Catherine by April Lindner

Summary: A forbidden romance. A modern mystery. Wuthering Heights as you have never seen before.
Catherine is tired of struggling musicians befriending her just so they  can get a performance at her dad's famous Manhattan club, The Underground. Then she meets mysterious hence, an incredibly passionate and talented musician on the brink of success. As their relationship grows, both are swept away in a fiery romance. But when their love is tested by a cruel quirk of fate, will proudly keep them apart?

Chelsea has always believed that her mother died of a sudden illness, until they find a letter her father has kept her for years — a letter from her mother, Catherine, who did not die: they disappeared. Driven by unanswered questions, Chelsea set out looking for her — starting with the sender's address on the letter: The Underground.

Told in two voices, interweaves twenty years apart, Catherine a timeless forbidden romance with a compelling modern mystery.

I loved April the first retelling, Jane (Jane Eyre retelling), but this did not work quite as well for me. In the end, I still liked it and enjoyed reading but there was just something about that is not on.
For the majority of the book, it was kind of disappointing, and I'm not sure if that was because of the book itself or because there are certain things about Wuthering Heights that just doesn't work so well when you are trying to modernize. The last quarter of the book improved, although I enjoyed reading the last handful of chapters a lot more than the rest of the book.

The romance in the book, well ... in the original they had grown up together and were more isolated from other people, in this one they literally only known each other for a few months, so that their relationship was missing that foundation that the WH has one. Because they do not know each other almost as long in this one, it was very high school romance-y.

This version of the characters didn't work out so well (also the fact that Heathcliff was called "hence" in this never stopped is utterly ridiculous--why not just call him Heath? * shrug *).  Catharina was sort of boring, she had no spark ... She was just a fairly general character. Older hence tuned older Heathcliff better than the younger version did to young Heathcliff--young hence was not bad, he was just lacking in spark too and I feel like I've read characters like him loads of times (while Heathcliff is a little more unusual).

In short, instead of this epic, destructive, tragic story of love and obsession, it just came across as typical teenage infatuation that ended badly and that made it more frustrating to read (especially see the older version of I was never sure why--or feel sorry for his character or thinking him a weird, creepy, stalker dude who his misery brought on himself. He is so ridiculously rude to Chelsea while her mother was Catherine, while he just had a relationship with her for a few months when they were teens until he screwed it all up. .. Wuthering Heights is his attitude at least a little more understandable because he had years with Catherine).

There were things that worked better in the original because of the period that it was created in, things that seemed in this small (the way hence responds to misunderstanding a bugged conversation in this was horrible and made me really hate his character and it just made it a lot harder to believe that he really loved Catherine). In the original it was understandable that Catherine had to make a choice but in this that doesn't have to lose the choice of one thing and another, it is why it was so made.

As for Chelsea chapters ...Chelsea was also kind of boring. Her chapters and her mother's chapters were so similar, that they don't really have their own different voices (to the point where I forgot to read the title of a chapter and have confused wondering why hence would be mopping the floors of the club he owns, only to realize it was Catherine's chapter that I was reading, not Chelsea, so that he not yet itself).

Cooper was beautiful, I really liked him. His relationship with Chelsea was already a bit on the hasty side, but it was also one of the better parts of the book, especially closer to the end.

This review is seemingly quite negative, but I really loved the book (especially closer to the end).

I think I'm reviewing it as a retelling and not like it's a brand new story--I really don't know how to judge it without the comparisons. I think that is a negative of the modernisation of a classic. I'm still not sure if I liked this because it is an adaptation of Wuthering Heights or if I find it nevertheless (because it kind of is a good retelling of the loss of almost all of the things that make Wuthering Heights what it is left behind).

I would give it 3 stars out of 5 rate.

Later.

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