The Fortune of Carmen Navarro was a good read, but I definitely felt like there was something missing. I read this book in two days, because I was just waiting to find out that Carmen was a gypsy with a supernatural power of seduction or something like that! But, in the end that was not the case and it just fell flat for me. Don’t get me wrong though the storyline is actually very good and different, being that it is based on an opera. So, if you are looking for a supernatural twist, this is not the book for you.

I really loved that this book was written in the perspectives of four people: Carmen, Ryan, Will, and Maggie. This was great because I never got bored and I got to venture into each of their personal lives.

Carmen is a sexy and beautiful girl who is half-gypsy. According to her best friend and ‘sister’, Maggie, all the guys flock to her and she uses them for a short time and moves on. I actually liked Carmen and that may be because she’s full of life and likes to have fun.

Carmen has a band called The Gypsy Lovers. She gets all her ideas and writes her songs based on her relationships. When Ryan and Will, cadets from the near-by military academy, visit the Quikmart where Carmen works, she writes a song about Ryan.

Ryan is shy and cute and Carmen of course decides to reel him into her ‘web’. Ryan is a straight-A student that studies hard and when he feels so connected with her he wants to forget about school. Then there’s a twist, but I’m definitely not telling you what that is! I will tell you that Ryan loves Carmen and things get too serious, too quickly.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book, but it was just a side read, not one to absorb all your attention! A good quick read. :) ( )

The Fortune of Carmen Navarro is influenced by the musical, Carmen. Jen Byrant had a few things in mind even before writing the book of how she wanted it to turn out, slightly spoilish: “(1) Carmen would remain a fiercely independent young woman; (2) that a soldier (or a cadet at a military school) would fall in love with her; (3) that his desire for her would consume him and bring about his downfall; and (4) that their relationship would end in violence” (Byrant 228).

However despite the onslaught of drama and feministic influences The Fortune of Carmen Navarro was short of being spectacular. Told through 4 different perspectives there still remains a lack of awareness in the character’s mind or behavior. Rather than a trajectory of movement as their thoughts would ramble on and off, there just seemed to be one or two main ideas lodged in each character. The novel is of moderate length, but once you split the book between 4 different people, it makes it so much smaller. The Fortune of Carmen Navarro needed to be more fleshed out.

Carmen is “a fiercely independent young woman” that we’re told is exotic, is beautiful and that despite dropping out of high school to work at the local Quikmart, is smart. She is ambitious. Carmen wants her name out there and her band to be in the biggest spotlight of all. But I found her highly unapproachable and unlikable. Carmen was very much, in my opinion, a difficult girl to befriend in real life: selfish, stubborn, headstrong, and so used to getting her way. Boys come and goes. Friends are very few and those few are mostly male.

Maggie is Carmen’s best friend and as close as not blood related sisters can be. It is uncommon for the secondary character to have their own role in novels, but Maggie does. Maggie wants to be a veterinarian (or as Maggie and Carmen say, an animal doctor); she’s smart, but very “plain” or so we’re told over and over again. Maggie lacks self-confidence and being around Carmen for so long can do that. Your best friend can get every guy she wants and you’re just her little brainy side-kick. Carmen is magnetic, charismatic, and a sight to behold. But still.

Ryan the cadet is just another puppy that has fallen under Carmen’s beauty and her voice. Byrant focuses solely on his shift from piqued interest to adoration to love to obsession—all in relation to Carmen. The transitions are smooth and the obsessive thoughts are spot-on. But I have so much trouble understanding why. Why does Ryan love Carmen so much even after the cold shoulder?

Will, Ryan’s close friend, is forgettable. His chapters only further showcase how Ryan is falling under the Carmen spell slowly but surely. Everything else didn’t have a point in the context of the plot.

The tension riding up to the ending was palpable. The climax was anticlimactic. All the ending proved was how much I disliked Carmen and how befuddled I was by Ryan’s actions. Was the Fortune of Carmen Navarro a twisted coming-of-age story? ( )

What would you do for love?

Carmen and Maggie are best friends, just like sisters in fact, and they both work at Quickmart, a convenience store in town. Will and Ryan are students at Valley Forge Military Academy; on a day pass from campus, they meet Carmen. Ryan, the shyer of the two cadets, is quickly smitten and soon he and Carmen are dating. Everyone agrees that the quiet, straight-laced guy on his way to West Point and the high school dropout, musician, gypsy girl make an odd pair. Carmen and Ryan's initial attraction quickly turns to passion, but at what cost?

The Fortune of Carmen Navarro was very different from what I was expecting. From the summary on the back of the ARC, I was expecting a wrong side of the tracks girl meets wealthy, cute but geeky soldier love story with maybe an unexpected ending. Instead, it turned a lot of YA cliches upside down and backwards. Inspired by the novella written by Prosper Merimee and the opera by Bizet, Bryant brings the story of Carmen to 2007 Pennsylvania. Told in 7 parts and from the perspectives of the two pairs of best friends (Carmen and Maggie and Ryan and Will) it chronicles the intense romance between Carmen and Ryan. Through Maggie and Will the reader gets all the background information - how Carmen came to live with her grandparents and why she's working at Quickmart, how Ryan got Will to attend Valley Forge Military Academy and how they became best friends as kids. The chapters are short and keep the action moving through out the entire book.

Maggie and Will's perspectives also show the affect the relationship has on both Carmen and Ryan and on how it changes Will and Ryan's friendship. Plus, the reader gets to see a lot of what happens from different perspectives, since most of the key moments are retold by more than one character. I'm usually not a fan of books told from so many perspectives, but it works really well for this story. I think that this is mainly because Ryan is so focused on Carmen that you don't learn that much about him from his chapters. So, it really takes the other characters to fill in all the blanks and connect all the dots. In fact, I actually liked Maggie and Will's chapters more than Ryan and Carmen's. The two of them just felt more relatable. And part of me thinks that if they really got a chance to meet and know each other, they would make an awesome couple.

Carmen and Ryan's relationship happens fast - it would have been even quicker if not for the fact that Ryan can only get off campus on the weekends - and soon it's obvious that Ryan cares more for Carmen than she does for him. The relationship pretty much takes over Ryan's life, while Carmen is hoping that it won't distract her from making music with her band, Gypsy Lovers. This is the opposite of many YA books where it's the girl who makes the romance the focus of her life. Again, I really like that the roles were reversed, that Carmen was super focused on her goals and wouldn't let anything get in the way of her dreams.

There were so many individual parts that I loved about this story - Maggie and Carmen's friendship, Will's commitment to Ryan, Maggie as a character - but, they just didn't fit together in a way that made me absolutely love the story. It felt like some pieces didn't fit in the bigger picture. Other times scenes that were told from multiple points of view felt fractured, like one piece was mentioned by one person, another perspective focused on a different piece of what happened and so on. I had to go back and reread a few scenes several times really understand what happened. I was ready to give up, but the book is such a quick read that I found myself close to the end and had to find out how Ms Bryant ended Carmen and Ryan's story. Here's the funny thing, Part 7 was my favorite part of the whole book! It takes place 3 months after the end of Part 6 and works as an epliogue in a way. It let the reader know just enough about what came next, but didn't give everything away.

So, in the end, I have mixed feelings about The Fortune of Carmen Navarro. But, I can see what other readers might love about it. A definite recommendation to those who love retellings or the opera version of Carmen. ( )

i read this as a book report because i thought it has a great plot. boy loves girl. boy cant have her. boy goes crazy. haha even thought this wasn't a very original plot, i seemed to like it very much, especially the alternative narration between the 4 characters.
Not one of the best books i've ever read, and it's not beautifuly written but i definitly enjoyed most of it. ( )