Photo de l'auteur

Suzy Vitello

Auteur de Faultland

4+ oeuvres 91 utilisateurs 38 critiques 1 Favoris

A propos de l'auteur

Crédit image: photo by Lindsay Soule

Œuvres de Suzy Vitello

Faultland (2021) 45 exemplaires
The Moment Before (2014) 22 exemplaires
The Empress Chronicles (2014) 20 exemplaires

Oeuvres associées

City of Weird: 30 Otherworldly Portland Tales (2016) — Contributeur — 45 exemplaires

Étiqueté

Partage des connaissances

Nom canonique
Vitello, Suzy
Nom légal
Soule, Suzy Vitello
Autres noms
Soule, Suzanne
Freisinger, Suzanne
Sexe
female
Nationalité
USA
Lieu de naissance
Vienna, Austria

Membres

Critiques

Cette critique a été rédigée pour LibraryThing Member Giveaways.
After a series of rapid changes in her life, fifteen year old Liz's OCD has gotten out of control and landed her in a psychiatric unit. After her release, Liz learns of another change; instead of returning to the sparkling clean city loft with her mother, Liz will be moving in with her father, his girlfriend and the girlfriend's brother, Cory on their goat farm. Liz tries her best to deal with the messiness of the farm and does her best to follow her therapist's advice to engage. Liz finds another obsession at her therapist's office when she mentions that Liz reminds her of the Duchess Sisi of Bavaria and allows Liz to see the Duchess' childhood journal. In 1850's Bavaria, Duchess Sisi is also going through a series of changes as she grows and realizes that her destiny is more than she can imagine. As Sisi falls in love the first time, she meets the enchanting Lola who makes promises that seem too good to be true. With Sisi's locket and journal in Liz's hands, she finds that their lives may be connected by more than their circumstances.

The Empress Diaries is an enchanting young adult fantasy intertwining the lives of a modern teen and the young Empress Sisi of Bavaria. Both Liz and Sisi's characters are compelling while facing some parallels in their lives, but have very different challenges in front of them. Liz is trying to live her life with OCD as everyday situations like eating or touching a non-pristine surface send her into a panic. Her time on the farm is challenging her in every single way from the home itself, to sharing a bathroom to eating the food. I was actually surprised at how unaccommodating Liz's dad and girlfriend were with her diagnosis, just expecting her to deal with life in this very different environment. I enjoyed seeing Liz and Cory's relationship grow as well as she helped Cory deal with his own demons. Sisi is dealing with change herself, she is experiencing her first love while learning that her and her sisters are destined to be married off to royalty, their cousins. Lola's character is intriguing and I wish the magical components of Sisi's locket and journal were introduced earlier. I was chalking up the happenstance to wishful thinking and imagination.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
Mishker | 2 autres critiques | Jan 9, 2024 |
Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.
When an earthquake hits the Pacific Northwest, a family is revealed to have many of its own faults. The seismic shifts are painful as the reader watches them grapple for survival in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Something I didn't expect, but greatly appreciate, is that I learned a few things about Earthquakes and what I should do were one to take place. This is a fast-paced read. The characters have depth. The earthquake and its aftermath are realistic. I would highly recommend.
 
Signalé
LyndsGriff | 29 autres critiques | Aug 2, 2023 |
I must preface by saying that I was really excited about this book, but read the first chapter and realised I'd have to go back and read the first. By the time it came at my library, I had forgotten why I was excited about the premise of this book, which could have contributed to why I didn't find the two terribly engaging.

It was challenging for me to get involved with this book because the chapters were extremely short and alternated between the perspective of the two girls. It was hard to distinguish between the voices, and thus when I got wrapped up in one girl's story, I just became confused when all of a sudden I was reading about the other. The plot also moved pretty quickly.

I liked Liz, but I didn't care about Sisi at all, and found myself bored by her chapters and wanting to skim through them to get back to Liz. Sisi seemed like kind of a pushover to me and wasn't terribly active about her own future other than getting Liz's help.

This book included a butterfly effect that simultaneously went too far and not far enough. I didn't quite find it plausible, because it rewrote basically the entirety of recent history, changed border lines and linguistics, etcetera, but it didn't affect Liz's parents meeting and having her about the same times. Since it did decide to rewrite history, I thought there could have been a lot more minor details to show how things had changed to make it believable. That the world just went back to the way it had been prior to events despite the new sequence was also hard to buy.

There were other details I didn't buy also, such as two teenagers just abruptly getting on a plane to the Czech Republic, and later Liz's parents just handing over a ton of money. There were also strange details at points that I found detracted from the story.

I'd perhaps recommend this for particularly young readers able to suspend disbelief more easily, but I just wasn't able to get into this book.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
whakaora | Mar 5, 2023 |
Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.
I received this book a long time ago and had hand written reviews to add here but never got around to it so here we go. I did not realise this was a sci-fi genre type of book so for me it was just weird and I feel I cannot give it an true review. It’s about a very dysfunctional family caught up in an earthquake about 10 years ahead of our time but the characters just did not grasp me. They are basically trying to find each other and reconnect through many trials. Perhaps for someone who enjoys this genre they’d love it but sadly it did nothing for me and felt disjointed.… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
MBMG | 29 autres critiques | Dec 1, 2022 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
4
Aussi par
1
Membres
91
Popularité
#204,136
Évaluation
½ 3.5
Critiques
38
ISBN
7
Favoris
1

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