Jasmyn

by Alex Bell

Book Overview

One day, without warning, Jasmyn's husband died.Since then, everything has been different.Wrapped up in her grief, Jasmyn is trapped in a world without colour, without flavour - without Liam. But even... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0575084456
• ISBN13: 9780575084452
• Release Date: November 2010
• Publisher: Gollancz
• Length: 311 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.1" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Jasmyn - a dark fairytale

Jasmyn is about a young woman, named Jasmyn, who has recently lost her husband Liam. She is completely devastated by the his death, so devastated that she can barely cope. On top of this, for some reason, her mother-in-law can't seem to stand Jasmyn, and her brother-in-law (Ben) doesn't seem to like her much either. Everytime she speaks with him he treats her like...doodoo. Jasmyn is already self-concious because of her looks (she looks different than other people), so this is especially hard for her to handle. Very odd things begin to happen - black swans fall out of the sky, dead, at her husbands funeral. Someone breaks into her house and trashes it. She sees an odd person at her grandparents house. There's more, but they would be spoilers. She slowly begins to come out of her grief a bit and starts to wonder what's going on. Jasmyn ends up having to team up with Ben to try to find something. She begins hearing things about Liam that she can't believe. Ben continues to treat her like she's dirt. Jasmyn begins to fight back. This is good. The book begins with a slow build up - as you read you get a very good feel for Jasmyn's all emcompassing grief, and then you see her begin to come out of it. In fact, throughout the book, from beginning to end, you will find complete devastation about the death, to disbelief to rage and anger about why she was left with no husband. As the build up of the story continues, every once in a while you get hit with a spooky happening, or something occurs that frightens Jasmyn. Until finally in the last section of the book all hell breaks loose. I liked reading this book. I usually like more action in the novels I read, but I liked the way things were laid out here. I found a few times that things felt a bit repetitive, but those were examples of Jasmyn questioning what was happening. I tend to get impatient while reading lots of internal "thinking". Jasmyn is going about her business, thinking - thinking, wondering what is going on, then WHAM! something happens. Towards the end there is a pretty big reveal. Very dramatic. Very good ending - In fact I thought that the last section of the book totally kicked ass. Enough that I stayed up until 5 a.m. reading, and then as soon as I completely woke up this morning, I had to finish the book.

Fantastic!

This will definitely not be the last book I read by Alex Bell. I really like the way she tells her stories. I picked it up on Friday afternoon because I wanted to read the first chapter, just to get a taste of the story. I ended up stopping after 80 pages, and only because I had to. I got swept away in Jasmyn's story so deeply that I all I wanted to do was keep reading. Imagine that the love of your life just up and dies one afternoon? No warning, and certainly no time to say goodbye. Well, that's exactly what happens to Jasmyn. Her husband Liam means the world to her. They've had a wonderful life together that spans back to their childhood. So when he dies, she's devastated. Her world falls around her and she can hardly even get up in the morning because her will to live is gone. I felt her grief and pain, and was deeply saddened by her daily struggle. However, a little while after his death, she starts to feel as if someone is watching her. A rude man she doesn't know barges into her house, demanding to see Liam. She starts to notice other strange things and people that seem to spring out of nowhere. Trying to get free of her grief and take a deep breath of life, she escapes on a short holiday to stay with a friend in California. Instead, she gets stuck in a mystery. One that suggests the man she knew and loved isn't who she thought he was, and leads her to Germany. She then finds herself in a foreign country with the brother-in-law who hates her and is keeping a lot of his own secrets. She's never felt more alone, but what Jasmyn uncovers throws her into the middle of an ancient myth filled with the magic and wonder of faery tales that all relate directly to the same mystery. Jasmyn is an amazing, wonderous book that will make you sad. It will also keep you sitting on the edge of your seat. I enjoyed how every detail slowly unravelled, and wasn't disappointed with the execution. I really enjoy Alex Bell's writing style, and Jasmyn's voice was so engaging I hated to put the book down. This book is filled with a fantastic blend of both dark and light shades of magic. I loved this adult faery tale. Every detail was so vivid, it lingered in my mind hours after reading the last word. The truth will shock, yet satisfy as well.

"You have never heard a story quite like this one."

Start a book with a sentence like this, and you've given yourself a tall order to fill. However, Alex Bell doesn't disappoint. _Jasmyn_ is something special indeed, putting me under its spell in a way that only a few books a year ever do. Our heroine, Jasmyn, is devastated when her beloved husband Liam dies suddenly, just a year after their marriage. Then, at his funeral, things really start getting weird: five black swans fall dead from the sky during the interment. In the coming months, Jasmyn learns that Liam may have had a secret life--and it's not your ordinary garden-variety secret life. She teams up with Liam's grumpy brother, Ben, to uncover the truth. Their quest takes them all over Europe, to real-life places as enchanting as any fairy-tale castle. I figured out one of the Big Secrets pretty early in the book, and so I got to read it on both levels at once: what Jasmyn thinks is going on, and what's really going on. The difference between the two is heartbreaking. Alex Bell weaves several old tales into her plot, and fleshes them out with vivid characters and settings, so that the story feels both familiar and fresh. I highly recommend _Jasmyn_ to anyone who likes an excellent grown-up fairy tale.