mybookjournal

It's very hard to write a review on your favourite novel because you are so much in love with that book that nothing seems wrong, to me this is one such book. Meaning - this review is all about praises for Persuasion.

I have no idea why I had given this book a four star rating earlier, which was actually a terrible mistake on my part and now has been rectified on second reading . May be this time I could understand the situation, the characters the whole plot even more clearly than earlier which made me swoon over this book even more.

Anne was young when she fell in love with Frederick. At that age one cannot be sure of ones true feeling as to, is it a mere infatuation? or something serious? Anne’s this confusion was influenced by her friend Lady Russell who ridiculed her decision of engaging herself with a man who was nothing compared to Anne and persuaded her to break the engagement. But little did Anne knew she would meet Frederick (now Captain Wentworth) again after so many years, to know she still has the same feeling towards him as she had 8 years ago. Is the love between these two protagonist mutual or just one sided is the biggest question for the readers. Even after knowing the ending, at times there were some sort of awkwardness, nervousness which questioned me while reading whether they are going end up together or not. Well, that says how beautifully the characters and the situations are weaved by Austen.

I loved Anne’s character. To the whole world she seemed weak, influential, feeble, at one point of time she was. But, not anymore and she keeps this transformation in her character as a secret from the whole world. She lets everyone think she is still the same Anne. She never blames anyone for what happened in the past neither Lady Russell nor herself because she knew as a girl she wasn’t matured enough to take decisions or to understand what was right for her and what was’ nt. Finally its Captain Frederick Wentworth who discovers the real Anne and breaks his silence..

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.”

I get the pattern of Keigo Higashino novels. First we come to know the crime and then the next moment we get to know the criminal but what we won’t know is the reason behind it and these kinds of mysteries is what i love to read. Where rather than concentrating on who is the criminal, the plot is more about why and how it was done.

Ayane and Yoshitaka a married couple, don't have children even after trying. But Yoshitaka is so adamant about having his own child that he doesn’t mind divorcing his current wife and remarrying. Meanwhile, he is also having a secret affair with one of Ayane student Hiromi. And when Yoshitaka is poisoned to death on a mysterious circumstances (by the way, i certainly didn’t feel pity for him) it made me curious to know why and how it was done. Then enters Detective Kusanagi, his intelligent assistant Utsumi and Professor Manabu Yukawa and solves the mystery for us.

But still there were some things which put me off. Firstly, Kusanagi’s soft corner for the suspect (Ayane), may be he just pretended to be interested in her am not sure of it but that part was unnecessary it somewhere made him look like a fool. Secondly, there was lots of ‘beating around the bush’. The crime was there, the criminal was there too and they knew how it was done but still it took really long time for them to conclude, even though there were 3 intelligent people involved that made the whole reasoning a bit silly and the criminal more intelligent. Having said that i still enjoyed this book and will look forward to read books by this author.

I very rarely give one star rating for a book, but this book deserved nothing more. I might have given it a 2 star if it wasn’t a sequel of Me Before You which is one of my favourites.

The problem with this book was that everything in here seemed unnatural and forced, the story, the events and all the characters. The whole story appeared as a forceful effort to build a sequel to the previous book which eventually lost the essence of the first book and made me think why I loved Me Before You. (Guess its time to re-read the book!)

And about the characters the less said the better they were just crazy and pathetic, except for Sam who was the only sane person there. Even Lou!! There was such a nice growth in her character in the previous but here she was back to square one. It made me wonder throughout the book, is this that Lou Clark, whom i loved in Me Before You? (Again, I guess its time to re-read the book!)

Anyway the only reason i completed this book was because it was written by Jojo Moyes, who is one of my favourite authors and I didn’t wanted leave her book incomplete. But i strongly felt she shouldn’t have attempted to write a sequel for a book which already had a perfect ending.
And people who loved Me Before You please don’t read the sequel because you are going to regret it big time, like me.

This book was an absolute entertainer from start to end! As soon as i finished this book i had rated it 5 stars but now i have changed it to 4.

I usually tend to read two books at a time especially if one of the books is more than 500 pages reason being somewhere in the mid i may get bored of the pace or the characters or may be i just need a break from that book but i was totally wrong when i started this one. From the moment i started till the end it didn’t even cross my mind to start another book until i finished the whole thing.

When i was first getting into the story of Nat and Fetcher a dizygotic twins who were separated at birth because of some unusual circumstances , mentally i had came up with my own story of how it would start and how these two would meet and end up killing each other, but i was wrong, the whole story was totally different from what i had imagined. There wasn’t any dramatic twist as i thought there would be so thats another point why i liked this book and of course the way the whole story was told by Archer without messing it up anywhere was GREAT! And now i know why he is called master story teller. Another thing which caught my attention was the ending, it was so confusing  that I had to read three or four times to know what actually happened.

Having said that i had just two problems with this book firstly at some parts the story was moving so fast that it was becoming difficult to catch up with characters and their circumstances another thing which didn’t sit well was Luke’s death i didn’t know why under such weak grounds he had to kill himself, that seems a bit forced, other than that I loved this book.

The reason why I love all Shashi Deshpande’s books is because I can relate to her writing so well. Her protagonists though traditional yet are rational and practical. They have a feminist undertone which some what makes the character very real and relatable to me though dwelling upon the past like all her protagonist do is not one of them. 

'Dark Holds No Terror' revolves around Sarita, a doctor by profession, an independent women, at least thats what she tries to portray but underneath, there is an emptiness in her which she is unable to fill. Is it not being a good daughter to her parents? or not being a good wife to her husband or failing as mother to children is one of the reason? She is unable to figure out. There is always something she is guilty of no mater what she does but she is not able to grow out of it. Perhaps to search that ’something’, one day Sarita leaves her husband, children, her profession and goes back to her maternal home. Wherein she is haunted by her mother's death as well as by her fathers silence. She dwells upon the past, how in her childhood days her mother used to accuse her of her brother’s death even though she was just a child then and how now she is unable to cope up with her husband and children with that past baggage. Yet, somehow she feels safe here at her maternal home, alone, at peace, out of all the daily chaos, with no one to interrupt her thoughts so that she could come to conclusion. Is Sarita’s journey to find herself is fruitful in the end? May be!

This was terrifingly dark and haunting novel. Though the narration used to jump from third person to first still it was not odd, i could go with the flow easily. May be i am accustomed to Deshpande’s writing!

This is my second book by Stephen King after Joyland and i will say i liked it better. 

The story was slow, depressing but was gripping enough for me to reach till the end otherwise this genre is not something i would finish this fast. But what i really loved most about Revival is the writing and character development of both Jamie Morton and Charles Jacob, also the way they kept crossing each others path throughout the book and SOMETHING HAPPENED each time, that part was something fascinating to me rather than scary or spooky. 

Probably the thing is that i don’t get myself involved while reading a horror book may be deliberately i don’t know, thats why it has never made THAT impact on me which it should.

Keigo Higashino’s approach towards crime thriller is totally different. The first book i read by him was 'Devotion of Suspect X’ i remember enjoying that book but not as much as i enjoyed Malice. I am totally in awe with this one. The story, the way it was presented to us readers and the characterisation everything was just incredible.

At first the story seemed very simple and to the point,
Firstly,we witness the crime,
Secondly, we get to know who has committed it and
Thirdly, the person who committed the crime also accepts that he is guilty of doing it.
This whole thing happens in just about 80 pages. So i kept thinking what left? Thats when Detective Kaga starts his research for the the reason behind this crime and whatever reason the guilty was providing was it genuine or just an illusion? And thats how the story moves on in search of the actual reason. Here we not only get to the bottom of the crime but also it makes us wonder about how criminal mind works and how it is rooted which is scarier than the crime itself come to think of it.
Although I don’t read many crime thrillers but if at all i want to read one and enjoy at the same time then it should be like Malice.

Just Loved it! Loved it! Loved it!!!
Okay, to start with i really didn’t have any high exception from this book since it had so many mixed reviews but as I had already read all most everything by Rainbow Rowell and was familiar with her writing i just wanted to give it a try. To my utter surprise it turned out be one of my favourite books of all time!! Also, this book is kinda special to me.

The story is simple and straight, yet extraordinary, at least thats how i felt. What made it extraordinary in Rainbow Rowell’s writing of course! She just knows how to get under the skin of a character and clearly explain what's going inside their head and why. Which actually connected me to both the main protagonist Eleanor and Park immediately.

This was just another teenage love story no doubt, but a brilliantly handled one i must say. There is no love at first sight, no instant physical attraction, no rich-poor drama. What starts between these two is just a simple understanding which goes deeper eventually and how does it go that deep is what the story is all about. Lets just sum up saying if you get the right partner at the right time of your life, then your life will be beautiful and thats what happened here with Eleanor and Park they met each other at the right time and then everything was just fine.

I had almost given up on reviewing this book since its very difficult for me to jot down thousands of emotions i underwent while i read this book. But its been more than a week since i finished this one yet neither am I able to start a new book nor am i able to forget this wonderful book. Seems like Auggie is not ready to leave me and i don’t want to let him go either. So i thought its better to try and capture my experience i shared with this book in a few words than not trying at all.

Well, to begin with I was very hesitant to start this book since i find it very difficult to read books about kids being humiliated, treated badly or made fun of, those kinds always breaks my heart as predicted this one did too, I've literally sobbed to no ends! But I am SO glad for having come across this book and for having read this too coz i got to meet 'The wonder boy August'. He brought so many vivid emotions in me which at times surprised me as well! He made me laugh, made me cry, also taught me how to let go and how to see life from a different angle altogether.
Being a wonder boy (yes i better call him that than anything else) he always knew he would get humiliated by the way he looked or may be scared too but what i loved is the way how he handled these situations bravely whenever he came across, not that he never broke down he did but then he was brave enough to forget about it and move on.

August says…"It’s okay, I know I’m weird-looking, take a look, I don’t bite. Hey, the truth is, if a wookie started going to school all of a sudden, I’d be curious, I’d probably stare a bit! And if I was walking with Jack or Summer, I’d probably whisper to them: Hey, there’s the wookie. And if the wookie caught me saying that, he’d know I wasn’t trying to be mean. I was just pointing out the fact that he’s a wookie."

That was the maturity level of a 10 year old Wonder Boy!! Of course the credit should go to his Wonderful parents and sister who were always supportive. Not to forget Daisy his dog who never cared how he looked like, just showered him the purest form of love. This shows that it is very important to show how supportive you are to your loved ones no matter how bad their situation is. Also .‘its not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than necessary’ Yes, got it Auggie. :)

It is books like these that teaches us to step into other person’s body, mind and soul just to see how it feels like to be on the other side life. All i can say is that there is SO much one can learn from Auggie that one read is definitely not enough!

Ectopy is a story about Dr. Zara Pendergast a cardiologist. Basically she is a workaholic who gives more importance to her professional life than personal. When she was appointed as the acting chief of medicine in a hospital she was working, she eagerly accepts the offer hardly knowing what was in for her.

Although Zara seems strong outwardly i found her a bit immature and impulsive in making decision for herself especially in the case of Greg. It was good to know in the end she finally realised who and what is good for her.

In this story author has tried to portray 'what is more important in life love or career?'. As a reader I felt the writing a bit too descriptive and much in detail than necessary which made this book a bit boring every now and then. But on the whole it was a good one from a first time author. This was my first experiment with medical fiction so it was new thing for me.

*Thanks for providing me a fee copy in exchange of an honest review.