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When You Were Mine by Rebecca Serle (view source)
Revision as of 10:33, 24 March 2012
, 10:33, 24 March 2012no edit summary
I was really looking forward to reading ''When You Were Mine'' - I loved the Shakespearan idea, there's been a deal of pre-publication interest and movie rights have already been sold, and although it's a debut novel, the author has a longstanding involvement in YA fiction. Everything looked good and so it is with crashing disappointment I report that I really didn't like this book.
Serle doesn't make any more than a very superficial use of the play - Rob and Juliet fall in love but their relationship is doomed from the get-go. That's it, really. Even the very basic idea of Rosaline that Shakespeare gives us - she rejects Romeo, not the other way around - isn't taken up. Juliet spends most of the book as a cardboard cut-out of an evil bitch who's only good for slut-shaming (and slut-shaming ''really'' sets my teeth on edge). There isn't any real discussion of the main themes of the play beyond young love (and perhaps a bit of chance). And I didn't like the main characters - Rosaline and her friends are vapid, boy-and-fashion-obsessed, and Serle spends endless pages describing their success at manipulating the high school pecking order. Best friend Charlie's main virtue is presented as her sharp-elbowed ability to get herself to the front of the popularity schoolqueue. Sigh.
It's not that all this isn't credible or that readers won't immediately recognise and identity with the emotional landscape inhabited by Rosaline and her friends - they will. It's just that ''When You Were Mine'' is a fairly flimsy high school romance with some Shakesperean window dressing, not an interesting take on a beloved and classic play.