Keeping Faith – Jodi Picoult

This is the second of Picoult’s novels that I’ve read in about as many weeks and I have to admit that I skim read most of it. I enjoyed the overall romantic and legal aspects of the novel however the religious element bored me – it was just too much.

Faith is a young girl that lives with both her parents, her mother Mariah is a previously clinically depressed and suicidal woman and her father Colin is an adulterer. Faith’s world is tipped upside down when she walks in on her father showering with another woman, of course as a little girl she doesn’t understand the ramifications of this, just that it makes her mother sad.

Next we know Faith has an imaginary friend, a friend that can heal, a friend that is a woman, a friend who is called God. Is she mad? Is she making it up? Is her mother putting thoughts into her head so that she can achieve fame? Or is she just a sad little girl?

Cue Ian Fletcher, the man to blow the lies out the water and prove that God isn’t real, or so he intends. Fletcher is hiding a family secret and when Faith begins to perform miracles he wonders if one can be saved for his family.

Fletcher is presented as a hound, a journalist with no morals but when it comes to his family he will do anything to help, with Faith proving that God may well just be real Fletcher allows himself to open to Mariah and soon they are romantically involved. As Colin fights for the custody he originally relinquished Fletcher becomes the ally no one expected.

It a responsible story but it’s not one I’d intend on reading again so this one will be destined for the charity shop.

12 Years A Slave – Solomon Northup

Unsurprisingly this 234 page memoir has taken me around a month to read (and there was me hoping it would be a couple of days). As ever the problem was that this is a short story and feels like there is a lot of information packed into few words.

One problem. This is not a story of conventional methods but in fact somebody’s life. Their journey and hardship.

Northup was a free man of New York City but when suddenly taken ill he is kidnapped and sold into the slave trade. When attempting to alert his owner of his status he is whipped with such brutality and threats he vows not to mention it again.

Northup is a kind man and one with many talents, but the one that comes up the most is his ability to play the violin. This on many occasion gets him away from the fields and earns both himself and his master Epps money. Though what a slave can really do with money is beyond me.

Prior to Epps is John Tibeats a bloke so terribly evil that Northup or ‘Platt’ as he’s referred to beats him back and runs away. This enrages Tibeats so incredibly that he sets about trying to murder Platt. Platt was able, unlike many, to return to his former master Ford for protection. Ford barters with Tibeats and Platt is sold on to Epps whom is not quite as evil, until he drinks.

Epps takes pleasure in his slaves torment but whilst Platt is present at his plantation he makes the mistake of making Platt an overseer. A job that entails such horrific brutality you will wonder why I said ‘mistake’. As I’ve already mentioned he is a kind and compassionate man and therefore devises a way of seeming to whip the slaves but in actual fact he is keeping the whip just millimetres away. This of course only works when Epps isn’t in the immediate vicinity but it saves the slaves multiple whippings.

When Samuel Bass comes upon Platt whilst working for Epps he vows to help the free man come home. It is a long and laborious task with little reward in the immediate until one day the news finally reaches Bass that the family will be going to reclaim their family member.

With false accusations to follow Northup is unable to settle at home despite knowing his innocence. The future is left very up in the air at the end but 12 years since he became a slave Northup is home again.

I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this book, though I don’t suppose it would be correct to say I did anyway! It was a struggle to keep on top of and I believe the film will probably pull on the heart strings and make it all seem more real.

The Cuckoo’s Calling – Robert Galbraith

Whoops already distracted – when looking how to spell the incredible J K Rowling’s pseudonym Robert Galbraith I noticed there is a second novel in the series – cue looking on Amazon!

Dare I admit that this novel was actually good?! I hated Casual Vacancy and I think maybe that was down to high expectations as an avid fan of Rowling during my childhood, in fact her novels shaped every aspect of my childhood – I adored Harry Potter and still do.

Whilst The Cuckoo’s Calling was a slow start with a lot of background setting the ending was a crafty twist and leaving my lunch break at work with only 20 pages left to finish was almost a killer.

Comoran Strike is an injured Afghanistan war hero as well as an illegitimate child of a rockstar. Team that with the fact he lost everything and he is worth very little provides the perfect private detective. Dedicated to a fault until his temp Robin steps in. Robin has always wanted to work in the industry and when Luna Landry’s brother Jonathan employs Strike she does her utmost to help get the case solved before her time is up.

Landry was a beautiful model who everyone wanted a piece of but when she tumbled to her death everyone ruled it a suicide – but was it?

Jonathan fights to prove it was murder and from there the novel spirals further and further into darkness of deceit, murder and all out psychotic behaviour. 

I think I considered pretty much everyone close to Landry as her murderer yet the twist at the end is brilliant.

Anyway, here’s to the next one!!

 

The Hollow – Agatha Christie

 

I am currently reading The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith but as that is taking me a little while I figured I would back track to another novel I have read recently. Do you remember me doing the Prudence and the Crow piece a while back, well this was the novel included.

I’ll admit I have never even considered reading an Agatha Christie as she is not someone who particularly enthralls me but I figured as it was included I would have to give it a go. I did pick crime novels after all! As per many short novels this was a struggle, I don’t know why but I always struggle on novels that are only a couple of hundred pages long, this is 190 pages, I think it’s because the author has to squeeze minute details into as little words as possible. I prefer the longer more drawn out process where you have time to digest the storyline.

Hilariously Poirot doesn’t seem to be a huge part of this novel, he is a neighbour of the Angkatell’s who held one of their ‘wild’ summer parties and low and behold a guest ends up dead. John Christow is the great respected doctor but when he’s found face down in the pool surrounded by his own blood his wife is the main suspect. I personally fancied his lover as the murderer but each to their own.

I won’t spoil the ending for anyone who may want to read this but I have to say the murder mystery aspect wasn’t all that exciting.

Plain Truth – Jodi Picoult

Okay so confession time. I’ve let this blog fall by the way side, I could come up with a number of excuses but instead let’s just get on with it!

I believe mum took this novel on holiday, on her return it went straight on to my ‘to read pile’ (honestly it’s huge!) partnered with the “I enjoyed it” statement from mum. Okay, so big expectations of this one then, as you know mine and mum’s opinions can sometimes differ. Well I’m pleased to say this time they didn’t, this book is genuinely good.

Focusing on the Amish Religion Ellie is thrown in at the deep end to defend a young Amish girl accused of suffocating her baby. Despicable I hear you say however not everything is what it seems.

Ellie has her reservations representing Katie but she takes a running leap into the culture when she volunteers to live with them so Katie can, for the mean time, avoid prison. No electricity and completely shut off from her ‘real world’ will Ellie cope?!

Katie is a strange character, the reader understands that she has had a baby, something she denies for a long time during the beginning of the novel. As her memory slowly comes back to her the reader wonders, did she actually smother her baby and then hide the body?

A dead sister, banished brother and aunt and a boyfriend that is struggling to look at her Katie slowly begins to admit how they baby came about. When visiting her brother at college she fell in love with his landlord and the rest was history. Having broken many rules and having lost her baby Katie believes that she must confess and be punished to help her in life but could the baby have died of natural causes? And how did it end up hidden?

A greatly written book with plenty of twists. Personally I suspected the dad, how about you?

Harvesting the Heart – Jodi Picoult

 

 

God I love Jodi Picoult – on a good day when I haven’t read too many of her novels in a row (they can get a bit samey given half a chance) she’s an incredible author.

I will admit from the off I had to skim read this a bit as I am about as squeamish as they come, and Nicholas Prescott is a surgeon, specifically one that mends broken hearts.

Paige Prescott meets her husband when she is merely a child that has run away from home, he becomes a strong protective force in her life until she becomes pregnant. Having neglected to tell the truth at the beginning of their relationship Paige allows her childhood secret to eat her alive until one day she leaves Nicholas and baby Max to find her mother.

Paige’s mother much like her just upped and left one day with no apparent thought for her child, Paige then does the same to her father and then her child and husband.

Whilst she is fighting with her guilt she fixes her relationship with her mother enough to go home where the fight begins again. Having had to juggle baby Max and his career as the top heart surgeon Nicholas has no time for his wife and pushes her further away.

Paige finds unexpected solace with her in laws who originally tried to push her away, Astrid and Robert adore their grandchild and slowly try to encourage their daughter in law to fight for her marriage.

Paige later becomes Nicholas’ shadow within the hospital as a volunteer and it is not until the end when Max becomes gravely ill that the two bond once more.

I would urge you to read this book, it’s an emotional roller coaster but well worth the effort!

John Bishop – How Did All This Happen?

I think this book frustrated me so much that it’s put me off writing slightly!!

John Bishop is a well known name in this household and I purchased this for my mum’s birthday back in December, it was one of many that has since sat in my unread pile.

It may be that because we know so much of John Bishop, and if you have read it my mum was one of the few people at his first Edinburgh fringe show, that this autobiography just didn’t hold my attention. It was that dull and slow running that my colleague said about a week and a half in ‘Are you still reading that?’ – which to be honest was the kick up the bum I needed to finish it. I think I spend on average a week reading a book.

John Bishop seems a lovely bloke with a now very happy family and decent life but as a comedian who uses his life as his material, I know most of his story. Maybe if he was to write another about the later comedic side of him it would be better.

This book has been donated to our local library.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prudence and The Crow

I am on a Facebook page called ‘Bookworms’ and one day we discussed whether there were any book boxes, a bit like Graze/Birchbox/Glossybox etc but with a book instead of food or make up.

One of the girls managed to find one via Prudence and The Crow (here) and I decided I would subscribe but only as a one off for £12, I took the extra £2 hit because I am too lazy to try and remember to cancel my subscription.

 

Above is a photo of the outer wrapping, it is the perfect size for a letterbox and every sticker placed on the front is a handmade touch. It is quite clearly wrapped by someone who has a passion for what they do, and it’s the handmade elements that really sell this product.

This is the next layer, it feels a bit like pass the parcel as I write this, again it is the personal elements like my name and the card that makes it special.

We’re finally inside!!! The wrapped item is my book, the printed material is a lovely and really amazingly handmade book bag, a Prudence and The Crow pencil, a Pukka teabag and a mint.

The book bag: it is so incredibly well made but I have to say I find the two types of material a bit random, I definitely prefer the second design. I don’t keep my books in any bags now but my dad has always commented how me and mum never break the spines of our books whereas my sister and him do, therefore I figure I’m quite neat with them? Saying that my work bag is a bit grotty so this could well be a welcome addition!

Finally, the book, I didn’t really want to break into the wrapping of this as it was so well done. I have never read any Agatha Christie so I am thoroughly intrigued.

All in all a good box as a one off and I love all the handmade touches but there’s one niggling thought in my mind and that’s that I could have bought the book for very little money elsewhere. It is this that has led to it just being a one off, but I have to say it’d make a wonderful present!

 

Little Beach Street Bakery – Jenny Colgan

 

Following on by the slight disappointment of Sophie Kinsella’s ‘Wedding Night’ I had another of my favourite ‘chic lit’ authors in my hands. I was dubious, if Kinsella’s was so simple and predictable would this then follow suit?

The answer is no, not because its not simple or predictable but because the simplicity of such a sweet story was enjoyable.

Polly Waterford has her life turned upside down when she is made bankrupt, during her search for a new flat she finds a dilapidated house in Polbearne and her life starts to rebuild slowly but surely.

Polly bakes bread, really good bread and it is from there that she starts to build herself relationships with most of the Polbearne inhabitants except one, her landlord Gillian Manse. A name that might sound like another familiar author? 😉

Manse is a hardcore Polbearne woman but behind her is a soft lady that has had her life ruined by loss, she is not necessarily fighting for the little village to stay the same but fighting because she herself cannot leave until Polly gives her a lifeline.

Polly’s love life is focused on a fair bit in this book, there are affairs, dramas and most of all the knight in shining armour at the end.

I really enjoyed this novel so I hope you will too, oh and watch out for Neil.

Wedding Night – Sophie Kinsella

Meet Socks. He’s my company in the morning and loves nothing more than trying to poke his head into my cereal bowl.

Sophie Kinsella is like many authors. She has set the bar high with the Shopaholic series and unfortunately since then I don’t think her books have lived up to expectations.

The novel focuses on Lottie who has her world turned upside down when a proposal goes wrong and her sister Fliss who must stop Lottie’s wedding at all costs.

Lottie is expecting partner Richard to propose, but when he doesn’t she runs back to Greece with an old lover to live as husband and wife. Her husband Ben is a disgustingly wealthy flake who realises in the end he’s married the wrong girl.

Older sister Fliss is currently going through a divorce which makes her incredibly bitter but when she meets Ben’s best friend Lorcan she realises life isn’t so bad after all.

This book is full of warm and funny moments that are almost feasible between family members, letd face it we’re a capable of silly things when family are concerned. What let’s it down? It’s all predictable.

A good easy read but yet again it’s not quite hit the mark I expect from Kinsella.