Where Rainbows End by Cecelia Ahern

Sunday, November 23, 2008 By 9 Comments

Imagine having to wait until you’re 50 years old to be united with your true love! What a long wait.

Rosie Dunne and Alex Stewart have always been best friends. They first met when they were five years old and have always been together through thick and thin. They did things like all best friends did together. They roughed it out through school, making their teachers and parents go crazy over their silly antics.

One fine day, Alex and his family had to move to Boston as his father was being transferred in his job. Alex and Rosie are from Dublin. Naturally, they’re upset because they can’t spend time together that much any longer. So they kept in touch through letters and e-mails.

Alex was supposed to return to Dublin to accompany Rosie to her debs or prom night. However, he missed his flight and Rosie had to go with someone else, a guy named Brian. She got drunk and the unexpected happened. Rosie then ended up being a pregnant 18-year-old. She couldn’t go to college in Boston anymore and also couldn’t be with Alex.

It’s evident that Alex and Rosie have strong feelings for each other but numerous things always got in the way. Just when Rosie might have confessed her feelings to Alex, he and his girlfriend, Sally, announced that they’re to get married! Rosie, wanting to move on, met another guy, Greg and got married too. Both friends were at each other’s weddings but felt weird seeing each other walking away from the altar with someone else.

Both friends also showed obvious dislike for the other’s spouses or partners. Rosie strongly expressed her dislike for whoever Alex was dating or was married to. Alex would also find fault with Rosie’s husband, Greg. And they’ll go on and on criticizing but they never got around to confessing their true feelings because they had to think of others, especially their children. They still do ponder over the ‘silence’ which they experienced after Rosie kissed Alex.

Anyway, Rosie’s daughter, Katie seemed to be experiencing the same thing like her mom. She also has a guy best friend, Toby, and never gave a second thought of having feelings for him. Katie and Toby are like the younger versions of Rosie and Alex!

Where Rainbows End is written in the form of letters, e-mails, and instant messages so it’s a very engaging read. Reading it was very quick even though it’s a rather thick book. Some boring parts could have been taken out so as to make the book thinner. Rosie’s e-mails tend to be terribly long as she can drone on and on about her job, her kid, Alex, Alex’s wife/girlfriend and her husband, Greg.

I definitely enjoyed reading this, just like Ahern’s other novel, PS, I Love You. Some things didn’t make sense in this novel but they can be excused. Can’t wait to read more of her books! Ahern sure knows how to write funny, heart-and-soul, touching and moving kind of stories.

Other Reviews: Annie, Alice, Rima, Kittycat

Popularity: 82%

Filed Under: Authors A, Genre - Romance, Titles W Tagged With:

Mo’ Dirty: Still Stuntin’ by Darrell King

Friday, November 21, 2008 By 3 Comments

Peter ‘Whiskey’ Battle or just Whiskey, as called by friends and family, makes his money by being a hired killer. For a large sum of money, he can easily wipe out anyone from the face of the earth without leaving any obvious traces to lead back to him. Yeah, he’s that good.

His friends consist of rich dudes who earn money in ‘unusual’ ways, just like him. His close friend, David Ambrosia, is in the music industry and is doing what he can to make his fiancée, Godiva, a singing superstar. He’s also connected to drug dealers and such. Then, there’s Whiskey’s father, Snookey and his younger brother, Alonzo. Snookey’s stuck in jail but can still run operations from in there. Alonzo frequently lands himself into trouble of some kind.

Whiskey is also protective of his older sister, Tasha, and her kids. She took care of him and Alonzo since they were young when their mother was too busy doing drugs or going after men. Therefore, Whiskey and his family are tough characters who have been through a lot. In fact, most of the characters in this book are tough people.

Anyway, Whiskey’s biggest job is to murder a Police Chief, Mickey O’Malley, who’s determined to eradicate drug trafficking and other drug-related crimes. Whiskey and his cronies find this worrisome because they’ll be losing a lot of money if O’Malley is successful. Therefore, lots of them want to see O’Malley dead and gone.

Mo’ Dirty is definitely different from all others that I’ve read in my life. Initially, I wasn’t used to the street language being used but as I kept reading, I got the hang of it. I wanted to stop reading halfway because I got kind of bored with it but continued because I’m curious to know if O’Malley will be killed or not!

The main characters are all bad-a$$ guys who are impossibly rich and treat women like objects but they’re undeniably loyal. Those who snitched on others to the cops will obviously be murdered. People who don’t keep their promises will likely get their ‘punishment’ too.

I’m guessing that there’s a second book after this one as the story wasn’t quite finished. There’s a “To Be Continued…” on the last page. For those who’d like to read from the bad guys’ point of view, then you can try reading this book. It’s certainly been an extraordinary reading experience.

***Thanks to Tracee Gleichner from Pump Up Your Book Promotion for sending me this book.

Other Reviews: gautami tripathy, April

Popularity: 2%

Filed Under: Authors K, Genre - Contemporary, Titles M

I, Coriander by Sally Gardner

Tuesday, October 28, 2008 By 15 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to own a pair of shoes that fit like it was made for you? Ah, how nice that would be! Coriander Hobie is one lucky kid. She receives a pair of silver shoes and they fit her perfectly. But then, there is another story altogether behind those pretty shoes.

In this book, Coriander tells her tale in seven parts. She also lights seven candles to represent each part and blows them off one by one as she finishes one part after another. Now this candle-blowing thing is really intriguing but I don’t understand what it means.

First, Coriander introduces herself (she was born in 1643) and her parents. Where they lived, how her parents met, how her mother could ‘cure’ the neighbours by recommending them to take some of her homemade remedies. Some people secretly called her mother a witch or a cunning woman but they still flock to her home to be treated.

Now one day, a package arrives for Coriander and what does she find in there? Why, it’s the pair of silver shoes that fit her so darn well. Unfortunately, her mother doesn’t allow her to wear them. Six-year-old Coriander who has fallen in love with the shoes just couldn’t understand why she wasn’t allowed to wear them. She knew that the shoes were made especially for her.

Unable to resist not being able to have those shoes, Coriander sneaks into her father’s room and discreetly wears them. She panics when she couldn’t take them off, as if they wouldn’t come off. Well, it was only temporary. The shoes acted normally after that and Coriander’s parents let her wear them freely.

After a while, something odd happened to Coriander’s mother. She died not much later and the family’s broken-hearted. To make matters worse, Coriander’s father is advised to take on a Puritan wife so that he can keep his properties. Mr. Hobie was supportive of the Royalist cause and the Royalists had lost the English Civil War.

Mr. Hobie’s new wife, Maud, is like the wife/step-mother from hell. She finds fault with almost everything and is set on making the house more Godly by removing and changing many things which she considers to be linked to witchcraft. She also brings a preacher, Arise Fell home and insists that he stay with them.

Arise Fell is definitely one person whom I would never like to meet! He’s an extremist, heartless, cunning, and just a really hated character in this book. I felt angry and sympathetic towards Coriander and the others who had to suffer from Arise Fell’s ‘hand of wrath’. He even forces Coriander to change her name to ‘Ann’ because Coriander is not a suitable name for a God-fearing person. Ridiculous!

You’ll enjoy reading I, Coriander as it’s magical and beautifully-written. The parts with Arise Fell were quite disturbing because he just seemed so cruel! He’s quite remarkable because he can influence people with what he preaches but things go too far when he takes matters into his own hands. For example, the part where he and Maud deliberately kill an old, defenseless woman while other people just stood by watching.

I should like to see this book turned into a movie. It would be quite fascinating to watch Coriander, Arise Fell, Tycho (Coriander’s love), and other characters on screen.

Other Reviews: Jenne, Jen Robinson, Casey

Popularity: 9%

Filed Under: Authors G, Genre - YA Historical Fantasy, Titles I

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Sunday, October 12, 2008 By 17 Comments

Margaret Murry or Meg as she’s called, is quite an awkward young girl who’s not popular in school. She wears glasses and has braces, the typical description for girls who are unpopular. Nobody understands her in school, not even her teachers. She also doesn’t do well in lessons but in reality, she’s extremely brilliant at Math! It’s because she finds the teaching methods in school too different from what her father used to teach her.

Her father has been missing for quite a long time. People gossiped that he’s probably run away with another woman. He used to write to the family but stopped after a while. Meg’s mother still continues to write letters to him but they go unanswered and this has caused more unkind stories to be spread about the Murry family.

Meg has 3 younger brothers, 10-year-old Sandy and Dennys are twins while five-year-old Charles Wallace is the youngest. Meg is closest to Charles Wallace and usually turns to him for comfort after having a bad day. He also seems to know what she’s thinking, making Meg feel that he can actually read her mind. Besides Meg, Charles Wallace also always knows what their mother is thinking and feeling.

One day, Charles gets Meg to go with him to a supposedly haunted house to meet three strange women with strange names: Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. They reveal that they are there to help Meg and Charles find their father who is in grave danger. Another boy, Calvin joins them too. He is considered to be of the same kind as Charles Wallace so he’s accepted by the three women to take part in their journey.

After that, they travel to another planet that’s very, very, very far away from Earth and they discover something sinister called IT. IT has captured their father and they have to save him. IT is evil. IT wants everybody to act like robots and unable to think for themselves. IT is in favour of uniformity. IT is also just a brain. I have no idea why IT was represented in the form of a brain though. The only way to handle IT is to try to resist what IT wants them to do.

One of my favourite parts in this book is Meg’s and Charles’ encounter with Calvin where Charles interrogated Calvin and Calvin being surprised that Charles wasn’t as dumb as everyone else thought he was. It shows that you can’t truly judge a person unless you got to know them! Actually I find Charles Wallace an absolutely interesting character. Such bombastic words and ideas from a mere five-year-old!

I decided to read A Wrinkle in Time because a lot of other people have already read and loved it. It’s also a banned book so I wanted to find out what could contribute to it being such a book. This story reminds me of something out of a Diana Wynne Jones book. I can’t say that I really liked this book. It wasn’t thoroughly enthralling but still something that we need to read. There are some scientific terms in it and they are explained in simple ways so even science-phobic readers can easily understand how science plays a part in the story.

Other Bloggers’ Reviews: Nymeth, Natasha, Book Dads, Trin, Penny

Popularity: 3%

Filed Under: Authors L, Genre - YA Classics, Titles A

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Saturday, October 4, 2008 By 15 Comments

To Harry Potter fans out there: Were you sad when you finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Felt gloomy because there won’t be any more new adventures by Harry, Ron, and Hermione to follow? Yeah, that’s what I felt. I felt sad when I read the last page of this book. I have to accept that Harry’s adventures are over! Well, if I need to relive his adventures, I could just read the books over and over again.

It’s supposed to be Harry’s 7th year of schooling at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry but Harry has more important things to do than go back to school. Albus Dumbledore had left Harry with an important job and that is to destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Voldemort found a way to “divide” his soul so nobody can finish him off that easily. He then kept parts of his soul in various objects and these objects are called Horcruxes. Only Harry, Ron, Hermione and Dumbledore know about them.

Nevertheless, it’s not an easy job for Harry to do. Since Voldemort’s gaining power and spreading his influence to as many places and people as possible, Harry, Ron and Hermione are forced to carry out their mission in secret. Also, Dumbledore did not leave much information to help Harry make faster progress. But then, in his will, Dumbledore did leave a Snitch and the Gryffindor sword to Harry, a Deluminator to Ron and a copy of “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” to Hermione. They’re puzzled as to why Dumbledore left them seemingly-useless things but somehow, they know that these items would eventually help them destroy Voldemort.

As they try to find the remaining undestroyed Horcruxes, Harry, Ron and Hermione become more and more frustrated. Harry also begins to lose faith and trust in Dumbledore who was almost like a father to him. He also learns more about Dumbledore’s shadowy past which doesn’t improve matters at all.

Anyway, like the previous six books, this one is just as exciting and gripping. I read to see how Ron and Hermione are getting along, what will happen between Harry and Ginny, the extremely mysterious Severus Snape and more! What are the Horcruxes that Voldemort managed to make and how will Harry find them? Was Albus Dumbledore good or bad? Was he actually helping Harry to succeed or helping Harry to die? These questions were being played frequently on my mind while reading this page-turner of a book.

You can expect lots of twists and turns, just like before. Lots of pleasant surprises too! I’m amazed at how Rowling managed to connect the many events together so that they make sense and that not many loopholes occurred.

I also felt sympathetic towards Snape. In fact, I thought that he was the most unfortunate character in the book and that’s why I really felt sorry for him. You’ll have to read it to know why.

Sigh….I can’t believe it’s the end of the Harry Potter series! I’m pretty sure other Potter fans can’t believe it too. I felt close to the characters ever since I started reading the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I’ve read so many times about Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, the Weasley family, Dumbledore, the other professors and became so familiar with them that they’re almost like friends (even Draco Malfoy!)! Do you feel the same way? Do you cheer when your favourite character triumphs? Or do you feel devastated when some characters are killed off? I’ve read somewhere before that Rowling shed tears when she was killing off some of the characters! Well, it’s already hard to read about them dying let alone writing about it.

So, what are your thoughts on this book? I’d love to hear all about it!

Other Bloggers’ Reviews: gautami tripathy, nymeth, tanabata, Tuesday

Popularity: 4%

Filed Under: Authors R, Genre - Fantasy, Titles H Tagged With:

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Wednesday, October 1, 2008 By 7 Comments

Finally I read the Book 6 in the Harry Potter series. One more to go! I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) way back in 2004…wow, that’s like four years ago. I thought I had grown out of Harry and all his exciting adventures with his Hogwarts gang but no, I was so wrong. I was instantly hooked to the story right from page one until the very last page. Rowling certainly is a talented writer and knows how to pull her readers into the story. No wonder she’s one of the most successful children’s author in the world!

So, it’s Harry Potter’s sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and times are more exciting than ever. Voldemort, the evil enemy of all things good, is at large and his followers are trying their best to help him regain complete power of the wizarding world. Voldemort’s crew call themselves the Death Eaters.

As usual, Harry is always given special treatment and more attention than the other students. This time, he has to endure being called the Chosen One by the others due to some prophecy that he’ll be the one to finish off Voldemort for once and for all. Also, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, is giving Harry extra lessons during the weekends, supposedly to help Harry understand his enemy, Voldemort.

All the same, what’s going on with Harry’s best friends, Ron and Hermione? Hermione, as usual is the one who’s obsessed with studying and being the only one enthusiastically answering teachers’ questions in class. Ron, on the other hand, is still jealous of Harry at times. But this time around, he’s a prefect and playing Keeper in Gryffindor’s Quidditch team. Therefore, his self-esteem isn’t really low nowadays. Harry’s the Quidditch Captain, by the way.

There’s some romantic tension between Ron and Hermione but neither one would admit that they like each other. I was quite annoyed when Ron started going out with Lavender Brown instead of going out straight with Hermione. I wonder if other people thought the same thing too, that Ron should be with Hermione. Anyone else who thinks otherwise? And speaking of love, Harry secretly likes Ron’s younger sister, Ginny, but she’s already in a relationship with Dean Martin, one of Harry’s friends. See, I told you times were exciting.

We are also introduced to a new professor, Horace Slughorn, who’s also the new Potions teacher. The previous Potions teacher, Professor Snape finally got his dream job, which is teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts. Slughorn plays favouritism rather openly, showing interest in students who are connected to famous people or students who are just smart and different from the others. Harry is definitely one of them.

Throughout the book, we are also suspicious about Snape’s loyalty. Harry insists that he’s on Voldemort’s side but Dumbledore is adamant that Snape’s on their side. Harry frequently wears his Invisibility Cloak when he’s spying on the enemy and discovers some very interesting facts.

I was also guessing who the half-blood prince could be. Harry’s been using an old Potions textbook which belonged to The Half-Blood Prince. The Prince seems smart and made a lot of useful notes in the book. Thanks to the book, Harry’s doing really well in Potions class, a subject he has always been weak at.

All right, this has been a pretty long post for a book which I think most of you have already read. Now I’m off to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)!

Other Bloggers’ Reviews: nymeth

Popularity: 3%

Filed Under: Authors R, Genre - Fantasy, Titles H Tagged With:
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