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.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

It all starts on the one-hundredth birthday of Allan Karlsson. Sitting quietly in his room in an old people’s home, he is waiting for the party he-never-wanted-anyway to begin. The Mayor is going to be there. The press is going to be there. But, as it turns out, Allan is not… Slowly but surely Allan climbs out of his bedroom window, into the flowerbed (in his slippers) and makes his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades unfold, we learn something of Allan’s earlier life in which – remarkably – he helped to make the atom bomb, became friends with American presidents, Russian tyrants, and Chinese leaders, and was a participant behind the scenes in many key events of the twentieth century. Already a huge bestseller across Europe, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is a fun and feel-good book for all ages.


I loved this book, which to me was equal parts thriller, murder mystery, comedy and Forest Gump.

It moved surprisingly fast and it a lot in the story, there wasn't once when I got bored or skim ready over parts.

The characters were all very likeable and didn't fluff around too much - every word was true to their character and helped move the story along, keeping you engaged right until the very last page.

In high school history wasn't one of my favourite subjects but I loved the way this book creatively wove the major historical events together in a tall tale of the centenarians life. It covers a plethora of interesting and historical events that span the last one hundred years - communism in China, World Wars, The Cold War,  and much more. 
His interactions with various officials including sharing meals and more with everyone from Stalin, Churchill, and Truman to Mao, Franco, and de Gaulle, teaching life lessons in an unbelievable but highly entertaining way.

This book will suit most readers and bring smiles and spontaneous laughter along the journey.

The Husband by Dean Koontz

What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill? 

We have your wife. You can get her back for two million cash. Landscaper Mitchell Rafferty thinks it must be some kind of joke. He was in the middle of planting impatiens in the yard of one of his clients when his cell phone rang. Now he’s standing in a normal suburban neighborhood on a bright summer day, having a phone conversation out of his darkest nightmare.

Whoever is on the other end of the line is dead serious. He has Mitch’s wife and he’s named the price for her safe return. The caller doesn’t care that Mitch runs a small two-man landscaping operation and has no way of raising such a vast sum. He’s confident that Mitch will find a way. 

If he loves his wife enough. . . Mitch does love her enough. He loves her more than life itself. He’s got seventy-two hours to prove it. He has to find the two million by then. But he’ll pay a lot more. He’ll pay anything.

From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is a thriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist, every shock, every revelation…until it lets you go, unmistakably changed. This is a Dean Koontz novel, after all. And there’s no other experience quite like it.

This is the first Koontz book I have read, and second time I have tried to read this particular book - the first time I only got a few chapters in before something else caught my attention, and now a few years later I was ready to try again. 

I'm so undecided about how I feel now I have finished this novel. I liked the story line and the pace of the book with its plot twists and turns, I think it was Koontz's writing style that has confused me. He was very detailed with his descriptions, but I felt maybe too much so. When he was describing a scene of thought of the character there was so many unnecessary words that I tended to skip over half of them until I got just enough detail that I needed to keep going on to the next paragraph.

I also didn't really enjoy the way the dialogue between characters was written, and preferred to read the inner thinking instead.

Overall I enjoyed the story but probably won't be in a hurry to read another Koontz book.

My Hundred Lovers by Susan Johnson

Who were the greatest loves of your life? The ones that awakened every sense? The ones that you still dream about from time to time, fantasise about? The ones that you could encounter after years of absence and still get a tingle in the pit of your stomach? Did you appreciate that distinct buzz of a special love at the time you had it in your life, or is the memory perhaps sweeter than the reality?

A woman, on the eve of her fiftieth birthday, reflects on one hundred moments from a lifetime's sensual adventures. After the love, hatred and despair are done with, the great and trivial acts of her bodily life reveal an imperfect, yet whole self. By turns humorous, sharp, haunting and wise, this is an original and exhilarating novel from one of Australia's premier writers.
Lyrical and exquisite, My Hundred Lovers captures the sheer wonder of life, desire and love.

I loved the idea of this book, what a fantastic way to remember various parts of your life, like random snapshots of yourself shown haphazardly in no real order.

It was a sensory experience reading this "That afternoon in the small bedroom the light was blue. The curtains were cream and blew softly in the wind. There was a cry, far off, almost out of earshot. There was a man in my bed and I did not know how he got there." and we were shown a glimpse in to the life that belonged to Deborah, a normal 'young girl' who wasn't shown how to value herself other than through her body. 

It is a work of fiction but Johnson writes so honestly and with so much personality that for the first part of the book I thought it was a memoir - It felt like I was reading her private diary, lyrical and poetically written mini memories, sometime sweet, sometimes surprisingly bitter. 

A book most would enjoy and gain something from on an individual level, especially if you like looking in through the window into other peoples lives.

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton

Caroline Reynolds has a fantastic new apartment in San Francisco, a KitchenAid mixer, and no O (and we’re not talking Oprah here, folks). She has a flourishing design career, an office overlooking the bay, a killer zucchini bread recipe, and no O. She has Clive (the best cat ever), great friends, a great rack, and no O.

Adding insult to O-less, since her move, she has an oversexed neighbor with the loudest late-night wallbanging she’s ever heard. Each moan, spank, and–was that a meow?–punctuates the fact that not only is she losing sleep, she still has, yep, you guessed it, no O.

Enter Simon Parker. (No, really, Simon, please enter.) When the wallbanging threatens to literally bounce her out of bed, Caroline, clad in sexual frustration and a pink baby-doll nightie, confronts her heard-but-never-seen neighbor. Their late-night hallway encounter has, well, mixed results. Ahem. With walls this thin, the tension’s gonna be thick…

In her third novel, Alice Clayton returns to dish her trademark mix of silly and steamy. Banter, barbs, and strutting pussycats, plus the sexiest apple pie ever made, are dunked in a hot tub and set against the gorgeous San Francisco skyline in this hot and hilarious tale of exasperation at first sight.

This book  definitely had its funny moments and plenty of witty banter.

The main characters, Simon and Caroline, were a lot of fun, but at times I found parts of the book a little immature - like it didn't know whether to be a young adult book or an adult 'romance' novel. But it was refreshing that the main characters didn't have major 'issues' and dark pasts like some books from the same genre, it made it feel a little more realistic.