Extras and An Inspirational Story

I'm finally finished with the Uglies series (unless he writes another one, of course) and I was pretty satisfied with it. The ending was great, it left me with a nice closing feeling. Every piece of the plot was solved, and there was a good deal of action. However, I did have my issues with it. . . .

First and foremost was the little romance story within it. The author gets a huge FAIL from me as far as the romance goes. He really shouldn't have even tried, it just sucked. It was surprising, because I don't remember the romance in his other books being as horrible as the romance in this one. I literally found myself skipping the romantic parts because they were so awfully written. They were random and loveless. Ugh, just TERRIBLE! *Deep Breath* I'll stop now before I go overboard, but take my word for it, if you read this skip over the romantic parts.

My second complaint was the beginning. It's not that I couldn't get into it, but he lingered too long on certain parts that I don't think he needed to spend so much time describing. Sure, they were pretty central to the story, but I wish that he'd made the part with the Sly Girls a bit more brief. If he'd done that, I think he would've had more room to describe the ending climax, which I would've like a bit more detail on. *Shrug* Not a huge issue, but definitely something worth mentioning.

Other than that, it was a good book. It was really easy to step into the main character's shoes, and the mystery of the inhumans was fascinating. Again, the ending was my favorite part, it was really well done. *Applause for Scott Westerfeld*

Now, for the inspirational story topic. I was had been at Maddie's house from about 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM (it was great seeing her, it had been a while since I last saw her) and her mom was giving me a ride home. Maddie's little sisters, Jesse and Lily, were in the back of the van being relatively quiet for a change. Maddie's mom was describing the difference between a stick shift and an automatic when something occured to me.

I just want to say this now: I would never ask this personal a question to any of my other friends' parents, but Maddie's parents practically helped raise me, and I was comfortable asking them anything.

So anyway, I asked her how she met Maddie's dad. I know that seems pretty random, and I'm not exactly sure how my brain went from the topic of driving stick shift to how Maddie's mom met Maddie's dad, but it did.

I won't describe the story she told me and the twins because it's not my story to tell. I will tell you that it was very inspirational, and it made me really believe that true love is out there for everyone. It wasn't all love and happiness, though, there were many hardships in the story as well. Her main point was that everything happens for a reason, and you might not necessarily see the reason for something happening while it's going on, but eventually you'll be able to look back and say something like, "Wow, I can't believe that something good actually came out of that."

It made me wonder a lot about what the future holds. I've decided that for the time being I'll just go with the flow, and maybe someday I'll have a story of my own.

~My next post will be about the movie Becoming Jane with Anne Hathaway starring as Jane Austen. I hope it'll be good (I won't have much to compare it to, though. The only other Jane Austen based movie I've seen is the Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly, and I haven't read any of the books).