Review: The Other Half of Augusta Hope

The Other Half of Augusta Hope by Joanna Glen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You can grow up, live in one place all your life, has your friends and family around you, a twin. Yet you don't feel as if you belong in that place, among your friends and family. You feel as if you are displaced and out of bounds.
So Augusta Hope delves in to the world of words and definitions. She leans their meanings and their nouns, their verbs and everything that came with said word. When she is young, she picks her favorite country and sticks by it, learns everything that there is to know about it.

When it comes to believing in things, not everyone is supportive, Augusta fights her own fight, her own battles with her words and her family and friends. Always compared to her twin sister Julia, it's hard to find your own place in the world when everyone thinks of your sister as perfection.

We follow Augusta's story through growing up in a small place, of knowing everyone in your street and the things that she likes, while intermixed we start finding out about the story and life of another character.
We learn their truths and their hearts, their hurts and their feelings all mixed together as we follow the paths that they both lead in life and the heartache that their lives bring.

Woven together in a beautiful tale, The Other half of Augusta Hope is a loving book that could change your whole view on how your own life is. Of how two peoples worlds could be merging from a very early stage in their lives, of how they both dream of the same things, read the same poems and hope.

Each page is filled with information, which draws you further in to the story line, drags you deep down and makes you feel like you are standing right along side each character, feeling their hope and joy and pain and happiness.
It's the story of the year and a book that everyone should pick up and read, because it is beautiful.

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Review: Life on the Refrigerator Door

Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Murder in Steeple Martin

Murder in Steeple Martin by Lesley Cookman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars



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Review: The Monsters We Deserve

The Monsters We Deserve by Marcus Sedgwick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars



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Review: Our Stop

Our Stop by Laura Jane Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What can I say? I absolutely loved this book! I sat and read it within one sitting because I just couldn't put the book down. At. All!
I mean, who doesn't love a story of people just missing each other by seconds and minutes sometimes, of a love story that would be the story of the ages.

Just how many times have you been on a train or bus and you've spotted someone that you have seen countless times but have always been too scared or nervous to approach and talk to? It happens more often than not, but it's always an amazing thing when you see two people connect over a near miss and to see how their friendship and romance would unroll over time.

So when we follow Nadia and Daniel's whirl wind adventure of missed connections and newspaper messages, we are taken on a wild ride of happiness and joy and anger and more again.

REading it, I was laughing along with the characters and feeling the heartache they felt. Despite being over 350 pages, it doesn't feel like a big chunk of novel. You get drawn in to to the world of Nadia and her friends, of Daniel's life in dealing with the death of his father and seeing Nadia for the first time during his moment of grief. It's a romance that doesn't feel like a romance, a unconventional way of meeting and seeing each other without really knowing that that person is the person that you have been writing to in the newspaper.
The whole story is light and easy to read, the authors wording is spot on that doesn't make anything feel heavy or long winded. You get enough glimpses in to each characters background that you come to feel like you know them personally, that you're right along side them throughout everything from their jobs to the minutes of missing each other on their first date.

For someone who doesn't really read romances, I adored this novel with all my heart, it's quick witted, laughable in places with the comments that are spoken by the characters. IT was easy to read and fall down the warren that is story telling. I really would recommend everyone to read this book, whether or not they enjoy romances.

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Review: The Prince

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
My rating: 1 of 5 stars



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Review: If Cats Disappeared from the World

If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A sweet short story about the things that mean both the most and the least in our lives. That when given a chance, what would you really give up and make disappear from the world to just live one more day.
If cats disappeared from the world, is a moving story about a guy who is giving a terrible outcome and has to face reality and what it's thrown at him. We follow him, his cat Cabbage and the devil as they work through each day of the week, just surviving and living each day to come like god did when he created the world in seven days.
We follow through his mind set of coming to terms with his illness, of trying to decide on what to make disappear and his struggles through making amends with the people who mattered the most to him in his life as well as looking back on the past and his memories.

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