Customer Reviews

Gothic Lolita: A Mystical Thriller

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

So, okay, I hate giving bad reviews so I am really trying hard to find a way to sugarcoat this one.

I think what the author was going for was to express this emotion of longing... longing for what? I guess... a soulmate? A friend that knows you so well that the two of you are almost like the same person?

Here is a quote from the first page of the book (which is written in FIRST PERSON PRESENT TENSE):

"do you ever wish you had someone (not the sky someone, but a real person) who could share in your reality?
there would be nowhere you couldn't go, down to the details of your last strange dream. you'd be in this game together, just you and the other person creating the entire world."

(Also, there are no capitalizations in the entire book...)

So the two main characters, Miya and Chelsea find each other through livejournal.com... oops I mean girlbloggers.com (which just happens to be the author's webpage.) Chelsea thinks Gothic Lolitas are awesome and Miya happens to be one (or pretends to be one on the internet anyways...)
But it doesn't really matter she's from Japan desu!!! So they bond... sort of... they never actually speak to each other they just lurk each others journals... And they both love this manga/comic book called Sailor Moon... oops I mean Shounen Rainbow Warriors.

AAAANYWAY....

the first several chapters are pretty incomprehensible it's almost like reading gibberish. you finally get the sense that you are reading the thoughts of two girls, Chelsea, a 15 year old half-Japanese girl from Los Angeles and Miya, a 15 year old girl from Japan. problem is, both girls write exactly the same way so that sometimes you have to keep going back just to make sure you're reading Miya or Chelsea. The writing is so disjointed that I really had trouble figuring out what was going on and even more trouble caring. (I am 29 years old, read a lot and have been to law school so I like to think I'm not an idiot, maybe I'm wrong.)

It seemed to me like Miya's father dumped Miya and her little brother in an orphanage and then died, I couldn't figure out whether the death scene happened in the orphanage or not. Then there was this creepy American woman living at the orphanage slobbering over all the little Japanese babies and there was this ominous tension like OH NO! DON'T LET HER TAKE AWAY MIYA'S KID BROTHER!! and then... you realize what's gonna happen at the end of the book even though you're only a few chapters in and you just cringe and go 'No way, it can't really be that obvious... can it?'

On the other side, Chelsea's whole thing was *~*~*~something happened to my brother 3 years ago and i cant tell you about it because this is a mystical thriller so i have to keep mentioning it and not telling you about it for the whole entire book...oh yeah and...elephant.~*~*~*

AND THEN!!!!

I'm not going to spoiler the ending. I just want to say how disappointed I was. Dakota Lane's other books have really high ratings and though I've never read them I expected this book to be good. I like looking at pictures of Gothic Lolita girls on the internet sometimes and I was really expecting this to be a book about them not some incomprehensible emo whinings of a grown woman trying to emulate the spirit of 15 year old girls.

She researched for three years but the book feels like she has never been to Japan. I really feel like she just sat in front of her computer and stared at pictures for 3 years.

Dakota Lane continues to create characters that draw her audiences into their dark and poignant worlds with awe and respect for their braveness in the face of tragic loss in her newest young adult novel Gothic Lolita. Understanding how the lives of the two young protagonists connect keeps the reader's suspense, and in Lane's poetic writing, the experience is haunting and magical. As a New York City public school teacher, I would recommend use of this work for literacy curriculum, in particular for multicultural literature, as this type is sorely underrepresented.

This is a story about two young American Japanese girls, one lives in Los Angeles, the other in Tokyo. They both blog and they read each others words, but they don't post on each other's blogs. Neither girl knows the other is reading her stuff. Both girls love the same Manga (Japanese type serialized comic novel) and they're both into the Gothic Lolita fashion, though this book isn't about that.

Miya lives in an orphanage with her little brother and she is worried they might be separated. Chelsea's brother went missing three years ago and she stopped blogging and Miya misses reading her words. She had a twin who died in utero and her grandmother told her her soul was immediately born into someone else. Chelsea?

There wasn't a lot of suspense for me in this dreamy like story, but I enjoyed it very much. This is a short novel, very easily read in one sitting. I did it with two glasses of chardonnay and soft music in the background and I felt pretty darned good afterwards. The writing is in the style that some people blog and e-mail in (no caps), but that wasn't hard to get used to as Ms. Lane writes with a sincere and fresh voice.

Gothic Lolita is a very quick read, and I found it very intriguing. The story is told in an interesting style with the alternating narratives. I have to admit,though, that the choppy fragmented paragraphs and the numerous grammatical errors drove me crazy. I wasn't particularly moved by the story, and I didn't find it at all thrilling. However, I am not in the target audience for this book.

My teen was pleasantly surprised to receive this. A novel about friendship. Friends who met each other through blogging. Both love gothic lolitas and both has never met each other in person. Has pictures in it that are very eye catching and not your usual drawings. A very good read she says and has already given it to another friend who loved it also.

To say I enjoyed this book seems a little dark to me - the whole concept of teen angst and the darkness that surrounds some teens is explored in an innovative way in this book by Dakota Lane.

Blogs are a huge part of our online world today and this book looks at the random yet meaningful attraction of two bloggers - thousands of miles and cultures away from each other.

It really hurt to see the depth of the darkness these girls try to work out through their writing - in my day we journaled and kept it private! But I guess with all the things teens deal with today and the inablility of working parents to stay in touch - it truly does take a village.

These girls find that with all their difference they are connected.

TWO GIRLS, THOUSANDS OF MILES APART.

Chelsea lives in Los Angeles; Miya lives in Tokyo. Other than the fact they're both half Japanese and obsessed with dressing like Gothic Lolitas, they would seem to have nothing in common. Or do they?

THE BLOG THAT WENT AWAY.

They got to know each other through their blogs. But three years ago something happened to Chelsea, an event so terrible that she stopped writing altogether. Miya's been checking Chelsea's blog ever since, to see if she's come back, but she never has. Until today.

A LIFE AND DEATH CONNECTION.

Today is the day Chelsea finally goes back online and tells Miya everything. And today is the day that Miya's life could change forever because of it. Like a Japanese manga come to life, Gothic Lolita is a mythic fairy tale about love, death, and rebirth...and the courage it takes to reach out to another soul.

Gothic Lolita is one of those novels, one that speaks to the reader and has a message, but one that I really disliked reading.

I really am not a fan of free verse, and that's exactly what this book was--with no capitalization whatsoever, which REALLY drove me crazy. If you're like me and are easily distracted by lack of capitalization (my inner-editor was throwing chairs against the walls of my brain) then I suggest not reading this book.

I was just generally confused with this book, and not in the great "Harry Potter" confused way. It also took forever for the book to go anywhere, and even when the plot did move, it only moved an inch and then stopped, as if it were too tired to get up and keep going.

Also, I'm really not too keen on the cover photograph. That angle is really unflattering, and it makes the model look very... un-modely.

One aspect that I did like was the photography in between the narrative parts. The photos gave perspective to the story, and brought to life the setting.


Book Details:
Hardcover
194 Pages

I enjoyed the book as much as an adult could enjoy a book intended to be read by teens. I shared the book with a teen girl who read it but said it was a little too confusing for her. I could see where that would happen, especially because at times I had a hard time keeping the characters straight, at least through the first chapters.

I think a certain type of reader will really enjoy this, but others might be put off by the back-and-forth approach.

This book attempts to be deep and dark, artsy and lyrical and succeeds to an extent. I can appreciate that but I think better books have been written in the same vein - The Tracey Fragments comes to mind.

I would think that the novel's targeted audience - teenagers - will find it appealing. It contains plenty of drama and mystery. The story centers on two teenagers Miysa (Japan) and Chelsea (USA) who might be spiritual sisters. Chelsea's grandmother tells her that she had a twin sister that died while her mother was still pregnant and a mystical connection is suggested between the two girls.

The storyline of Miysa and her autistic (?) little baby brother being put in an orphanage by her father is heartfelt and the most fascinating although unrealistic at times. How could the orphanage be so austere yet allow her to have online access 24/7 to form a bond with another girl halfway around the world? Still, this character was the most convincing for me and I felt her struggle.

Chelsea lives in California and nothing is right since her little brother went missing. This is what triggers the break from her internet relationship with Miysa. What exactly happened? This is the crux of the plot which is parsed out in non-sequitors. I thought the style used by the author made it hard to connect.

I just got back from Japan and while there I saw a lot of very interesting clothes on the young people there, especially in the Harajuku district. The Lolis, Lolitas, both Gothic and not were very unusual and very young. A Lolita is a girl dressed in a little girl's white clothes, almost like a little girl's wedding dress or maybe a communion dress with frills. Make the dress black, the makeup too and you have a Gothic Lolita. Okay, I'm older, but that was my impression.

And that's what I thought this book was going to be about, but it wasn't really. Oh it was about a couple young girls who liked the Gothic Lolita subculture, but mostly it was about two girls who were very similar, who had similar lives, but who lived very far apart, one in America, one in Japan.

Both girls blog on a site for girl bloggers and they read each others blogs and when one stops, the other worries about her. It's been three years, then the girl who stopped blogging starts up again and thus begins a dark and uplifting tale about these two young girls and the events that have intruded on their lives. This is, to say the least, a very interesting book, different, for me at least, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, I did, very much. Sometimes different is good, it is here.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene