The leap Book

Yep. My very first review on Goodreads, The Leap! :)

Well, where should I begin...? The start of this story was really really great that it successfully got my full attention till I finished this book in less than one day, although I must admit that it was actually beyond my expectation--but not in a really good way. I had finished at least half of Bartimaeus trilogy before starting to read this book, and The Leap was something that I didn't expect would come from the author. It was a lot darker, and I can't help but feel like it was full of implied things. Even though many people would put this book in fantasy category, I think there may still be different interpretations in deciding what kind of story The Leap is about.

The author himself divided the points of view between Charlie's and her brother James', and both seemed to convey different versions on viewing how the whole things happened. Charlie's version portrayed her journey in a mysterious place in her dreams to find Max in order to prove that he was still alive. There was no too specific explanation given about the place, and I myself think of it as possible realm after death, or between life and death, or something similar to that. While James' version portrayed his struggles to save his little sister who seemingly couldn't got over her shock from losing her best friend, to the point where she almost killed herself in the hopeless attempt to find him back.

Another way to interpret the storyline which we may conclude after finished reading it is, the magical journey Charlie had been through was all simply a hallucination happened while she was in her state of overcoming her post-traumatic condition--which is also possible because the author inserted James point of view in the first place.

The ending didn't really explain much, but made the whole story even more open to many interpretations. According to my personal preference, a little but meaningful conversation between Charlie and Max wouldn't hurt, since the poor girl had been through a lot just to meet him again (and I would love to see some romance fan-service too).

To sum up, I suppose it was one of the best books I read in 2011. Although as a reader with inner-fangirl :p, I don't find myself satisfied with how the author conclude this story (believe it, despite how gloomy it was, I still expected a very happy ending in the first 50 pages of the book--until it got even more darker and it was obvious that such an ending won't exist), it was purely my personal preference.