So how should I begin this review? I’m already another book past this review (as I said in the last one) and I’ve managed to stay mostly off topic for the last reviews and I will do so again at least for the first part of this review.
What I don’t understand is why the publishers feel they have to take a perfectly good (and interesting and simple) book cover and ‘spice it up’ for the mass-market paperback release? The book cover to the right (and all of the book covers for this series) are the original hardback covers. After the jump (if you’re reading on the main page or in the email) at the end of the blog you can see the American and British paperback version of this book. I understand you want people to buy the book once it comes out, but why the need to spice it up especially if it’s later in the series?
I struggled to limit my non-‘review’ commentary on the last book and luckily this is a pretty long series so I get to stretch it out over quite a few books.
Although I’ve read this before I’m still counting it as a book I’ve read this year. I should probably only count it as a half, because it is a young adult novel and I should be challenging myself, but that would be completely undermining some of the brilliant Young Adult fiction that is currently out there. Although a lot of times the novels are formulaic and sometimes tedious in their making sure the reader understands the plot lines and characters, I just have to remind myself they’re written for a younger audience.
You have to love a book with its first chapter titled “Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down.” I’m not positive but I think most of the chapters were song lyrics and most of them made me smile. Bootlegger’s Daughter takes place in a fictional rural county of North Carolina which vaguely resembles the surrounding counties where I grew up (thank you I-95).
I first want to say it irks me that the title is grammatically incorrect on the US version (Hornet’s versus Hornets’). It is a nest of hornets not one hornet’s nest.