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The Lucky Few: Finding God's Best in the Most Unlikely Places

Heather Avis and Lysa TerKeurst

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These are the faces that call me "mom," the three children who made me a mother. When I started my...

From Intercountry Adoption to Global Surrogacy: A Human Rights History and New Fertility Frontiers

Karen Smith Rotabi and Nicole F. Bromfield

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Intercountry adoption has undergone a radical decline since 2004 when it reached a peak of...

BookInspector (124 KP) rated Before This is Over in Books

Sep 24, 2020

Before This is Over

Amanda Hickie | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry

8.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

The blurb of this book, sounds a little bit like the one for the dystopian book, where everybody dies and you survive, but it was far away from it. This was really dark and emotional journey, where wrong decisions could kill your family.

The main character in this book was Hannah, a wife and mother of two boys. Normally I really enjoy reading books, told from different perspectives, but in this case, the whole story was told from Hannah’s perspective only, and it didn’t leave me disappointed. I really liked the relationship which this family was sharing: the support and understanding between Hannah and her husband were very strong, and I also enjoyed reading about their parenting techniques, there is something new to learn. 🙂 The characters who really annoyed me were the children. I am not a very big fan of kids, and they got on my nerves really bad in this book (children will remain, children, I get it…) I really liked Hannah as a character, she was doing everything she could to survive those horrible weeks in isolation, and I really respected her decisions, even though sometimes they used to be really harsh.

The plot of this book was concentrated around Hannah’s house, sometimes including some news about next door neighbours. This book was quite long, and sometimes the chapters used to drag a little, but one thing I liked, that when you think everything is going to be ok, Hickie throws in a challenge for the family to face. That’s what kept me going and interested in this book. I was curious whats next, how and when this all epidemic is going to finish.

The writing style was very creative and pleasant to read. The chapters were too long for my liking and it really dragged sometimes. I really liked the idea of using a calendar symbol to mark the new chapters, I think it was creative and something new. The ending of this book rounded the whole story quite good. However, it left me wondering, what happened to the other characters, who came along the way. So, to conclude, this is a really emotionally challenging novel about survival and choosing whats best for your family. I do strongly recommend to give it a try, I really enjoyed this adventure.

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BookInspector (124 KP) rated All I Ever Wanted in Books

Sep 24, 2020

All I Ever Wanted

Lucy Dillon | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry

4.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

The description of this book is quite accurate, but I would like to outline the different understanding of the book. My description of the book would be something like that: Caitlin, going through divorce from her controlling perfectionist husband. Their divorce really influenced their little daughter Nancy, who stopped talking after their separation. Eva is Caitlin’s sister in law, who, even after 2 years, still suffers from her husband’s death. The only company Eva has is her two pugs, Bumble and Bee. After visits to Eva’s house, Bumble becomes Nancy’s best friend, and helps her find her voice again.

It is a really nice story about two women in opposite situations. I really liked that, all the characters in this publication are really diverse personalities and they are really believable, like ordinary people. If you have children, you will absolutely understand how Caitlin is feeling. There is so much mother’s love in this book. You can really feel it when you go through the book. The problem is, as a person who is not very interested in kids, I found it too much for my liking. I really liked Eva’s character in this novel. She was interesting, and complete opposite of confused and clumsy Caitlin. However, there was so much moping about the same thing over and over again. I found it quite boring to read, because it just plods along, is very detailed and has only few turns in the story. I am great full though, that author gave voice to more than one character, which gave better feeling of the characters.

I liked that author discussed few really interesting themes in this book. She talked about how divorce influences grownups and well as children, the freedom feeling when your other half is not there to supervise you, as well as how it feels when you are in your forties, alone and know that it’s almost impossible to have a child of your own. It was very cute, how her love for dogs’ author shared in the book with the readers, by putting two cute pugs with very detailed descriptions of their personalities and emotions. The ending of the book rounded up everything nicely, but was really predictable. So to conclude, if you have children and would like some comfort reading about family, love and cute kids, then this book is definitely for you.