Sunday 22 February 2015

'Love Hurts' Malorie Blackman and others, collection of short stories

23454354
Goodreads * Amazon UK
Random House Corgi Childrens



Book Summary: Malorie Blackman brings together the best teen writers of today in a stunningly romantic collection about love against the odds. Featuring short stories and extracts about modern star-crossed lovers from stars such as Gayle Forman, Markus Zusak and Patrick Ness, and with a brand-new story from Malorie Blackman herself, Love Hurts looks at every kind of relationship, from first kiss to final heartbreak.

Love Hurts is an anthology of short stories written by well known authors (like Gayle Forman, Markus Zusak or Jenny Downham). Most of these stories are simply extracts from already written books. We can read a bit of If I Stay, We Were Liars or The Infinite Moment of Us - most of chapters are parts of different titles, but there are some separate stories as well.

If you didn't read original books it's easy to get confused while reading extracts, because they're simply out of context and we don't know the background of characters or events. On the other hand you can get to know different writing styles, read pieces of bestselling books and decide if you'd like to pick them up or not.

I'm not sure if making a book out of parts of other books is a good idea. I think readers would enjoy it more if these were separate short stories. I have to say that my favourite story was Malorie Blackman's standalone Humming Through My Fingers. It was a solid and touching read. 

I wouldn't call this book a waste of time but it certainly wasn't what I expected it to be. I would recommend it only to those who want to get to know writing style of different authors and decide whether they would like to read their works. If you expect an unique read like My True Love Gave To Me you will be disappointed.


3 comments:

  1. That is exactly what I thought while reading this book! I was greatly disappointed. I gave it two and a half stars solely for the variety of different authors and samples of AMAZING works of literature <3

    Loved your review!

    PS, I nominated you for the Infinity Dreams Award -- Info here http://booksbyj.blogspot.com/2015/02/infinity-dreams-award.html

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! :) <3
      I was expecting something more similar to "My True Love Gave To Me" - it was an amazing and unique read. But I have to say some of the extracts actually convinced me to enlarge my "to read - ASAP" book list :)

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  2. Thank you! I have so many nominations and I didn't reply to them :D I will do it soon :) xx

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