Book Review: Revolution

TITLE: Revolution
AUTHOR: Jennifer Donnelly
PUBLISHED: 2010
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: Historical fiction, drama
PREMISE: While dealing with the death of her brother a girl finds a diary dating back to the french revolution...
MY REVIEW: Personally, I liked this book a lot better then the rather over-praised Northern Light. But that is just me. Both books have really good writing in them, it's just that Revolution was ten times more interesting to me then Northern Light. It also was free of the obvious messages that weren't terribly subtle in NL. Now I will say some may find this boring because there's very little romance, sometimes Andi's angsting got annoying (but she got better at least), and occasionally the book was slow so this is not your usual YA book. I also found the ending chaotic and hard to buy but at least it was satisfying.
But on the whole this book is really good. I found the history stuff really interesting because she goes into a part of the french revolution most people don't go into: the aftermath. It was nice to see fully fleshed out characters for a change (Vijay was my favorite) and it was nice to see that rarety of plot points: ACTUAL character growth. It does exist! It was also nice seeing an author do actual research beyond a google search.
Again not a perfect book but defenitely an interesting one. I look forward to whatever Donnelly writes in the future. I would love see her tackle Victorian England for instance.
WHO SHOULD READ: fans of Northern Light, history buffs
MY RATING: Four out of Five diary keys