Nicole J Simms/ August 15, 2014/ Blog/ 0 comments

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I’ve never considered writing a book review before, but after reading J. K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy I felt compelled to share my views. Being a Harry Potter fan, I was keen to read more of J. K. Rowling’s work, so when the Casual Vacancy came out I put it on my to-read list. The reason I never bought the book, upon its release, is due to the genre and topic not being my thing; however, since it was one of my favourite authors who wrote the book I wanted to read the book. Also, since starting my writing journey, I have pushed myself to read different genres that I wouldn’t have considered before.

I must be honest when I started the book I was bored by it, and it took me a long time to get into it. However, with being determined to finish the book, I soon began to enjoy it and looked forward to my nightly reading sessions. What gripped me to the story wasn’t the plot it was the characters. I found them so life-like and interesting that I just had to find out what happened to them. If you have read the Harry Potter books, you will know that the one thing J. K. Rowling can do is make you care about the characters. It was interesting to see how seemingly normal characters can, in fact, catch your attention. It showed that even the person who appears boring can have an exciting, possibly deadly, secret. As a writer, this is something that got me thinking. She took a normal village, with normal people, and still created something magical, and by the end of the story I was overwhelmed with emotion. It really was a heart-warming story.

I’m not going to say any more about the story, don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t read it, but what I learned from reading the Casual Vacancy is that it is important that you create 3D characters. If you can get your readers to care about your characters, you can be forgiven for a less than exciting plot. Also, characters don’t have to be exciting on the outside as long as they have something more on the inside.

That’s it for today, but I’ll be back, and don’t forget to read my self-doubt fighting posts on The Horror Tree website.

Keep writing, folks!

My latest, The Horror Tree, posts can be found at the links below.

http://horrortree.com/setting-self-doubt-on-fire-writing-group-fears/

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