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Donna's review of all things bookish!
August Pullman wants to be an ordinary ten-year-old. He does ordinary things. He eats ice cream. He plays on his Xbox. He feels ordinary - inside.
But Auggie is far from ordinary. Ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. Ordinary kids don't get stared at wherever they go.
Born with a terrible facial abnormality, Auggie has been home-schooled by his parents his whole life, in an attempt to protect him from the cruelty of the outside world. Now, for the first time, he's being sent to a real school - and he's dreading it. All he wants is to be accepted - but can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, underneath it all?
Narrated by Auggie and the people around him whose lives he touches forever, Wonder is a funny, frank, astonishingly moving debut to read in one sitting, pass on to others, and remember long after the final page.
Inspired by a personal loss, Greene explores the way that tragedy and time assail one man’s memories of his life and loves.
Like his father before him, Arthur Winthrop is the Headmaster of Vermont’s elite Lancaster School. It is the place he feels has given him his life, but is also the site of his undoing as events spiral out of his control. Found wandering naked in Central Park, he begins to tell his story to the police, but his memories collide into one another, and the true nature of things, a narrative of love, of marriage, of family and of a tragedy Arthur does not know how to address emerges.
Luminous and atmospheric, bringing to life the tight-knit enclave of a quintessential New England boarding school, the novel is part mystery, part love story and an exploration of the ties of place and family. Beautifully written and compulsively readable, The Headmaster’s Wife stands as a moving elegy to the power of love as an antidote to grief.
Colin's job was to abduct Mia as part of a wild extortion plot and deliver her to his employers. But the plan takes an unexpected turn when Colin suddenly decides to hide Mia in a secluded cabin in rural Minnesota, evading the police and his deadly superiors. Mia's mother, Eve, and detective Gabe Hoffman will stop at nothing to find them, but no one could have predicted the emotional entanglements that eventually cause this family's world to shatter.
In My Sunshine Away, M.O. Walsh brilliantly juxtaposes the enchantment of a charmed childhood with the gripping story of a violent crime, unraveling families, and consuming adolescent love. Acutely wise and deeply honest, it is an astonishing and page-turning debut about the meaning of family, the power of memory, and our ability to forgive.
I tend to read young adult fiction in between some of my other books. I find it to be a nice change of pace. The books tend to be a bit shorter, and I am more apt to venture into some genres that I wouldn't necessarily read. I'm going to give a short review of the books I've read so far in 2015. All book titles are linked to Goodreads, if you would like a more detailed synopsis of the books.
I read this at the end of 2014. The story takes place over the holidays, so it was the perfect time to read this one. It was very cute, I loved the fact that it revolves around a bookstore. My review.........3 stars
First in a trilogy. Points given for the gorgeous covers! I would describe this as The Hunger Games (minus the violence) meets The Bachelor. While I'm not a huge Bachelor fan, and this would (I believe) be considered a dystopian novel, I loved it!! My review..........5 stars
This one, while good, was my least favorite of the trilogy. A lot of time was spent with the main character deciding which guy she wanted, and I got bored. It picked up at the end, which was a good omen for book three. My review.........4 stars
Don't hate me for this, but I could not get into the characters in this book at all. So many glowing reviews for this one, but I was just meh. I didn't really care what happened to them. This one fell flat. My review.........2 stars
This one fell somewhere in between the first book and the second book. I really liked the way the author resolved the love triangle, let's just say she didn't take the easy way out and eliminate one of them. Mixed emotions at the end. My review...........4.5 stars
Great book. Kind of a dystopian, family sage, mafioso mash-up, that was really well written. Kept me engaged the whole way through! This is the first in a series, I'm going to have to seek out the others. My review.........4 stars
My first book by National Book Award winner Woodson. I thought the writing was wonderful, the story was just ok. The book was really short, and I think this may have hindered my fully attaching to the characters. My review..........3 stars
When Queenie Hennessy discovers that Harold Fry is walking the length of England to save her, and all she has to do is wait, she is shocked. Her note had explained she was dying. How can she wait?
A new volunteer at the hospice suggests that Queenie should write again; only this time she must tell Harold everything. In confessing to secrets she has hidden for twenty years, she will find atonement for the past. As the volunteer points out, 'Even though you've done your travelling, you're starting a new journey too.'
Queenie thought her first letter would be the end of the story. She was wrong. It was the beginning.
FRANCE, 1939
In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another.
Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.
With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah takes her talented pen to the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.