicken
because he did that in the book and drawing Nameless/Abe squashing a chicken is
much less gruesome than him killing off one of the Jacks. I just felt that he’d
seem more menacing killing something which would emphasize his overall
character okay?
Overall I did not like this book,
but I’m not going to say you shouldn’t read it because I didn’t like it. This loosely-Romeo and Juliet-esque novel contains a
bad romance (in my opinion) for those who like romance, some fantasy elements
for those who like romance, and to top it all off it has an awesome sauce family
problem in it that makes the whole thing worth the while but if you want
some real family drama go watch Star vs.
the Forces of Evil. I feel like I slightly wasted my time with this
book, especially since the book I’m now reading after that is a hell of a lot
better than A Million Junes. I regret
to say I was deceived by the shiny, sparkly cover (it looks more sparkly in
real life than the picture at the beginning of the review) and the plot summary
made the book seem more interesting than it actually was. Never the less, A Million Junes was a good read but
nothing worth holding onto for long (not even anger towards the book). Some may
find it interesting for the things I listed above, but who knows, even more
people may find it interesting since my salt is blinding me from all the good
this book has to offer. Such is the way of life I guess, so look forwards to my
next review which is looking to be something positive for a change (for real,
it feel like the past few books I’ve been reading haven’t been all too
special).
More blog posts on A Million Junes
Characterization (it the same post as the hyperlink in the second paragraph)
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