Snag So Shelly Presented By Ty Roth Conveyed As Interactive EBook

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so if I had known this the book wouldn't have seemed so crazy to me! "If Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley were living adolescents today, how would their literary talents, notorious personas and known fates collide"

I was warned that the story might squick me out.
It did. This is most definitely for the older teens, if for teens at all, There's death, drugs, sex, rape, incest, abortion and a variety of other shadowy things gonig on,


To truly appreciate the book, you need to know about the lives of these people, There is a quite a bit of historical fact mixed in with the fiction, Go read about them before you read this, you'll appreciate it more,


As for the story, here's what we have:


Shelly goes by her last name, her mom died, her dad behaved poorly then got remarried, they're wealthy, she's radical and writes great stories while she pines for Gordon Byron who is her neighbor and best friend.



Gordon Byron rich spoiled kid, first novel published in eighth grade, full of himself, athletic, club foot, debauched behavior with women in general maybe men and with relatives in particular, divorced parents, some sexual abuse possible in younger years.



John Keats poor, parents died, brother dying, short and skinny, writes poetry, fear of death, narrator of story,


It's worth reading, just take your time and soak it all up, So I'm just gonna get this out of the way right now, This entire book felt familiar to me because of a song by a band called Better than Ezra entitled "A Lifetime, " Lyrics go like this:

Allie woke

upAM
Graduation day,
Got into a car,
And crashed along the way,

When we arrived late to the wake,
Stole the urn while they
Looked away,
And drove to the beach
'Cause I knew you'd want it
That way.


And you were standing
On the hood of the car
Singing out loud
When the sun came up,

And I know I wasn't right,
But it felt so good,
And your mother didn't mind,
Like I thought she would,
And that REM song was playing
In my mind,
And three and a half minutes
Felt like a lifetime

It felt like a lifetime

And you move like water
I could drown in you.

And I fell so deep once,
Till you pulled me through

You would tell me
"No one is allowed to be so proud
They never reach out
When they're giving up.
"

And I know I wasn't right,
But it felt so good,
And your mother didn't mind,
Like I thought she would,
And that REM song was playing
In my mind,
And three and a half minutes
Felt like a lifetime

Are you sitting in the lights
Or combing your hair again,
And talking in rhymes
Are you sitting in the lights

When I got home, heard the phone,
Your parents had arrived.

And your dad set his jaw
Your mom just smiled and sighed,

But they left soon
And I went to my room,
Played that disc that you'd given me,
And I shut my eyes
Swear I could hear the sea,

When we were standing
On the hood of your car
Singing out loud when the sun came up,

And I know I wasn't right,
But it felt so good,
And your mother didn't mind,
Like I thought she would,
And that REM song was playing
In my mind,
And three and a half minutes,
Three and a half minutes,

Felt like a lifetime,

So, this book isn't a complete portrait of those lyrics but the basic storyline is rather similar, I love this author because when I looked in the acknowledgements he credited Better than Ezra and REM as inspiration for the book, Ty Roth is just that cool! So, this book is a modernization of the relationship between John Keats, Mary/Percy Shelly who has been condensed into one character, Michelle 'Shelly' Shelley and George Gordon Byron.
At the beginning of the novel which is narrated by Keats we first meet Keats and Byron after Shelly has committed suicide and they are attempting to steal her ashes to carry out her final wish.
Shelly wanted her ashes spread on the beach of an island where she used to play as a kid, with an REM song playing on her boombox while they did it.
Keats and Byron were only connected through Shelly and were NOT friends on their own, Keats is poor, Byron is rich, Keats is conservative and Byron is extremely debaucherous, If they weren't doing this for Shelly they'd have no reason to hang out at all, As the novel progresses we find out a lot of Byron and Shelly's backstory because it seems that she told Keats almost everything that ever happened to them he was a confidante.
Further into the book you find out that there was one very important thing that she DID NOT tell Keats, This book is all about coming to terms with death and the consequences of living the way they have chosen to live, I really liked this book and it was extremely well written, I admire that the author was able to take such firmly established reallife literary personalities and make them modern in a believable way, I gave this four because at times I felt majorly detached from the characters and unable to care for them I'm unsure if that was because of Keats' narration or because of the way they were written.
I would recommend this to anyone that loves literature or a good mystery/journey book,

I had to cast this one, so here it goes:

Nina Dobrev as Michelle 'Shelly' Shelley


Jeremy Sumpter as George 'Gordon' Byron


Brendan Robinson as John Keats


Nicolas Cage as Mr.
Shelley mainly cause I don't like him!


Victoria Principal as Catherine Byron Gordon's Mother


Evan Rachel Wood as Augusta Byron Gordon's Sister


Michelle Pfeiffer as Mary Jane Clairmont Shelley Shelly's Stepmother


Camilla Belle as Claire Clairmont


Hayley Hasselhoff as Tammy Jo "Hogg"


Cody Gomes as Neolin


Vanessa Hudgens as Zoe
image error This was one book I was very interested in reading.
I adore classic novels, and I have read some Byron, Keats, and both the Shelleys the Shelly in the novel is based on both Mary and Percy, So when I heard about the concept and the idea of So Shelly I was immediatly hooked, I checked out the book from my local library, read some promotional things from the publisher Random House on the novel, and scoured around Ty Roth's website, I put it at the top of my toread list and stayed up until eleven thirty reading the book,


So what did I think Though I had a few complaints and concerns, I found So Shelly to be a novel that was pretty darn good.



The story transposes the lives of Keats, Byron, and Mary and Percy Shelley both combined into one character the Shelly of the title and puts them into modern day.
Many of the characters and events remain, as the author explains in a note, and most of the changes were only to make the characters seem more modern and not, well,thcentury writers.



John Keats, our narrator, has stayed away from Gordon Byron his entire high school career, Gordon is brave, crooning, and all the women love him, Keats finds him terrifying and prefers to stay home and write, The two share one connection, though: both being friends with Michelle "Shelly" Shelley, Shelly has recently drowned in a sailboat accident, and the two recconect at her funeral, Gordon hatches a plan to steal her ashes, and with the container in hand they head towards the lake where Shelly drowned, As they drive, the two remember their memories of each other and Shelly and try to decide what led her to drown herself,


The book isn't about Shelly, though, It's about Gordon. At leastof the book is about him, And everything about him is his sexual conquests, Roth heaps on conquest after conquests, telling of Gordon's many affairs, infatuations with girls, and more, Some of it seems a bit unrealistic his writing a YA vampire novel as a jab to the current YA industry and the fact that Gordon was on a Greek terrorist squad but I had one major concern with the focus on him.
It essentially was the same sexual situation over and over, He met a girl, seduced her, they had sex, and then the girl/teacher/friend was either suspended from school, fired, or dumped as quickly as her relationship with Gordon ignited.
It was basically the same sexual conquest in every chapter, only with a different setting and time the book jumps from Gordon and Shelly's childhood until their senior year in high school.
He was an interesting character, but I think the author could have shown his many sexual conquests which were true to life of the real Lord Byron in different ways.



Keats is barely in the story, He narrates and explains things, adding in small little quirks that the readers will smirk at, He "writes" the story as it is explained in the prologue, but other than that is barely in the story, Most of the scenes are about Shelly, Gordon, and Gordon's many women, He barely has a purpose in the story other than to tell it, and his resource for getting the information is contrived, He supposedly got the information from a drunk Shelly over ten hours! and the event is mentioned once in the story and then dropped, like the author didn't care.
He could have probably been dropped from the story and not much would have changed, or the author could have used third person instead,


I liked the historical details behind the book, and after you read the author's note the events seem much better, The writing is quite fluid and goregous, and I rarely see books about classic novelists in YA, I think that Roth has a chance to improve and when he publishes his next novel I'll be interested in reading it, It might not be soon, though he posted on his blog that he had sent a draft to Random House and they had rejected it,


So some flaws, but a pretty interesting romp through the Romantic Era, with quite a few ties with Romanticism that will remain with readers, I'd recommend it more for history lovers people less interested in history may get bored, specifically those that know little about Romantic poets I reccommend reading the author's note first if you don't know much about the Shelleys, Keats, and Byron.

It's hard to review SO SHELLY without using expletives, Because it's that effing good, But I'm going to try, Yes, it's a reimagining of the lives of the major romantic poets, Byron, Keats and a mishmash of Shelleys, Sometimes when reading it something happens and you think, "ooh! I wonder if that's historically accurate, " It's fascinating, and the author explains the majority in an equally interesting afterword,

But that's not the thing about this book, Don't care about the romantic poets Doesn't matter, This book is beautiful. It's tragic, melancholy, hole in your soul stuff, So intensely atmospheric, and the great lake hovers constantly in the background, Looking to discuss setting as character Check out Lake Erie in So Shelly,

Love, death, obsession and flawed people are the order of the day, wrapped up in a layered, literary package, It took me forever to finish this book, because Keats dragged me along with my heels dug in all the way, You see the end from the beginning and I just didn't want to get there, .