Skip to main content

Review: Faceless by Alyssa Sheinmel

 Faceless by Alyssa Sheinmel




BLURB

"When Maisie is burnt in a terrible accident, her face is partially destroyed. She's lucky enough to get a face transplant, but how do you live your life when you can't even recognize yourself any more? As Masie discovers how much her looks shaped her relationship to the world, she has to redefine her own identity, and figure out what 'lucky' really means."


MY THOUGHTS

  • Struggled through the first few chapters.
  • Cringed at times, but kept reading.
  • Got better halfway.
  • Different mindsets.
  • Sweet and sad.


This one is a toughy. While I don't really like the story, I couldn't put it away and stop reading. I just had to know what happened to Maisie in the end.


I don't know if that says more about me or the book, to be honest.


I struggled a lot through the first few chapters, and came very close to giving up. Maisie's accident happens in chapter 1 or 2, but from there she just kept whining for about 4 chapters. And I have never been in that situation, but no one wants to read constant whining, right? 


"I think I've earned the right to be a little bit rude" 


You probably already have this down as a negative review, and you're probably right (I don't know, I haven't finished writing it yet), but let me get this straight: there are parts of it I like.


I guess the best way to describe it is good writing and characters shoved together with a bad  storyline. Doesn't make a great combo.


It did get a bit better halfway, what Maisie lessens the complaining a good bit. 


“Oh my god, would people please, please, please stop calling me lucky?”


It was very interesting, as well, to see the different mindsets around disabilities from disabled people themselves. Some were very hopeful, but some were quite negative (Maisie). I had never viewed it from that perspective before.


It does also stand to the writer's skill that I was nearly crying in parts, even though the storyline wasn't great. I got quite involved in Maisie's life, and was sad at some of the more emotional scenes. 


It also really showed the power of friendship and how difficult it is to stay friends with people after drastic life events.


It helped me to appreciate my friends even more. I have one especially close friend, and I could absolutely see the similarities between the close friend in the book and my friend (shoutout to her, by the way!)


Another thing I can relate to is the enjoyment she got from her jogs in the morning. I recently started walking in the early morning, and can see how enjoyable it can be.


“Because I do want to live. For whatever that’s worth.”


So, in summary: I enjoyed the writing style and characters, but wasn't content with the storyline. It provided a good insight into disabilities but there was a lot of moaning.


I would give it 60/100, on the basis that the writing was good, but the storyline left a lot to be desired.


I'm not quite sure what genre it fits into, as it is a little bit of everything, so I will say Young Adult, because that's what it's aimed at


STATS

Score: 60/100

Age group: 10+

Genre: Young Adult


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome

Hi! Welcome to the Book Corner Blog. This is a blog all about children’s books. As children ourselves we are experts on the subject and we want to share our knowledge with all of you. We know that many children associate reading with school. We hope that this can change since there are so many books out there that are nothing to do with school but still very, very good. On our blog we hope to introduce children and young adults to books that they will want to read instead of ones they think they should read. We are also hoping to include some author interviews. We have so many questions to ask the authors of our favorite books. There are some books that you read and they just fill you up with questions. We want to get answers to those questions. We hope that our blog will cover those topics as well as many more. We will try to post at least once a week and we would be overjoyed if you were to read some of them.  Saoirse and Neassa at The Book Corner

Why you don’t like reading

           Why you don’t like reading In this blogpost we are going to talk about a lot of common reasons why people don’t like reading and how to get around these problems. We know that there are so many different reasons that people don’t like reading and we are only going to cover the basic ones. Teachers Teachers are actually a huge problem when it comes to children reading. They often make their classes read books that they don’t want to read as part of their work. These books are usually classics or books that are quite complicated and very “wordy” [meaning that they have a lot of words and phrases that are uncommon or rarely used]. Not all teachers are like this, though. When I [Saoirse] was in sixth class [fifth grade] I read “Holes” by Louis Sachar. This turned out to be one of my favourite books so that ended up being a good thing. Another problem with teachers is that they rarely have very good or interesting books in their class library. For us, this is a big problem becaus

Reading by Neassa

 Hey guys, it's Neassa. I don't really have a specific topic for this post, so I'm just gonna talk all things reading. Why am I doing this, you might ask? Well, it's because reading books isn't confined to one subject, so neither is this post. I am often asked, why reading? Why are you a bookworm when you could be a gamer or a sportswoman? Well, firstly I can still be a gamer or a sportswoman and still be a bookworm ! It's not a job or a commitment, it's just for fun.  And why reading? If I'm completely honest, I'm not sure. I really can't remember a time when I wasn't surrounded with books whether I was reading them myself or having them read to me by m parents, so I have been enjoying stories for years ,and I just never stopped! I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I also like writing short stories. I would love to write a novel, and am really excited about that. I like writing because I like to try and cover topics I lik