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.

Paper Towns – John Green

Another read by my sister first, I think John Green is a new favourite author for her for the time being. It was her reactions that lead me to ask to also borrow the book with an ever approaching library deadline.

The novel starts off somewhat amusingly with talk of black santa collections and covert operations to wreak havoc on old friends and an ex boyfriend.

Yet it soon takes a more sinister turn when protagonist Margo Roth Spiegelman runs away and is feared dead by her best friends.

As a reader I guess that’s what you come to expect in the end, that she will either be dead or me and my sister both agreed… not real. I don’t know why but there’s just an air of make believe in the way the other protagonist Quentin ‘Q’ Jacobsen acts.

It’s by no means a bad novel but I can’t say I liked it as much as the previous, for a start I found the ending a little bit boring.

That’s not necessarily a criticism of Green but of novelists in general, now it’s all too easy to just let it finish and all element of surprise is over. There was just nothing out of the blue or exciting about it.

I would still read more of his novels going but going by ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ opposed to Paper Towns.

 

Pages: 320

To Buy: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paper-Towns-John-Green/dp/1408806592

Author’s website: http://johngreenbooks.com/

Never Look Back – Lesley Pearse

A big one this time which is why there has been such a gap between this post and the last. Lesley Pearse’s ‘Never Look Back’ is a whopping 737 pages and I enjoyed every single one.

I usually lose interest in a book this long and as per usual it took me a little while to get into but I think that’s my reading style opposed to the novels story.

The narrative centres around Matilda Jennings, a young girl rescued from the slums of London just about keeping her family together who is surprisingly intelligent and self confident for a child of the era and upbringing.

She is welcomed into the family home as a nursemaid for the priest’s daughter later on growing to see her as her own child. It is hard to remember that there is a mere 15 years between the two by the end of the story.

Without ruining it the pair endures some pretty horrible things across their lives, from gaining and losing multiple ‘family’ members to nursing during the war and saving innocent but abused women from the streets.

You’ll have moments of happiness reading the novel but also moments of pure sadness, especially in the end when the content Matilda seems to be perfectly peaceful.

This is not the first book I’ve read by Lesley Pearse and I doubt it’ll be the last, my mum and I are good fans of her work now, but she is capable of something few authors seem to do – write books that are entirely different from one another.

I honestly think you could read her novels back to back and think it was a different writer every time.

I would recommend this novel to anyone, if it takes a while to get into then just give it time it’s worth it in the end.

Buy here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Never-Look-Back-Lesley-Pearse/dp/0141046031/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373723879&sr=8-1&keywords=never+look+back

Authors website: http://www.lesleypearse.com/