Book: Carry On

By: Rainbow Rowell

Published: 2015

By: Macmillan Children’s books

Goodreads description: Simon Snow just wants to relax and savor his last year at the Watford School of Magicks, but no one will let him. His girlfriend broke up with him, his best friend is a pest, and his mentor keeps trying to hide him away in the mountains where maybe he’ll be safe. Simon can’t even enjoy the fact that his roommate and longtime nemesis is missing, because he can’t stop worrying about the evil git. Plus there are ghosts. And vampires. And actual evil things trying to shut Simon down. When you’re the most powerful magician the world has ever known, you never get to relax and savor anything.
Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama. It has just as much kissing and talking as you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell story — but far, far more monsters.

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Purchase on Amazon UK: Link

Rating: ☽☽☽☽☽/5

Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One that has ever been chosen. So how did he end up here, at Watford? The Mage’s Heir? Why was he chosen?

Simon is a magician, apparently the greatest one that has ever lived, but he can’t even cast a spell. He is hopeless, and it doesn’t help that his girlfriend has just left him, there’s a magic eating monster walking around with his face, and his enemy – roomate – hasn’t even bothered showing up this year.

“I can’t just turn it on,” I said.
“Try.
“I can’t, damn it.” I was waving my sword around – I was pretty good with a sword already at 15 – but the chimera wasn’t corporal. (Which is my rough luck, pretty much always. As soon as you start carrying a sword, all your enemies turn out mist and gossamer.)
“Close your eyes and light a match,” Baz told me. We were trying to hide behind a rock. Baz was casting spells one after another; he was practically singing them.
“What?”
“That’s what my mother used to say,” he said. “Light a match inside your heart, then blow on the tinder.”
It’s always fire with Baz. I can’t believe he hasn’t incinerated me yet. Or burned me at the stake.

Carry On is one of those books that gets under your skin and will never leave. It is amazing. It is freaking magical.

And yes, that was a cheesy joke, I know, but if you have read this book, you will understand why I made it.

Simon and Baz…they’re…indescribable. Incredible. All the big words in the world put together.

This book was the first I’ve ever read about magic. And probably not the last, but maybe the one that’ll mean the most to me.

There are so many things I could say about this book, the author and the way it’s written. But I honestly don’t think the words would come out the right way, in the right order. And even if they did, they would never, ever do it justice.

This book is beyond anything I can write, ironically. Rainbow Rowell managed to use our measly 26 letters, to write this book. But using them to describe what she wrote…is impossible. This book IS the sun. The center of my universe right now, and it feels like all of the light is coming from those pages, instead of a ball of fire.

This book, it makes everything feel okay again. It reminds you that there is good – and love – in the world, wherever you go.

It is pure beauty, in ever sense of the word.

And what, exactly, could be better than that?

-Beth