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Category: family

This is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

This is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

With the American gun laws still present, with innocents getting killed all around the world by these monstruous weapons, it’s only right that a book about a gun-wielding killer would trickle it’s way into the young adult genre.

This book is important to read. It’s important that’s it’s read by everyone. Yes, it’s a young adult book but it shows us the horrors of what happens at a school shooting, it shows us how families grieve and mourn the loss of their children who were taken away from them too early. This is a feeling that parents should never feel.

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Remember Remember by Sue Whitaker

Remember Remember by Sue Whitaker

Remember Remember is a novella by Sue Whitaker that describes the horror of what one incident can do to someone’s life. It’s fast-paced and packed with emotion that will make you feel like you’re on a rollercoaster of a ride.
Sue Whitaker has created a story that is both beautiful, but also sends a message out to every single person on the planet – old and young – about the danger of bonfire night.
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To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing

To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing

Studying English and Media at my university has opened my eyes to a whole different section of literature that I never thought I would enjoy: short stories. Not just any old short story though, short stories that have a deeper meaning and a through close reading, you can take a lot away from it.

That’s the exact experience I had when reading To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessig. It’s classed as a short story, but it’s longer than you would think a short story to be but it’s not a novella (like Robert Louis Stevenson’s, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).
If you have any negative ideas about short stories and how ‘they’re boring’, To Room Nineteen will completely dispel any negativity you feel.

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Something in Between by Melissa De La Cruz

Something in Between by Melissa De La Cruz

I really did want to give this book five stars. I really really did, because I read it in a matter of hours. Something in Between has been one of 2016’s most anticipated releases and as soon as it came out, I went down to my local Waterstones and bought it. I couldn’t wait a day longer.

I feel like the biggest reason why this book was so highly anticipated was due to the whole plotline of the book being about immigration. This is such an important topic and it was so good to see an author taking such a big topic in today’s society and turn it into a YA novel.

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The Last Day of Captain Lincoln by EXO Books

The Last Day of Captain Lincoln by EXO Books

The Last Day of Captain Lincoln is the debut novel from EXO Books and is a novella that is intriguing, captivating, exciting and inspirational.

 This 133-page book was heart-warming whilst also being a book that made you cry, it was a book that you could take something away from, an important lesson that you could learn. That’s why this book was so good.

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Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson



An eating disorder can ruin someone’s mentality, it can ruin their body, their life. It destroys everything. But that’s how the outsider’s see it. The person actually going through an eating disorder thinks the exact opposite and that’s what Wintergirls explores.

Wintergirls is the first book I have ever read that is solely focused on an eating disorder and the harsh reality of living with it, of not actually accepting the fact that you do have an eating disorder, of not seeing how beautiful you really are.


Cassie and Lia did everything together, including staying thin. But then Cassie died. Now the voice in Lia’s head is telling her to stay strong. Lose more. Weigh less.

Is she strong enough to fight it?

This is the first book that I have ever read by Laurie Halse Anderson and after having a taste of her writing style, I am in love. 

Wintergirls was gritty, it was dark and upsetting. But without it being those three things, the portrayal of anorexia throughout the book wouldn’t have been true. Anderson doesn’t sugar coat it, she doesn’t glorify it, she tells it how it is. We are constantly in the mind of Lia and we are constantly hearing her telling herself that she’s fat, ugly and stupid. 

It is deeply upsetting but it is an incredible story. It is a story of fighting life, of fighting those around you, of fighting your mental state and fighting until the end. 



“I believe that you’ve created a metaphorical universe in which you can express your darkest fears. In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves, and sometimes we do such a good job, we lose track of reality.”
– Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
 
 


The story opens with Lia being told that her best friend, Cassie died. Throughout Wintergirls, Lia is constantly putting on a front about how she isn’t upset that Cassie is dead but secretly, she is seeing Cassie’s ghost everywhere she goes. 

We learn about their friendship and we are shown how parents can react in different ways to their child’s mental illness – it shows how to not support your children (Lia’s parents and step-mother were not supportive at all and it made me so so angry!)

I cannot stress enough how wonderful this book is. The writing, the characters, the ending… The ending made me cry, it made me close the book and reflect of what Lia went through, of what her parents went through. 

If you know someone who is suffering with an eating disorder but you don’t know how to deal with it, read this book. It is so eye-opening. 

Wintergirls made me uncomfortable, very uncomfortable but Anderson wanted it to make you feel like that, she wants us to know the horrible truth of what some boys, girls, men and women go through. It is a brilliant book to read.

Warning: contains triggers for eating disorders, depression, anxiety and self harm



Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

Regular readers of my blog or those closest to me will know that as soon as I finished reading To Kill A Mockingbird for Year 10, I fell in love with it and it instantly became my favourite book. Nearly six years later and it still is the best book that I have ever read and it doesn’t seem like that going to change.
When I heard that Harper Lee (Rest In Peace) was going to release a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, I felt skeptical. I didn’t want my love of the characters to be distinguished. So I waited… And waited… And I had heard nothing but bad reviews about Go Set A Watchmen. I heard things about the book that just didn’t seem right and didn’t make sense.
It was published in July 2015 and it wasn’t until more than a year later – September 2016 – that I would read it.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – returns home from New York City to visit her ageing father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and the political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt.
I feel like this review is going to be very short and very brief. I did not like this book and I felt like it shouldn’t have even been written (Harper Lee, what were you thinking? I would love to know…) I finished the book, put it down and felt like crying. Go Set A Watchman hadn’t ruined my love for To Kill A Mockingbird, but it had added detail to the characters that I didn’t want, it expanded on things that I didn’t want to learn about. For me, TKAM is the perfect standalone with the perfect characters and the perfect messages about society. GSAW ruined it all.
*minor spoilers now so look away if you don’t want to read about them*
 “The only human being she had ever fully and wholeheartedly trusted had failed her; the only man she had ever known to whom she could point and say with expert knowledge, “He is a gentleman, in his heart he is a gentleman,” had betrayed her, publicly, grossly and shamelessly.”
– Harper Lee, Go Set A Watchman
 
 
The biggest question I had once I had finished this book was ‘was Atticus racist or not then?’ We are told that Atticus attends council meetings and that he has turned into a hater of black people but later on in the book, we are told by Louise’s love interest that the only reason him and Atticus turn up to the meetings is to see whose faces lie beneath the masks, so when the time comes for “war”, Atticus and Hank know who want to destroy Maycomb.
Then, at the end of the book, Scout has a huge argument with Atticus, yelling at him about how he’s completely different to the way he brought her up. How he has ruined everything by going to the council meetings and become the complete opposite of the values he used to believe in. Atticus doesn’t even argue with her.
I wanted to cry. I really did. Atticus was this fictional character that I felt a huge amount of love for. I fell in love with him in year 10, I fell in love with what he believed in and in GSAW, Lee ruined everything. Twenty-six-year-old Scout became the person Atticus was in TKAM and Atticus became someone that I didn’t even recognise.
Also, quick point, can we just talk about how annoying Scout was with Hank? Stop playing the poor lad and just tell him whether you’re going to marry him or not. Of course, after she saw him and her father at the council meetings, I could understand why Scout was weary of marrying Hank but before that, she was messing him around so much!
I only give this book two stars because it’s from the same world as TKAM and it’s written by Harper Lee. This book should never have been written, it should never have been published, it should never have even been an idea. I’m sorry Harper Lee, I love you, I will always love you, but this book shouldn’t have happened. TKAM was a book of pure perfection. You should have left it like that.
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf


To The Lighthouse was the second book that I read for my university course. There was something about reading this classic that was very daunting. Woolf is known as a literary genius, as an author that has inspired people, an author that has written books with loads of meaning.

If you read my review of Great Expectations, you will know that I am not a regular reader of classic literature. In fact, I barely read it. Maybe that’s what was so daunting about reading To The Lighthouse…

The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflict between men and women.

 I wasn’t in a good mindset when I started this book and for the first seven chapters, I found it dull and confusing. I kept putting it down and picking it back up again to the point where I reached a reading slump. I didn’t read for two weeks (which is a mega long time for me!)

 It got to that point where I said to myself: ‘Kirsty, you HAVE to read this for uni, so pick yourself up, get the book and binge-read it.’ And that’s exactly what I did. I started from the beginning again and finished reading it at five past one in the morning. 

 After I put the book down, my first thought was “what a load of rubbish!”. But after sitting on it for a few days and properly thinking about the novel, I understand Woolf’s style of writing more and what she meant to convey through this book.

“What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation that had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
– Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse



 Throughout To The Lighthouse, Woolf wants to portray to the reader the roles of men and women in that time. Through the character of Mrs. Ramsey, we are shown that women had to entertain, look after the children and smile no matter what. Mr. Ramsey was used to show us that men were the breadwinners, they were intelligent and were allowed to be moody because they were in deep thought the whole time pondering the ways of life *slight sarcasm on my end maybe?*

 Another theme that Woolf wants to show the reader is the theme of time and how quickly it can pass us by and the damage that it can do.

 Thinking of these two themes, I can see why the book would be very enjoyable to those who are avid classics readers, but for me, I found this book very hard and confusing to read. Woolf writes very very very long sentences. I think there’s a point in the book where half a page is just one sentence. She also writes as a flow of conscience, so she skips from character to character and the reader has to figure out which character point of view she’s writing from.

 If you’re like me and hardly read classic literature, I suggest that you have Sparknotes at the ready – just in case you don’t understand what’s going on.

 Overall, I can understand why people love this book as it talks about the stereotypical gender roles and Woolf is an amazing writer, she describes in huge detail so that you can paint a picture of the book in your head perfectly. However, the way she writes in long sentences and the flow of consciousness isn’t for me. I know that I will have to read this book again and again since I am studying it at university, but I hope that whilst I am dissecting the book in class, I grow to like this book. If I wasn’t studying it, To The Lighthouse isn’t a book that I would read again.