Perfect is the conclusion of the duology which began with Flawed, it is their author Cecelia Ahern’s first time writing for a Young Adult audience. The narrative is set in the not-too-distant future, in an unnamed European country where anyone deemed to have transgressed the social rules is branded – literally – as Flawed. After she was branded Flawed by a morality court, Celestine’s life has completely fractured – all her freedoms gone. Since Judge Crevan has declared her the number one threat to the […]
I laughed, I cried, I considered buying a Saab.
Sometimes a story is able to take you someplace else. But even better, sometimes you become so immersed in a particular fictional world, you don’t ever want to leave. That’s what happened to me when I listened to A Man Called Ove, the most recent pick from my new book club (and a huge step up from our first pick!!). Not only did I feel like I was right in Ove’s Swedish neighborhood, experiencing everything that happened in the book, but it made me want to […]
A Workout for Your Tear Ducts
This is a beautifully written YA novel that is appropriate for all ages and deals with a terrifying topic: the illness of a parent. The idea for A Monster Calls originated with writer Siobhan Dowd who died before she could write it. Author Patrick Ness was approached to create a story from Dowd’s notes, and he has produced a painfully honest and sad account of how a 13-year-old boy handles the illness of his mother. You will cry, but this story is so beautiful and […]
“Space Around Me Where My Soul Can Breath”
I don’t think I’ve ever read a “self help” book before. It’s not that I don’t think I could do with some improvement. I often find their advice to be overly simplistic or that they take a “one size fits all” approach to many of life’s problems. Ms. Olsen’s book has some of these issues but is generally easy to read. She divides her books into small, easy to digest sections making it easy to read before bed. I would say one of the […]