This is a pretty delayed review because I’ve been quite busy this week (including seeing the Blues Brothers at the cinema for the first time on Thursday and seeing the Olympic Torch in Huddersfield this afternoon), so I’m still slipping further and further behind on my reading challenge. Lacking a bit of motivation at the moment I think…

But onto the review: I don’t really know how to write it without completely spoiling the book for anyone else that wants to read it, but I’ll give it a try.

The book is about a young woman called Veronika who decides to commit suicide. (Un)fortunately, she doesn’t succeed and ends up in a psychiatric hospital called Villette. Even though she doesn’t succeed with her suicide attempt, she finds out that she made a good enough attempt at it to give herself only a few days to live.

However, while she’s in the hospital she meets a few people who have been classed as ‘insane’, but when she learns their stories, she realises they’re not mad at all, and that she’s missed out on a lot of experiences and things she should have done in her life. Of course by this time it is too late, but by listening and talking to these strangers, she ends up helping them to get over the problems they’ve been having and help them to leave the hospital.

Because she has nothing left to lose, she is willing to try more things and to experience new relationships and emotions. There’s a huge twist in the last 2 pages of the book, which bring the book to an amazing ending, but I won’t say any more about that because it really will spoil the book for you if you decide to read it. I think the main message of the book was really that sanity only means that we’re all mad in the same way, so is anyone really mad?

I’ve been reading The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks for the last day or so, and enjoying it so far. I think this week is going to be less busy than the last, so I’ll have some more time to just chill out and read.