Rated:
 



"Know yourself and go in swinging.”

Hi everyone. I finally come to you with a review :)

i finally read a book after an eternity. yaaay!! i kept telling myself the urge to read would come when it was right. so when i had a sudden urge to look through my bookshelf i remember this little beauty that i found myself buying months ago. i still wasn't reading at this point, but i saw the name patrick ness and went for it anyway. i am so glad.

i started it late last night and stayed awake until 2am and finished the little i had left around an hour ago.
i am so glad i listened to a review (that's you Audrey me dear) and went into it blindly. this book is all about unraveling as you go along. don't read anything on it trust me.

this book is about a boy who made a choice. he made a choice but now hes stuck. he's stuck with the choice he made in a place he doesn't understand and with too many questions without answers. as he goes to look for these answers he will look back on life and have to really dig deep and face some things that maybe he's not quite ready to face yet.

there's a lot going on and quite a bit to take in this book- but i don't necessarily think that's such a bad thing because you're basically in the same state of mind our protagonist is. in a way you both feel like your in this together. you have all this uneasiness and sense of dread constantly niggling at you- as if you're wandering blindly for clues. you kind of go through it together because as the readers we know no more than he does.

it's fair to say (in my opinion) that the book is pretty grim. don't expect smiles or anything lighthearted to lift the mood because it's pretty heavy throughout. and may i add i made the mistake of reading this at night. please do not read it at night. but only because there's a creepy character that will seriously scare you shitless. i had to pull my duvet tighter around me last night but even then i kept on reading anyway. i seriously devoured the book.

i'm not going to say the book is perfect. a lot of things are answered but quite a few also unanswered.  our mc is also a little annoying. he's kind of self centered, a little too overconfident and has the tendency to get himself and everyone around him in trouble. when i look back though, at times when i wasn't busy being pissed at him, i found myself thinking that maybe i was being way too hard on him. at the end of the day he has basically gone through hell. and it made me think just how different would i have been in his situation.

i wish i could go into more detail but i think it's best i don't. read it :)

“Jasper Jones fell out of this world and nobody noticed...And they'll notice now because something has been burned. Now they'll look for Jasper Jones.” 

Jasper Jones... how long i have waited for you. i knew it was going to be good because some of my favourite reviewers had raved about it. and when has aussie lit ever let me down?
Jasper Jones pulls you in from the first page the moment a stranger by the name of Jasper Jones lets himself in through Charlie Bucktin's window. Oh, he's heard of him aright, but it all consists of town folks saying he's bad news. everyone knows that if anything bad happens in town, most likely, it's Jasper Jones fault. If someones child isn't acting accordingly, well then, surely it's that Jasper Jones influence. But charlie sees something different in him, so when he pleads with him to come with, charlie follows.

He will wish he didn't.
What they discover is horrible. terrible. beyond what Charlie could have imagined. But now it's too late. he's a witness now, a participant. now a boy who comes from a seemingly sheltered family (or so we are told to assume) is thrust into a situation way beyond his control.
From there on we are able to be spectators to Charlie's world. With him we witness the extreme racism that is the norm which he is privy to daily. His own best friend Jeffrey Lu is taunted and mentally abused by others, as well as his family.

  Life during that time was not ideal by a long shot and it gave me a mix of emotions. a part of me resented Charlie not sticking up for his friend, and another, for Jeffrey for not doing so either. another for people merely watching like nothing is happening. personally, it was deeply hurtful to watch. I just couldn't understand it. it was even more frustrating knowing i couldn't slap those knuckle heads myself on Jeffrey's behalf.

Meanwhile, we also take this sweet journey of Charlies love-life. it's strange. on one end there is this big secret eating him up inside, and on the other, this horrible racism that he is privy to, and as terrible as it all is we are able to see this sweet side too. it's quite lovely seeing him grow before our very eyes. he's utterly relatable as this shy, innocent young boy whose heart practically beats out of his chest every time he sees his crush.

It's a heartbreaking tale because although there are a few sweet moments, the majority of his life is pretty terrible. his mother has practically lost her mind from resentment of her life, her family, and everything else one can think of. on the other hand, Jasper Jones is all alone in this world. His father is a terrible drunkard who is never home. to top it off  you have a town full of people who hate him because it's easier to have someone to blame. specifically someone with no family.
This book really left me unsettled and conflicted. but i'm glad, because any book that can instill these kind of emotions is definitely doing something right . a must read.

Note: I read this in December last year so this review was long overdue. I hope you are all doing well. I'm thinking of doing a catch up post with some pictures. I don't know if anyone is reading any of this because I have been gone for so long but either way HIIIII. I miss you all a lot. <3

 Hi guys. I wrote this originally in 2013, around January.. it was mostly a letter to myself.  i thought about posting it but i think at the time it was too fresh. My mother has three sisters. After this aunt my mother lost two more. The last one around two weeks ago. So i think I'm going to post it whilst i still have the courage or it will probably stay in my drafts forever. I don't know if you will get anything from it, but even it it helps a little, or if you can relate, that's more than enough.


 today i want to talk about a bit of a sad topic. I'm talking about loss. how does one deal with it? is there a way to prepare yourself if the loved one has been suffering for a while and you know the inevitable could happen at any moment? but what if it was sudden, hard, and every other angry word you can think of. how exactly do you cope?

i'm here to tell you that there really isn't just one particular way. you see, in life some of us follow a strict set of rules, a guidebook of sorts that gives some of us comfort and meaning. and some of us live life in the moment, but with loss there is no book telling you how to deal with it or prepare yourself, there is no list, and there are no clear instructions. the truth is that  when it happens you will just know. 

but it's so important to know that there is no wrong or right way to deal with loss or go about it. i lost someone recently, and she had been suffering for a long time. many around me told me that she was in a better place now, that her suffering had finally ended. i understood that. but i wasn't ready for her to go, i didn't want her to go. and as selfish as it made me feel i wished that i could have had more time with her. in the last few years of life she lost the ability to speak or eat. so a part of me will always regret not knowing her as much as i wanted to before she became so ill. that is something, I suppose, that i must live with.

the truth is that this was the first loss in our family that i actually felt. i never saw and never knew my mother's mother and my father's father. i saw my fathers mother twice in my life and never really had a good conversation with her or my mother's father as I was too young when they passed away to really be able to appreciate relationships in that point of time.. so their passing never really stirred anything in me. but my mother's sister, now hers I felt. i bathed her dead body (something that even now i really don't know how i did looking back) but i think times bring out your best and worst and in that moment i wanted to be there for her as much as possible. i know that she would have wanted me there. but here's another truth. if i felt that i couldn't go through with it, that would have been OK too. because either way my love for her would have been the same.

my point is that when we experience the loss of a loved one don't be too hard on yourself if you don't do things the way you or certain people expect you to do. it's OK to be alone for a while, to grieve alone. there's nothing wrong with that. 

visiting our loved ones is also something i want to quickly touch on. personally, i find that visiting my aunt gives me peace. it's like saying hello and checking up on her. my thing is taking some flowers and writing a little note every time i visit and placing it on her grave, which will normally just include me saying hello and telling her some things related to that day. in this weird way, it makes me feel connected to her more than ever.

i'm going to tell you a story about a boy during my high school days. i didn't like him and he didn't like me. i honestly have no idea why apart from the fact that we were very young and silly. and then one day i came into school and found out that he had passed away. i thought it was some kind of sick joke. I mean, he had just been in my business studies class the day before. but there you have it. the unfairness of life. It took me a couple of years but I finally visited his grave. i wrote him a letter and said some words and i walked away feeling peace and a bit better. all those years i always felt a bit uneasy. Like there were some unspoken words that needed to be said. i think 'sorry' was the main thing. so when I visited my aunt recently i went to visit him for the second time (i found his grave just as i was about to give up searching for it.). there were birthday balloons around his grave which made me smile and it felt like saying hello for the second time. it made me think what he would think, that out of all his mates and family it was the stubborn girl who was couldn't stand boys that came to visit. i think it would amuse him - in a good way. :)

but here's the thing. i know people who find it too painful to visit loved ones, or some who don't feel the need because they feel they are ultimately gone. and again, i'm here to tell you that there is no particular rule to this either. every single person deals, with this too, differently. and that's absolutely and totally fine. i just want to say that i really hope that people don't feel sad or guilty for not visiting, or for feeling a certain way during a loss of a loved one. that would really bother me. because i believe they understand. i think them understanding how you feel is enough.