alice – Book Dust Magic

Book Review: Faithful by Alice Hoffman

faithful

Title: Faithful

Author: Alice Hoffman

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Date: November 1st, 2016

Pages: 272

Format: eARC

Source: from Publisher for a review

Synopsis (from Goodreads): From the New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and The Dovekeepers comes a soul-searching story about a young woman struggling to redefine herself and the power of love, family, and fate.

Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.

What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithfulis the story of a survivor, filled with emotion—from dark suffering to true happiness—a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls—including an angel who’s been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.

Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing, that she captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding yourself at last. For anyone who’s ever been a hurt teenager, for every mother of a daughter who has lost her way, Faithful is a roadmap.

Alice Hoffman’s “trademark alchemy” (USA TODAY) and her ability to write about the “delicate balance between the everyday world and the extraordinary” (WBUR) make this an unforgettable story. With beautifully crafted prose, Alice Hoffman spins hope from heartbreak in this profoundly moving novel.

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Review:

Faithful is the book you can’t help but notice. It’s beautiful cover is what draw my attention immediately, but after I read it’s synopsis, I just had a feeling this book might be something I’d like.
I’m not even sure how to describe it, I just had a feeling this book will be right for me.
I am so thankful I was right.

This book was beautiful. There is no other way to describe it.

And hopeful, because when I finished it, it left me in hope that life can get better, people can make something out of their lives after the fall, even after dark places and hard times.

The story follows Shelby who was in a car accident that left her friend in vegetative state.
Shelby was the one who drove, and now she feels guilty for her friend’s stolen life.
She can’t help but feel responsible for what happened, knowing that she’s the one who had put her friend in the state that she is now, the state that turned her into a sleeping beauty in a way.

Faithful is written in first person. From Shelby’s POV we get to see a life of a young girl during time period of several years, where she do her best to overcome her guiltiness and grows as a person, making her life with no perspective turn into a life with potential to be a good one.

The writing style is simply beautiful. It takes more time to progress everything that’s written, but it is worth it.
This is the first book by Hoffman I have read, and it left me wanting to read more.

Shelby was an interesting protagonist. I understand why some readers might find her unlikeable, but I emphatized with her the whole time.
She had some moves that I wouldn’t approve, but still I understood her.
Side characters were well developed and they radiated with realness.

This book deals with depression in, to me, very realistic way.
It also talks about feeling of guilt that can overtake someone’s life.

I like how love for animals has been present the whole time but it did not overtake the main story.

Everything was just done very tasteful and I can honestly say that this is one of the best books I have read this year.

Manga Review: Alice In Wonderland – Special Collector’s Manga by Jun Abe

Title: Alice In Wonderland

Author: Jun Abe

Publisher: Diamond Book Distributors

Date: June 7th, 2016

Format: eARC

Source: from Publisher for a review

Synopsis (from Goodreads): Manga publishing pioneer TOKYOPOP is back … bringing readers Disney Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” a retelling of the film in manga style. Alice Kingsleigh was a young girl when she visited the magical world of Underland for the first time. Now a teenager, she spots a white rabbit at a garden party and tumbles down a hole after him where she is reunited with her old friends. Alice soon learns it is her destiny to end the Red Queen’s reign of terror.

Review:

If you’re a fan of Disney’s Alice In Wonderland movie (from year 2010), there’s a great chance you will LOVE this manga.
Why?
Because it is almost exactly the same.

For those of you who still haven’t seen that fantastic movie produced by Tim Burton (What you are waiting for??!), here is what the story is about:

Several years has passed and Alice is a grown girl now, old enough to get married and start her own family. However, Alice does not feel comfortable with that and she still finds herself daydreaming everyday: wondering how it would be like to be able to fly, picturing the impossible.
Her nights are filled with dreams of Wonderland and all those silly creatures that live there.
One day, as she is older, she sees a rabbit with clock and starts following him around.
You can guess what happens next!
You’re right! She falls into a whole that leads her back to Wonderland.

I really, really enjoyed this story.
If you didn’t know, I am a huge fan of the movie, so it is no wonder that I enjoyed this manga so much.

As I already said, it is almost exactly the same as the movie.
The only difference I noticed is that at the beginning of manga we get to see Alice as a little girl and her father talking with her before her sleeptime, while in the movie Alice told us about that, but we didn’t get to see it.

I liked the art in this manga. Characters looked so much better then in the movie (not sure if that is unintentional critic for the actors but… bare with me). Alice and the White Rabbit were so beautiful but yet simple, and as for Hamish – he looked like a model here. So much more handsome then Hamish from the movie (again, every insult aimed at actor is unintentional).

There is only one character that I didn’t like how was drawn, and that is Mad Hatter. While in movie he looked perfectly (and I was never too crazy about Johnny Depp so that has nothing to do with him), here in manga he looked like a weird skinni woman.

All in all, I would recommend this manga to everyone who likes the movie but also to anyone who still hasn’t seen it.
But, if you disliked the movie, you probably wouldn’t like the manga either, so I would suggest you to skip this.

Three Short Book Reviews: The Unexpected Everything, The Nearly-Weds and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There

Recently, my good Goodreads friend and a blogger, Lola from Hit or Miss Books , gave short reviews to multiple book in the same post. You can read it here.

I really liked that idea and because of Lola I got an inspiration to do similar thing.

I decided to post three short reviews for book I read but didn’t feel like writing full lenght reviews about them.

The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson

The Unexpected Everything was a really fun summery read. It follows the story of Andie who is a politician’s daughter. Because of the scandal behind her father’s name, her summer plans changed and she finds herself a job as a dog walker.
Along the way, she meets a cute guy and you can all guess where the story goes from there…

The story also focuses on friendship and how, with time, we can just grow apart.
With some cute scenes, swoony moments and some predictble situations handled in an unimaginable way, this book is one that should be on your tbr list for this summer.
I highly, highly recommend it to every ya contemporary lover.

Who could say no to this adorable cover anyway?

The Nearly-Weds by Jane Costello

I had some fun time reading this book.

The story takes place in Boston where our main character Zoe goes as an English Babysit.

If you didn’t know, this book is a winner of Romantic Novelists’ Association Romantic Comedy Award.
That being said, I don’t think I have to tell you it is full of funny situations and toughts.

Zoe was a great narrator and I think it would be awesome if there was movie based on this book.
Who knows, maybe one day we’ll have a chance to see it.

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

I had the strangest dream.
I dreamed I found myself in Wonderland, went there trough the looking glass, but while I was there, I couldn’t remember what Wonderland looked like.

After I woke up, I decided it was the best time for me to finally read this book and find my answers.

When I was growing up, I liked watching Trough the Looking Glass animated movie better then Alice in Wonderland, even if it wasn’t Disney’s.

Now when I was reading it, some pictures from that movie came to my mind, I was reminiscing about some scenes I complitely forgot about.

What took me by surprise was how I knew some quotes even though I couldn’t have know them from that very movie.

Also, I noticed how some characters that weren’t in the first book, but were in Disney’s movie for the first time showed up here, in Trough the Looking Glass.

When I look at them only as books, I can’t say I’m sure which story I like better.
I think this one made me smile more often, even if I think that Alice in Wonderland has better quotes in it.

A Summer of Secrets by Alice Ross: Book Review (Blog Tour)

summer of secrets for JENNY

I am so happy to be today’s host for A Summer of Secrets blog tour. I enjoyed reading this story and would like to thank Jenny from Nevrland Blog Tours for giving me this opportunity.

A Summer of Secrets

A perfect, feel-good summer read about love, life and family.
One long hot summer. Secrets never stay buried for long…

Portia is determined to restore Buttersley Manor, her family’s crumbling ancestral home, to its former glory. Yet she has a feeling that there are a few forgotten skeletons in the dust-covered cupboards.

Jenny has put her life on hold for far too long. It’s time to finally start living and to dig up those hopes and dreams she’s kept hidden all these years – but is she brave enough?

Rich is happily married with a beautiful wife and lovely daughter. In fact, his world is perfect until a very unexpected consequence of his past walks through the door…

Joe would like nothing more than to travel back in time to when he and Gina were happy. But is it too late to rescue what they once had?

One thing’s for sure, nothing’s ever quite what it seems when it comes to life in the country!

Goodreads * Amazon

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Review:

Four characters, four stories, one village, one short book. That all equals one enjoyable summer read.
And as a cherry on top, it has a cute cover with bright colors that makes you feel good just when you look at it.

A Summer of Secrets follows four different characters: Portia, Jenny, Rich and Joe who’s lives intertwine as they live in the same place, a little village called Buttersley.

From all the stories in the book, I think Joe’s one was the most interesting one. However, not one of them grabbed my attention from the very start and after I finished the whole book, I can’t say I was touched by either of them.

However, I think this is still a very good read and would likely recommend it for days when you want to read something light that will bright up your day and make you forget the world around you.

The writing style was simple and easily readable. It does not have any memorable quotes just like the whole book does not have any memorable situations, but when you take everything in and out, the final product is still very good.

This is second book in the series but can easily be read as standalone.
In fact, you don’t have to read the first book in order to read this one because it follows totally different cast.

It is written in third person.

Now, after everythig I wrote so far, you probably think I wasn’t emotionally engaged when it comes to this novel, but that is not true.
In fact, at some scenes I even wanted to transform myself into Buttersley and shake some characters, and the lawyer in me wanted to give Joe and Rich some legal advices.
I felt sorry over Jenny and it kind of broke my heart to see how she gave up her life in order to make her mother happy and how she couldn’t find the strenght in herself to rebel.

All in all, I am pretty satisfied with this book. Yes, it does have some flaws that could easily be solved with editing, and yes, it will probably vanish from my mind few months from now, but it still kept me entertained and made me feel better.

The end was okay, but I think Rich’s and Joe’s stories could have been more developed.

If there will be the next book in the series I believe it will follow some other characters which is good but ashame at the same time, because I feel like Rich, Joe, Jenny and Portia have more stories to tell and it would be interesting to read where their lives would bring them.

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About the author:

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Alice Ross used to work in the financial services industry where she wrote riveting, enthralling brochures about pensions and ISAs that everyone read avidly and no one ever put straight into the bin.

One day, when nobody was looking, she managed to escape. Dragging her personal chef (aka her husband) along with her, she headed to Spain, where she began writing witty, sexy, romps designed to amuse slightly more than pension brochures.

Missing Blighty (including the weather – but don’t tell anyone), she returned five years later and now works part-time in the tourism industry.

When not writing, she can be found scratching out a tune on her violin, walking her dog in wellies two sizes too big (don’t ask!), or standing on her head in a yoga pose.

Twitter * Website

Book Review: Splintered by A. G. Howard

Title: Splintered

Series: Splintered (#1)

Author: A. G. Howard

Publisher: Lumen (Croatian publisher)

Date: January 1st, 2013

Pages: 324

Format: Hardcover

Source: Borrowed

Synopsis (from Goodreads): This stunning debut captures the grotesque madness of a mystical under-land, as well as a girl’s pangs of first love and independence.

Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.

When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own.

Review:

So you think you know everything about Wonderland?

Then think again, because this isn’t the Wonderland you remember from your childhood.

Prepare yourself for the creepy, dark and twisted version of the happy place you used to visit when you wanted to feel better.
In this Wonderland, White Rabbit is a skeleton-looking faery with horns, and here, flowers wait to eat everyone who step on their theritory.

Alyssa Gardner is a great, great, granddaughter of the real Alice, who once visited Wonderland.

Women in her family are cursed. They can hear bugs and flowers, and eventually, everyone of them lose their minds.

Alyssa is on the mission: she wants to find the Wonderland and take the curse off from her family. By doing that, she’ll save her mother and herself.

I love this version of Wonderland.
The world building was amazing.
The logical aspect behind this world building was worth to be admired.
I really like how the writer portrayed Wonderland as a fairyland and all the characters from our well-known story as mysterious faeries.

The writing style was also beautiful. There were so many good sentences and quotes and if I read my own copy intead of the one from the library, it would probably be full of marks and underlines.

Our protagonist, Alyssa was pretty interesting to read about and in some kind of way, she was different from other female characters in ya novels.

There are two more characters worth mentioning: Jeb and Morpheus.

Morpheus was very manipulative, but because he is a faery, it made me appreciate him and I liked him as a character (when I look at the whole picture). As a love interest, he isn’t the greatest choice, but he is still better then his rival (if you can call him that).

Jeb, on the other hand, is the person I wouldn’t want for anyone. I didn’t like him at all, and honestly, just when I think about him it makes my nerves go up.
Why I have a negative opinion about Jeb will be discussed in my spoiler section.

There is also one character that I’d like to talk about: Taelor.
To us, she is presented as Alyssa’s rival and we weren’t supposed to like her, but I couldn’t help but to do opposite. In my eyes, she was pretty realistic and I actually think she tolerated a lot from her shitty boyfriend.
I feel like we all had to root for her to brake up with Jeb so Alyssa could be with him, but I actually rooted for her to brake up with Jeb so she could get rid of the douche.

The pacing was great, action packed in all senses. I even lost the track in some fighting scenes but it wasn’t long enough until I figured out what happened.

The only aspect of this book I didn’t like was romance.
In our love triange, I feel like Alyssa had an option to choose between bad and worse.

I also didn’t like the scene at the very end, which I like to call „The redemption scene“ (if you read the book, you’ll know what I mean).

Plus, I think there was too much cheese on the last page, if you get me!

Spoiler Alert!!!

Why I didn’t like Jeb:

He was in relationship with Taelor who he treated bad. He kept putting her on second place, made her feel insecure in herself. He went on prom with her but hang out with others and saved only two dances for her.
At the same time, he had no problem accepting that her father would rent a place in London for him to live in.