Melissa Wiebe's Blogs

I had a bit of difficulty getting into this book, but I ended up actually enjoying the book.  I think if there had been a little bit more editing to the book (the first section should have been cut maybe by about 100 pages), I think that I may have enjoyed the book a little bit more than I did.  Overall, it is a pretty good read and once I was able to get more into the book, I was able to enjoy a little more than I had.  It is one of those books that the payoff comes later on in the book, as you are given so much information in the first section that I felt that there was too much to digest.

I bought this book because I had hoped to go and see the film version of this book, which was released in North America on Feb. 14, and I had started out with high hopes for the book.  Based on how the book started out, I had hoped that this book would live up to the expectations that I had built up for this book and I ended up being a bit disappointed.

While I did like the author's use of words and how he described the rich atmosphere of the book early on in the book, I felt that it just kinda fell flat and by the end I just wanted the book to end.  I realize that this was my first foray into paranormal fiction and so I didn't really know what to expect and how I would react to such a book.

It's not that I didn't have times where I enjoyed reading the book, its just that I felt that it was maybe a little too long and that the book could have been much more effective and cohesive if somebody had cut 200-300 pages; it didn't really need the 700+ pages to describe what it did.

I saw this book reviewed by another blogger that I read on a regular basis and thought I would give this a try.  Not being able to get to this before Christmas, I was able to start it on New Years Day.   

It was clear from the outset that I had missed quite a bit of the back story of the two main characters, even though there is enough information given throughout the book that you don't really feel like you have to read the previous books to get the drift of the story.

It was a pretty decent read and quick to get through.  Its good for those times during the Christmas holiday season when you need to read something that will take a few days without much thought.

I saw this book reviewed by another blogger that I read on a regular basis and thought I would give this a try.  Not being able to get to this before Christmas, I was able to start it on New Years Day.   

It was clear from the outset that I had missed quite a bit of the back story of the two main characters, even though there is enough information given throughout the book that you don't really feel like you have to read the previous books to get the drift of the story.

It was a pretty decent read and quick to get through.  Its good for those times during the Christmas holiday season when you need to read something that will take a few days without much thought.

I probably took too much time to read this book and should have completed the book in a quicker fashion and that influenced how I rated the book in the end.  But that being said, I did enjoy the book and is one that I would consider re-reading in the future to give myself a different perspective on the book.  

I do admit that my love of Jane Eyre did colour my view of this book and this is why I did read Villette; I wanted to say that I had read more than one Charlotte Brontë book.  

It definitely is a more mature read than Jane Eyre is and explores different things than what Jane Eyre, even though there are some similar themes in the two books, they explore them in different ways.  For example, they both deal with religion.  Whereas Jane Eyre deals with the balance between moral duty and earthly pleasure, Villette deals with the clashes between Lucy's Protestant background and Paul's Catholicism.

Even though Lucy and Jane seem to be around the same age at the start of the book, Lucy seems to be a more mature individual and more aware of what she wants and desires at the outset, while Jane seems to know what she wants and desires, its only when she leaves Thornfield Hall does she realize what she desires and wants.  And Villette seems to deal a little more on what it was like to be a teacher in a boarding school, whereas Jane Eyre deals more with governess aspects (although Anne's book, Agnes Grey, is much darker than Jane Eyre ever was).