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Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, by Laura Hillenbrand
This story truly is one of resilience and redemption. It mainly follows the life of Louis Zamperini who was somehow able to defy all odds as a POW and to come out on the other side to heal and live life to its fullest. He is truly inspiring.
It’s amazing (not in a good way) how many fighter pilots lost their lives during the Second World War by malfunctions more than by enemy attack. That fact alone blew my mind. I am so glad for having read this book because I think that it isn’t until you somewhat understand the trauma that those in war endure, especially POW’s, that you truly sympathize with their mental stability or instability that they face when the war is over. After reading of the conditions of the POW’s in Japan, I don’t know how any of them survived not only while imprisoned but even after they were home.
This book was heartbreaking at times and difficult to read. I was angry at times of the unjust treatment not only the POW’s had to go through but even an innocent animal. I am sad to know the depths of evil that people stoop down to during war, but am just as touched to read of the people who put their lives on the line to lend a hand to those who needed it.
I highly recommend this book.
To buy this book, click on the book cover below:
Big Little Lies, by Liane Moriarty
PAIGE if you are reading this…this is a winner! 🙂
There is a quality to Liane Moriarty’s writing that just sucks me in. Maybe it’s the character’s that she so wonderfully develops, or it could be her perfect comical timing, or even how skilled she is at putting in those plot twists that make you say, “What the f?”
It seems that as with every new book that Moriarty writes, they get better and better. I absolutely loved this book so much that I will probably read it again within the month.
As a side note…I purchased the Audiobook when reading “What Alice Forgot” and the narrator was amazing at nailing the characters and I adored the Australian accent. Since that was such a hit for me, I bought the audiobook for this one too and it was great! Caroline Lee did a fantastic job bringing this story to life. So..if you enjoy audiobooks then this is worth the credit that’s waiting to be used!
If you would like to purchase this book, click on the book cover below:
We Are Not Ourselves, by Matthew Thomas
It was a bit hard for me to rate this review with stars. There were times that I thought that I was going to give it 3 and other times 5 stars, so I’ve settled in the middle of the two.
Instead of being plot-driven this book seems to be solely character-driven where you get a feel of the families individual idiosyncrasies and if you pay particular attention to detail, you can see how the twists and turns in their lives cause subtle changes in each character as you would in real life. This story is best summed up as being centered around one family, mostly following the mother Eileen, and their ups and downs throughout life. Although I would have to say that it was mostly downs than ups.
Eileen wants to live a life of prestige. She not only graduated from high school but received a BS in Nursing as well as a Masters in Nursing Administration. At some point she finally meets a man that she deems worthy enough for her, after giving up the dream that some wealthy man would sweep her off her feet and allow her to live off of his wealth. And when life sets in and things start to move off-track, Eileen chooses to overlook them as if they weren’t happening because in her mind her life was going to be projected the way she wanted her life to actually be.
Eileen and her husband, Ed, eventually have a child and name him Connell. Luckily for Connell his dad seems to be great at giving him emotional support. Growing up Eileen’s mother was very distant and as a result, Eileen is hard and off-putting almost as though she were narcissistic, but I am not sure that she could be labeled as so. It seemed that her image would shift from indifferent to cruel to passive and then controlling. I couldn’t quite figure her out, but I felt sorry for her son because she treated him horribly at times. I think deep down though that she loved him the best way that she knew how.
Because this story is mainly character-driven, it is long and at times slow moving. I think this would be the only reason why I didn’t take the plunge and give it five stars. I think as much could have been achieved with developing the characters in the story had it been tightened down to at least 100 less pages, but this is my personal opinion.
The author did an excellent job with making the characters three dimensional because I found myself getting angry and frustrated at the mother when she would act so indifferent to her son or controlling toward her environment and at other times when she was so oblivious and chose to see things not as they really were. At times it was painful to read these parts because as the book progressed I began to loathe her. She reminded me a lot of the mother from the movie ‘Ordinary People’, Beth Jarrett, because she was wound so tight and was so concerned with outside appearances than to open her eyes and look at her life as it really was. At first I thought that the book failed by making the MC so dislikable, but the more I thought about it afterward, I realized that the character of Eileen was so well developed that she pulled some serious emotion from me.
If you are looking for a great character-driven novel then this is definitely the book for you.
Thank you to NetGalley/Simon & Schuster/Matthew Thomas for the advanced copy for review.
To purchase your own copies of this novel, click on the book cover below:
Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger
I don’t like so much when I am in the minority of rating a book, but I suppose that I am this time. Ordinary Grace is a coming of age book about a twelve-year-old boy named Frank who’s curiosity for life and the happenings around him exposes the nastiness in the world to him a little too soon.
Because I just made a big move and have had my head in boxes for the past two weeks, I unfortunately have not been able to enjoy reading a book as I usually do. Due to these circumstances, I bought the audiobook.
I was very pleased with the audiobook and thought that the narrator was amazing. I have been known to stop an audiobook within the first chapter if the narrator didn’t pull me in, but I will say that I was hooked from the first sentence.
Right up until 3/4 of the book, I was going to give this read a definite 4 stars. Unfortunately for me, it didn’t come together for me toward the end. One reason is because when a certain person dies, there are suddenly suspicions from a couple of people in town and this lead me to believe that there was a bit of mystery to the book, but it totally didn’t play out that way. In the end, it is just delivered in a way as in, by the way the killer was… So I didn’t really get any joy out of knowing who it was.
I also didn’t like how the main character set up early in the book what was about to happen, such as when he said the next death was going to be the hardest. I kind of like for things to unfold naturally so that way I can concentrate on the story and not what’s ahead. I know this may seem paradoxical to what I stated about finding out who did it in the previous paragraph, but I mean this in the sense that I don’t like to know of tragedies ahead of time. I like to be surprised.
The third thing that kind of ruined it for me was that I figured out early on who was responsible for what happened to this murdered person before they were killed (I’m trying to say this without having to hide for spoilers). It just seemed so obvious to me for some reason and the tough part for me was that it seemed that there were distractions to try to keep the reader from seeing this but it didn’t work for me.
Because of these three incidents, it just made the last bit of the book just drag for me and it suddenly came across as having a mediocre plot. I just didn’t get a feeling of suspense and found it easy to figure out the behind the scenes. Maybe this is purely by chance for me and I ruined it for myself.
I do, however, want to say that I thought that the writing was great. I liked how the author would set up a scene and I could sense actually being in the scenes myself. He was able to bring things to life by talking about the cracking of a pipe or a heavy rainfall. To say that I struggled the last 1/4 of the book doesn’t mean that I didn’t like it, because I enjoyed the majority of it completely. I guess what my review is stating is why I didn’t give it 4 or 5 stars. It does seem that this book was fantastic to the majority so I definitely think everyone should read it.
Click on the book cover below, if you are interested in reading this book:
Past the Shallows, by Favel Parrett
As some adults later do, sometimes I wish that my parents would have done something different or I feel deprived in some way. That is, until I read books on children with abusive and bitter parents that could care less if they existed or not. Once I read them, I think, ‘you should be kissing your parents feet’ or ‘why am I such an ungrateful little runt?’
This is the case with Past the Shallows. This story is told by two brothers, Harry and Miles. Harry is the baby of the family and is still innocent and uneffected. Miles is older and a bit weary and is in the process of becoming resentful of the man that they call their father. Unfortunately for these two brothers, their mother is dead and the man who cares for them basically doesn’t want them. There is a third brother, but he doesn’t make enough of an appearance to know much about, just that he left once the abuse toward him had hit its peak.
This book was well-written and dark, dark, dark. I think that the only happy moments in the book are when Harry finds twenty bucks and when he befriends a dog. I think this is an important forewarning before diving into this one. There is true symbolism to be found if you are looking for it. All in all, it’s a great read if you are prepared for it.
Much thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and author for the advanced copy to review
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