Name: Catherine
ISBN: 9780316196925

April Lindner

In this retelling of "Wuthering Heights," Catherine explains how she fell in love with a brooding musician and left her family to return to him, and her daughter describes searching for her mother many years later.

Catherine

Monicap

Having read, what, five books since I read this one, I figure it’s time to review it before I forget what happened.

Plot: 4.5/5
This book runs along two timelines, one timeline narrated by Catherine as a teenager falling in love with Hence (Heathcliff) and such. The other timeline is narrated by Chelsea, Catherine’s daughter, who is searching for her. Honestly, I liked what was happening in Chelsea’s timeline better. There was mystery AND a little romance. Catherine’s timeline was JUST the romance, and Catherine’s timeline was capitalized on more than Chelsea’s.
This IS a retelling of Wuthering Heights. When I tired to read Wuthering Heights, I got a total of 84 pages in (there being 400 something pages in my copy). I FOUGHT to get page 83. Wuthering Heights was just not doing it for me. Whilst reading this book, I had a discussion with friend of mine (Who had read Wuthering Heights in it’s entirety; I asked her to give me a synopsis of the story) and we got to talking about why I didn’t finish WH, and I chalked up to the narration of WH. Who was the Narrator? A neighbor. Did the neighbor play any role in what happened in WH? No. SO I got bored and stopped. Nothing was ACTIVELY happening, it was just the neighbor HEARING about what happened form several different people. 
Anyways, I DID read some of WH, and there was scene in this book, that I recognized straight off from WH, and that was the ghost-at-the-window scene. Man, that sent chills down my spine. 

Characters: 4/5
Hence: Was SOOO Heathcliff. There’s no other descriptor that applies.
Catherine: Mmm. Don’t really remember what I’d intended to say about her.
Quentin: Oh, my, whoa. Wow. Bipolar, dude?
Chelsea: WAS the main character, I don’t care if The book is titled Catherine, or that Catherine has more chapters than she does, Chelsea was the Main Character. Chelsea was DOING things She went out and SEARCHED and TALKED to people and DID stuff and was ACTIVE, Catherine just let shit happen to her.
Cooper: I think we have a winner. I love this little bundle of male. He’s more believable as a person then Hence, though Hence was exactly what he was supposed to be. If Hence had been different, I’d have been disappointed in this book.
It just goes to show, YOU CAN’T PLEASE ME.

Romance: 2.5/5
Mkay, so we have Catherine-and-Hence. Their Romance was the WHOLE point. I didn’t really like it. It seemed very wrong at points, and then it went and had a sort of typical rocker-boy-romance ending. WTF?
I really liked Chelsea and Cooper’s dynamic better, but that wasn’t capitalized on! We barely saw it!

Overall Grade: 11/15

I liked this. It was Wuthering Heights, but in a more modern-reader-friendly way.

Maura

When I read this I couldn’t put it down. I was so hooked and ended up reading bits and pieces to my campers and they got invested in the story as well.