Joined in 2023 
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63 About this deal
Both Tori's personal blog and the Solitaire blog exist in real life (the Solitaire blog under a different name than the original however, as "solitaire.co.uk" is taken by people who just love the card game). THIS WINTER is a story about mental illness that includes very frank and frequent discussions of mental illness. Please read safely and responsibly. i’ve now read everything alice has released and i think it’s safe to say i’ll read anything she writes, but that doesn’t mean her books are all really that great imo aaanyway never mind the strange plot points where people keep interacting with tori and choosing to hang out with her or asking her to do stuff for them even though she treats everyone like utter trash (and no, depression and self-hatred isn’t an excuse to be a judgmental asshole to everyone else)
This character Lucas gets introduced and he and Tori used to be best friends. So he starts talking about how much she's changed since he last knew her, and she decides to be all snappy and bitchy to him, just because. In fact, she seems pretty snappy to him throughout the whole book (that I read). But poor Lucas was never anything but nice. And my candid answer is: Yes and no. I think you just can’t compare it to any of her other works because for one thing it’s her debut novel and for another it’s an entirely different writing style. At least for me it is, because it’s extremely immersive and you see the world through Tori’s perspective and POV. Of course you could argue that you do that with every book and MC you read about but I think this time it was different. You saw the darkness with Tori’s eyes and yes, this is unpleasant, it doesn’t make you happy, it drags you down; it makes it a chore to get through the book and it’s exactly the reason why I think “Solitaire” is brilliant in its own way. I’m a sanguine person, but I appreciated to get a different glimpse at the world and it’s always good to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. A little bit of sensitivity never hurt anyone. With this in mind: Four stars. No more and no less. No, but you were always dreaming up all these imaginary games. Like our Pokémon battles. Or the secret base you made out of the cornered-off section of the playground."Solitaire, the name of a mysterious group of anonymous pranksters, has taken over Harvey Greene Grammar School, the school known locally as "Higgs." Higgs is home to sixth formers Tori Spring, Michael Holden and Lucas Ryan. One by one, members of Solitaire continue to play pranks on the school. Tori is left with these pranks and the many other mysteries that follow: Michael suggests Solitaire is talking to her in some way. Why is Lucas avoiding me? Is Michael in love with me? So before Solitaire plays their biggest ever prank, Tori wants to know who's behind it. It was at that point that I realized: I love books! Why should I waste my time reading about a bitter bitch who hates them?
The acclaimed debut novel by Alice Oseman, author of the YA Book Prize 2021 Loveless. Solitaire presents the characters who inspired the popular webcomic and graphic novel series Heartstopper, one of Netflix's leading series today. I first heard about Solitaire on Tumblr. I've been following Alice Oseman ever since and I desperately wanted to read her novel. So when I finally, finally! found it at the library I think I maybe made some loud joyful sound and hugged it...yeah. To write a review about “Solitaire” turns out to be more difficult than I thought it would be. Mostly because I still don’t know where I stand with the book or rather on which side I came out of? About half of the people who read it loved it and the other half seems to dislike it pretty strongly. There rarely seems to be anything in between and I totally get why the opinions about this book are so varied. It’s not an easy book to like, because Tori Spring is not your typical MC. And I don’t even mean that she’s an anti-hero, she’s just not someone you’d like to be friends with and her life and the people she surrounds herself with are all pretty bland and uncongenial. My name is Tori Spring. I love to sleep and blog. Last year — first with Charlie and before I had to deal with the harsh reality of A-levels and college questions and the fact that I actually have to start talking to people one day — I had friends. Things were very different I think, but it's all over now.Solitaire is a story about mental illness told through an unreliable narrator. The presentation of mental illness in this story is sometimes sensationalised, underexplained, and may be harmful to readers who have experienced mental illness. Please read safely and responsibly. Solitaire is Alice Oseman's debut novel, and as such the place I decided to begin with her full length works. (I have already read some of her Heartstopper webcomic, but none of her books) I had heard pretty mediocre things about this one compared to some of her others, so decided it would be a good place to start, as to gently increase my expectations and not be too disappointed.
But books–they’re different. When you watch a film, you’re sort of an outsider looking in. With a book–you’re right there. You are inside. You are the main character.”
having tori hate on this particular girl the whole time for no real reason other than tori’s super judgmental and then revealing her be the antagonist really just ain’t the message we want to be sending I know this is a STUPID ASS thing to be annoyed about, but I couldn't get it to stop nagging me. That kind of stuff bugs me... #nerd. But I don't think I've ever read a modern YA contemporary that hit me quite like Solitaire did. See, at the risk of getting too personal, I'm not afraid of dying. Never have been. But I am afraid of dying without doing anything worthwhile in my life. I mean living as a sort of passive observer in the world and never doing a single goddamn thing to change it. Tori never ever smiles. She doesn't find joy in anything. She hates everything. But when she talks to Michael she smiles.
I find one song that I really love and then I listen to it about twenty billion times until I hate it and have ruined it for myself.All the things that happen in the book are what lead to the ending. No matter if it’s the sudden appearance of Michael Holden and Lucas Ryan or the mystery about Solitaire that runs through the entire book like a golden thread. No matter if it’s Tori’s complicated relationship with her mother and friends or her closeness to Charlie and the things she had to witness. They all come together in the end and they collide. I guess you could say all those things and especially Michael Holden and Solitaire work as some sort of catalyst that inevitably leads us to the ending of the story. Just like a musical crescendo. It builds and builds until it finally explodes. Ocr tesseract 5.2.0-1-gc42a Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9887 Ocr_module_version 0.0.18 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-2000099 Openlibrary_edition I really wanted to write a very detailed, as objective as possible of a review of this but honestly I'm realizing I just can't. I thought this book was super problematic so I'm just gonna write my thoughts as they come to me. Random thought, but at the moment I'm not sure if I want a haircut like Tori's because of her or is quarantine simply getting to me (again. I already got side bangs and bleached half of my hair this year, I don't need another risky decision).
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