The Book Of Tomorrow

N.B.  This review is based on an uncorrected proof of the title, so some of the quotations and information might be different from those of the final print.

Ireland’s former prime minister’s daughter Cecelia Ahern proved herself to me that she’s a brilliant story teller with her   novel The Book Of Tomorrow ,  the first ever book of hers that I’ve read.  It was so gripping with a good plot that holds a mystery that reveals itself only near the end, really likable language style, and some philosophical views of life and love.

The story is presented is of being told by Tamara Goodwin, a spoiled teenage girl who’s father is a very rich developer.   She is a very self centered girl, having being brought up without a care in the world. But her world is shattered in to pieces when her father, after getting deep in to debt, takes his own life.  Stripped off from their fancy home and all the riches, Tamara and her mother are forced to live with Tamara’s uncle and aunt in remote and isolated place.  As they get on with this new life Tamara is very concerned about her mother continuing to appear so dazed and indifferent, and her aunt refusing to show her to a doctor, and even more weirdly, trying to hide something.   Things develop in to a whole new level when Tamara comes across a diary that automatically shows entries for tomorrow when she look s in it to it, in her own hand writing! With the help of the diary Tamara tries to predict and manipulate her tomorrows to help her mother out of her daze and find out the secret her aunt is holding.

I’ll quote the very first two and part of three paragraphs of the book so that you can get a feel of how beautifully Cecelia has woven this story.

“….. They say a story loses something with each telling. If that is the case, this story has lost nothing, for it’s the first time it’s being told.  

This story is one for which some people will have to suspend their disbelief.  And, if it didn’t happen to me, I would be one of those people.

Many won’t struggle to believe it though, for their minds have been opened; unlocked by whatever kind of key causes people to believe.   They’re either born that way or, as babies, their little bud like minds are nurtured until their petals slowly open and prepare for the very nature of life to feed them……”

See the symbols she uses to get her point across?

The plot is so gripping in the sense it slowly, very slowly, builds up tension, untwisting a tiny bit at a time yet presenting another twist, creating such intense anticipation of something sinister to happen, a quality I saw in the movie Coraline too. [I didn’t get to read the book.]  It was a little too rushed near the end though, and when the big secret is finally revealed, it is rather unconvincing. Had the secret being a plausible one in a real life situation, this book would have been even better. What I like most about The Book Of Tomorrow is that it makes the reader think about life, love, caring while being one of the best suspense, thriller, fantasy novels ever.   I can’t wait to get my hands on Cecelia Ahern’s other books!

   

    

Good To A Fault By Marina Endicott, How Do Selfishness And Sacrifice Relate To Each Other?

Good To A Fault, a novel written by Marina Endicott ,was a book I found  very enjoyable and inspirational. Although it has a plot that evolves around a woman's decision that is hardly likely to take place in the real world, the author presents it with such a fine manner which makes it really convincing.

Here is a peek in to the plot. Clara Purdy is fourty- three, and works as an insurance claim adjuster. Divorced and living in her deseased parent's house, she feels a certain hollowness in her life.

Then something happens to change her quite and uneventful  life. On her way to the bank during the lunch break in her car one day , Clara hits another car with a whole family in it. None of the family, the Gages, is hurt by the accident itself. But the mother of the family is diagnosed with cancer when they are all taken to a hospital for examination.

With their car damaged, the hospitalised, the Gage family is quite at a loss. Then Clara makes a decision that's to make both her's and the Gage's lives very different from what they used to be. She decides to ask the distressed Gage family to live in her house and take care of them till things come to a settlement.

So Clara' and the Gage's start off with close company, their lives full of exhaustion ,  energy, self -concern, sacrifice, and love. You would think the plot takes a dramatic twist from this point on, but it doesn't, but rather flows on with a very realistic manner. That's the beauti of this book. The not-so-dramatic flow of events makes this book more convincing  and thought provoking .

One other thing that I really liked about this book is how brilliantly  the author expresses how the child charactors of the this story think and feel. Marina Endicott really has a gift of presenting  a child's perspective  of the world around him or her.

In essence this novel conveys  the message that one finds  hapiness and contempt  by helping others, by sacrificing, and when one is helping others, one is actually helping oneself , selfishness  and compassion  are really the two sides of the same coin.That's my reading of Marina Endicott's Good To A Fault.

The Barbary Pirates by William Dietrich, a fast- paced novel with adventure, humor, and history

The Barbary Pirates is novel that is one of a series written by William Dietrich around the fictitious character Ethan Gage. It is written with some relevance to certain true historical incidents and characters as well. to I was a little confused as I just started this book because I had not read any previous books of the series and the language was a bit modern for a book telling a story set back in 1802. But as I kept reading everything came in to light and it was impossible for me to put the book down.

The main character, Ethan Gage, is as American who has a taste for adventure, treasure hunts, and women. Wherever he goes, he attracts trouble. The plot starts when he is given an assignment by Napoleon Bonaparte to find a legendary weapon called “the mirror of Archimedes”, a super-power weapon apparently originated in Atlantis and later used by Archimedes. Gage is accompanied by Georges Cuvier, William Smith, and Robert Fulton in his voyage from Paris to Venice, Thira and Tripoli, to hunt for the mirror, his lost love, and a son he did not know existed. The journey is full of adventure and danger with Gage's arch enemy Aroura Somerset, a clan called the Egyptian rite, and Barbary Pirates in pursuit, desperate to have the weapon for themselves.

I found The Barbary Pirates fantastic as a novel of adventure, thriller, and history, very fast paced and absolutely funny. The dialogs were hilarious, full of sarcasm towards Gage from others for his attraction to trouble.

There is a historical note at the end of the book that clarifies the historical incidents, places and people that the reader encounters in the book. I found it very informative. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope to get my hands on the other Ethan Gage adventures soon.

 

31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan

31 Bond Street is a novel inspired by a true incident that happened in New York in 1857.

The Starting point of the plot is when Dr. Harvey Burdell, a well known dentist  is found brutally murdered in his house,31 Bond Street, fingers are pointed at the house mistress, Emma Cunningham, a widow with two daughters who has leased a floor of the hose.

District attorney Abraham Oakey Hall Prosecutes Emma. If he succeeds in a conviction, his ambition to be the next mayer will be fulfilled. But the defense attorney Henry Clinton is determined to protect her.

From then on the plot doesn't flow in a straight line but rather presents itself as pieces of a puzzle,occurring at different times involving different people. The reader has to put the pieces together and make sense of what happens.

The story presents a certain portion of American history and politics, racism and slavery as well as economy in America back then. But most important of all is the way the book portraits the misery people put themselves in, being greedy, following false values, getting married with the sole purpose of improving one's social status and wealth.

The author has gone too much in detail to the back ground of the plot at certain points, making the book a little draggy at times. The end is a little awkward too, because the author has not related to it properly from the beginning.

Generally this book was a fairly good read, both entertaining and informative. Any one studying law would find this book interesting too.

HUSH by Kate White

This is a thriller/suspence novel that I found rather dissapointing. It's written around a woman who fleas a scene of homicide.
Lake Warren is a marcketing consusltant, currently working for a fertility clinic. Her husband Jack is filing a divorce, and worse, seems to be wanting the full custody of their two kids. So, Lake has been advised by her lawyer to "keep her nose clean", so as not to make things easy for Jack.
There is this Dr. Keaten, a consultant to same fertility clinic that Lake works for, who is very flirtacious towards her. She too is attracted. After a lustful night spent with him in his appartment, Lakes find him brutelly murdered.
She takes flight, not wanting to call the police, thinking it would affect her custody battle. She tries to act normal. But strange things happen around her. It's as if some trying to scare her. And worse yet, two police dettectives come breathing down her neck. So Lake is determined to direct the police towards who ever the real killer is, with out revealing her being in his appartment when Dr. Keaten got killed.
The plot as a whole is very inconvincing. The author has tried to insert some twists to it, but with hardly any success. Some of them just offer distractions. One other thing I cannot appriciate is the harsh, down right direct way the author expresses Lake's and Dr Kates Love making. It's surprising to expect from a lady author.

Money To Burn by James Gripando, suspence wrapped around cooperate espionage

Pleas note that this review is of a uncorrected proof copy of the book, so the final publication may be different in some aspects than presented here.

I could have read this book from the beginning to the end without stopping, had it not been for my lovely wife and darling little girl, and my day job, of course. For me, it was everything a suspense novel
should be.

The plot starts with Michael Cantella, 28, pretty well up in the cooperate ladder of Saxton Silver, a Wall Street investment bank, going on a trip in the Caribbean with his girl friend Ivy Layton, a trader in
Ploutus Investment, a large hedge fund that is also Saxton Silver's biggest primer brokerage client.

As they cruise around Bahamas in a charted boat, impulse and passion make them jump at marriage. When Cantella awakes with a hang over after the first night following their wedding, he finds no trace of his wife in the boat. After a few days of intense search it turns out that Ivy had fallen victim to a shark attack and not survived.

Seven years pass by. Michael is married again, and in even higher a position in Saxton, but the emptiness caused by Ivy's death remains. And on his 35th birth day, he logs in to his account, only to find out that all his money has been stolen by some one!

That is just the beginning of a chain of bizarre events to follow. Some sort of cooperate espionage seem to be involved in bringing down the stock value of Saxton, some one tries to hurt Michael physical, his laptop is infected with spyware, his wife files a divorce case, and worst of all, he is suspected to be responsible for Saxton's bankruptcy and the killing of the host of a TV shaw of finance. The rest of the story follows with Michael's desperate attempts to get out his mess.

This plot has many twists and turns. As one twist untwists, a new one appears, making it hard for the reader to guess the end. This book is capable of sustaining the reader's curiosity almost to the end.

The book also discusses a timely issue, how greed brings about misery, particularly relating to the way those big shot finance firms operate. The author makes good use of Michael's grand father's character to express it. Had the author elaborated more along this line, this book would have been an excellent piece
of work. As it is, Money To Burn is very much in the league of popular suspense novels, and one of the best of the kind.

I thought it was worth sharing this

I recently read “Thirteen Never Changes” by Budge Wilson. I thought of posting two quotes from it rather than writing a review because I felt in that way I would give a better impression of the book. So, here goes,
“……Later on, long after everyone had gone to bed, I could hear Dad down the living room. Crying. In a strangled way, like Hilary, but crying. Me, too. I cried a lot. What a lot of crying in this house. But I guess that’s what war is all about. Not piper’s bands or marching parades or people staring bravely in to the sunset. What war is really about is a lot of crying……”
“…..Today Norman enlisted. It was awful. I don’t think I can talk about it, even to you. I can’t stand to see Mother and Dad suffer like this. I’m not sure I’ll ever be brave enough to be a parent, now. When you get a new baby, you must just think, it’s a BABY. You know- you buy bootees and little sweaters and hug it a lot. You feed it and comfort it, and it must be a really lovely feeling. But what you can’t be thinking is, when this baby grows up and gets big, he’s going to go off and be in a war. How could you stand even looking at him if you knew that?.........”
PS- this book will make a nice gift for a girl on her thirteenth birth day.

The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins, a true story excavated from it’s grave

This novel has been inspired by a true incident that took place at the time of Second World War It’s about a team of German paratroopers that comes to England, to kidnap Winston Churchill! This book tells you that not all the German military people of that era were evil, and there had been some great folks among them. Full of action and suspense, this book is one that I enjoyed most.