Books Love Me – Reviews

Our favourite shopaholic, Becky Bloomwood is pregnant and she’s more excited than ever! After all, having a baby would be a fun thing, right? This means that instead of shopping for just one person, Becky can now shop for two! It’s definitely utter bliss for her shopaholic soul.

Life seems perfect. A baby coming soon, her husband Luke is doing well with his public relations company, a beautiful new home awaiting them…what else could Becky want?

Well, she’s not really contented with her current obstetrician, which is boring Mr Braine who has delivered Luke before. She hopes to secure celebrity obstetrician, Venetia Carter who treats mostly famous people. Becky, with her fantasies of rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous, eventually succeeds in getting Venetia to be her new doctor.

The thing is, long-legged, red-head and glamorous Venetia used to be Luke’s girlfriend when they were teenagers. Should Becky be worried? No, she shouldn’t be, of course. Luke loves her. He would never leave her. Hurting her would be the last thing in the world that he’d ever do. But she has that nagging feeling of distrust whenever she sees Venetia, or Luke.

Can’t say I loved the book though I liked it. However, the more I read about Becky’s extravagant spending and frivolous ideas, I began liking her less. Actually, I don’t really like her character but I just find her funny at times. Her mannerisms and ridiculous ideas can leave you speechless.

It is a fun book to read, there’s no doubt about it. I enjoy the other characters especially Luke and Becky’s best friend, Suze. I know that Suze comes from a wealthy family and she must have had the best education, so sometimes I find it hard to believe that she can be quite ditzy.

Shopaholic & Baby is a fun and cheerful book to pick up after a hard day’s work.

I’m also looking forward to the next book, Mini Shopaholic, which comes out in September.

In the third book of the Shopaholic series, Shopaholic Ties the Knot begins with the wedding preparations for Suze, Becky Bloomwood’s best friend. She’s happy that Suze is going to marry a really nice guy but after some time, she realises that she has no idea when it might be her turn to walk down the aisle. Becky knows her boyfriend of two years, Luke loves her very much. They are a blissful couple who has been living together in New York but they have never discussed getting married.

Just when she thinks Luke is not interested in marriage, he proposes. Becky’s feeling joyful because there’ll be a Becky’s Big Day (inspired by (Princess) Diana’s Big Day) after all. Her mother is just as excited and has begun preparations for the wedding. However, when Becky returns to New York, Luke’s very frosty mother, Elinor, surprises her with her own plans for a grand wedding for Luke and Becky at the Plaza.

It’s hard to say no to Elinor. Becky plans to go along with Elinor’s plans for a while and then decline her offer later. But as Becky becomes more involved in the New York wedding, she is overwhelmed with the luxury and privilege of getting married like a princess. She then plans to let her mother know about her decision to marry in New York. The thing is, Becky’s parents have already put in a lot of effort and work for the England wedding that she didn’t have the heart to disappoint them. So, there are two weddings for Becky on the same day. Which one will she choose?

I can’t believe how much I looked down upon the Shopaholic series and thought it was the kind of chick lit book that I shouldn’t waste time reading. Well, reading my first Shopaholic book in 2007 proved me wrong. It turned out to be one of the most fun books I ever read!

This one was no exception. It’s light-hearted, a page turner and undeniably hilarious. I loved how many times I chuckled aloud while reading it. Becky’s such an imaginative person. Besides being an impulsive buyer, she also tends to jump to conclusions rather quickly.

The other characters definitely add more drama to the story. Luke is so devoted to Becky but he’s also a very loyal son to Elinor whom Becky detests. Then there’s Becky’s new best friend, Danny who aspires to be a fashion designer. I guess her life wouldn’t be complete if there’s no fashion designer for a friend.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I’m going to get started with the fifth one, Shopaholic & Baby! And FYI, the sixth book, Mini Shopaholic will be released on September 21 this year!

The first Emily Dickinson poem that I learnt was ‘There’s Been a Death in the Opposite House’ when I was in secondary school. I didn’t know much about her then. Fast forward to my uni days: for my English class, we learnt six of her poems and most of them revolved around the theme of death. Depressing? Yes, kind of, but it’s interesting to discover why Ms Dickinson constantly wrote about it. She also liked to write poems about nature.

Anyway, did you know that she wrote nearly 1,800 poems? Incredible, huh? She never got married and she died when she was 55. She was known to wear white all the time, never left her house, never met anyone but her family and she would lower down baskets of food through her window. The only form of communication she has with the outside world was through writing letters. Besides, she was good at baking and her famous black cake is mentioned many times in this book.

Take a look at the cover. Are you smiling at the cheekiness of it? Or are you raising an eyebrow since the cover does not seem compatible with my description of Emily? Well, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson is about the secret, wilder side of the poet that will shock you horrendously. Don’t get too excited as it is part fiction with several fictional characters thrown in for an added thrill.

The story begins with Emily as a student at the seminary Mount Holyoke which had strict rules for its students. There, she falls in love with a blond, blue-eyed handyman named Tom. Though she thinks of him all the time and wants to woo him, she never had the chance to be with him. Emily was to find out later that her schoolmate Zilpah Marsh had already made Tom her man.

Her relationships with various characters are also explored throughout the novel. The characters include her protective father Edward Dickinson, her faithful dog Carlo, the fictitious Zilpah Marsh, her sister-in-law Sue, and also her array of suitors. In the book, she fell in love over and over again but I think her heart always belonged to Tom the handyman.

The author, Jerome Charyn, has used her letters and poetry as inspiration for the book. Therefore, you can spot some lines from her poems in the story along with her eccentric way of capitalising the first letter of certain words. Lots of metaphors are also used and I had to read some paragraphs again and again to comprehend the meaning. Honestly I gave up at some and just continued reading.

Split into seven parts and 48 chapters, the 348-page novel is written from Emily’s point of view. If you want to get to know Emily Dickinson intimately, read this book and you’ll observe how imaginative and flirtatious she can be! You’ll also find yourself delved into her innermost thoughts and following her on daring adventures (daring for women of her time). Remember that it is her secret life and secrets can be scandalous, can’t they?

***Thanks to Mark Goldman for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Questions like ‘How would you get rid of a murder weapon without causing suspicion?’ and ‘What if you found out the tattoo on your back was worth over a million pounds?’ on the back cover of Skin and Other Stories by Roald Dahl could make the reader hungry for more dark tales with unexpected endings.

This book has a collection of 11 short stories, each with its own eccentricity and uniqueness. I particularly enjoyed reading some of them like Skin, Lamb to the Slaughter, Galloping Foxley and My Lady Love, My Dove. The others were all right but some of them had endings which I wasn’t satisfied with.

In Skin, a miserable old man called Drioli came across a painting in a picture gallery and was shocked to know that a boy he used to know had become a very famous painter. Drioli had requested that the boy paint a picture of a woman, Josie, on his back. Now that painting is worth a lot of money and Drioli made the mistake of announcing it to the visitors of the gallery. A few men have made generous offers for him but can they be trusted?

As for Lamb to the Slaughter, it is my favourite story! The ending was totally brilliant and unpredictable. Well, that was how it’s like for me. Who would have thought that Mary Maloney was such a smart, cunning woman? Out of the blue, her husband told her that he’d be leaving her, for what reason, we don’t really know. Mary was in a daze and went downstairs to the cellar to get a leg of lamb, presumably to make supper. Instead of putting the lamb into the oven first, she decided to whack her husband on the head with it. He fell down, dead.

In Galloping Foxley, William Perkins recalls his school days where he had to be a slave to a senior student named Bruce Foxley aka Galloping Foxley. Perkins usually encountered nothing unusual and met the same people while on his way to work. The arrival of a newbie at the train station had disrupted Perkins normal routine. He then thinks that he sort of knows the new guy and suspects him to be a former bully.

Stories such as An African Story and Beware of the Dog have military elements in them which reflect Dahl’s background in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

He also wrote a number of other short stories and you can view the list here. I also have The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories and I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of Dahl’s surprising tales!

Anna Hanson, 16, thinks her life is boring. She’s a prefect in school, pays attention in class, goes home, does her homework, and if she feels like it, she’ll talk with her mom for a while. Her mother suffers from stress and is unable to go to work. Anna lives with her mom while her dad’s remarried and her brother lives with him.

The story starts with Anna in class, learning about the play, Macbeth, when a new boy enters the classroom. He’s not dressed in the school’s uniform, has a shaven head and looks like he’d rather be anywhere else than there. Anna is the only person to introduce herself to him after class.

Anna doesn’t really belong to a particular group or clique in school. So when a girl from her class, Karen, invites her out for the night, she was quite happy to go. Finally, some plans with friends! She found out later that Karen was only using her as a substitute friend. She then left the club and went home, feeling that there wouldn’t ever be anyone who would genuinely want to be friends with her. That’s how she was mugged on her way home. By the new boy.

His name is Craig Ritchie but Anna calls him Ritchie. Instead of reporting him to the police, she kind of bonded with him. He told her stories of his life, his perspective of the modern world and she was utterly fascinated by them. Perhaps this boy was her gateway to a much more exciting and fulfilling life.

Ritchie and his pals are thieves. They steal stuff from other people because they feel that they deserve to do that. They are like the outcasts in society: one has been bullied, Ritchie has been ridiculed in school, abandoned by his father who left his mother, etc. So they think that robbing from rich people is like taking back what should be theirs.

And suddenly Anna pitches plans and ideas to Ritchie about how both of them can steal something from a store and later give away their ‘earnings’ to somebody who needs them. They’d steal from stores that have branches and franchises all over the world. Since these big companies are already making millions, a few lost pounds wouldn’t hurt them. Anna saw themselves as Robin Hoods. Stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

I am familiar with the saying ‘Crime doesn’t pay’ and I’m sure most of you have heard of that too. Well, I was wondering how these two kids will end up in the end. It is interesting to read how they tried to steal from a bookshop without getting caught. But I was skeptical. Wouldn’t they be caught on the CCTV? I doubt that the shops would leave any area unguarded especially if it’s some huge store like Borders or something.

Something Wicked does make us reflect on issues like exploitation and consumerism. You should read the part where they talk about shoes and the Third World. Who made them? How much were their wages? How much are we paying for the shoes?

All right, I thought Anna really went through an extreme transformation. Since she met Ritchie, she’s become braver and in a way, happier. But not necessarily wiser. Ritchie is also another complicated character.

I can’t say that I enjoyed this book. It was a slow start but it did pick up pace when Anna and Ritchie go Robin Hooding. I guess this book tells us that we learn things by making mistakes.

Historical England, boarding school, magic and realms, strange creatures, evil forces, and a group of teenage girls: these make up the Gemma Doyle trilogy. The Sweet Far Thing picks up where Rebel Angels left off.

Gemma and friends are back at Spence Academy and under the watchful eyes of their headmistress, Mrs. Nightwing, they learn decent manners, curtsies, and everything else ladylike. Gemma is unable to fit in with the mindless chatter and gossip of the other girls at her school. She feels that there’s more to life than just attending parties and dancing with men.

Now Gemma holds all the magic of the magical realms where she and her friends, Felicity and Ann have been going. She’s expected to share the magic with all the tribes in the realms but not so soon. Since Felicity desperately needs a Lady Markham to sponsor her debut in order to claim her inheritance, she needs some of Gemma’s magic to make it happen. As for Ann, well, she needs some magic to escape from being a miserable governess.

What about the beautiful Pippa who’s stuck to wander in the realms forever? Felicity is always delighted to spend time and play with her best friend. However, Gemma feels that there’s something suspicious about Pippa and that she must be careful around her.

In the meantime, Gemma keeps having dreams/visions of a lady in a lavender dress. The lady seems to be trying to tell her something but no sound comes out from her. Who is she? Is she dead or alive? What is she trying to say? What is the Key and what in the world is the Tree of All Souls? Absolutely mysterious and frustrating!

Gemma also needs to find out why the school is restoring the ruined East Wing now. Many years ago, two girls supposedly perished in a fire that destroyed the East Wing but they survived anyway. One of the girls was Gemma’s mother. The other girl, Circe, became an enemy and murderer. It is also said that the then headmistress, Eugenia Spence, sacrificed herself to the Winterlands. The Winterlands is an evil place, by the way.

Oh no, I did not forget the handsome and elusive Kartik. He returns to stay with the gypsies and occasionally has little secretive chats with Gemma. He keeps telling her that he’ll leave someday which only irritates and saddens her. His old brotherhood, the Rakshana, is also on the lookout for him as he failed to kill Gemma in the previous book.

That’s quite a lot to digest, isn’t it? Well, you can expect much more than that from this 819-page book. There are five acts and there is a quote at the beginning of each act. In truth, I enjoyed reading every page of this book even though it took me more than a month to finish it.

Some things I just didn’t like though. I thought Gemma’s friends selfish, especially Felicity. Most of the time, I felt that Felicity’s only using Gemma to enter the realms so she could be with Pippa. I’m also quite surprised at Ann who eventually leaves Gemma alone in her troubles too. Like Gemma, I thought that perhaps her friends are only her ‘friends’ because she has magic which can reduce or wipe out the unpleasantness in their lives. Well, nobody’s perfect.

Besides her school chums, Gemma has to deal with Kartik, Pippa, Miss McCleethy who’s watching her every move, Fowlson who’s working for the Rakshana, her father who’s addicted to laudanum, and her obnoxious brother, Tom. She definitely has a lot on her plate.

I’m quite sad to see the end of the Gemma Doyle trilogy. It’s been a thrilling journey following Gemma, her friends and their battle against being helpless women in a rigid English society that expects little and yet so much from them.

Other reviews: Debbie, Susan B. Evans, Emily, Em