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Liz Rosenberg – The Laws of Gravity
How far would you go to protect your family? And if, in the act of protecting your family, you ended up losing them anyway, would it all be worth it?
That’s the dilemma Ari faces when he finds out his cousin Nicole is dying of cancer, and her only hope of survival is a cord-blood transplant. But the cord-blood that Nicole needs is the cord blood of Ari’s children, which he kept to safeguard their future. And despite his love for his cousin, he would protect his children, and therefore the cord-blood with his life.
But he’d already signed a letter promising that Nicole could have it, and Nicola is determined to fight this as it’s her last hope.
We follow the process through the courts and through the challenges that this brings for a previously close-knit family. We also get to know the judge of the case, trying his last case before retirement, and see the case change his attitudes towards his family too.
This was a very unusual choice of book for me, picked mainly because it had an audio-version and it was quite high in the kindle unlimited charts. I enjoyed listening to it on my commute, the narrator had a soothing voice which brought the book to life, in a way that I don’t think I’d have experienced if I’d simply read the book.
I found the book very interesting, although it definitely wasn’t an easy read, as you could probably tell by the subject matter. I’d still recommend it though, as long as you’re prepared for becoming emotionally invested.
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Karen Miller – The Innocent Mage
This was a wonderful birthday present from my friend Abi. She’s the one that got me into reading fantasy, and I don’t think she’s ever suggested a book I haven’t loved.
I found that this book started off a little slow, there was a lot of time spent building up the back-story and getting slowly into the action. But once it kicked off, it kicked off good!
I loved the character of Asher, elevated from a lowly Olken fisherman to the assistant to the Doranen prince. But far from being big-headed, he remains humble, and even finds the attention tiresome at times. He had promised himself that he’d only stay a year in the capital before returning back to his father and brothers on the coast, but things don’t go exactly to plan.
Talking of plans, Asher is completely unaware of the plans for his life. Dathne, the heir of Jervale, has had visions of Asher’s future, and although he may not know it yet, he’s going to play a big part in the coming days of Lur.
Weirdly, my favourite part of the book was the end, although if I hadn’t already got the second book, I don’t think I’d be saying that! I never in a million years would have guessed that the book would end like it did. I was sat at my desk at work, and as I turned to the last page, my jaw dropped and I just sat staring at the page in disbelief.
I have a feeling that I’ll be reading the second book much quicker than the first, the action is just about to begin in earnest!
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Gaston Leroux – Phantom of the Opera
I’ve been meaning to get round to reading this for absolutely ages, I think I downloaded it when I first got the Kindle app for my phone, but it has just never jumped to the top of the list. But I figured it was about time, especially with it coming with a free audio version with my Kindle Unlimited subscription. I’ve never seen either the film version or the stage version (shocking, I know) so I was coming in completely blind to the story and what was going to happen.
What surprised me was that I just couldn’t get into it at all. It’s obviously a classic, and the fact that it has been interpreted so many times left no doubt in my mind that I’d love it, but I don’t know if I just came to the book at the wrong time or if it’s just not my cup of tea, but I couldn’t honestly say that reading the book made me happy. It’s taken me 3 months to get to the end, and even then, that was only because I was so stubborn and determined that I wasn’t going to give up. It’s very unusual for a book to take me 3 weeks to read, let alone 3 months, so that should give you an idea that it wasn’t for me.
I think maybe if I’d seen either the film or the musical first and I knew what to expect, I may have come to the book with a more open heart and mind and the book might have climbed right in to take its place next to the other classics that I love so much, but alas it wasn’t meant to be.
I wouldn’t say the book was badly written (obviously, it’s a classic), and I definitely wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading it, but I found it to be quite a slow-starter and there just wasn’t enough to pique my interest and leave me desperate to know how the book would end.
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Kate Maruyama – Harrowgate
I’m still undecided what my feelings are towards this book, I can’t really say I loved it, but I didn’t hate it either.
I mainly listened to this book as an audio book rather than reading it, which I think added to the experience, it definitely felt like it had more tension.
The main character, Michael, left his heavily pregnant wife to go on a work trip completely out of contact with home. He was supposed to be back in time for the baby to be born, but when he gets back, the baby has already arrived and Sarah has locked herself away in their flat.
At first, Michael thinks that Sarah is suffering from post-partum depression, but her behaviour becomes more and more erratic, she refuses to let her sister into the apartment, and doesn’t like Michael touching their new baby Tim. And there’s this mysterious lady Greta who has appeared suddenly into their lives and seems way too comfortable.
So when Michael finds out the truth about the situation and it turns out to be far more sinister than he expected, he has major decisions to make. Can he risk losing the love of his life and their baby? It doesn’t seem like he has much choice, but he needs to decide how far he is willing to go to keep them around.
The book was really well written and kept me wanting to listen to more, but the subject matter wasn’t completely my cup of tea, so I couldn’t say I fully enjoyed it.
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Charlie N. Holmberg – The Master Magician
When I found out this book had been released, I had to stop what I was reading and get this right away! Thank goodness for Kindle Unlimited, which meant I could read this without worrying about the state of my bank balance!
I fell in love with Ceony and Emery at the end of last year when I read and became enthralled by The Paper Magician and The Glass Magician. I left the second book desperately yearning to find out if Ceony could finally get her dream, and I’m happy to report that this book made my dreams come true.
As usual, Ceony manages to get herself into unnecessary trouble by believing that she’d be safer fighting the bad guys alone without getting anyone else involved. Foolishly thinking that she’s keeping everyone out of danger, but managing to endanger them more in the process.
Towards the start of this book, Ceony is sent to finish her apprenticeship and complete her final test under a different magician, as Emery doesn’t want the world to think that he showed any bias towards Ceony because of their close relationship. But this new magician is nothing like Emery, and with the new laws about to come into place regarding opposite-sex apprenticeships, Ceony feels like she may end up losing her chance to pass the test and her relationship with Emery in one fell swoop.
Add to this the fact that her deadly enemy is now chasing her for revenge, and you can tell Ceony is not having the best of times!
I don’t want to give away too many plot spoilers here because I’d really recommend that you pick up this book (the whole series in fact). For such a short book (this one is only 200 pages), the author has done a fantastic job at creating this brilliantly magical world, and characters so utterly loveable that you can’t bear the thought of leaving them.
I finished this book on my lunch break today with a beaming smile on my face. After a nailbiting hour of frantic page turning trying to uncover what was going to happen, let’s just say that I was very happy with the ending. Not just what was written, but how it was written too. I think we know by now that I loved loved loved this book, so I’ll just finish off with two of my favourite quotes:
“When one believes in oneself, even the extraordinary is possible”
“How many men can honestly say a woman has walked their heart? But I can. And if you’ll have me, I’d like you to stay there.”
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Andy Jones – The Two of Us
After slogging through the last book over a painful two weeks of forcing myself to pick up the book and continue, it was nice to read something so compulsive that I just couldn’t put it down.
I initially dismissed the book as the usual chick-lit style book, but I was wrong to judge the book by its cover. The book went so much deeper than a light romance, it was full of raw emotion, sometimes painful, sometimes delightful, but always real.
Unusually for books that I read, the entire book was from the guy’s perspective. Fisher has just started a new romance with a lovely girl called Ivy, but less than three weeks into their relationship, they find out that Ivy is pregnant…with twins. They’ve not even got to know each other yet, so the next 9 months are going to be quite a struggle as they adapt to this new reality.
As we’re taken on this journey with Fisher and Ivy, we’re absorbed completely into this couple, their feelings became my feelings, and their frustrations became frustrating to me too. You might think that it would all be plain sailing, but of course it isn’t. But the troubles that Ivy and Fisher experience go far deeper than I could ever have imagined.
As I’m not a parent, I don’t think I could truly experience the full range of emotions offered by the book, but it still had me in tears. I wouldn’t say it was the easiest book to read, but it was so beautifully crafted that I just couldn’t bear to put it down without finding out how things would work out for Fisher and Ivy.
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Caitlin Moran – How To Build a Girl
Lessons I’ve learned from reading this book: Always listen to your best friend when she tells you a book isn’t that good.
I’d heard really good things about this book, it won reviews and people on Twitter were raving about it. But then my best friend Abi read it and didn’t particularly enjoy it, so I should have known that maybe the book wasn’t going to live up to the hype. Especially since Abi’s taste in books is usually bang on.
I found the book very pretentious, and the way it was written made it very hard to imagine that the main character was only a teenager. The language used and the thoughts that this girl was supposedly having just seemed too mature for her age. The book felt to me more like the author was projecting her own feelings and the way she wished she could have acted growing up onto this young character. Maybe I was just very naive as a teenager, but I definitely never acted even 10% as wild as Johanna.
Due to this, I could feel absolutely no empathy with the character, and when you feel no connection with the main character of a book, it becomes very hard to keep picking up the book to read it. Hence why it took over 2 weeks to read. I didn’t like the character and that made me feel no compunction to want to keep reading. Take something like Divergent or The Paper Magician series, and the young female characters are so well written that you can’t help but read more to find out what’s in their future, but I just couldn’t feel this for poor Johanna.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. After all, the book won awards. But when I get a young female character as the lead in a book, I like her to have something about her. And all Johanna seemed to have was a desire to have sex with every man she met. And even these scenes are not written like other books of this kind that I’ve read. She’s still a teenager, but the way she describes her encounters with these men is vulgar at best, degrading and unnecessary at worst.
I don’t really want to write too much more now, as I feel like I’m a little bit ranty this morning, and I could probably go on for hours. Instead, I think I’ll pick up my next book, which I hope will be much more entertaining.
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Milly Johnson – Afternoon Tea at the Sunflower Cafe
First up, I need to say that Milly Johnson is my favourite Chick-Lit author. And I don’t mean Chick-Lit in a disparaging way as it is sometimes used, there’s nothing wrong with getting lost in a fantasy for an afternoon, and you’re not exactly going to get that with a thriller.
This book was originally supposed to be called ‘The Woman Who Gave Up Chocolate’, but the publishers thought that was too negative and it was renamed. It’s a shame, because I felt that was a much better title for the book. The afternoon tea element wasn’t really central to the story, and kind of felt shoe-horned in. If it had been left out completely, I don’t think the book would have changed in any way.
I did very much enjoy the main characters of Della, Connie and Cheryl. Milly has a way of writing characters that are so relatable you could envision them as your friends, and by the end of the book, you feel like they are. Faced with such completely horrible characters of Jimmy, Ivanka, Gary and Lance, you wouldn’t blame them for rolling over and giving up. But being the true Yorkshire lasses that they are, that’s never going to happen, and we stick with the three ladies as they fight back against their separate (and common) enemies.
If you’re a follower of my blog, you’ll notice that it’s been a while since I wrote a book review, and it’s nothing to do with this book, in fact, I read this in two sittings. I’ve had a lot going on recently which has left no time for reading and to tell you the truth, I’ve really missed it! This was the perfect book to get me back to my favourite pastime, a page-turner daydream.
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The Creed
When I previously went to a Methodist Church, the services never followed a particular plan, and we never really did prayers or recited text as a whole church, except for the Lord’s Prayer.
But since going to Pudsey Parish, it’s been quite different. One of the things that is said nearly every week is the Nicene Creed. I’d never even heard it two months ago, but I love the practice of saying it, and I’m looking forward to the day when I can say it without the paper in front of me.
We believe in One God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is,
seen and unseen.We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,
was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.I’ve also been listening to a lot more Christian music while I’m at work, which I find very uplifting. It keeps me happy while I’m working and keeps part of my thoughts on God even when I’m concentrating on other things. One song I’ve heard that I find myself singing all the time; when I wake up, when I’m in the shower, just anywhere, is This I Believe (The Creed), by Hillsong Worship. It’s based on the Nicene Creed, and when you listen to it, you just can’t help but sing along, it’s a powerful song:
“I believe in God our Father
I believe in Christ the Son
I believe in the Holy Spirit
Our God is three in one
I believe in the resurrection
That we will rise again
For I believe in the name of Jesus” -
Walking through the Old Testament
At the weekend, I went to an event at Pudsey Parish Church called Walk Through The Bible. This particular one was the Old Testament version, but they also run a New Testament version too.
Ever since I started going back to Church last month, I’ve been feeling so much happier in myself. Apart from being in contact with God again and feeling my spirit renewed, I’ve met so many wonderfully friendly people – not a service goes by where I don’t meet someone knew, it’s been absolutely fantastic. I’ve joined a Cell group which meets on a Tuesday night for 2 hours for prayers, Bible study and discussion, and we even had the Vicar round for a cuppa last night for an introductory chat.
But coming back to Church, I realised how much I don’t know about the Bible, and how much has been forgotten during my time away, so when I heard about Walk Through the Bible, it sounded perfect. I couldn’t manage to persuade anyone to come along with me, so it was a bit daunting going along. I’m generally a very solitary person and not good at talking to new people, so it was a bit scary walking into a room full of people I didn’t know, but I was feeling at ease very quickly thanks to the wonderful people I mentioned earlier.
After a cup of tea, it was time for the event to start, and within the first few minutes it became clear that the day was going to involve a lot of actions; pointing and making shapes with our hands. That’s usually not my kind of thing, I always feel really self conscious doing them, but I quickly realised that the actions were vital to remembering my way through so much.
By the end of the day, we had a string of 77 actions taking us all the way from Creation to Christ. It was amazing how you could remember them all, I’d never have remembered without them!!
The instructor who was leading our course was fantastic. Totally charismatic and full of jokes and stories to make the day fun. I had initially thought that 8 hours of bible study would be draining, but apart from a slight post-lunch too-much-tea induced lag, the day flew by.
The event was so popular (I think there were about 40 people there) that the Vicar has asked them to come back and do the New Testament version too. I’ll be first on the list to sign up for it when it does, it was the best thing I’ve done in ages!! If there’s one in your area, I’d highly recommend it, so much fun!!
Louise Douglas
(I've got no) Shelf Control…
Louise Douglas 