Phantom of the Opera Book Tag

As I mentioned last week, I’m a huge musical fan. I also enjoy doing book tags. So I decided to combine the two.

I nominate Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore. It was such a great ride, and it was actually nice to see the story from a non-magical girl’s point of view, because the last two books were both about magical girls.

There’s a relatively old fantasy book called The Summer Witch by Louise Cooper that I always want to be reading. I think it’s a fabulous book and I love it to death and I’m pretty much always thinking about it. It’s about a lonely girl married to and old man who won’t touch her, and she uses magic tot urn a scarecrow into her lover, but then starts dabbling in other magic until she basically goes insane. It’s really awesome.

 

I don’t know if I could say I learned a lot of valuable lessons from her, but Rachel from Animorphs was one of my role models growing. Beautiful, smart, fearless, and with a touch of berserker rage, Rachel taught me that appearances don’t matter (she fell in love with a bird!) and that it’s OK to be a girl and be into makeup and clothes and kicking ass. Although her rage and bloodlust led to some pretty dark places, I’ve always admired Rachel. My favourite ever fictional quote is about her:

“Okay, then answer this, Ellimist: Did I… did I make a difference? My life, and my… my death… was I worth it? Did my life really matter?”

“Yes. You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered.”

“Yeah. Okay, then. Okay, then.”

‘The Ellimist Chronicles’ by K A Applegate.

Oh god, just reading the quote makes me want to cry.

I’m nominating all four books from the Wolves of Mercy Falls series by Maggie Stiefvater. Her use of imagery, metaphor and lyricism really makes her prose sing and stand out amongst her peers. Sometimes it can rise to a bit of purple prose, but mostly I think it’s just beautiful and I’ve never read anyone else with her grasp on beautiful language. She doesn’t just tell a story, she sings it.

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This might come as a surprise, but instead of nominating a single book I’m going to nominate a character, James Potter from the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. We don’t get to see much of James, but from what we do see, he’s part of a notoriously badly-behaved gang who bullies a poor boy with no friends, uses one of his so-called ‘best friends’ as a scapegoat, is always getting into trouble at school, he always ruffles his hair to make it seem like he’s just jumped off his broomstick, and he’s just plain mean. I can’t believe Lily Evans ever fell in love with him. What a brat. A kid like James Potter needs a good spanking.

My number 1 favourite book OTP is Fire and Brigan from Fire by Kristin Cashore. It’s a reverse Beauty-and-the-Beast type relationship, with the not-exactly-handsome boy having to learn to love the incredibly beautiful girl for who she is, not what she looks like. It’s a slow burn and they hate each other at first, but come to a mutual trust, understanding, and love.

I’m nominating The Orphan Queen by Jodi Meadows even though it’s ridiculously obvious who the secret identity is once you’ve met them.

I think while a lot of people here might go for Harry Potter or Elena from Vampire Diaries I’m going for Vasilisa ‘Lissa’ Dragomir from Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy. The entire series would be completely different if they had survived the car crash that killed them and awakened Lissa’s powers.

I nominate Unearthly for the best love triangle. It’s an exploration of destiny vs free will: will Clara fall for the angel destiny has in mind for her and she sees in her visions, or will she fall for her best friend’s brother, who doesn’t even appear to like her at all? I love slow-burn romances where the characters start out hating one another – it’s a lot of work for the author to turn it around and make me start cheering for the ship.

I might surprise some people by choosing this character when I could have chosen Snape from Harry Potter 9except I don’t think he’s misunderstood at all) but I’m nominating Rosalie from the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer.

For most of the series Rosalie is depicted as this bitchy, catty, jealous love rival for Bella’s beau Edward, even though Rosalie is very happily in love with Emmett. She votes against Bella becoming a vampire and argues against protecting her from James.

Then it’s revealed that Rosalie isn’t jealous of Bella, but of Bella’s humanness, and she wishes someone had been around to advocate for her remaining human because of the things she’s missed out on like having the baby she desired so much.

I’m glad in the end Rosalie and Bella bonded over Renesmee, but the early depictions of Rosalie are largely interpreted as her being the beautiful bitch, a typical Mean Girl, and that’s not an accurate depiction. She’s fiercely loyal and not afraid to fight for what she believes in. She was merely trying to protect Bella, an everyone thought she was jealous.

The Twilight Saga (Twilight, #1-4)

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Nemo
Nemo

About Nemo

A lover of kittens and all things sparkly, Nemo has a degree in English Literature and specialises in reviewing contemporary, paranormal, mystery/thriller, historical, sci-fi and fantasy Young Adult fiction. She is especially drawn to novels about princesses, strong female friendships, magical powers, and assassins.

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9 thoughts on “Phantom of the Opera Book Tag

    1. Nemo

      That’s an awesome idea, I’d love to do the tag once you’ve created it. I’ve got some tags for lesser-known musicals coming up in the next few weeks.

      1. Sydney

        It’s actually going to be a series. Im going to start posting them weekly starting next Tuesday. Can’t wait to see you’re other posts.

        1. Nemo

          I’d love to do the tags of the shows I’ve seen at least. Mine’s meant to be weekly but I had to take a little hiatus this week!

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