Review of "The Letter" by Kathryn Hughes

Domestic abuse is something that we're only just finding the right discourse to talk about. For too often "victim blaming" has been present here, by means of people suggesting that the victim somewhat brings it upon themselves because they stay with the perpetrator. However, in The Letter, Hughes shows the other side of this discussion: what do you do if the person you loved isn't who you thought they were, or want them to be? Tina, the protagonist of the story suffers greatly at the hands of her domineering husband, whose alcoholism sends him into fits of paranoid rage. What the reader begins to realise is that Tina isn't simply foolish for leaving him, but terrified too. When Tina and Rick marry he begins to hit her upon occasion, but convinces her that if she didn't provoke him it wouldn't happen. As well as this, he is so apologetic and seemingly filled with love after he does it that she believes in her hopes: that he's changed, and it won't happen again. I think this is an incredibly important text for anyone to read if they've ever considered why the victim of an abuser would stay in a relationship filled with pain.

Tina just wants Rick to love her like he did before they were married. But since their marriage night he's beaten her so badly that she's ended up in hospital. She wants to escape, but how can she? She needs the man she loves, especially is she's right, and there's a little one along the way. Surely he'll become the loving man he once was now, right?

Desperate to think about something else and needing an escape from everything, Tina is intrigued when she finds a letter in the jacket a man donated to the charity shop she works from. It's from a man named Billy, dedicated to his lover Chrissie, apologising for the mistakes he's made and swearing that he will do right for her. The only problem is it has no postmark: the letter was never sent. Tina feels the need to reunite the letter with its rightful owner. This search takes Tina to places she'd never imagined, and might just have the potential to turn her life upside down ....

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "A Man Called Ove"

When I think about bildunsgromans as a genre, I imagine the likes of Jane Eyre or The Catcher in the Rye, a story progressing from childhood to adulthood. But here I think we have something a bit different and yet all too similar. Ove is a man who has lost everything with the loss of his wife, and now his worldview doesn't quite fit the world he lives in. He needs to grow up, but doesn't know how. All he knows is that the choices he wants to keep making aren't the ones Sonja would necessarily be proud of, so he reminds himself of what she would have encouraged him to do. In this way, Sandra's spirit allows Ove to adjust to the world he lives in. Finally, what would a person be without the people around them? Utterly isolated since Sonja's death, Ove has people seemingly thrust upon him. At first this seems hateful, but as we witness them putting off his suicide attempts in heartbreaking fashion, we begin to realise that perhaps they are exactly what he needs.

All Ove wants is to die in peace. He's reached a time in his life where he's alone, and no longer happy. Plus, he'll either be reunited with his late wife Sonja, or be spared from the pain of living every day without her. Very set in his ways is an under-exaggeration of Ove's character, and when his neighbours begin to break the strict rules he's set up in their estate. When they realise that he's a lot more than an angry old man, they begin to call on him more and more frequently for advice and help regarding practical issues. 

With the current day interspersed with memories of his and Sonja's past, we begin to learn why this man is the grumpy old bastard that he appears, and fall in love with him just as Parvaneh and the rest of his community do. The real question is: can they save Ove from himself, just as he saves them from making mistakes?

Have you read it?

Steph x

Review of "Am I Normal Yet?" by Holly Bourne

All Evie wants is a normal life. But how can she hope to have one when she's trying to adapt to life with a serious mental illness? In this paradigm-changing novel, Bourne imagines what it's like to be a teenage girl who genuinely suffers from OCD to a potentially life-threatening extent. We follow Evie in her journey to college and what she sees as normality: friend , boys and parties. Evie cannot even fathom life in which this is a normality for her, but what if it is possible?! Through this harrowing tale of relapse and recovery, Bourne makes no attempts to glamourise mental illness, instead exposing it in all of its life-ruining glory. 

A fresh start. That's what Evie wants from college: a place where no one knows her as "that girl who went mental and ended up in hospital". Plus, she's still got her best friend Jane who stuck with her through everything to keep her on the straight and narrow. But when Jane gets a new boyfriend and is suddenly inseparable from him (even their personalities are now joined at the hip, eurgh!), Evie feels more isolated than ever. That is until Lottie and Amber come along, making a trio called The Spinster Club with Evie, changing the definition of the word for good. Gone are the days when the girls depend on boys for happiness; now, they celebrate their singledom. However, Evie starts to fall for a boy, and what happens when she feels like she can't stay true to her feminist roots? Finally, when old habits start creeping back in, will she be consumed by her mental illness or triumph?

Have you read it?

Steph x

Review of "How I Lost You"

If you were going to pick up just one thriller in 2015, this is definitely the one I would recommend. I absolutely whizzed through it, and ended up puzzling through my opinions on Susan's guilt whilst I was in the shower, at work, basically any time that I couldn't be scouring the book for new information. I'm not going to lie, I love a good ol' bit of conspiracy theorising. So, when this book combined that with some mystery, speculation and a whole tonne of grief, I was enthralled. Imagine being told that you murdered your 12 week old baby, but not being able to remember anything about that day; never knowing whether you did this or not, never knowing whether you are indeed insane, or not. 

Susan Webster, now Emma Clarke, has been released back into the "normal" world after four years in a mental institution after she killed her only child. Having moving to a new town, and set herself up with a new identity, Emma is horrified to receive post at her new home addressed to her old name. Who knows she's moved here? Is she in danger? Things take a turn for the worse when she opens it up, revealing a photograph of a four year old boy, and on the back is written the name she can't bear to see: Dylan. Is her son alive, or is this all some kind of cruel prank?

Desperate to get to the bottom of things, Emma calls on the aid of her best friend Cassie and journalist Nick Whiteley. But as they search deeper into the past, someone gets more and more determined to terrify them away. Multiple break ins, and evidence of stalking puts Emma entirely on edge, especially when it appears that Dylan wasn't the only person murdered, and her (ex)husband may have the answers ...

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "The Dead Wife's Handbook"

I'm pretty sure we've always indulged ourselves a little, imagining how people would react to our deaths, but what if that fantasy became your reality? Rachel had everything she ever wanted, until it was all stripped away from her in an instant when she suffers a sudden death from an undiagnosed heart condition. What she suffers next however, is worse than a death she had ever imagined. The book is split up into the seven stages of grief, and as such you follow Rachel through her journey into the afterlife. Everybody questions death at some point, considers whether there is a life after death at all, right? I found this to *excuse my French*, be a little bit of a mindfuck: just imagine if those that you loved could watch you grieve for them, suffering just as you do for the lost relationship. Would you do things differently?

Rachel and Max have the kind of marriage everybody dreams about, and it's only strengthened by the birth of their daughter Ellie. However, when Rach suffers a premature death, Max and seven year old Ellie are left to pick up the pieces, and re-organise the chaos that their life and feelings have descended into. 

However, they aren't quite as alone as they think. Rachel is granted visionary access to some elements of their lives, but has no control over when or how often this will be. From seeing her parents for the first time since she died, to witnessing Max and Ellie's emotional celebration of the first anniversary at the cemetery, this access seems both a blessing and a curse. But what if Max and Ellie's wounds start to heal and they commence rebuilding their lives?

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "The Moon and More"

Sarah Dessen was pretty much my heroine in the chic lit world during my teenage years, and definitely introduced me to the idea that romance and chic lit for teens isn't all trash. So, when I was looking for a new read last week I figured: why don't I go back and see if her writing's as fab as I remember? And it definitely was. Say goodbye to simple plot lines, and the belief that teen fiction about relationships should either be all or nothing on the physical front, here we have a book that effortlessly blends complex characters with beautiful settings and rigorous plot twists. 

It's Emaline's last summer in her tiny town on the coast before she heads out to college. She imagines everything will change when she leaves, but what if it all comes before she expects? Her and Luke have been dating for what feels like forever, but as things get rocky and NY city boy Theo turns up, a break up may be on the cards far sooner than she ever thought. Plus, living and working with her two step-sisters and mother seems a bit unbearable at times, but when Emaline's invisible father turns up in town with her ten year old half-brother in tow, the notion of 'family' gets complicated too. Will this summer of change make her long to escape the tiny town she lives in? Or cling to it more than ever?

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

Review of "The Goldfinch"

I've finished the summer (weep) off with another thriller in this season of reading thrillers that I advanced upon, This was probably, unfortunately, my least favourite of the ones I've read, perhaps because the others were so much of exactly what I was looking for. However, that isn't to say that it wasn't worth reading at all! The Goldfinch was definitely one of those books that made you think: both about your own character and the state of our capitalist world.

What would keeping a life-ruining secret for decades do to you? In an interesting take on the psychological impact of deception, Theodore Decker's life is turned upside down the day his mother dies. Thirteen-year-old Theo and his mother take a trip to the Met but at the wrong time: a bomb goes off, rupturing both the gallery and the young boy's life. Handed a priceless painting by a dying man, Theo escapes the building in the confusion of the explosion only to live in fear of what keeping this painting may do to him. Suddenly left alone, the remainder of Theo's adolescence is spent moving from place to place, ending up in a whirlwind of addiction, crime and deceit. 

But, what happens if everything isn't as Theo thought it was? Who really has the painting and what will the ultimate consequences of taking it be?

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x