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...