Day 109 – Anyway the library is really old and the books on the shelves there are dying (Pg 20)

White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick is one of the prize books. It’s a teen novel, labelled as a children’s book, and that disturbs me, it disturbs me as it’s quite a disturbing book, with scenes reminiscent of Sweeney Todd (the film with Johnny Depp is my experience of Sweeney Todd and to be honest that kind of thing really isn't my cup of tea). The book starts out with more brooding and teen angst than you can poke numerous bottles of black nail polish at. It feels a little like an attempt at jumping on the ‘Twilight’ band wagon. You will notice I am not placing a link to Twilight here, it is appalling and has far too much publicity as is.

White Crow is written from 3 different perspectives, and while it isn’t difficult to read, the 3 perspectives are so different it can be off-putting. There's a medieval diary entry written by a priest, a first person narrative from a teenage girl and the most off putting of all, is a third person narrative (another teenage girl) written in present tense, which is very much like a badly written screenplay (of these I have read quite a few). It could be that it was written this way in hope of a film sale...

Toying with the idea of heaven and hell, murders and suicides, all makes for very grim reading. A note at the end of the book indicates that some plot points are based on true historical events. While I didn’t agree with the way it was done, nor was I too keen on all the doom and gloom, I was sucked into this story and the mystery. I wanted to know what happened, even though I didn’t care about one single character.

I am hoping my next choice will be a little lighter.

175 days remaining, 23 books to go.