Coming Home by Melanie Rose

This book was bought for me as a birthday present and claims to appeal to fans of Sophie Kinsella, who I have enjoyed in the past and Cecelia Ahern, who didn't appeal to me so much, so I was interested to see which side of the fence this book swayed me.



Picking it up yesterday I am happy to say I have finished it in the last ten minutes and thoroughly enjoyed it.



It is one of two novels Melanie Rose has written, this one being her second.



After a freak car accident in a snowstorm, the leading lady of the story finds herself suffering amnesia and after being found wandering in the snow with a cat in a box becomes embroiled in the complex lives of her rescuers. Not only that but she begins getting memories, not possible because of their time frame to be hers. Will these memories piece together a larger pictures involving more than just her.



If you enjoy books that are fairly light hearted and full of intrigue then you will enjoy this page-turner. All the characters feel like friends at the end of the book and I was sad to have finished the book wishing it would just keep going.



9/10

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

The last book by Jodi Picoult that I read is the one that I had been looking forward to the most to read. As a criminology graduate the content of this book is right up my street. Reading this book highlighted many of the devastating issues from the Columbine shooting that was so shocking.

Picoult allows us to read an almost behind the scenes look at the mind of the murder of her imaginary school shooting.

Lacy Houghton, a midwife is devastated when her world falls apart after finding out her son has entered his school and murdered ten pupils. As the story unfolds the terrible bullying that he endured and experience he has at school begins to shed light on the terrible situation facing some high school pupils.

It was another book that I found hard to put down, and although she did not by any means justify the murders of the pupils another view point is given as to why these things happen. Perhaps facing these may make us more vigilant of the signs in the future in real life.

8/10

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

This is the second of the three Jodi Picoult books I have read. I started it straight after Perfect match. Normally reading the same author in a row isn't something I generally do as I get bored of the same style and like a variation. However upon reading the back of the book the content seemed so different to the one before I went ahead.

At age 13 Anna is finally worn out with hospitals, operations, transfusions and injections...but Anna is not sick. She was born for the purpose of helping her sick sister who is fighting Leukemia. Through out this book we are given the viewpoints of all the family members in this heart breaking story. The way Picoult shifts our opinion from one chapter to the next depending on whose viewpoint we are reading is done so well.

Anna battles for the rights to her own body, she doesn't want to give up her kidney to her ailing sister, but the battle between the family loyalties are pushed to their raw limits. At 13 Anna is making a decision that will ultimately lead to her sisters death.

As you read the book you feel like you are getting to know the characters and I shed more than a few tears on numerous occasions throughout reading it. Issues none of us want to confront in our life are blasted through with such ferocity yet compassion that those of us, myself included who has not been in a situation even remotely similar can experience the devastation the disease can impose upon a family.

As with the other Picoult book I read there are twists and turns along the way which make it a truly brilliant novel. I can see why it has been made into a film starring Cameron Diaz. Because I enjoyed the book so much I watched the film, which was equally as tearful.

8/10

Top 100 Books...Read more than 6??

The BBC believes that most of us will only have read 6 of these 100 top rated books (seeing the film does not count as reading the book!!!). I will put an 'x' by the ones I have read, feel free to do the same in the comments. Just cut and paste the list and do your own comparison.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6. The Bible X
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9. His Dark Materiels - Phillip Pullman X
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11. Little Women - Lousia M Alcott X
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas HardyX
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne D Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulkes
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38. Captain Coreli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres X
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47. Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon X
60. Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure- Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding X
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Hermen Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Inferno - Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Colour Purple - Alice Walker X
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White X
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute X
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I Have Read 38 of the hundred so far and I am in the middle of about 4 of them and in possession of many more so watch this space for more reviews on the BBC's top books. Enjoy counting for yourself and sharing it with friends.

Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult

This is the first of 3 Jodi Picoult books I am going to review. Although I had heard of her work, I had never read any of them so I allowed myself a pick of 3 to give myself a broad view of her style.

Perfect Match follows the story of an assistant district attorney, Nina Frost who prosecutes the sot of crimes that tear families apart on a daily basis. This is all well until Nina discovers her own child, only 5 years of age, has been sexually abused.

Suddenly her life, career and home life are thrown into disarray, suspicion and devastation as she tries to hold her broken family together and find justice for Nathaniel her son.

Despite her professional training Nina's taste for vengeance is gripping and she is about to embark on a journey that most parents would argue was legally wrong but morally right.

It is a thought-provoking read, which is constantly moving and developing into different angles and when you think everything is starting to come together another development happens to throw the case into chaos again.

Being the first of Picoult's books that I had read I was keen to pick up the next.

7/1 0

A Fair Cop by Michael Bunting

How PC 451 Became Prisoner DK8639



Michael Bunting has taken his scribbles accounting his horrific experience from police officer to prisoner and turned them into a fantastic, honest and graphic read.



Michael had been a regular PC, after following his dream and joining the force following in his father's footsteps. After a routine patrol call however, his life was turned upside-down and he found himself not only in court on charges others found ridiculous, but subsequently sentenced to a terrifying prison term.



Once in prison he found himself spat at, beaten in front of guards, attacked in the showers, had buckets of urine thrown over him, had his food tampered with and came frighteningly close to suicide.



Michael doesn't preach, doesn't exaggerate or use over fussy turns of phrase. His book is an honest and open account written in a style we can all relate to, making it all the more horrifying. My heart didn't stop pounding from the judges decision till his accounts of the day of release.



Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.....a must read for everyone! Our eye's need to be opened to the corruption going on in the prison system!



10/10

City of Thieves By David Benioff

Sorry for the long absence, but it has not been wasted! I have got a number of new reviews to post for all the books I have been reading over the past few months.....well the ones worth reviewing anyway!!!

So here goes.....

City of Thieves by David Benioff

David Benioff has written a couple of books in his literary career, neither of which I have read. In fact until I bought this book I had not heard of him. I have heard of films he has screen written, like Kite Runner and X-Men etc. I was in Tescos and I spotted a paper cover on this book that claimed to give the buyer 2 free books if they did not enjoy the book. Intrigued I took up the challenge. Obviously there was an end date to this offer which well exceeded the time it would take to read the book, so I thought, "Hey, read it and then trade in in for a couple of new ones..." Whether or not I did this will come later!

The book is set in one of the coldest winters in history in a war torn city under German siege. The main characters, shy Lev and charismatic, risk-taker Kolya are thrown together in a mission to find a dozen eggs in a week in order to be forgiven for their crimes.

The back cover didn't fill me with too much enthusiasm...mmmm a story about an egg hunt they say? But my curiosity took the better of me and I began reading.

387 glorious, heart-pounding, riveting pages later I dropped the book into the hand of my husband and said READ!! It was brilliant.

Without giving the plot away too much and thus ruining the read for others, I can tell you among the content the young men encounter cannibalism, brothels, murder, desperate hunger, capture, Nazis and bonds so strong they will change their lives. I have not read a book so fast in a long time.

Usually my husband and I differ greatly on books and when I thrust a book into his hand insisting he read it he rarely gets to page 50 before giving up and returning to his own favoured genres. City of Thieves proved a rare exception to this rule. I have since passed it on to another 4 family members and friends and have not heard a bad review yet. Needless to say the book is still in my possession, and I intend to carry on circulating it!!

I never did want the free ones in exchange!!