Book Review: Marly's Ghost by David Levithan

Tiny and Tim, really?

A remix of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with a Valentine’s twist

When Ben’s girlfriend, Marly, dies, he feels his life is over and the prospect of Valentine’s day without her fills him with bitterness. But then Marly arrives – or at least, her ghost does – along with three other spirits. Now Ben must take a journey through Valentines past, present and future – and what he learns will change him forever.

I thought this was new released, turns out it was first published 10 years ago. It's new to me and probably you too if your reading this review. There's nothing to age it anyway, well until holographic photos become the standard.

This book is literally a remix of A Christmas Carol while that's interesting, there are moments when the language used does not sound anything like how a teenager would speak now or the 00s so its odd and almost pulls you out the story because of how noticeable it is. For example, the structure of the sentences and use of exclamation  marks are just not the way people talk or write now (you know that I mention it, its odd that exclamation  points have became so underused now). This becomes really bad half way through the book. Ben basically becomes regretfully old man from the early Victorian era. I've never actually read A Christmas Carol but I can tell when the lines have came from the original text.

Also I just can't over that Tiny and Tim existed as characters. When ever these two show up, I'm just completely taken out of the story due to the ridiculous of everyone calling Tiny, Tiny. I know they called that so you know that they the Tiny Tim of this version but still. I can't get over it, I can't move on. It ruined all the scenes these characters are mentioned or seen for me because in the back of my head I was going "WHY? Really?"

There is also illustrations in this book by Brian Selznick in the style of the original illustrations of A Christmas Carol and this works way better than reworking of the text. They pretty cool and go really well with what's being described.

This book deals with things such as grief and did I did like the relationships between the main characters and you get feeling the lost with them. Though, I found as the language the more disconnected I felt with Ben.

Overall, I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars for carnations. It nice quick read and if you want to read A Valentine's Carol then this is the book for you. Also if haven't read anything by David Levithan yet then I wouldn't suggest starting here as I don't feel like this is a true glimpse of him. I should probably get over my hang up of Tiny.

I got this book for review off netgalley. It being published by Electric Monkey on 8th January 2015.