The Handmaid's Tale

Finally reading The Handmaid's Tale! It's getting me all excited about blogging again so here I am. Stay posted. I will try my best to Blog more..life willing.

Synopsis

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one option: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like all dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs. The Handmaid's Tale is a brilliant and astutely perceived evocation of twenty-first-century America.

It's Vintage's 21st birthday and we're celebrating by publishing twenty-one of our

most iconic books in a rainbow of beautiful colours. Treat yourself and make

your bookshelves happy.

This Family Life

Synopsis 

Things that might happen during your first year of parenthood: 

1. You’ll get covered in a ‘nuclear’ poo. 
2. You’ll be convinced your son is talking with a Japanese accent. 
3. You’ll worry that when your son waves, it looks like a Nazi salute. 
Of course, this might just be Harry Spencer. 

Taking up where This Thirtysomething Life left off, Harry Spencer and is wife Emily are back and trying to survive their first year of parenthood. It has its ups and downs (and a few bits in the middle), but along the way they begin to understand the true meaning of family and what it takes to be a parent. 

Featuring a hilarious cast of extras including Harry’s father-in-law Derek, who has a unique problem with Scotch, Steve and Fiona, the parents from children’s entertainment hell, and a yoga instructor with a prominent camel-toe, This Family Life is the ultimate comedy for anyone who is a parent, has a parent, or is thinking about becoming one. 

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Review

I read this a while ago, I loved it but for some reason life got in the way and I never got a chance to review it until now. Right, although The Family Life wasn't as funny as This Thirtysomething Life it left me with a cheerful and optimistic view of life especially as my view of marriage was skewed to begin with. I loved Spencer and Emily's relationship this time round, I thought he was a little bit more understanding and sexier.

I would recommend this as it's funny, lovely and the author does a good job of portraying a modern British family.  

Review: Broken #1

Synopsis

Caleb is perfect in every way, almost too perfect and Gwen has never felt so happy. He is hers and she is his. Life can't get much better and their love can't get any stronger. That is until mistakes are made and their world comes crumbling down. 

She's left alone with no money, no home and a growing person invading her stomach. How will she survive? 

Forced to leave culinary school, the job she needs and the home they made together. 

Gwen finds a knight in the most unlikely source. Caleb's brother Nathan. A complex man with a phobia she doesn't understand and mannerisms that aren't of this day and age, will she be able to melt his seemingly frozen heart and become his friend? Or will he forever push her away and wallow in his loneliness and self loathing? 

Review
Broken didn't have a great start. The beginning was a bit of a mish mash, a girl meets a boy on a beach and falls deliberately in loves, how gullible is she and how gullible does the author think we are that we would believe such nonsense? The beginning of this story would be a good story for a fifteen year old, its very unrealistically romantic, if not headache inducing. I was livid with the author for such a bad start.

However as the story progressed, I began to understand the characters. This author is good at characterization, in Lil Bits of Us, I loved Mia not because she was perfectly formed but because she was flawed, she was a young woman coming to terms with the death of the father and coming to terms with growing up. However in Broken Gwen is sappy, very weak and to a certain extent stupid. Towards the end I began to sympathize with her. Yes she needs to stand up for herself but I'm hoping she does this in the second book.

This isn't a story that rings true, it sounded as though the author thought about how great it would be to meet someone on the beach and she went for it. But Gwen and Caleb are not the kind of people I would have a drink with, they characters in a book and don't translate to real life. But I still think this author has potential,  the story is captivating enough, funny and there are elements of brilliance and I was entertained but I think the author needs to go back to the drawing board. Sort out the dialogue for example and create characters as great as Mia.

Question: Does anyone know an English Caleb, the name is very American. Sigh!

Ps. I was sent this book by the author. 

How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Synopsis

The astonishing and riveting tale of a man's journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by youths all over 'rising Asia'. 

It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on the most fluid and increasingly scarce of goods: water. 

Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises alongside his, their paths crossing and re-crossing in a love affair sparked and snuffed out again by the forces that careen their fates along.

Can Anybody Help Me?

Synopsis

It was crazy really, she had never met the woman, had no idea of her real name but she thought of her as a friend. Or, at least, the closest thing she had to a friend in Dublin. 

Struggling with a new baby, Yvonne turns to netmammy, an online forum for mothers, for support. Drawn into a world of new friends, she spends increasing amounts of time online and volunteers more and more information about herself.

When one of her new friends goes offline, Yvonne thinks something is wrong, but dismisses her fears. After all, does she really know this woman?

But when the body of a young woman with striking similarities to Yvonne's missing friend is found, Yvonne realises that they're all in terrifying danger. Can she persuade Sergeant Claire Boyle, herself about to go on maternity leave, to take her fears seriously?

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The Girl Who Was Saturday Night

Synopsis

At birth, Nouschka forms a bond with her twin that can never be broken. 

At six, she's the child star daughter of Quebec's most famous musician. 

At sixteen, she's a high-school dropout kicking up with her beloved brother. 

At nineteen, she's the Beauty Queen of Boulevard Saint-Laurent. 

At twenty, she's back in night school. And falling for an ex-convict. 

And it's all being filmed by a documentary crew.

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Ghostwritten - Review

Synopsis

She listens to everyone else’s story, but can she find her own?

Perfect for fans of Tenko and The Railway Man

A childhood mistake. A lifetime of regrets.

Jenni is a ‘ghost’: she writes the lives of other people. It’s a job that suits her well: still haunted by a childhood tragedy, she finds it easier to take refuge in the memories of others rather than dwell on her own.

Jenni has an exciting new commission, and is delighted to start working on the memoirs of a Dutchwoman, Klara. As a child in the Second World War, Klara was interned in a camp on Java during the Japanese occupation – she has an extraordinary story of survival to tell.

But as Jenni and Klara begin to get to know each other, Jenni begins to do much more than shed light on a neglected part of history. She is being forced to examine her own devastating memories, too. But with Klara’s help, perhaps this is finally the moment where she will be able to lay the ghosts of her own past to rest?

Gripping, poignant and beautifully researched, Ghostwritten is a story of survival and love, of memory and hope.

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Review 

Ghostwritten is a well written, well researched and generally its a well thought out book. It is a story of Jennie and Klara. When Jennie agreed to ghost write Klara’s memoirs she find herself dealing with her own memories and dealing with her own failing relationship. It's too nice, there were surprises, no sense of doom, this book is like chocolate, nice and unoffenisve. 

Having said this I should point it I found it extremely hard to get into it. I receive a lot of review requests and this has meant that if a book is slow, I switch off and pick up another. This was slow to start. So slow I stopped reading and came back to it a week later. Admittedly it was the fact that I didn’t care enough about Jennie and her issues and her decision not to have children. She wasn’t a character that stood out as such, she very easily forgettable and Klara is a stereotype of a character I’ve read before.

Although this book is technically good, it’s not captivating. I found myself switching off and thinking of food. I’m saddened to say this but I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.  I tried but ultimately I forced myself to finish it and that’s never a good thing.