Gothic Lolita: A Mystical Thriller
Ginee Seo Books
November 25, 2008
208 pages
Amazon
Chelsea and Miya, who live in Los Angeles and Tokyo, respectively are best friends of a sort. They only know each other through an online journaling site and Chelsea hasn't posted anything in three years. But between when they're friendship started at age 11 and Chelsea's disappearance, the two girls had things in common: a
love of the Gothic Lolita fashion, gothiclolita009, a shojo manga character, and both are half Japanese.
Miya has continued to blog and Chelsea might not make herself known, but she's still paying attention.
Now, Miya and her three year old brother are living in an orphanage, placed there after her mother's death by their father (who dies as the book starts) and just hoping no one will decide to take her cute little brother and leave teenaged her behind. And Chelsea is still living in LA but still dealing with the disappearance of her younger brother that happened three years before.
Now to see if the two girls can make their way back together and how.
Gothic Lolita, which I still haven't quite figured out being called a 'mystical thriller,' is written and presented in an interesting and unique way. Told in alternating points of view (Chelsea and Miya) that don't contain capitalization and are usually short and I suppose, blog like and sometimes more like poems than prose, the writing is interspersed-and sometimes actually on-photographs. Some of the photos are of the girls/their lives but others just seem to somehow relate to the story.
I will have to say that I pretty quickly figured out what the ending of this was going to be, I hoped that there was going to be some sort of a twist, but there wasn't. It was a very quick read,
though (less than a couple of hours I think, even really looking at the photos), so that wasn't as much of a problem as it would have been in a book that took an average amount of time to read.
I would have liked more from this book, but that's not how the book was done. It wasn't an in-depth, long prose type of novel, it was done in a different style.
At some points it seemed like the girls had too much in common which worked for the book but also made me wish for more about the two of them than what they shared. In some ways that's a good point of the book (that I wanted more) and a bad point. I did really like that neither girl had a cookie cutter life, however. It made things interesting and was very creative of the author.
So, while I think this book wasn't amazing and the ending is very predictable, it's also a really fast read that's unique and filled with some photographs, too so it's still worth a read--maybe a library read since the hardcover's $16.99 ($14.03 atm on Amazon)?
7/10 mostly for the ending/predictableness
Ginee Seo Books
November 25, 2008
208 pages
Amazon
Chelsea and Miya, who live in Los Angeles and Tokyo, respectively are best friends of a sort. They only know each other through an online journaling site and Chelsea hasn't posted anything in three years. But between when they're friendship started at age 11 and Chelsea's disappearance, the two girls had things in common: a
love of the Gothic Lolita fashion, gothiclolita009, a shojo manga character, and both are half Japanese.Miya has continued to blog and Chelsea might not make herself known, but she's still paying attention.
Now, Miya and her three year old brother are living in an orphanage, placed there after her mother's death by their father (who dies as the book starts) and just hoping no one will decide to take her cute little brother and leave teenaged her behind. And Chelsea is still living in LA but still dealing with the disappearance of her younger brother that happened three years before.
Now to see if the two girls can make their way back together and how.
Gothic Lolita, which I still haven't quite figured out being called a 'mystical thriller,' is written and presented in an interesting and unique way. Told in alternating points of view (Chelsea and Miya) that don't contain capitalization and are usually short and I suppose, blog like and sometimes more like poems than prose, the writing is interspersed-and sometimes actually on-photographs. Some of the photos are of the girls/their lives but others just seem to somehow relate to the story.
I will have to say that I pretty quickly figured out what the ending of this was going to be, I hoped that there was going to be some sort of a twist, but there wasn't. It was a very quick read,
though (less than a couple of hours I think, even really looking at the photos), so that wasn't as much of a problem as it would have been in a book that took an average amount of time to read.I would have liked more from this book, but that's not how the book was done. It wasn't an in-depth, long prose type of novel, it was done in a different style.
At some points it seemed like the girls had too much in common which worked for the book but also made me wish for more about the two of them than what they shared. In some ways that's a good point of the book (that I wanted more) and a bad point. I did really like that neither girl had a cookie cutter life, however. It made things interesting and was very creative of the author.
So, while I think this book wasn't amazing and the ending is very predictable, it's also a really fast read that's unique and filled with some photographs, too so it's still worth a read--maybe a library read since the hardcover's $16.99 ($14.03 atm on Amazon)?
7/10 mostly for the ending/predictableness
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