Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Jacob Jankowski is a veterinary student about to sit his final exams when he receives the devastating news that his parents have been killed.  Desperate and unable to cope, he hitches a ride on a freight train that turns out to house the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.  The circus has fallen on hard times due to the Great Depression but Jacob's background ensures him a job as the circus vet.  Jacob is seduced by the exotic animals, glamour and romance of the circus life, but there are darker currents running underneath the sequins and glitter.  When he falls in love with married performer Marlena and the circus acquires Rosie the elephant, Jacob finds himself tested.

As always, I bought this book when it was surrounded by a lot of hype but then failed to read it in a timely manner.  I also failed to see the film, so I went into Water for Elephants with completely fresh eyes.  I was expecting a light, sentimental type read, and that's exactly what it was.  Even though Water for Elephants discusses some heavier themes such as animal cruelty, murder and the brutality of circus life, it does so in a Spielberg-esque way that left me in no doubt that things would be OK in the end.  It's like life without the sharp edges, and it makes for comfortable if not challenging reading.

My favourite element of Water for Elephants was the setting.  I'm not surprised this novel was turned into a film, as it's so visually evocative of both the time period and of the circus.  I could almost smell the popcorn and taste the excitement that the circus bought to the dreary towns it stopped in.  I also really enjoyed the character of Marlena, who had more guts than I initially took her to have.  The bits dealing with Rosie and the other animals made me want to try Gruen's novel Ape House, as I liked the way the animals were characters in themselves.

However, there were some flaws.  Jacob falls in love with a married woman, which could have made for some interesting complexity in the novel, but Gruen shies away from this by making her husband to be a bad guy.  This seemed a little too convenient for the plot.  As I mentioned above, there's never any doubt that things will end well for Jacob, and this takes away some of the tension.   Despite this, Water for Elephants is a really fun, escapist read.  I loved immersing myself in the world of the circus for a while.

Source: Personal copy
First Published: 2006
Edition Read: Two Roads, 2011
Score: 3.5 out of 5

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

I don't read much YA, but I would have to be living under a rock to not notice the massive success of this series.  With the third instalment, Isla and the Happily Ever After, recently published, I decided it was time to give Anna a go.  The basic story-line goes as follows - Anna is looking forward to starting her senior year and getting closer to her almost-boyfriend Toph when her father decides to send her to boarding school in Paris.  At first Anna is determined to hate being uprooted from her life in America, but she soon makes new friends.  One of these is Etienne St. Clair, who she finds herself developing feelings for despite him already being in a relationship.  As the year goes on, Anna and St. Clair have to deal with their conflicting feelings.

I can see why Anna and the French Kiss is so popular.  It's super fun to read and the romance between the two main characters is well written.  There's no insta-love here - Anna may be attracted to St. Clair initially, but we only see her fall in love as their friendship develops and they spend more time together.  At first they have an easy-going friendship, but as time goes on, they become closer and support each other through some major life events, and it was good to read a relationship grow in such a realistic way.  It also helps that Anna is a likeable main character.  She's aware that she shouldn't have feelings for St. Clair and so does her best to suppress them and just be his friend.    She isn't perfect and comes across as a normal, relatable teenage girl, and I'm sure this has contributed to this book being so loved by so many.

So I liked Anna, but I wasn't so keen on St. Clair.  Yes, he is described as being dreamy, and he is a great friend to Anna, but I thought he was terrible in the romance department.  He knows his friend Meredith has feelings for him, and chooses to let her hope rather than address it.  He's in a relationship with Ellie, despite having deep feelings for someone else.  He's not technically cheating, but he is on an emotional level, and he continues to stay with Ellie despite knowing that Anna likes him back.  I know that some of this is necessary for the plot, but St Clair just comes across as a bit spineless.  I was also sick of Perkins constantly reminding me that St. Clair is short - who cares?!

Anyway, Anna and the French Kiss was a really fun read.  It's not perfect but it's quick and engaging and I enjoyed reading it.  I'll definitely be picking up the next two books.

Source: Personal copy (kindle)
First Published: 2010
Score: 3.5 out of 5

My Last Duchess by Daisy Goodwin

Cora Cash comes from one of the wealthiest families in America and is used to the best of everything.  Her ambitious mother arranges for them both to travel to England in the hope of securing a match with a titled but relatively impoverished English gentleman, thus raising the status of their family.  Well aware of the game her mother is playing, Cora isn't expecting to actually fall in love, and when she does, this blinds her to the intrigues around her.  Nothing in England is quite what it seems, and Cora soon finds herself vulnerable.

I picked up My Last Duchess looking for a fun, easy read and I wasn't disappointed.  It's the kind of book where you have to suspend your disbelief a little bit, plunge in head first and just enjoy it.  It's not a believable story by any stretch of the imagination, but it's certainly an entertaining one.  Cora herself is a well rounded character but some of the other characters are merely stereotypes or one-dimensional, such as Cora's mother the fortune hunter and her love interest Ivo, the mysterious and reserved English gentleman.

What I did like about this book was that it went further into Cora's story than I was expecting it to. I thought it would be a straight-forward marriage plot with Cora's wedding and happy ever after in the final chapters.  But it wasn't - Cora gets married very early on and we follow her as she attempts to be happy.  And to give credit to Goodwin, this isn't easy for her.  Cora has married for love, but it's unclear whether her husband has, and she's married into a society that isn't welcoming at all.  There's plenty of ups and downs and even at the end, it's unclear whether Cora will ever be truly happy.  I liked the lack of a definitive happy ever after, and I liked that we got to see beyond the wedding.

You'll enjoy My Last Duchess if you like books that are purely escapist and you don't mind if the story is unrealistic in parts.  I had a lot of fun reading it and it was perfect for when I was up in the small hours of the morning feeding the baby.

Source: Personal copy
First Published: 2011
Score: 3.5 out of 5

The Vintage Girl by Hester Browne

Sometimes you need a bit of brain candy, and I picked up The Vintage Girl in the library as I was in the mood for a light, escapist, happily-ever-after type read.  Evie Nicholson loves antiques and is working for a dealer when she gets the opportunity to value family heirlooms at Kettlesheer Castle in Scotland.  A daydreamer and a romantic, Evie's imagination goes into hyper-drive when she learns that she will be at the castle at the same time as traditional ball hosted by the family (including the handsome heir). Caught up with visions of sweeping down staircases Gone With the Wind style and dressing for dinner, Evie pays little attention to the reality of life for the Nicholson family.  Can she learn to take a step back from her fantasy life?

The Vintage Girl was a lot of fun to read.  Hester Browne is a good writer and the story just flows from chapter to chapter, never feeling too short or too long.  The pacing is perfect and the romance, whilst being rather predictable, builds up slowly and avoids the pitfall of insta-love.  Evie herself is easy to relate to as a main character, particularly for someone like me, who also likes to live with her head in the clouds sometimes!  Equally her love interest, Robert, isn't too perfect, and is shown to have a few flaws of his own.

The main tension in the narrative comes from the fact that Robert is expected to marry someone else, someone rich who can use their money to save Kettlesheer Castle from bankruptcy, and is already in a relationship with this person.  But their relationship never felt believable enough to cause any real problems, and Browne made it too easy on Evie and Robert by making Catriona rather unlikeable, to the extent that it was hard to see why Robert was with her in the first place.   Similarly, this problem was solved too easily later in the novel.  I'm not expecting deep depression or anything like that in a novel like The Vintage Girl, but I would have liked the emotions of the situation explained a bit more.

I would recommend The Vintage Girl if you are after a fun, easy read with a bit of romance thrown in for good measure.  It's not the best chick-lit novel I have ever read, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Source: Library
First Published: 2013
Score: 3.5 out of 5

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Lincoln is a single twenty-something working in the IT department of a newspaper office just before Y2K. The problem is, he still lives with his Mum and his job is to read the emails of his fellow workers, reporting any inappropriate contact.  The personal emails of two women in particular keep getting flagged up, day after day.  The more Lincoln reads the conversations between Jennifer and Beth, the more he learns about Beth's relationship dilemma and Jennifer's decision about whether being a parent is for her, the more he can't bring himself to report them.  In fact, he finds himself falling for Beth.   But with no way to introduce himself without coming clean about his 'snooping', is there any hope for Lincoln and Beth?

I downloaded Attachments on to my kindle as I really enjoyed Rowell's Eleanor and Park, and was interested to read her adult fiction.  And for the most part, Attachments met my expectations - it was a fun, quick read with well written characters that I ended up rooting for.  I liked Lincoln because he wasn't perfect, and because I think his struggle to know what to do with himself after university is something that most people of my generation can relate to.  Beth and Jennifer's email conversations really bought the book to life, and allowed Rowell to deal with some difficult issues with a light touch.  In fact, the emails were my favourite part of the book, I thought both women were very well written and the dialogue between them felt true to life.

However, I didn't enjoy Attachments as much as I did Eleanor and Park.  One reason was that it was annoying how often Lincoln was described as being perfect in the looks department.  There's one too many sentences about how big and dreamy he was, and it became irritating.  Beth too was apparently stunning and this was a bit of a shame since Rowell had gone to so much trouble to make their personalities flawed and real.  Also, I found the end of the book overly sweet.  I'm as big a fan of romance as the next person, but it was just too saccharine and this killed my enjoyment of the book a little.   So Attachments was a fun, light read but it would have benefited from just a little more depth.

Source: Personal copy (kindle)
First Published: 2011
Score: 3 out of 5

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

R is a zombie.  He exists in a slow-paced, endlessly repetitive world broken only by short bursts of feeding until he meets Julie, a normal human.  Rather than feeding on her, R decides on impulse to capture her and protect her.  But being around a living human for such a long period of time starts to have unusual effects and R finds himself changing, becoming different from all of the zombies around him.  Can a relationship between a human and a zombie ever work?

My first read for RIP!  Sadly it was less than stellar but it was still exciting to get my participation in the event under-way.  I never had massively high hopes for Warm Bodies, but it did come recommended from someone who isn't normally a paranormal romance fan, so I was hoping that it would be fun and enjoyable.  And to a certain extent, it was.  I liked the tongue in cheek tone of the novel and the moments of dry humour Marion sprinkles throughout the story.  Warm Bodies doesn't take itself too seriously and I liked that.

The romance itself was surprisingly sweet and believable too.  I'm still not quite sure how Marion pulled it off, but R falling in love felt sweet in a non-tacky way.  There was no insta-love and the interactions between the two leads were sensitively written, with just enough humour to keep them from being sappy.   I was most definitely rooting for them.

The issue I had with Warm Bodies wasn't the romance, but rather the way the zombie issue itself was dealt with.  Now I'm not an expert on zombies, but I know the basics and I wasn't cool with the zombie mythology in the book.  There was no explanation of how the zombies came to exist in such large populations across the world and as soon as I could predict where the ending was going with R, it felt like a cop out.  I don't want to spoil it for anyone but the whole zombie idea was altered too much for my liking.  It felt like the easy way out.

And that wasn't the only easy way out.  R initially meets Julie on a feeding/hunting trip with other zombies and Julie's boyfriend is killed.  This could have been an interesting source of conflict/tension between them and could have led to some real-life complications, but everything was brushed aside by Marion in order to make the romance 'easy'.  This didn't sit well with me.

On the whole, Warm Bodies was a short, fun read full of dry humour but it required just too much suspension of belief when it came to the zombies themselves.

Source: Personal copy 

First Published: 2010

My Edition: Vintage, 2013

Score: 3 out of 5

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

I needed a lighter read last week, and Eleanor & Park has been taking the blogosphere by storm lately.  Set in the 80s, it's about teenager Eleanor, who has moved back in with her mother a year after being kicked out by her stepfather.  On her first day at school, Park offers her a seat next to him on the bus to save her from the ridicule of the other kids.  An unlikely friendship forms as the pair bond over mix tapes and comic books.  Their friendship soon grows into something more, and this becomes the one bright spot in Eleanor's life.

Mostly, I loved Eleanor & Park.  Mu husband and I got together as teenagers (I was 17, he was 18) and even though it's now almost ten years later, reading this book took me back to the early days, to what falling in love for the first time feels like.  How you can agonise for ages over whether to hold someone's hand, how swapping music recommendations and developing a shared taste can be really exciting.  Rowell perfectly captures the innocence and fear of first love.

I also loved how the characters felt very real and their relationship developed slowly over time.  It wasn't just   *bang* they meet and fall in love, there was a nice progression.  Adding in the unhappiness of Eleanor's home life could have turned her into a cliche, but thankfully she was too three dimensional for that.   Park was very real too, battling between his feelings for Eleanor and his desire to fit in with other kids.

The only issue I have with this book is that the second half of the book didn't live up to the first.  The experience of actually falling in love was written so well that what came after it was bound to be a bit of a let down by comparison, and it was.  But on the whole, Eleanor & Park was a lovely, easy to read book that perfectly captured first love.  It definitely lived up to the hype.

Source: Personal copy (kindle)

First Published: 2013

Score: 4 out of 5

The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne

Amy Wilde is at a party one evening when she meets a man named Leo.  Only after several dates does she realise that he is in fact Prince Leopold, a member of a minor European royal family.  Sounds perfect, right? But Amy is totally unprepared for the change in her life that dating royalty brings - her every move is scrutinised in the papers and she's put on a punishing fitness regime by Leo's family.  When a chance change to the succession laws brings Leo closer to the throne, the pressure on Amy intensifies and her own secrets threaten to become public knowledge.

The Runaway Princess is certainly different from my normal reading but I was craving a bit of brain candy last week and I did dream of marrying a Prince as a young girl (My Mum always wanted me to marry Prince Harry and my older sister to marry Prince William!!).  I liked the premise of the book, how it promised to go beyond the 'happily ever after' and I was in the mood for some light relief.  And on these terms, the book delivered.  It was fluffy and fun and it was always a pleasure to pick it up after being at work all day long.  It's easy to empathise with Amy and Browne had some fun with the minor characters too.

The only problem with this book was that Leo was mind-bogglingly perfect.  I mean, come on!  I could buy that he was sick of the trappings of royalty and just wanted to meet a normal girl, but I couldn't believe that he was that accommodating and non-spoilt, in addition to of course being amazingly handsome.  In fact, a better story-line could have been Amy falling in love with his arrogant brother Rolf, that might have had some more chance for character development.  As in most of the chick-lit I've read, the ending felt very tidy and again, I couldn't believe that Leo was that perfect.

On the whole, I spent a happy few nights with this book in a happy, stress-free place.  It's not high literature, but I did enjoy escaping with it :)

Source: Personal copy (kindle)

First Published: 2012

Score: 3 out of 5

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

This book had been on my wish list for a long time.  I remember seeing positive reviews of it last year and placed a hold on it in October 2011.  As my library system owns just one copy of the book, it was only last week, almost seven months later, that I got my hands on it.  It was consequently under a lot of pressure to perform!

Hotel On The Corner of Bitter and Sweet starts with the discovery of property belonging to Japanese American citizens in the basement of a Seattle hotel.  Watching this discovery is Henry Lee, a Chinese American who was only a child when World War Two began.  The items take him back to his school days, in which he struck up an unlikely friendship with Japanese Keiko Okabe, the only other Asian student at his expensive school.  Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet traces their friendship through family disapproval, internment camps for the Japanese and the end of the war.  Does Henry have to live with only regret?

I had such a mixed reaction to this book.  To start with the positives, it was definitely an engrossing reading experience.  Whilst the initial section was perhaps a bit slow, things soon picked up and I found myself reluctant to put the book down and go to sleep each night. I knew very little about the treatment of Japanese citizens during World War Two in America, so I found these parts fascinating to read.  There are parallels with other kinds of camps, but Ford does it all with a light touch.  The two main characters of Henry and Keiko are easy to relate to and their relationship is written just right for their age and situation.  I was hoping for a happy ending.

But I did have one big issue with the book and that was it's lack of depth.  Yes Ford is writing about something that not too many people know about, but he does so only shallowly.  At times Hotel on the Corner of Bitter Sweet was more about the tragic romance of the two characters than anything else.  Now, I don't mind that if it's done well, but I wanted to know more about the camps and about Keiko's family.  How did her father really feel?  I don't mean this as harshly as it sounds, but it was a bit like a Nicholas Sparks novel with an unusual backdrop.

And whilst Henry and Keiko were well drawn, substantial characters, the same couldn't be said for the rest of the cast.  Henry's future daughter in law Samantha was just too perfect to be believable, as was the whole Okabe family.  They really had no opinion on their daughter being so close to a Chinese boy, accepting him almost as a member of the family from the moment they met him?

I don't want to be too negative about the book as I did have a positive experience reading it.  It's just that the experience was sort of shallow, it won't stay with me for long.

Source: Library
First Published: 2009
Score: 3 out of 5

Arabella by Georgette Heyer

I am a stranger to the romance sections of bookshops and libraries.  I tend to stick with historical fiction, classics, literary fiction and contemporary fiction.  I'm not adverse to romance taking place in the stories I read but I have this perception of the romance genre as being a bit tacky and bodice busting, not 'proper literature' (judge me for this if you like!).  But I've seen Georgette Heyer's name mentioned on lots of blogs I follow and last week felt the need for a read I could escape into, so I braved the romance section of the library and came out with Arabella.

Arabella is the daughter of a country vicar who is sent into London for the season to live with her Godmother in the hope of making a fortunate match.  On the way to town, her carriage breaks down and she meets wealthy and sarcastic Robert Beaumaris.  Arabella overhears him accuse her of being yet another girl only after his money and reacts strongly.  Soon all of London believes her to be a wealthy heiress and Arabella finds herself caught in her own deception.

I have to admit that I very much enjoyed Arabella.  The writing was sharp, witty and events moved on at a good pace.  Arabella herself was a sympathetic main character as she wasn't perfect (although of course she was perfectly gorgeous), and it was easy to see her character develop over the course of the novel.  Robert Beaumaris was a leading man in the mold of Rhett Butler, a man so fabulously rich he could think whatever he liked and have a sarcastic, half-joking, half-sneering manner, even though he's a bit of a softy underneath.  I was rooting for the two of them to get together by the end of the book.

I was also impressed with the historical setting of Arabella.  It was clear that Heyer really understood the time period and consequently there were lots of small details about dress, meals and social events that I as a historical fiction fan definitely appreciated.

Of course, I could argue that events in the novel were predictable, which they were.  It's easy to see the consequences of Arabella's deception before they actually happen and what will happen between Arabella and Robert is obvious from their first meeting.  But I was in a mood where I found the predictability comforting and Heyer still took me on a fun ride to the predictable ending.  Arabella is a great comfort read for times when you simply want to lose yourself in a good story, well told.  It's not going to change the world but I can guarantee you will have a smile on your face when you finish it.

Source: Library
First Published: 1949
Score: 3.5 out of 5

The Secret Countess by Eva Ibbotson

Winter is the perfect time for reading fairytales.  In The Secret Countess, Anna Grazinsky, a Russian Countess, has to flee to England with her family after the Russian Revolution.  With all her money lost, Anna takes on a job as a servant in the house of the Earl of Westerholmes and tries her best to fit in with the staff.  But it's soon obvious that she is different to the other servants and matters become even more complicated when she starts to fall in love with the Earl, Rupert, who happens to be already engaged.

The Secret Countess is an enchanting, magical book.  Ibbotson certainly has a way with words and this simple plot caught me up in it's web within the first few pages.  Even though I knew what was going to happen, I couldn't put it down.  I loved the glamour of the Russian characters, the cosiness of the English country house setting and the understatement of the love story.  Although the romance is a central part of the plot, it is written with a light touch and shown rather than told, making it more powerful.

It is true that Ibbotson's characters are either very good or very bad.  Although Anna goes through some tough times, she remains impossible bright, vivacious and full of life.  Her counterfoil, Rupert's fiancee Muriel is all bad; she believes in eugenics, is cruel to the staff for very little reason and can be very spiteful.  Usually I would have a problem with these all-good, all-bad characters, but within the fairytale like elements of the setting and plot, it made sense.  After all, no one complains that the evil witch in Hansel and Gretel lacks good characteristics alongside her evil ones.

The Secret Countess was a perfect escapist read, like watching an old-fashioned film.  It didn't challenge me intellectually or introduce any new ideas but it did whisk me away to a stylised version of early twentieth century England and caught me up in it's story.  I will be reading more by Ibbotson soon.

Verdict: A cosy, escapist read for a Sunday afternoon.

Source: Library

First Published: 1981

Score: 4.5 out of 5

The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes

I should start this review by saying that I have a thing against chick-lit.  I have tried lots of chick-lit but find it generally formulaic and it doesn't even relax me in a guilty pleasure kind of way.  My sister has been nagging me for ages to read Marian Keyes, arguing that even though her books look like chick lit, they are much more well written and deeper.  I finally decided to give in with The Brightest Star in the Sky.

Synopsis: The novel tells the story of a group of people all living in flats in the same building. Maeve and Matt are a married couple coping with a traumatic event, Katie is finding it hard to see where her life is going, Lydia is a female taxi driver who cares for her Mum (who has dementia) and Jemima is coming to the end of her life.

Well, my sister was right - it's not really chick lit.  In fact, Marian Keyes' writing style reminded me a bit of Nick Hornby's and there was no way the book could be described as superficial.  Marian was very good at writing about everyday life in a way that didn't sugarcoat it or make it overly depressing.  It was just like real life, lived by people everywhere.

With such a large cast of characters, it was hard to relate to and root for every one.  I found Maeve's story the most affecting and guessed the twist before it was revealed.  On the other hand I didn't really get behind Katie's relationship struggles.  Those sections weren't boring, but I didn't really care which character Katie chose.

The writing style was simple and easy to read - all of the strength of the book was in the characters and plot developments.  I didn't care for the supernatural element of this novel but would definitely read more by Marian Keyes.

Verdict: Sister 1  Me 0
Score: 3.5 out of 5