Half Bad by Sally Green + 5 Year Book Awards

This meeting marks our 5 year anniversary so as well as discussing our usual monthly book was also spent some time giving book awards.  Anyway, back to the book.

We all enjoyed this book, some more than others.  Although the half bad, half good thing has been done before in fantasy novels, we felt the story was dealt with well and was ideal for younger audiences.  It was an easy read and we all wanted to know what happened next, so it was a quick read too.  We knew that this book was aimed at Young Adults and this might explain why some of the characters were a bit two-dimensional (e.g. the sister Jessica).  I was annoyed at the ending, it ended quite abruptly and didn't conclude much but everyone else liked it and felt it was fine for the first novel in a series.

Concept: 8/10
Plot: 7/10
Ending: 6/10
Cover: 9/10
Page Turner: 9/10
Who would we slap: Jessica
Where's the cheese: Gabriel fancying Nathan
Would we recommend: 5/5
Better as a: film

New category, where we come up with a twist that wasn't in the book:
Lets add a twist: Annalise is Jessica in disguise.

Total: 8/10

Our next book will be 'Season to Taste' by Natalie Young.  Our next meeting will be at Lisa's house and the June meeting will be at Kate's.

The Book Awards
We all nominated a book for each category, there was no overall winner.

Best Book:
Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
Room by Emma Donohue
Girl with a Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Best Character:
Peter Grant - Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
Stuart Gilmore - Stonemouth by Iain Banks
Major Pettigrew - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Most Like To Live In:
Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Worst Book:
Empire by Jeremy Paxman
Wishing on Venus by Mark Holmes
The Shack by Wm Paul Young

Most Slap-able Character:
God - The Shack by Wm Paul Young
Everyone - The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Sonya - Tideline by Penny Hancock
Gem - After The Party by Lisa Jewell
Thomas (all of them) - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Last Orders by Graham Swift

An exciting meeting at Susie's newly renovated house (it's gorgeous), it's a shame the book didn't excite us more.

This book won the booker prize in 1996 so personally I was expecting grand things.  It's quite a quiet book, small and understated.  It tells a simple story of a group of friends, one of whom dies, it goes into their past and then skips to the present.  There is no great twist, no earth-shattering ending, just more and more reveals about these people.

We found it quite hard to distinguish between the characters at first, all are introduced at the same time and most are old men with families so it took a while for us to learn their names and remember what we know about them already.

Concept: 4
Plot: 3
Page Turner: 3
Ending: 3
Cover: 5
Who to slap?  The author or Vince
Would we recommend? 0/5
Better as ... ashes

Total: 3/10

I got to choose our next book (again!) hope it will be better than this one.  It's 'Half Bad' by Sally Green (available on kindle and paperback from 3rd March).

Our next meeting will be at Jen's house on Wed 12th March.