My A-Z Author Challenge 2015 is complete!! :)

Yes, that's right, as you have probably seen already, I have completed my A-Z Author Challenge - yay! :) This has all happened in 64 days...and considering this is the first year I have had a full-time job, I am pretty daym proud of that! :) I have really enjoyed it, as it has really got me to read a whole range of new authors that I may never have normally touched, but whom have benefited from having a surname starting with an unusual letter! Having said that, I did get a bit dis-encouraged by the end, as I felt like the alphabet was dictating what I could read next! Now I have a 'TBR jar', so I won't know what I am reading next until I finish a book and pick a new one from the jar - how exciting!

Anyway, as I have finished, I thought it only fair to honour all the books that have taken part in my challenge, and I shall finish by picking a top 5! I hope you enjoy! :)

A - Mitch Albom - The First Phone Call from Heaven
B - Laura Bates - Everyday Sexism
C - John Connolly - Bad Men
D - Lucy Dillon - One Small Act of Kindness
E - Imogen Edwards-Jones - Hotel Babylon
F - Jane Fallon - The Ugly Sister
G - Jane Green - The Other Woman
H - Emma Healey - Elizabeth is Missing
I - John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany
J - EL James - Grey
K - Nicole Krauss - The History of Love
L - Francois Lelord - Hector and the Search for Happiness
M - Ken Macleod - Intrusion
N - Jennifer Niven - All the Bright Places
O - Maggie O'Farrell - Instructions for a Heatwave
P - Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Q - Matthew Quick - The Silver Linings Playbook
R - Stella Rimington - The Geneva Trap
S - Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones
T - CL Taylor - The Accident
U - Fred Uhlman - Reunion
V - Ferdinand von Schirach - The Collini Case
W - Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
X - Xinran - The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices
Y - Louise Young - The Heroes' Welcome
Z - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - The Shadow of the Wind

Quite a mix in there...we have crime, thrillers, young-adult, biography, non-fiction, romance, classics and other types of fiction - it's great! :) 

Aaaand my top 5 are:

5) Grey - I know people are going to seriously judge me that out of 26 books this made the top 5, but I really enjoyed it! It was very long, which I was secretly dreading, and I was actually so pleasantly surprised that it quickly shot into being one of my favourites! :) 

4) The Accident - I LOVED this, I thought the story was great, the suspense kept me hooked, and I really identified with the characters.

3) The First Phone Call from Heaven - For the first book of twenty-six to have kept my attention for so long must show that it was something special! I really love the magic in Albom's stories, they always make me feel warm and fuzzy once I have finished them, 

2) Intrusion - I was a bit apprehensive about reading this book because the reviews were a bit varied, but I loved it! I thought the storyline was really interesting, and I loved all the sciencey references, which seemed pretty accurate and appealed to me in particular! 

1) The Bell Jar - Without a doubt, my favourite book of this list. I just thought it was so powerfully written, and is the first book to have ever provoked such strong emotion in me that the emotion didn't go away when I shut the book! I really really think the whole world needs to read this book!! :)

I do feel a bit bad - these 2-3 line synopses do not do these books justice at all, and there were some other great ones in the mix too. All of these books have been reviewed under the A-Z tag, so if any of them interest you, please go and check out the reviews! :) Also, if you have read any of the books featured in this challenge, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Adios, amigos :) 

Z: The Shadow of the Wind

Okay, I'm sorry, I promise this will be the last review for a little while! But now...I bring you...the last book in my A-Z Author Challenge 2015 - yay!!! :)  I am so happy that I have finished it, as much as I enjoyed it, it is much more fun to have a mystery regarding what I shall read next, rather than being dictated-to by the alphabet! I now have a TBR jar (stolen from another blogger - sorry I can't remember who!), which I am very excited to start using! :)

Anyway, back to the point! This review is of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's 'The Shadow of the Wind'.

Oooh I do love being shrouded in mystery! This book had it all: mystery, intrigue, romance, heart-break, crime, passion - what else could someone want?! Critics call this the book for people who love books, because it is a celebration of the power of literature! 

Without giving too much away, the basic storyline is set in Barcelona. Daniel, a bookshop owner's son is taken by his father to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a safe haven for old books which may otherwise be destroyed. He feels drawn to 'The Shadow of the Wind', which he later finds out is the only copy of this book remaining in existence. Why, you may ask? Well, Daniel asked the same question! In his quest to discover the life and mystery of the writer, Julian Carax, Daniel gets a little more than he bargained for. Suddenly, he finds himself intertwined in an epic and complex puzzle, involving some very unlikely characters. Undeterred, he follows all the trails, which lead him to some pretty scary places! 

This story is packed full of suspense and mystery, and I actually didn't predict the ending at all! I was gripped...most of the time. For me, sometimes the plot-line advanced a little too slowly, which is why I just couldn't feel justified giving it the full 5 stars. I really enjoyed it though, and would definitely think about picking up the sequel: 'The Angel's Game', although I may give myself a Zafon break first! 

Have you read The Angel's Game? Is it similar to this, does the storyline follow this closely? Do I need to have a good memory of this book to enjoy it properly? I'd love to hear your thoughts below :) 

Y: The Heroes' Welcome

Yes yes, it's me again! I have another book review to bring you, which I finished just yesterday. This is Young's 'The Heroes' Welcome'. I have to be honest, I was desperately trying to find a Y for my A-Z challenge, and was about to give up when I saw this gorgeous cover sitting on a table in Waterstones! I just had to buy it...I didn't even really look at what it was about until I got home!

I later found out that it is a sequel to Young's 'My Dear I Wanted to Tell You', which I actually read years ago, and know I enjoyed, but wouldn't be able to tell you much of the plot except that it was a war romance set in the First World War.

In this sequel, Young deals with the 'what happens next?' Yes, you can write romantic letters which travel across oceans to each other, but what about when the war is over? If you're lucky enough that your soldier returns home, what will life be like then? No one really thinks about that!

Everyone recognises the sacrifice of soldiers who risked their lives fighting for our country, no one denies them the glory they deserve. But how many people think about the hardships they faced when they returned home? Injured, suffering with PTSD, how easy would it have been for those soldiers to integrate back into society? What about their wives? Would they still love the man they had fallen in love with before the war, or would they have changed so much they were unrecognisable? Would they be able to handle their husband's night terrors, their disfigurement, or their drink problem?

This book was really well-written, and struck a very poignant chord! It tells a story which I guess a lot of people don't even consider, and for that reason I really enjoyed it! It was daring, and not afraid to tell a story of heart-break. Not every story has a happy ending, but don't we all have to make the best of what we have?

Has anyone else read this book? I'd love to hear your thoughts! :)

X: The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices

Hello people, and welcome back again to my book reviews as part of my A-Z author challenge! :) I now have my X to share with you...which is Xinran's 'The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices'. I am glad my challenge encouraged me to pick up an 'X', otherwise it would have been very unlikely that this book would have ever come into my possession.

The clue is in the title really...this book is a biographical work, compiling stories of women all over China who have suffered oppression or abuse in their society. Xinran is a radio presenter, who is brave enough to set up the first radio show which discusses the lives of women in China. Within hours, her answer phone and letter box are flooded with stories of women who have been waiting to be heard for so many years.

Some are really heart-breaking. There are tales of abuse, forced marriages and the struggle to develop an identity in a male-dominated world. It is difficult to imagine that these stories actually happened less than 50 years ago! It was a real awakening for me, and shifted my life back into clear perspective: women in the UK complain about the treatment of women, and maybe we should still not stop fighting for 'equality', but we should also be grateful that we do not experience the horrors of these women. If these women can live their lives with such dignity and compassion no matter what hardships they face, what excuse do we have?

W: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Hello my lovely readers, and apologies once again for my period of silence! I have been stuck in a period where I couldn't stop reading whenever I had spare time (nothing to be complained about!), but this does seem to have translated into a slight neglect for my blog! Nevertheless, I am back, with exciting news:

I have finished my A-Z Author Challenge 2015!! :) 

I am so proud of myself, and to have completed it in 64 days is a special achievement, I believe :) I shall soon be bringing you my A-Z wrap-up, but for now, a review of my book read for W: Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. 

I really like these Pulp covers of classics! I get that they're trying to modernise classics to make them more accessible to the youth of today (which is a category I still like to consider myself to be in!), so they totally worked for me! :) Let's be honest, I would have read this regardless of cover, but it's fabulous blue pages were the pushing factor which actually made me buy it! :) 

I am sure most people reading this will know the story of Dorian Gray: he sits for a painting, and becomes overwhelmed by the realisation that he will never again look as young as he does in the picture! This thought eats away at him, and he wishes that the portrait could bear the burden of ageing, while he maintained his youthful good looks forever. Well, Dorian...be careful what you wish for! 

I actually really enjoyed this book. In the first few chapters, Dorian makes friends with Lord Henry (Harry), who had some great things to say. He made some great observations and was extremely philosophical about life, and the human instinct, which I found really interesting. I loved the love story (can't beat the story of a strong man going weak for a girl), and it kept me really hooked!

The problem was, as the story hit about half-way, suddenly it seemed to lose its thread somewhat. At one point, there was almost an entire page listing different names of jewels which Dorian had studied, acquired or sold, and it became extremely tedious! I struggled to cling to the weak thread of the story, and although it did pick back up, I felt rather lost by this point, and almost had to crawl to the finish line. It's a shame really, because Wilde's writing showed such great promise in the first half of the book, which is why I felt guilty scoring it anything less than 4 starts on GoodReads!

What do you think of the story of Dorian Gray? As always, I'd love to hear your comments below! :) 

V: The Collini Case

Hello everyone! :) Here we have yet another book which I read over my weekend! Continuing on the theme of Nazi Germany, we have 'The Collini Case' by Ferdinand von Schirach.

Collini is an Italian. He is in his 60s. He pretends to be a journalist in Germany, walks into the hotel room of an 80-year-old man whom he has never met, shoots him 4 times, and kicks him so many times that his face is completely disfigured. He then walks calmly down to the reception, tells them there has been a murder, sits quietly and waits to be arrested. 

Why would he do that? What possible cause of revenge could he have? I don't want to spoil the plot of this book too much, otherwise its charm is also ruined. 

Therefore, suffice to say that it is extremely well-researched, and thus very educational! I learned a lot from reading this book! It follows the 'Collini case', which seems so clear-cut. Collini admit to murder, his DNA is all over it, what could his motive be? This motive runs a lot deeper than anyone could have expected, and is thrilling to read.

I gave this book 3 stars because I think it could have been written a little better, but nevertheless, I do not regret a second of the time I took to read this. I learned a lot, and would still recommend it to all those interested in history, particularly German history! 

U: The Reunion

Hello once again, my lovely readers! :) I really have read some fantastic books this weekend, and would next like to share with you my thoughts on 'The Reunion', by Fred Uhlman. I have included a link to it's GoodReads page as for some reason it is very difficult to find!


Speaking of things which are difficult to find...did anyone else doing an A-Z author challenge find U exceptionally difficult?! I scoured the entirety of a Waterstones store and came to a grand total of three...Updike, this, and a crime series, of which they didn't have the first instalment, so that was scratched from the list of possibilities. I decided to go for this, as I have had very few dealings with novellas, and the synopsis talks of the beautiful development of a friendship - how can that be done in 74 pages? I was intrigued, so thought I'd give it a go!

This is the story of Hans, a 16-year-old Jew, living in Stuttgart in the 1930s. One day, his first true friend walks into his classroom in the form of Konradin, a Christian. The reader is expertly guided through the development and blossoming of their beautiful friendship in only around 30 pages, but yet it never seems to lack detail.

All of a sudden their friendship is turned upside down by the rise of the Nazis, and the fall in respect for the Jews. Hans suffers with extreme feeling of betrayal as he watches his friend mould into the anti-Semitic views of his family, and he himself is sent to America for safety.

The ending is so delicious and warm-hearted, it made me so happy! True friendship never really goes away, it can just sometimes take a while to find your way back to it when the world is trying to push you off its path. The story is so powerful when it asks the question: why did being a Jew and being German have to become mutually exclusive?

This novella is a great testament to the few words needed to make a powerful and poignant story if those words are expertly chosen. It's a work of art, really.

Do you enjoy reading novellas? Are they always this good?! Can anyone give me recommendations of others I might like? I would love to hear from you :) 

T: The Accident

Hello again and welcome back for the second instalment of my weekend readathon! :) This time I am going to talk to you about my 'T', which was 'The Accident' by C.L Taylor.

I really love crime novels. My favourite authors tend to focus on crime on a big level, like as part of the Ministry of Defence, or huge company fraud or international drug rings. This book really intrigued me because it was crime on a much more local level. I'll show you the synopsis that gripped me:

I just thought this was so intriguing, and had to pick it up! I have to say, I was completely hooked from the moment I started reading until the very last page. Taylor had a really clever way of keeping my attention: a chapter of the main story would be left on an epic cliffhanger, then I would be forced to hurriedly read through a diary entry from the past to get back to the main story and find out where the excitement would take me! It was like the frustration of an ad-break halfway through the climax of a film! It was just so fantastically written! There were parts that really made me laugh, there were parts that made me really feel sad for Sue and it was quite emotional! Obviously I can't give away too many details of the plot, but I think it was fab, and even the ending was just utter perfection. 

The comparison to 'Before I Go to Sleep', which is one of my all-time favourite books, is perfectly justified: it is definitely in the same league! I thoroughly recommend you pick this book up! A solid 5-stars from me! :) 

As always, let me know what you think of this book if you have read it...I really hope I encourage even just one of you to pick it up! 

S: The Lovely Bones

Hello and happy rainy weekend! :) This has been the perfect opportunity for me to have an epic read-athon, so I started my weekend on S, and am now almost finished W! :) I guess I should therefore apologise for the review spam you are likely to receive in the next few days as I catch up! :)

So, first off I bring you my review of 'The Lovely Bones', by Alice Sebold. This has been on my TBR list forever, as I have always been very intrigued by the premise: a girl being murdered and then watching what happens to her family once she is gone? Who wouldn't want to see how people reacted to their death?

So, my A-Z challenge gave me the perfect excuse to buy this book and read it as my 'S'. In my time working in Waterstones I have seen many beautiful covers for this, but this is by far my favourite, and I was so happy that it was sitting in Picadilly for me the day I wanted to buy it!

So, for me, the book started off really well. You are immediately introduced to the fact that Susie was murdered, and how that comes about. She then takes you back a few months, to give you a feeling for her personal connection to all those she then decides to watch from heaven. It gave me everything I wanted in the first 100 pages, particularly a really thought-provoking description of heaven and how it is possible to make it everything you want to be. That's a comfort, it's heart-warming and it's just lovely. 

As the police seemed to get farther and farther from solving the mystery of her crime, her family (father in particular) became more and more determined to solve it themselves. For some reason though, their frantic search for her killer wasn't nearly as saturated with emotion as it should have been. For this story to have gripped and moved me, I needed to feel a lot more strongly connected to the characters, and needed to feel close to crying along with them. In the absence of that, I actually felt that the storyline seemed pretty flat. I wasn't engaged with it, and at times became quite bored, which I am ashamed to say! 

I read the foreword after finishing it, where the writer says she first read this book in her 20s and didn't really get the deep meaning in it. She then read it again 10-15 years later and suddenly it was so much more emotive and thought-provoking. Maybe that's my issue? Maybe I should return to this in 10 years and see whether my opinion changes?

For now I just think that a lot more could have been made of such an intriguing and unique storyline! Also, the ending for me was just plain bizarre! I know the whole thing is not 'normal; or plausible, but that bit was just strange! 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one! I am sure there are many people reading this who can't believe I have anything bad to say about this book, so please make yourself known in the comments below! I'd love to talk about it :) 

R: The Geneva Trap

Wow, I can't believe I am already on 'R' for my A-Z challenge! This time it is the turn of 'The Geneva Trap' by Stella Rimington. This is the 7th book in the Liz Carlyle series, of which there are currently 8. I unfortunately bought this before the wonderful days of Goodreads, so was unaware of its position in a series, so attempted to read this standalone. This made me apprehensive, and coupled with the mixed reviews I have seen, I wasn't sure what to expect!

Well, what can I say?! Oh the suspense, oh the drama!! I thought this story was SO clever! Stella Rimington is said to be a former head of MI5, and it shows! That background experience gives her stories such a credibility and plausibility, so they escape the far-fetchedness that a lot of crime/spy thrillers can suffer with! There were so many clever threads in the plot, so you finally think you have nailed-down a clue, then 10 pages later it has all been thrown back up in the air again! There was just the right number of characters: not too few that the story was easily predictable, but not too many that they became impossible to keep tabs on (another common problem with this genre). 

I really could not put this book down, and as a consequence, I stayed up far too late at night to finish it! I thought it was a clever move by Rimington to make some of the characters at risk Liz's friends and family, as it added an extra tier to the stakes, and made the story all the more exciting. 

I always make a point with this genre to try my hardest not to try and guess the ending. Had I tried to, there is potential that I could have worked out the ending ahead of time, but as I don't like to spoil books for myself in that way, it wasn't a problem for me and I was hooked right until the very end! I thought the ending was great as it tied up all the loose ends and left me completely satisfied! 

I really urge those of you considering this book to ignore all the negative reviews and pick it up! You don't need to read them in order, this works perfectly well as a standalone novel! Needless to say, I will be keeping my eye out for more from Liz Carlyle! A definite must-read from me! :)

Q: The Silver Linings Playbook

Well here I finally am with a very long-overdue review of The Silver Linings Playbook, by Matthew Quick. This was completed as part of my A-Z Author Challenge 2015!

I should point out that I did something I never do with this one...I watched the film before reading the book! I just couldn't resist when I saw it playing on TV! However, luckily there were loads of differences between the film and the book, so that was fine by me! :) Also, sometimes I don't like watching films first because then all I can imagine are the actors from the film, but in this case that wasn't a bad thing either, as I love Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, so I was quite happy for them to be playing the parts of Pat and Tiffany in my head! :)

However much I like Bradley and Jennifer though, their movie cover will never live up to the original:

So, a quick synopsis from Goodreads:

"Meet Pat. Pat has a theory: his life is a movie produced by God. And his God-given mission is to become physically fit and emotionally literate, whereupon God will ensure a happy ending for him -- the return of his estranged wife Nikki. (It might not come as a surprise to learn that Pat has spent time in a mental health facility.) The problem is, Pat's now home, and everything feels off. No one will talk to him about Nikki; his beloved Philadelphia Eagles keep losing; he's being pursued by the deeply odd Tiffany; his new therapist seems to recommend adultery as a form of therapy. Plus, he's being hunted by Kenny G!
In this enchanting novel, Matthew Quick takes us inside Pat's mind, showing us the world from his distorted yet endearing perspective. As the award-winning novelist Justin Cronin put it: "Tender, soulful, hilarious, and true, The Silver Linings Playbook is a wonderful debut."

Oh Pat, you break my heart! I love Pat as a character, he is portrayed so well and it is so endearing to see him fight so hard to win back the woman he loves. He has such an air of innocence; he may be aggressive at times, but I couldn't possibly hold that against him and I got frustrated along with him when he messes up! It was so heart-breaking to read that he was so convinced that by changing his ways he could win his ex-wife back, she is clearly his entire world. I felt just as much sympathy for him as I would if he were my real-life friend! He tries so hard, bless him!

Then Tiffany is thrown into the mix, and she shifts his life once more! He is willing to learn to dance just to get a chance to talk to his ex-wife! Yes, the ending may be predictable, but it doesn't make it any less delicious! It is almost like the adult version of the ending I so wanted from All the Bright Places. 

I just loved it! I couldn't put it down, and I was rooting for Pat so strongly that I cried, laughed and smiled along with him! A really lovely story :) 

P: The Bell Jar

Everyone must read this right now. I have a very important review to share with you, of Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar', read as part of my A-Z Author Challenge.

I think this book is incredibly powerful. Never before have I read a book that left me so enraged that I was actually irritable in real life too! This is the story of a girl in her 20s who suffers from depression in 1960s America, a time when mental illness was as misunderstood as it is possible to be. Now, I did Psychology A-level, so I have learned a lot about the treatment of mental health patients in the past, but nothing could have prepared me for the raw emotions I felt when I read this book. The first half of the book starts off so 'normal', just a girl finding her feet in a new city, in a new job. As things start to unravel for her, she explains her feelings so matter-of-factly, and doesn't make suicide seem like this big glamorous drama that it is sometimes perceived to be, but contemplates ways to kill herself in such a casual way. 

The bit that angered me was the way she was treated. Even now, I think there is a huge problem in the fact that mental health patients are not trusted to make their own decisions. Yes, their perspective has changed so they may no longer see life through rose-tinted glasses, but why does that mean they should be forced into treatments that they don't feel are right for them? Surely the best person to know what would help rebuild an unravelled mind is the person who lives with that mind every day? It just frustrates me SO much, and this book brought out a whole wave of these feelings for me, which I had been harbouring for a long time. 

The narrative highlights with such clarity how depression isn't always a feeling. Not all sufferers feel sad or down all the time, it is just as likely that they feel numb - completely devoid of all emotion. I love the 'bell jar' analogy, because it is great imagery to describe how a sufferer knows and can feel what is going on around them, but feels that they are experiencing it from within a bell jar containing their own dark, putrid air. 

I think it's so important that books of this kind are spread as widely as they can be. It doesn't at all surprise me that 'The Bell Jar' became so famous when it was released as it was shared in a time when mental health had a huge stigma attached to it, compared to modern day. It was an incredibly brave piece of work at the time, but now that society is becoming more accommodating, a lot more fantastic books of this type are springing up, getting braver and braver in their honesty and openness. 

Plath writes in such a compelling way, and I implore people to read this! Also, it has one thing on 'All the Bright Places', which is that it represents hope! 

Have you read The Bell Jar, or any other work by Sylvia Plath? I would love to discover more from her, so please leave any recommendations in the comments below! :) 

O: Instructions for a Heatwave

Here I am again with another book review from my A-Z Author Challenge. Today for you, I have my O: Maggie O'Farrell's 'Instructions for a Heatwave', nominated for Costa Book Awards 2013.

I had quite high hopes for this one! My cousin and nan had enjoyed it and been passing it around the family, so that must count for something, right?

The synopsis is as follows:
"The stunning new novel from Costa-Novel-Award-winning novelist Maggie O'Farrell: a portrait of an Irish family in crisis in the legendary heatwave of 1976.
It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children - two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce - back home, each wih different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share."

I must have missed something here! I just don't get it! I didn't find any of the characters like-able and the story seemed so slow and 'dithery' (stolen this word from a GoodReads reviewer which I loved!) The climax just completely fizzled out really. I ended the book feeling lost and confused!

Despite all this though, I still gave this book 3 stars on GoodReads! It's a weird sensation, because even though nothing seemed to happen, I didn't dislike it and kept feeling compelled to pick the book up! Maybe that's Maggie's charm? Whatever it is, I would definitely pick up another of her books to see if I can work it out! :) 

Have you read this book? Let me know your thoughts below: are all Maggie's books like this?

N: All The Bright Places

Hello and welcome to my second book review post of the day! If you have looked at both, then I salute you! :) This time, I have an epic rambling to be made on my 'N' as part of my A-Z Author Challenge, which is the infamous 'All the Bright Places' by Jennifer Niven.

I feel this to be a long one...so buckle up and we shall begin! :)

Firstly...again, let's hail this cover!! :) How beautiful!?

There is so much I have to say about this book, because it took me through a very complex set of emotions, all in one night! (Yes, I finished it in pretty much one sitting...more on the 'pretty much' later!)

So, for anyone who doesn't know what this story is about (where have you been?!), Finch and Violet meet on top of a bell tower, both suffering with the struggles of life and feeling like the plummet from a bell tower could be their only escape. They become friends, then more than friends, and learn to live via each other. A beautiful, if not cliche storyline.

So first, the 'love story' aspect. I don't read too much YA, so I am not sure if this is a commonplace feeling for adults reading YA, but it did make me feel very old! Finch is not very socially adept, so his way to connect with Violet is via Facebook...he creates a Facebook account just to talk to her. It reminded me of those oh so happy days of  exciting romance via social media: logging out and back into MSN messenger to make sure your crush realised you were online (no one can deny that they did that!), and the whole effort of trying to make your virtual self seem like the person your crush wants you to be. They quote novels to each other, which is cute but at the same time...pass me a bucket! I can't lie though, it became a bit like a guilty pleasure and I couldn't stop reading it! I loved their relationship! The dual narration meant that I grew to care about both characters a great deal as I could see exactly how they thought and felt - Niven's writing style can take credit for that! It also struck me as a great testament to the incredible impact that love can have on your mental state when you feel like that black cloud over your head is never going to go away. Finch and Violet gave each other hope, and a future to look forward to. Finch got Violet back into the car after she had been traumatised out of it, and Violet showed Finch how wonderful life can be when you experience great things with great people.

This brings me onto the problem I have with this book: the ending. I think that books that deal with mental illness, particularly those aimed at younger target audiences, for whom the subject is more difficult to talk about, have an incredibly important societal role to play. People suffering with mental illness, and those who care for sufferers turn to literature as a comfort: to read about someone else's problems and learn about ways to cope. Just like Violet and Finch represented hope to each other, so fiction and a happy ending can represent hope to people who are struggling. If somebody goes through a book feeling like they can completely relate to a character, and that character then has a happy ending, that can be incredibly powerful - like a sunshine through the rain cloud.

This is the issue I have with the ending...*potential spoiler alert here!*, where was the happy ending?! I get that Niven was trying to represent how hard-hitting and devastating mental illness can be, and in some ways I applaud her unflinching storyline. I am sure it hit home with a lot of people who cannot fully appreciate the gravity of mental illness if they have no direct contact with it, so from that perspective, it was a fantastic ending. However, for all those reading this book and loving the fact that Violet and Finch were helping each other, and feeling like they were getting better and could get through this darkness and into happily ever after, the ending was just so wrong! It broke my heart, and I am pretty sure will have shattered the hopes of many people! This is why I say I almost read it one sitting: once I was 50 pages from the end and realised what was going to happen, I just had no motivation to finish it, it was so disappointing!

So, in summary, a fantastically written book, a great read, right up until the last 50 pages, where if you're hoping for a happy ending, I suggest you stop and write your own!

I am sure lots of you reading this will have read this book...what do you think? Did Niven make the right choice with the ending? Let me know in the comments below! 

M: Intrusion

Good morning everyone, and thank you for coming back! It feels like forever since I have last posted, and as a result, I now have 4 books to review in the next couple of days! :)

First, I am going to talk to you about my 'M': Intrusion, by Ken Macleod.

This was my first taste of SciFi in a while, and I absolutely loved it! The synopsis is simple: a future society where pregnant women are required to take a 'fix' which would prevent genetic diseases in their unborn children. This seems like a good thing, but what if you think you have a beneficial genetic trait which you would like to pass on? Set in a world where everyone is highly monitored, objection is not an option...so what now?

The first thing I loved about this book is that there were a lot of high-level scientific references, and being a science undergraduate, I really enjoyed that! A lot of the references were scientifically sound, and it gave a certain element of credibility to the story, and made it seem all the more real!

There was suspense, surprise, twists and turns...everything you could want! I can't tell you much about the story itself without spoiling the plot! I really struggled to put this book down because I thought the writing was fantastic, and the story had me completely gripped. There was a complex mix of characters who all complemented the story in a thrilling way - an absolute must-read from me!

From this review, does anyone have any other ideas of SciFi I would enjoy? I am really keen to get back into it now! :) 

L: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Hello hello hello, and happy Sunday! :) Today I bring you the next instalment in my A-Z Author Challenge: Lelord's 'Hector and the Search for Happiness'!

Interestingly, as I have just Googled this title to get the cover image, I have found that it was made into a film, released in 2014 and starring Simon Pegg as Hector! Well, that has ruined the sequel for me...I didn't imagine Hector looking anything like Simon Pegg, but I am sure his face is all I will be able to imagine from now on!

Anyway, that isn't Lelord's fault, so back to the point! :) Firstly, I LOVE the cover, don't you?! Very quirky, which is quite a good insight into the story to come! The plot seemed simple...Hector, a disillusioned psychiatrist starts to feel down because he feels he can't make all his patients happy. It's 'easy' enough to treat people with diagnosed disorders, but what can you do for people who are just generally dissatisfied with life? Eventually, Hector gets so bogged down with this, that he decides to take a break, and go travelling. On his travels, he creates a list of 'rules for happiness', based on his observations of people with lives much simpler than those of his home country. Is it just coincidence that the richest countries have the most people in need of psychiatrists?

I was very surprised by the child-like style of writing in this book. I wasn't expecting sex to be referred to as "the thing adults do when they're in love". This got a bit patronising at times, but I guess it did help to make this a very simple, easy read. I hoped that this book would be an uplifting, feel-good story, which it was...I did enjoy it. However the 'rules for happiness' were pretty child-like too, any adult who sat down with a piece of paper and was asked to write a list of these rules would have come up with almost exactly the same thing, so nothing particularly exciting there. This book also suffered a bit with the same ailment as Krauss' 'The History of Love', it was too short! It takes incredible writing skill to cram a great story into less that 200 pages, and unfortunately I felt that this fell a bit short.

Has anyone seen the film based on this book? What did you think?

K: The History of Love

Hello all you lovely bookish people, and welcome back! :) Today I am going to talk to you about Krauss' 'The History of Love' read as part of my A-Z Author Challenge.

Firstly, can we take a time to appreciate this wonderful cover?! I really enjoy it, and that's what first attracted me to it in the epic Waterstones Piccadilly. I was really intrigued by the synopsis on the back of this:

"Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author.
Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the love lost that sixty years ago in Poland inspired him to write a book. And although he doesn't know it yet, that book also survived: crossing oceans and generations, and changing lives. . "

I love the idea that books are more than just objects of pleasure, but that they can have bigger importances and bring people together and facilitate relationships. 

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I am always intrigued by books with less than 300 pages, because I wonder how they can pack a huge plotline into such a small amount of words. If it is done well, it can be fabulous. However here, not only was a big story being packed in, but it was being told by 3 different narrators. For me, there wasn't enough time to bond with even one of the characters, because they were spread too thinly. The whole story seemed quite disjointed. You know when you wrote essays at school, and had to cut loads out to stick to a word-count, and you end up with the bare bones of the original, without all the linky bits which make it flow well? That's what it felt like with this book! 

There were a lot of little threads of the story, and I was intrigued to see how they would all tie together at the end, but again I thought it was quite poorly done! Maybe I am being overly harsh, as a lot of people praise the 'exquisite' ending, but it just didn't do it for me, I'm afraid. 

If you have read this, or any other stories by Krauss, please comment below and let me know your opinion :) 

J: Grey

Hello everyone and thank you for stopping by, once again! I have now completed 'J' on my 2015 A-Z Author Challenge, and chose to read 'Grey', by EL James. I really want to start a conversation about this one, because I have heard such mixed reviews, and have debates with people who haven't even read it *ahem...Ben*, but I would love to discuss this with people who have read either this, or the original trilogy...so please comment below!

I have to say, that this one has thrown me slightly! I read it because I felt like I was in no position to comment on any FSoG things when all my knowledge of it was what I got from the film! I have never read the original trilogy, but thought I might get a really interesting perspective if I read this first, so I had very few pre-conceived ideas about how this story would play out in print. Looking at other people's reviews, it seems that that was a good idea, as apparently it is very repetitive of the original trilogy?

So I didn't go into this book with high hopes, I just wanted to see if I could get any inkling about why it received such a huge hype! I have to say, however, that I was extremely pleasantly surprised! In the first 100 pages, before any of the hardcore stuff happened, I was really enjoying the plot! I thought that James' use of italics to portray Christian's thoughts was really effective, particularly as it gave him such a playful voice, where he seemed excited and challenged by Anastasia's strong-mindedness. I was pleased to see that Anastasia wasn't the docile 'submissive' I expected her to be, and that she was actually very strong-willed, and they actually had very cute and hilarious banter, not only in person, but also via subject lines of emails!

I was quite addicted to this, as even if you take the sex scenes away, this story has a lot stronger plotline than many ChickLit books I have read! I read it extremely quickly, and now feel quite guilty for including Christian in my 'Top 5 People I Would Like to Drown'. Can we really condemn a man for getting confused over how to deal with a situation when he falls in love for the first time, after expecting that he never would? I was actually surprised by how much he seemed to care for her, given all the commentary that he is abusive and that this glorifies domestic violence.

I would love to hear from people who have read the original trilogy...are things portrayed differently in those? Get in touch! 

I: A Prayer for Owen Meany

I: John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany

 

I don't often order books online as I like to flick through them before doing so, but I needed a book for 'I' pretty quickly, so found Irving on Fantastic Fiction, and thought I'd take the plunge. Well...when it arrived I thought it had slightly backfired...this book is 720 pages long! It had better be good!

 

Owen Meany is a small boy/adult (he doesn't grow!), with enough faith in God for someone 3 times his size. He believes that God has a plan for him, and has dreams which show him a future he wouldn't have chosen for himself. However, his unfaltering faith in God inspires him to follow a path in life which he believes will ultimately lead him to fulfilling God's plan for him. Unfortunately, life doesn't make this easy for him. A rogue baseball he hits throws the lives of him and his best friend into mourning...but his faith continues to stand strong. Life wasn't easy, living in America when boys his age were being conscripted to fight in the Vietnam War. It caused friendships to wobble and relationships to crack. This gave the story a very multi-layered effect.

 

I read a lot of this book, assuming it was building up to something which makes it worth reading the full 720 pages. I was engaged, but only on the proviso that all these intricate lines of story would somehow cleverly intertwine at the end. (As I have said many times, I am a sucker for a good ending!) I am glad to say that I was not disappointed! This book has one of the most exquisite endings of any I have read in a long time, and I am so glad I stuck with it until the end! It was unexpected, intelligent and thoroughly satisfying! 

A-Z Author Challenge: A-H

A-Z Author Challenge 2015

As well as taking on the '52 books in 2015' challenge on Goodreads, I also found an A-Z author challenge which I have been going a little bit crazy over! (Doesn't help that I have a very competitive brother to contend with...)

Having started the challenge 3 and a half weeks ago, I am already on I, so will give a quick overview of the challenge so far.

A: Mitch Albom - First Phone Call from Heaven

What a crazily beautiful book to begin with! I love Mitch Albom because he always adds a sprinkle of magic to his work, which makes you so happy to read it. This story was about people from a certain town in America who started to receive phone calls from their loved ones who had died. It was so heart-warming to read of the comfort it brought people, and I was devastated when I thought it may not be true (in the context of the book, of course!) I loved the ending, and just like with every other Mitch Albom book, finished it with a smile on my face.

B: Laura Bates - Everyday Sexism

So I obviously took a very different path with this one. This book sprouted from the Everyday Sexism project launched by Bates on social media to get women speaking up about incidents of sexism that occur in everyday life, and often go unnoticed. I am in two minds about this, because although I acknowledge that some women reported horrific experiences, criminal acts by men which reach well beyond the realms of sexism, I do think that this forum allowed a lot of women to complain about things that really didn't warrant such a level of complaint! At the end of the day, if somebody is offended by something that is said to them or happens to them, it should not have to be defined as sexism or racism or any other label for it to be taken seriously! 

C: John Connolly - Bad Men

I was excited about this book because I had been strongly recommended it by a colleague of mine. On the surface it looks like an everyday crime novel (other than the large moth on the front cover instead of the generic terrified girl or bloody dagger), but my expectations couldn't have been much more wrong. Connolly injects a spice of the mystical into his stories, which move them from a normal crime level, to an almost supernatural edge. While I can see why so many people may like this, it wasn't my thing really. I wouldn't have minded so much if all the loose ends were tied up at the end, but the lingering mystery at the end did annoy me. 

D: Lucy Dillon - One Small Act of Kindness

This is a perfect example of me falling prey to a pretty cover...how lovely is this?! It caught my eye as I was on my way out of Waterstones Picadilly (arguably my favourite place on Earth), and I couldn't help but pick it up and find my way back to the till. It sounded like such an uplifting story about the good of humanity, and I wasn't far wrong! 

It had a great edge on the usual 'chick flick' novel, with Alice having an accident and forgetting who she was...a fact that her ex-boyfriend decided to take advantage of. There was a lovely romance brewing by the end, and my only criticism was that I didn't get to hear enough about the happy ending! 

E: Imogen Edwards-Jones - Hotel Babylon

I had very high hopes for this book, particularly after I read Hospital Babylon and thought that was great, and felt I ought to read the book that inspired it. It had been sitting on my bookshelf for ages, and the A-Z challenge gave me the push I needed to read it. I have to say that unfortunately I was disappointed. I was expecting the same kind of scandalous stories found in Hospital Babylon, but I probably should have realised that I would never find this quite so shocking, seeing as I have worked for over a year in hospitality! Having said that, it was a quick and easy read...so not a wasted day! Plus it did have me giggling away at times...people have such a cheek sometimes! 

F: Jane Fallon - The Ugly Sister

I was conscious that I did not want to spend too much more money buying lots of books for this A-Z challenge, which meant that I had no choice but to read chick lit for F and G. This book reminded me why I decided to expand my horizons away from chick lit. I just couldn't get intimate with the characters, so I really didn't care what happened to them! Although saying that...I really did hate Cleo! I was hoping she would come round in the end and we would see the good girl we had met at the start, but she ended just as bitter as she was when I first began to despise her!

G: Jane Green - The Other Woman

Perhaps because I had just had such a bad time reading 'The Ugly Sister', I actually enjoyed this much more. A couple close to marriage, a baby on the way and an over-powering mother-in-law...a classic story, but Green wrote it well, so it was an enjoyable read. 

H: Emma Healey - Elizabeth is Missing

I have been thinking about this book a lot since I reviewed it on Goodreads, trying to work out why my review was so much more negative than most other people. I think I have worked it out...from its critical acclaim and categorisation, I was expecting a crime novel. I love a fast-paced crime thriller, so this rambly tale written from the perspective of an 82-year old suffering with dementia seemed to drag a hell of a lot. However I try and make excuses for this though, I really did not like this book, and would not be in a rush to recommend it to everyone, despite its nominations for 'best debut novel' etc...

Okay, so that turned out to be a bit of a mammoth first post! But don't worry, from now on they should be coming one at a time. 

The next may take a while as I have committed to the 720-page John Irving novel "A Prayer for Owen Meany", so expect some silence for a while! Hopefully it'll be worth it! :)