Wuthering Hearts Blog Tour: Book Review & A Guest Post from Author Kay Woodward on her love for Wuthering Heights.

Product details:
Publisher: Andersen Press.
Release date: July 7th 2011.
Paperback, 224 pages.
Rating: 3½ out of 5.
Ages: 12+
Source: Received from publisher for review.

Passion, the Yorkshire moors, a wild and handsome stranger . . . sound familiar?

When Robert arrives in town with his dark good looks and mysterious background, Emily has a huge crush! It’s almost enough to take her mind off this year’s school play . . . miserable, wailing Wuthering Heights.

But Robert is no prince, with his black moods and fierce temper. The beautiful untamed moors would be the perfect backdrop to their fiery romance, if only Emily could work it out.

 A very fun read that will appeal to younger teenagers, Kay Woodward’s Wuthering Hearts tells the story of Emily, an outspoken and feisty girl who is determined to land the lead role of Cathy in her school play, an adaptation of Emily Bronte’s classic Wuthering Heights.  She also hopes that the new boy at school, the brooding and mysterious, Robert, who she has a major crush on, will play Heathcliff to her Cathy. But the course of true love never did run smooth, and Emily has to battle mean girls and moody boys in her quest to win Robert’s heart.

In this modern take on Bronte’s classic, Woodward employs certain characters and settings from Wuthering Heights and gives them a modern spin.  The wild setting of the Yorkshire moors is present, as is the character of Heathcliff in the guise of Robert, a nomadic boy who is moody, sullen and angry.  When Emily’s father takes pity on his plight, and welcomes him into their home, life suddenly gets a whole lot more interesting for Emily, as she now has the object of her affections right within her reach. As she begins to fall for Robert, Emily also begins to lose herself in the story of Wuthering Heights, and the book that she had initially dismissed as being dark and depressing soon starts to capture her heart.

Kay Woodward’s modern interpretation of Brontë’s classic, while offering a pretty straightforward storyline, is quirky and humorous and will, I’m sure, inspire many younger readers to reconsider their views on Wuthering Heights, which is not, as Emily at first describes it ‘dark and depressing’ but is instead as she comes to learn the ‘Best Book Ever!’

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As part of the Wuthering Hearts blog tour, author Kay Woodward has stopped by to talk about her love for Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.

Forget Twilight, this is the original dark romance.

In Heathcliff, Emily Brontë created the most unlikeable and fabulous hero EVER. There are times I want to shake some sense into him (and maybe point him in the direction of a bath and a comb and a nineteenth-century branch of Top Man) and others when I want to persuade Heathcliff that if he'd only forget Cathy, then a candlelit dinner with me would be a much better option. But really, he's perfect as he is. Dark, brooding, miserable, stormy, mean and, well, gorgeous.

Spoilt, wild, passionate Cathy loves Heathcliff dearly, but knows that he can't give her what she wants. She's got her head screwed on when it comes to personal finance, but living happily ever after? Not so much.

  

And there's Wuthering Heights itself – the house on the moors originally owned by the Earnshaws. In chapter one, the house is cold and unwelcoming, like Heathcliff. But it's the perfect backdrop to the drama of Cathy and Heathcliff's on-off-on-off-repeat-to-fade romance. That sort of thing would never have happened at Pemberley.

I love how unpredictable the book is. It’s told in flashback – the ghostly Cathy makes her grand entrance right at the beginning. (It's at this point that you know it's not going to end well.) Heathcliff is introduced as a totally nasty piece of work. The rest of the book tells how they got here – and what happens next.

Wuthering Heights is one of my all-time favourite books. But weirdly, it's also the one book that I can never really pin down. It's not a nice, safe read. The plot isn’t exactly easy to follow and the dialect might have you scratching your head to start with. (And that’s from a proper Northerner.) But keep going and you’ll find that it’s thrilling, spooky, totally romantic and above all else, brilliant.

No wonder it's Bella Swan's favourite book.

Next Tour Stop: Brontë Blog -  Stop by and check it out!