Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Love (Play With My Hair, #1) by Douglas R.

23570503
This review was written by: B
Received: Free E-book from the author
Publication Date of Book: December 2014
Pages: 192
Stars: 4.5/5


Myla is not like everyone else.  For one, she doesn't live on Earth, she's from Pandor, and secondly, she's a Lebra.  For Myla, yellow means warmth, but the color purple means death.  Being a Lebra is extremely important.  Her prestige leads to many things such as her having to possibly fight for her life!  She can't even see her family, including her little brother whom she has never met in person.  Then there is the fact that she can't have a relationship with anyone of the male species.  All of these things are distractions for her.  Distractions interfere with her training and her focus.  If she loses focus, she may die.  However, these rules do not make or break her.  She still finds ways to communicate on rare occasions with her family, and she might have even found herself a boyfriend!  You see, there's this big evil out in space, almost like a brain, that needs someone like Myla to inhabit so that it can become unstoppable.  Myla has gifts, and she's growing into them everyday.  Perhaps these powers are what led to her finding Blake.

One night, asleep in her bed, Myla dreams of a boy unlike any she has known.  His name's Blake, and he can't be real.  However, they both insist that they are in each others' dreams.  Who's real and who's not?  To settle this once and for all, the two give each other something of their own that have an almost personal value to them.  Myla is given Blake's iPod Touch.  When she wakes up, it's sitting there in her hands.  Now, that's pretty insane!  Falling asleep the next night, they meet again.  Can a relationship like this be possible, star crossed lovers even?  Blake's from Alaska, all the way on Earth while Myla's from Pandor.  It can't happen, but love can do strange things to a person.  If Myla hopes to have a relationship, she must save herself and him at the same time.

Love was a surprisingly captivating read!  I fell into it much harder than I thought I would.  A major reason for this was due to how much music played a part into this book.  Music is a huge part of my life and so many others.  It can influence your mood, sway you to feel a certain way, change the tone, and make emotions surface that you weren't even expecting.  I feel like this book demonstrated these concepts perfectly.  Music is freedom to be whoever you want to be whenever you want to be it.  It's a connection that links us all.  The fact that Blake cared so deeply about music and that Myla changes her outlook on her life, even if it's only to a certain extent due to her first experience with music, is quite powerful.

The relationship between Myla and Blake was also interesting to see unfold.  While she is certain of her feelings towards him, he is more hesitant to recognize what is going on inside of him.  However, the top two most favorite relationships that I read about was between Myla and her trainer Rhiannon along with the friendship between Blake and one of his best friends Sherri.  Each group showed true and tangible emotions towards each other to the point where I didn't feel like I was just reading a book.  They were earnest, and I was really jealous of what they had!  It was an intimacy that wasn't love but rather a desire to make each other happy and to protect what they had, and this was definitely the best part of Love.

Douglas R also wrote about the  issue of wanting to be yourself instead of hiding behind closed doors or trying to please everyone.  Myla was like a caged bird, as noted in the book.  The metaphors with this were really beautiful, and how her character is currently breaking free is wonderfully challenged.  The struggle to shine her true colors is written with perfection and brought to light something that I feel a lot of people struggle with, including myself.

The only reason that I gave it 4.5 stars was because at a couple of scenes, I felt like the wording was slightly awkward.  (For instance, Myla liked to call Blake "Baby" quite a bit more than I thought she would.  I didn't really have a problem with this too much, but maybe that's just me.)  Also, it seemed like it was really easy for Blake to convince his two best friends of this girl in his dreams and how she was real.  However, I believe that the closeness demonstrated between Blake, Sherri, and Matty made up for this because it made me feel like they could tell each other anything.

Overall, I definitely recommend that you give this book a shot.  I really want to read the next one in the series!          

If you enjoyed this book you may also like:
23298880    12275873    15945897