Harry Potter Moment of the Week (54): Muggle-Born, Half-Blood, or Pureblood?

Harry Potter Moment of the Week is a meme hosted by Uncorked Thoughts. The aim of this meme is to share with fellow bloggers a character, spell, chapter, object or quote from the books/films/J. K. Rowling herself or anything Potter related! A list of upcoming topics can be found here.

This week's topic is:
Judging By Your Family, Would You Be Muggle-Born, Half-Blood or Pureblood?

Judging by my family, I believe that I would be a Half-Blood. It is incredibly hard for me to imagine my entire family possessing magic, however, my family is anything but normal. The most realistic choice seemed to be me coming from a family of Half-Bloods. I believe my father’s side of the family would be from the wizarding world, while my mother’s side would all be Muggles. Lee, coming from my dad’s side of the family, would be a Pureblood. I have two other siblings, Melissa and Denis, and I would like to think that all of us would possess magic, otherwise they would terribly jealous. Even with our magical abilities, I feel like my mother would still make us do chores the old-fashioned Muggle way, lol.

September 2014 Recap

It's officially fall! That just blows my mind. I technically completed the TBR Pile Challenge this month! My goal was 11-20 books, and I've passed the 11 mark. I'm going to keep trying to make the higher end of the range, too. With one goal met, I'm feeling even more motivated to completing my other 2 reading challenges for this year!

Reviews Posted:

• The Water Mirror by Kai Meyer
• Half Bad by Sally Green
• Haze by Paula Weston
• Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan
• Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta
• The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta
• The Fiery Heart by Richelle Mead

Featured Posts:

• 2014 Fall Releases I Need to Read
• Found Around the Shelves: The Simpsons
• Read the Book or See the Movie First?

TBR Reading Challenge Progress:

• Books Read/Reviewed: 4 (Total for Year: 14)

Australian Women Writers Challenge Progress:

• Books Read/Reviewed: 3 (Total for Year: 3)

Review: The Fiery Heart by Richelle Mead

* This review may contain spoilers for the previous books in the Bloodlines series.

The Fiery Heart (Bloodlines #4)
By Richelle Mead
Publisher: Razorbill
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased

To Sum It Up: As Sydney strays further and further from her Alchemist beliefs, the danger that she’ll be found out becomes increasingly real. Sydney finds herself needing to keep more and more secrets, an especially challenging task now that her younger sister, Zoe, is shadowing her on her assignment in Palm Springs and is very eager to prove herself as an Alchemist. Sydney has always excelled at foreseeing potential problems and heading them off, but under this much pressure, including keeping a forbidden romance under wraps, not even Sydney may be immune to making an extremely costly mistake.

Review: The Fiery Heart brings a significant change to the Bloodlines series. For the first time, there are two POVs, and of course the big news is that one of them belongs to none other than Adrian Ivashkov. I remember when this was first announced and how I had a mini-freak-out because . . . Adrian. POV. Reading from Adrian’s POV! Yes!

Perhaps I went into reading The Fiery Heart with a tad too much anticipation because I needed a few chapters to really get into Adrian’s side of the story. I know, I know—what the hell is wrong with me? I’ll try to explain my thinking as best I can. The trademark Adrian Ivashkov snark is there, but maybe I just expected more of it since we had direct access to his thoughts. Instead, a lot of his pages were devoted to his feelings for Sydney, and while I’m 100% Team Sydrian, I also still wanted Adrian to just be Adrian, the guy who always has a smartass remark armed and ready.

As I read, though, I started gaining more of an investment in his chapters. Something that may not have been as apparent in the previous books is the extent to which spirit can torment him. It gives him dizzying highs and alarmingly despairing lows, and when he’s experiencing a low, he’s consumed by thoughts of worthlessness. This is the same Adrian whom everyone often perceives as arrogant and carefree. What’s really heartbreaking is that he’s reluctant to give up using spirit because he believes he won’t be able to help people anymore. His biggest fear is not being able to help Sydney if she needed him. Commence swooning now!

The other POV in The Fiery Heart belongs to Sydney, naturally, and she’s breaking just about every Alchemist rule now. She has evolved into quite the rebel; one of her story lines follows her research into developing an ink that resists the type the Alchemists use to enforce loyalty among their ranks. In addition to her super secret project, she also has to carry out her regular duties, namely keeping her other “family members” out of trouble. This job, which is already tough at the best of times, is made much more difficult by the presence of Sydney’s actual sister, Zoe, at Amberwood Prep. Do not get me started about Zoe; she’s every bit the heap of trouble I expected her to be. I suppose it could be argued that Zoe is the product of some terrible parenting/brainwashing by her and Sydney’s father, but I’m really not in the mood to scrape together some sympathy for Zoe.

Although I thought The Fiery Heart started a bit slow compared to the previous Bloodlines novels and once again went into a rather lengthy recap of the series thus far, it did find its groove eventually. The action toward the end was intense, and Eddie got to demonstrate some serious guardian badassery. Waiting so long to read this has actually worked out for me because I can proceed straight to Silver Shadows now and pick up where the head spinning ending of The Fiery Heart leaves off.

All in All: I liked The Fiery Heart a lot, but maybe not as much as the other books in the series, despite being able to read from Adrian’s perspective. The pacing felt a bit leisurely for a while, but I did think the novel finished strongly.

Review: The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta

The Piper’s Son
By Melina Marchetta
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Format: Hardcover
Source: Purchased

To Sum It Up: Tom Mackee’s family fractured after the death of his uncle, and Tom himself is at a low point. He’s exhausted his friends’ patience after their repeated attempts to help him have been to no avail. His family members don’t have much support to offer him, either, as they’re all dealing with various issues in their own lives. So it’s up to Tom to pull himself together—if that’s what he wants.

Review: The Piper’s Son is unique in a couple of ways. First, it’s not quite a sequel to Saving Francesca, although characters from the latter make appearances. The Piper’s Son takes place five years after Saving Francesca and focuses not on Francesca Spinelli this time but on one of her friends, Thomas Mackee.

Tom is 21, which I suppose technically makes him a few years older than the typical YA protagonist, but then, I think Melina Marchetta’s novels transcend intended audience age groups anyway. Another intriguing aspect of The Piper’s Son is the narration, which occasionally shifts from Tom’s POV to that of his 42-year-old aunt, Georgie (although the entire novel is written in the third person). If you asked me to nearly categorize this book, I couldn’t, and that’s a huge part of what makes it stand out.

I will admit to not immediately finding the love for The Piper’s Son that I have for some of Marchetta’s other books, including Saving Francesca. It’s hard to say why, too, other than I just wasn’t feeling it for a while. It’s not that Tom, Georgie, and the rest of the Finch-Mackee clan, whose complicated relationships form the heart of the novel, aren’t compelling. Marchetta digs deep into this family, good and bad times alike, and it’s an intricate, mesmerizing portrait painted with the finest detail. When it comes to breathing life into the characters on a page, Marchetta is in a class by herself.

Returning to the question of why this book needed some time to grow on me, well, I’m still working that out. I mean, I couldn’t wait to start it after finishing the superb Saving Francesca. I don’t know. But, The Piper’s Son did grow on me. I started finding myself thinking about it when I wasn’t reading it, a sure sign that it had made quite the impression on me. Would Tom ever forgive his father for leaving him? Would Georgie ever forgive the father of her unborn child from breaking her heart years before? Would Tom ever see Tara Finke, another figure from his St. Sebastian’s days, again? I developed an investment in these characters that pitted my brain, which needed to know how the book ended, against my eyelids, which very badly wanted to close from exhaustion. (My brain also said that Will Trombal, one of my favorite characters from Saving Francesca, might very well be in those last 60 pages; I managed to stay awake.)

In the end, I think all this book needed was a little patience from me to allow it to tell its story at its own pace. And it turned out to be a powerful story, one that I won’t be forgetting soon, especially since I’ve officially run out of Melina Marchetta books to read. A sad day, indeed.

All in All: Another brilliant character study from Melina Marchetta. I found it slightly slow moving compared to Saving Francesca, but the novel’s final impression is well worth any wait. I also highly recommend reading Saving Francesca first to maximize your experience reading The Piper’s Son.

Review: Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

Saving Francesca
By Melina Marchetta
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased

To Sum It Up: Francesca Spinelli wishes that she didn’t have to attend St. Sebastian’s, a former all-boys school where Francesca is completely without her friends from her old school. Life becomes even more tumultuous for Francesca when her mother falls into a severe depression and is unable to even get out of bed. It’s school that becomes Francesca’s unlikely haven, as friendships gradually develop between her and some of her St. Sebastian’s classmates.

Review: Add Saving Francesca to the ever-growing list of books I should have read much, much sooner. Melina Marchetta is only one of my favorite authors, and here I allowed one of her works to languish on my bookshelf for nigh on two years. How did that even happen?!

With every Melina Marchetta novel I read, the more awestruck I am by her writing. Contemporary can be a tough genre for me sometimes, but not with Marchetta’s books. I think it’s a combination of her realistic characters and expertly crafted storytelling. Marchetta’s dialogue is also razor sharp, both in terms of wit and sounding natural, not labored. There’s a magic to her prose that I just adore, and I can’t articulate my love for it any better than that.

How could I not love a book that references Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy, Les Misérables the musical, and Macbeth? But I also loved Saving Francesca because it’s funny, sad, sweet, and resonant. My heart broke for Francesca as her outspoken mother, Mia, fell into a deep depression that left the rest of the family at a loss to help her. At the same time, my heart warmed to see Francesca find friendship among a group of individuals who, at the beginning of the book, you don’t quite picture ever hanging out together. There’s the Marchetta magic at work yet again: not only does she bring these characters together, but she does it effortlessly and makes you fall in love with them and their little quirks, too.

At a bit less than 250 pages, Saving Francesca is quick read, but that’s also because it’s such an engrossing one. Don’t let its size mislead you, either; there’s a substantial story, as well as substantial characters, packed into those pages. It’s not often that I find myself wholeheartedly recommending contemporary novels, but there’s so much to love about this one. Like . . . everything.

All in All: I savored every page of this book, and it still ended way too quickly!