The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

 “Later, I would come to think of those first days as the time when we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things: the hole in the ozone layer, the melting of the ice caps, West Nile and swine flu and killer bees. But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.” 

Luminous, haunting, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles is a stunning fiction debut by a superb new writer, a story about coming of age during extraordinary times, about people going on with their lives in an era of profound uncertainty.

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, 11-year-old Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life--the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.

With spare, graceful prose and the emotional wisdom of a born storyteller, Karen Thompson Walker has created a singular narrator in Julia, a resilient and insightful young girl, and a moving portrait of family life set against the backdrop of an utterly altered world.

From looking at the overall rating of this book I didn't really very high expectations, so maybe that is why I enjoyed it so much!

Not only did I find the storyline interesting - a doomsday coming of age from a new perspective - but I found the writing style of Walker made it so much more engaging, her words and juxtapositions easily brought to mind the images and emotions needed to get involved with the story on the page.

When you read the blurb on the back cover it doesn't sound like it, but make no mistake, this is a YA apocalyptic novel, so if that's not usually your style then you're probably not going to enjoy it for more than a few chapters. 

Although I don't think it's the main intention, this book also brings up some pretty good concerns about the environment and the lasting effects of our modern lifestyles. And when I was reading it I could't help but think about how much was a prediction of things to come, and how would we react if something similar really did happen in our lifetime. I also found really interesting how the slow death of humans was very similar to the death of the earth - we see ourselves as slightly more intelligent but in the end the truth is that we are just as susceptible to death as every other living thing on this planet. 

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” 

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

A really great book, as incredibly sad as it was witty and even hopeful.

John Green nailed the teenage perspective, and I can only assume the terminally ill teenage perspective.

It's not a long book, so definitely worth the read.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells. 

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. 

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance? 
          
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

This has been one of the most interesting and shocking books I have read in quite a while - I had to keep reminding myself while I was reading it that it is based on true events, it is so far removed from anything I have ever experienced myself (although Australia obviously also has it's own dark history with it's native aboriginals).

Although Skloot is a scientific writer, this book didn't read like a text book, and even though I hadn't had anything to do with biology since year 10 high school, I found it easy to follow and her writing informative and really engaging. The language Skloot used seemed to keep in character for those that she was interviewing, and it made it easy to image the conversations actually taking place, brining the story alive for me. It made me want to read faster to hear how it all ended, but at the same time I didn't want it to end and had to pace myself.

I disagree with other reviewers when they say Skloot makes the story about her - it doesn't mention really anything about her personal life (apart from when she was studying and her lecturer first introduced her to the name Henrietta Lacks) - but it does cover her journey on piecing together this story with the Lacks family.

One of the things I enjoyed most about this book was that there was clearly so much research done in to the story - and I learnt a lot from reading it (eg how the Klu Klux Klan originated, testing that was conducted on the black community, and at the 'negro insane hospital'. In between sections explaining the scientific timelines, the lacks family story was woven through, from when Henrietta first went in to hospital, to when Deborah passed away and the book was concluded. 

One of the most heartbreaking things about this story is that even though Henrietta's cells have helped with so many medical advances in fighting diseases, creating lifesaving vaccines, and understanding the human body in general - her family couldn't even afford the medical treatment or appointments they needed to stay healthy and comfortable. 

Now that I have finished reading the book, I can't help but think 'what would the world me like if the doctors never took her cells?' Would we be in a different state with regards to medicines available? OR would researchers have still gotten there in the end?

I enjoyed reading this book so much that since I started reading it (and especially now I haven finished it) that I have talked about it to friends, family and coworkers and encouraged them all to check it out.

The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks

Ira Levinson is in trouble. At ninety-one years old, in poor health and alone in the world, he finds himself stranded on an isolated embankment after a car crash. Suffering multiple injuries, he struggles to retain consciousness until a blurry image materializes and comes into focus beside him: his beloved wife Ruth, who passed away nine years ago. Urging him to hang on, she forces him to remain alert by recounting the stories of their lifetime together – how they met, the precious paintings they collected together, the dark days of WWII and its effect on them and their families. Ira knows that Ruth can’t possibly be in the car with him, but he clings to her words and his memories, reliving the sorrows and everyday joys that defined their marriage.

A few miles away, at a local rodeo, a Wake Forest College senior’s life is about to change. Recovering from a recent break-up, Sophia Danko meets a young cowboy named Luke, who bears little resemblance to the privileged frat boys she has encountered at school. Through Luke, Sophia is introduced to a world in which the stakes of survival and success, ruin and reward -- even life and death – loom large in everyday life. As she and Luke fall in love, Sophia finds herself imagining a future far removed from her plans -- a future that Luke has the power to rewrite . . . if the secret he’s keeping doesn’t destroy it first.

Ira and Ruth. Sophia and Luke. Two couples who have little in common, and who are separated by years and experience. Yet their lives will converge with unexpected poignancy, reminding us all that even the most difficult decisions can yield extraordinary journeys: beyond despair, beyond death, to the farthest reaches of the human heart.

Nicholas Sparks definitely is the master of love stories, there is no doubt about it. While this story is nowhere near my favourite one of his (what could seriously ever compare to The Notebook??), it's still good enough to read until the end (although at about the halfway point I did question if I should keep going, I'm glad I did).

I liked how the two stories were woven together - at the beginning I couldn't see how they worked together, but towards the end you could see a pattern and get a hint as to how they were going to fit together.

With so many books similar to 50 Shades being released and increasing in popularity, it's good to read a love story that is a bit more wholesome, but at times this one felt a little bit too PG.

Although I will confess to shedding a quiet tear when it got to the part of his wife's death. How beautiful to love someone as much as they did - I can only hope to be that lucky.

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis

A debut of extraordinary distinction: Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable family. 

In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented.  Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave.  She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation. 

Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is wondrous from first to last—glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life. An emotionally transfixing page-turner, a searing portrait of striving in the face of insurmountable adversity, an indelible encounter with the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of the American dream, Mathis’s first novel heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

I always find it really refreshing to read a story that is set out slightly different from the norm, it makes be excited to continue reading no matter what the topic, and it makes it harder to guess how it is going to end.

This story tells the depressing yet interesting tale of Hattie's tribe of children. It very cleverly shows you who they are, and then by default tells the story of Hattie herself. 

I don't know how accurate it is, but in parts it is heartbreaking, and I found myself really wanting this poor family to finally cut a break! It seemed like each and every one of them was doomed to struggle their entire life.

But despite the bleak tales of the family members, the Mathis is a master storyteller. It may not give you warm and fuzzys when you read it, but it will definitely keep you turning the page.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Laneis told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

Not what I was expecting at all and a hard one to comment on.

The author has a vivid imagination and the storyline was very creative, but I just didn't get in to it.

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

From bestselling author Meg Wolitzer a dazzling, panoramic novel about what becomes of early talent, and the roles that art, money, and even envy can play in close friendships.

The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents, fortunes, and degrees of satisfaction diverge.

The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty; not everyone can sustain, in adulthood, what seemed so special in adolescence. Jules Jacobson, an aspiring comic actress, eventually resigns herself to a more practical occupation and lifestyle. Her friend Jonah, a gifted musician, stops playing the guitar and becomes an engineer. But Ethan and Ash, Jules’s now-married best friends, become shockingly successful—true to their initial artistic dreams, with the wealth and access that allow those dreams to keep expanding. The friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their talents have become and the shapes their lives have taken.

Wide in scope, ambitious, and populated by complex characters who come together and apart in a changing New York City, The Interestingsexplores the meaning of talent; the nature of envy; the roles of class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.

After finishing this book the thing that struck me the most, was how normal it was. For me, it was a nice novel about a group of friends growing up, learning about themselves and each facing struggles along the way. It just felt real, it didn't sugar coat things and promise that everything will magically turn out in the end (like some novels do to make everything wrap up nicely at the finish).

The characters were flawed and damaged, and very well written. 

Nostalgia was a common theme throughout the story and at times it could get a little melancholy, but it is a good reminder to appreciate your history but keep looking forward. 

There were ups and downs in the plot, but they weren't over dramatised. Having said that if you like dramatic novels then you  might find parts of this a little mundane. 

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Don Tillman, 39, a successful but odd genetics prof, designs a questionnaire for his Wife Project: punctual, non-drinker, non-smoker. Rosie, a spontaneous, outspoken barmaid, smokes, curses, and adjusts his clock when he complains about his schedule. Yet an unlikely partnership blooms when Don agrees to help Rosie find her biological father.

Big Bang Theory meets Along Came Polly. Totally laughable and I enjoyed every minute! So much so that I was actually smiling to myself while reading it!

I loved the unique and charming characters - Don's with his endearing yet practical quirkiness, Rosie with her rough vulnerability and Gene and Claudia with their unconventional marriage. Everything fit together so well.

There were no slow or boring bits for me, and I was laughing right up until the end. 

 

Entwined with You (Crossfire #3) by Sylvia Day

The worldwide phenomenon continues as Eva and Gideon face the demons of their pasts, and accept the consequences of their obsessive desires… 

From the moment I first met Gideon Cross, I recognized something in him that I needed. Something I couldn’t resist. I saw the dangerous and damaged soul inside–so much like my own. I was drawn to it. I needed him as surely as I needed my heart to beat.

No one knows how much he risked for me. How much I’d been threatened, or just how dark and desperate the shadow of our pasts would become.

Entwined by our secrets, we tried to defy the odds. We made our own rules and surrendered completely to the exquisite power of possession…

I have a love/hate for these kinds of books. I can't stop reading them, but it's all same same but different. Same drama, just a different plot line.

If you liked the first two in the series then you will like the third - there was nothing disappointing about it. I read it in less than a day and thought this was last of the series, then get to the end and find out there's going to be another one.

I wonder how many more dramas two people can face - what on earth could possibly be coming at them next?

I will read the next one because I've already made it this far through, but I am secretly glad it isn't available yet so I can have a break and refresh by reading something a bit different and not so heavy.

Reflected in You (Crossfire #2) by Sylvia Day

“People get over love. They can live without it, they can move on. Love can be lost and found again. But that won't happen for me. I won't survive you, Eva.” 

Gideon Cross. As beautiful and flawless on the outside as he was damaged and tormented on the inside. He was a bright, scorching flame that singed me with the darkest of pleasures. I couldn't stay away. I didn't want to. He was my addiction... my every desire... mine.

My past was as violent as his, and I was just as broken. We’d never work. It was too hard, too painful... except when it was perfect. Those moments when the driving hunger and desperate love were the most exquisite insanity. 

We were bound by our need. And our passion would take us beyond our limits to the sweetest, sharpest edge of obsession...

The biggest thing about these style of books, is that they have an addictive story. It leaves you on the edge of your seat wanting some resolution as to how it will all end. 

It wasn't as messed up as Fifty Shades (and with a much better writing style), but it was a little unnerving  as to how unbalanced both Eva and Gideon were...On-again off-again, fighting and then making up, before fighting again. 

Why do the men in these kind of books have to be broken and damaged to love women that way? Is it because it makes for a better storyline? I'd like to read a book of this genre without that element to it, to see how much it really adds (or not) and make up my own mind.

Overall it was a good book - an escape from the everyday hassles to explore through someone else's (highly imaginative) life, and exactly what you would expect from something like this. I've already bought the last instalment...

The Zahir by Paulo Coelho

 

“Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused. This force is on earth to make us happy, to bring us closer to God and to our neighbour, and yet, given the way we love now, we enjoy one hour of anxiety for every minute of peace."

The narrator of The Zahir is a bestselling novelist who lives in Paris and enjoys all the privileges money and celebrity bring. His wife of ten years, Esther, is a war correspondent who has disappeared along with a friend, Mikhail, who may or may not be her lover.

Was Esther kidnapped, murdered, or did she simply escape a marriage that left her unfulfilled? The narrator doesn't have any answers, but he has plenty of questions of his own. Then one day Mikhail finds the narrator and promises to reunite him with his wife. In his attempt to recapture a lost love, the narrator discovers something unexpected about himself.

I should have known better than to expect a standard storyline, don't be fooled by the blurb on the back cover - this book is not a conventional love story.

At first I struggled with the plot - if someone went missing without a trace and the police were called in to take away the husband as a suspect, then surely that would not be the end of the discussion. Wouldn't an investigation have to go on? And wouldn't there be a way to find her - credit cards, passports tracing etc. And I found it hard that it took 2 years for the narrator to get motivated to find where she went - surely he couldn't be that shallow??

You never find out the name of the narrator and I wonder how much of the story and characters are based around Paulo Coelho's life.

For me personally, I found the conversations about love and life happiness between the characters interesting and thought provoking, and while some struck a cord with me, others did not as much.

I really found the metaphor for the writing process interesting on page 69, and also the railway tracks defining a marriage on page 136.

If you a fan of other Paulo Coelho novels then you will also enjoy this one - but if you haven't read any of his other books, then relax, don't fight it, and let the story take you on a journey.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers.

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

For some reason I am finding it really hard to write my review for this book. I'm not really sure why - I really enjoyed it.

It was easy to read, but was written in a way that made me look for deeper meaning in what was being said.

I loved that there was a supernatural theme that surrounded Faina - she was a little girl who lived in the snowy Alaskan woods, but there was some magical force around her and the snow right through to the very last sentence.

Mabel transforms throughout the story - she starts off 'grey' and depressed, but slowly the life comes back to her and the love rekindled in her marriage. By the end of the story she is a strong woman.

Very well written and a lovely read on a cold wintery weekend.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, The Great Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. 

After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.

There was so much hype around the movie, so I wanted to read the book before I let Leo distract my appreciation from the original.

For the first half of the book, I found the storyline quite 'scatty' and the characters dialogue jumped around as if they weren't having a conversation, but were each talking about separate topics.

It also took me halfway through the book to feel any kind of engagement with the characters - other than Nick, the main characters weren't featured as often until the last 50% of the book.

So after nearly quitting, I persevered, and I'm glad I did, as towards the end it all fell in to place and I could appreciate it all a bit more.

Originally I thought I would enjoy the movie more, but after I finished I'm glad I read the book first. 

I read a caparison online before writing this review (which can be read here http://www.hollywood.com/news/movies/55013084/great-gatsby-book-vs-movie?page=all). It also made obvious a lot of subcontexts within the story (e.g. Daisy's superficial relationship with her daughter and her materialism). I still haven't watched the movie, but now I can't wait to see if I agree with this. 

I'm glad I read it. It is a classic and must read for all.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.

Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

I usually love books that are based in Paris, but I have made it through 50% of the book and I am sitting on the fence about it.

I have enjoyed reading it so far. The characters are not unlikeable, the writing easily transports me to the location of the story and I wouldn’t class it as boring by any means – it reads like you are having a sneak peak in to Renee and Paloma’s private lives making it feel even more real - but so far I can’t really see the point of it all.

I’m putting my decision to stop reading it down to me wanting to read something a bit exciting and modern – the story so far has been moving along at a slow and steady pace. Apparently the best part of the book is the last quarter so I am keeping this in mind and will most likely come back and finish it at another time.

The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell

“Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea, and it is almost as if the trees know, in their restlessness, in their head-tossing impatience, that something is about to happen.” 

Maggie O'Farrell has a singular knack for sensing the magnetic fields that push and pull people in love, and in The Hand That First Held Mine, she summons those invisible forces to tell two stories. 

The first is the spirited journey of Lexie Sinclair, a bright, tempestuous woman who finds her way from rural Devon to the center of postwar London's burgeoning art scene. Her force of personality makes her a natural critic (she's a wonderful tour guide to Soho's Bohemian circles), and she soon falls deeply in love. 

Fast forward fifty years and you'll meet Ted and Elina: a contemporary London couple who've just had their first child, both afflicted with a crisis of memory--Elina can recall only bits and pieces of her life before the baby, while Ted fights off memories he can't even recognize. 

O'Farrell alternates these plots artfully, always keeping the incorrigible Lexie in forward motion, while letting Ted and Elina wade further back in time. Inevitably, the two stories collide, and the result is a remarkably taut and unsentimental whole that embraces the unpredictable, both in love and in life.

Right from the opening paragraph (above) you could tell Maggie O'Farrell was going to take us on a special poetic journey with this book. Everything was described in such lyrical detail that you could see it all painted clearly in the back of your eyelids as you are reading along. 

I liked how the two stories were woven together. The 'bizzy spells' were cleverly aligned with the counter story and but it wasn't until towards the end that I saw what was happening - it was done in a way that wasn't glaringly obvious which was nice for a change. 

All the characters played their part well (even though some of them weren't particularly likeable), but my favourite character was definitely Lexie - smart, bold, and confident - I loved seeing her character develop over time (towards the end of the book when she is swimming in the ocean thinking of her son was really beautifully written).

For those who are thinking of reading this book - stick with it. It isn't until a few chapters in that you get the hang of the two story lines (and the memory loss of Ted and Elina) but once you see where they are heading and get a feel for the characters and time/setting, you will see it is worth seeing through until the end.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

“Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.” 

A mesmerizing, moving, and elegantly written debut novel, The Language of Flowers beautifully weaves past and present, creating a vivid portrait of an unforgettable woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own troubled past.

The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating grief, mistrust, and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings.

Now eighteen and emancipated from the system, Victoria has nowhere to go and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. Soon a local florist discovers her talents, and Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But a mysterious vendor at the flower market has her questioning what’s been missing in her life, and when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness.

A book about flowers was not something I thought I would enjoy, and when this book was recommended to me the title gave me an initial vision of a different story, so I was surprised to start reading and see that Victoria's story was set in modern San Fransisco.

Although her personality was a little prickly to start off with, there were two stories of Victoria's life that moved along side-by-side; one about Victoria today, and one giving insight in to her childhood, so that as things were developing today, you could understand why or how they were happening. 

The characters were well written - even though most of them do not appear like conventional heroes, but they each have an endearing quality...that they all want to help the underdog (Victoria) using their individual means available and without expecting anything in return. If only more people were like this in real life!

When I got to the end I liked that it had a happy, yet realistic finish - where the main character is admitting that it is going to be a hard road to realise her ultimate happiness, rather than it all just working it out in the end magically.

I would definitely recommend this book, and as it isn't very offending I think it would suit most readers.