I've read Little Women at two different stages of my life: the first one when I was 12, and the second one when I finished university. In both of them, I was on the edge of the end and the beginning of important parts of my life and somehow the book was there as a companion but more important as a catalyst of changes in the way I saw life. But there were a lot of things that were different in each reading so here are my experiences with Little Women:

A parent of one of my classmates donated several classic books, so our sixth-grade teacher assigned us to read one book each month and make a report of it. Though the initiative of it was amazing, I have to admit I'd find most of them difficult to understand and I wasn't interested in their themes so I didn't like most of them¯\_(ツ)_/¯. However, as soon as I started Little Women it was a completely different feeling because it made me excited instead of miserable.

It was one of the first books I felt I could relate to the protagonists and their conflicts despite living at different times because they were flawed (as any other real human) but learned from their mistakes. 

From all the sisters the one I felt more identified with was Jo and wanted to be even more like her. I loved her passion for writing and just like her, I was at that age when girls become teenagers and I kept wondering why everyone around me seemed so eager to grow up.  

Ten years later, the experience was so different, it felt like reading it with new eyes. I only became aware of the second part after watching the movie (the one with Winona Ryder, Christian Bale, and baby Kirsten Dunst) so it was a good opportunity to make the complete read when I finally got a beautiful copy of my own.

This time I realized I could identify with not just Jo, but with all the sisters: I've had doubts about my art like Amy,  I'm an introvert who loves her home like Beth, and like Meg, I've come to realize how much I value to stay humble. I had dreams like them, but I was also facing how difficult it is to achieve them in reality and how adult life is so different and way more complex than what you think when you are younger *cries*.

I loved the relationship Jo and Laurie had. When I was a kid I obviously just saw their sweet friendship but as a 22-year I was so sad knowing my ship not only was deep underwater but the reasons behind it.

After reading each chapter, I was left with this feeling of inspiration for becoming a better person and that made me realize how books can transcend into the lives of their readers. Just like them, I was learning to be a sister, a woman and let's just face it, a decent human being. Little Women has become a precious book to me, one that I can reread and watch in movies over and over again (with a good cup of chocolate preferably).

There's no better book to read when you are feeling lonely than Fangirl. Reading about Cath Avery makes me feel like I'm in a familiar place (even when where I live the closest you'll get to snow is the fake one from the mall). I also grew up with an epical book series I adored and I am an introvert that prefers staying at her room.

Choosing a favorite scene from Fangirl is too hard since there are so many I love to re-read over and over again, so instead I´ve chosen one that is good to remember in real life. When something crappy happens to you and there are too many emotions you need to let out, one healthy way of doing it is like the Avery's family: you call an Emergency Kanye Party (or just any other artist you want works too).

If Wren were here, she’d call an Emergency Kanye Party. 

First she’d stand on the bed. That was the protocol back home. When things were getting too intense—when Wren found out that Jesse Sandoz was cheating on her, when Cath got fired because her boss at the bookstore didn’t think she smiled enough, when their dad was acting like a zombie and wouldn’t stop... one of them would stand on her bed and pretend to pull an imaginary lever, a giant switch set in the air, and shout, “Emergency Kanye Party!” 

And then it was the other person’s job to run to the computer and start the Emergency Kanye playlist. And then they’d both jump around and dance and shout Kanye West lyrics until they felt better. Sometimes it would take a while.…

Listening the audiobook of Daughter of smoke and bone made the experience even better because of the beautiful way Laini writes, I’m telling you, it was mesmerizing. Her words are definitely meant to be listened (and is great to hear the correct pronunciation of all those strange names because seriously I don’t think I would have got most of them right on my own).

It felt so fresh and different from a lot of YA urban fantasy (especially the ones that were being published back then). So this are my thoughts about the whole trilogy.

Let's discuss it! (Beware Spoilers)


THE GOOD STUFF

• I fell in love with the characters. Each of them are so peculiar and well developed. I can’t pick a favorite one, is too hard. 
• I knew it was about Chimaeras. But I barely knew what the heck a Chimaera was, so it was fascinating specially reading on Laini’s version of them (and picture them in my head). 
• It had an interesting take on the theme of angels and beast and our general preconception of good and bad. 
• I liked it was set in Prague and Morocco. I always enjoy traveling and learning about new places through books and we all know YA books are too often set only in the US (there’s a whole world out there friends, ready to be discovered). It made the book more unique. 
• I didn’t knew what would happen next. It was unpredictable and I like it so much when the story takes me to unexpected places. Until the very end it got me hooked.

 THE BAD STUFF

• The second book suffers from the second books’ disease: a.k.a. lack of important plot. Most of it is unnecessary, and feels like going in circles.
•  Secondary point of views. Ok, so I did like some of them, they are interesting, you know, they are complementary and let you see the world from different perspectives. But some of them were just filling. Instead of being a way of telling the story, they slow it down, making the rhythm heavy. There were characters showing up here and there that had nothing important to do with the story and that completely disappeared afterward (I’m looking at you random guards, soldiers, and citizens whose name I've already forgotten). It was hard enough following with the amount of characters and their strange names to add a bunch of useless more. My brain couldn’t take it! 
• An instant love in the first book and then in the next two books nothing...until the very end. Are you serious? I feel betrayed. I don’t like either one. The first one is always hard to believe and the second one is just excruciating as a fan. 
• THAT ENDING. I’m cool with the not so happily ever after ending but man, what a way to make things more complicated. It was so weird and tangled and is so hard to wrap my head around it even when I’ve read it twice already! I can’t even describe it, that’s how hard it is!

 MY FINAL VEREDICT 

There was once upon a time an amazing writer called Lainy Taylor who wrote an epic story of love and magic...

She is definitely an amazing writer hands down, these book have everything, a beautiful writing style, an epic world building and vibrant characters. And speaking of characters here's a character guide with the main characters (and the animal features each have), you're welcome.

I choose this scene in The Siren because it encapsulates so well why I love Kiera Cass's books. She is great at writing sweet, lovable scenes that make my teenager soul jump with happiness (shh I still have it and it will never go away). And in this book, that's an accomplishment even bigger since the protagonist, Kahlen, is a siren who can't talk with her love interest, Akinli, because her voice is deadly to humans so she needs to communicate through her body and her expressions.

This scene has everything, a cute scenario of a dream date (I mean I'm terrible at baking but a cake is a cake and who doesn't want some in a date yummy!), Kahlen trying to come up with a career for him turns out to be deep and thoughtful and let us see the characters' personalities and the great chemistry between them.

[...] I stared at this boy who I admittedly hardly knew. Yet I felt as if I'd learned so much about him, like, if anyone asked, I could outline his entire personality. He was so warm, so open, so full of simple joy. What had I done to catch his attention, to have him interested in not just my looks, but my thoughts?

I could tell he was actually eager to hear my opinion, so I focused on his question. I could imagine him as an advocate for an abused child or an aide for someone with mental illness, the only person in their whirlwind lives with the capacity to hold them down to the earth. I wrote on the whiteboard again.

"Social work?" he asked. I applauded.

He laughed, a sound more like music than anything I made. "I'm intrigued. Okay Kahlen, I will research this field and get back to you."

He glanced down at the cake batter, then raised the whisk and held it out to me, dripping. "Does this look right?" I touched the whisk, then licked the batter off my finger.

Akinli's warm blue eyes held mine as sweetness spread across my tongue. It was perfect I gave an enthusiastic nod, and he reached to taste it himself. "Hey, not bad for my first cake, yeah?" [...]