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.