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 Having taken a rather memorable few trips through Europe in his youth and early adulthood, Bill Bryson decides to repeat the experience solo as an adult. After all, at the time of writing he lived in England but had hardly ever traveled across to the continent. In an effort to remedy that, he first sets off for Norway to watch the Northern Lights, then slowly makes his way south to city after city of hotel rooms and amusing cultural insights, ending up in Istanbul.
It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Bill Bryson, and now that I’m off on my first ever trip to the Continent myself, I thought it was the perfect time to be reading this book. I’m only going to Paris right now, but I have big plans for the future, and I couldn’t wait to read Bryson’s perspective on Europe. (I did plan to read a book more specifically on Paris, but the library lost it before it got to me, so I chose this instead.) Bryson didn’t disappoint me at all, and I found myself laughing along at all of his jokes and thoroughly enjoying this book. I also discovered that it was perfect for late night Read-a-thon as everything he says just becomes hilarious when you’re that tired. I may possibly have preferred more depth – a bit more detail on the history of each place perhaps – but I was still quite pleased with what I got.
What I like most about his books is that while he encounters stereotypes and in many respects has a “typical” experience in certain countries, I never feel like he’s stereotyped the country without a good bit of humor. He pokes fun at them, but he also regularly pokes fun at himself in the world, so it’s impossible to be offended by anything – something which I admired when reading his books about my own country. I like that Bryson’s books feel like a friend has sat chatting with me about his trip; they’re not high literature or particularly sophisticated, they’re just about a really funny writer who has had quite a few memorable trips and life experiences.
Contrasting his trip now with his trip years ago really brought to life how much the world has changed in a short span of time and simultaneously how much remains the same. Our world is indeed evolving, but in ways perhaps different from what we might expect. The most poignant section of the book for me was his trip back to Sofia, Bulgaria, formerly in his mind a wonderful place with a particularly notable huge shopping mall. When he arrived this time, there were queues for bread and the shopping mall was virtually empty. The landmarks were the same, but the entire feel of the city had changed and was set to change again just a short time later.
I’m definitely looking forward to reading more by Bill Bryson – his later writing is definitely better, if The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is any indication, so I’ll be rounding out my collection of his books sometime in the very near future. In the meantime, Neither Here, Nor There was an amusing, sarcastic little read and I would definitely recommend reading it before or during a trip to Europe.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 A rare female doctor, trained in Salerno, is recruited to head to England along with two men in order to solve an important crime. Adelia is a mistress of the art of the death; she “reads” bodies in order to find out exactly what happened to them. In short, she does autopsies, and her skills are essential to try and find out who has been taking and killing small children in Cambridge. The Jews have been blamed, of course, despite the fact that they’re obviously innocent, and they have even been killed by townspeople, so they are all holed up in the center of town. Adelia’s job is to find the murderer, without getting murdered herself.
Sometimes being unfamiliar with mysteries is useful, because I just loved this book. I mean, I’m probably going to spend this entire review gushing about it mostly because I can’t help myself. I’ve done what I normally don’t do and read reviews prior to composing my own, and have discovered that quite a few people thought the mystery was too predictable for the book to be interesting. I suppose that some aspects were predictable – the character who commits the murders is always a suspicious character though I didn’t guess which one – but I never read mysteries for the whodunnit aspect. I usually don’t even guess. Taking this solely as historical fiction, I just adored it.
I liked it so much that I didn’t even particularly care that Adelia seemed so anachronistic to me. After all, there were female doctors trained at Salerno (which I knew, but the author kindly clarifies as well) and it’s not outside the realm of imagination that one would develop as independent a spirit as Adelia does, even if it was unlikely. As a modern reader, I thought she was fantastic all around, and I loved the romance that developed and her eventual response to it. I loved even more that it was a romance between two imperfect people who never planned on it happening, but were so drawn in by one another that they simply could not resist.
I also enjoyed all the little medieval details that Franklin sprinkles throughout the narrative. I really felt the atmosphere, which doesn’t always happen when reading historical fiction. I was particularly pleased with her depiction of Henry II, who she describes pretty much precisely as I’d imagined him to be, as a clever man with an unfortunate temper that betrays his intellect. He doesn’t show up often, but when he does he quite steals the show, as I think the king would have done in the Middle Ages.
I can easily say that this is the first medieval novel I’ve read in over a year that I wasn’t ready to pick apart with inaccuracies. The simple truth is that I enjoyed it far too much. Since everyone in the novel was fictional, apart from Henry II, I didn’t have to worry that something was wrong and I didn’t know about it. The case itself was fictional. Even the small details that Franklin includes which didn’t happen she explains in her afterword – including the origin of her idea for the book, a case which genuinely did occur.
I absolutely can’t wait to get to the next book in this series – I’ve already requested it from the library. I loved Mistress of the Art of Death and would recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction or historical mysteries.
I am an Amazon associate. I purchased this book.
 The world has been more or less overtaken by zombies, groaning swaying creatures who exist mainly to feast on the remaining humans’ flesh. “R” is one such, but he occasionally has dreams about what it’s like to be human, and he thinks about who he was even though he can’t quite figure it out. On a raid one day, R sees a girl, Julie, and instead of eating her, decides to save her. He masks her with zombie blood and brings her back to the airport where the zombies live, somehow changed because of her brightness, vivacity, and humanness. Despite the fact that R is a zombie and Julie is a human, things begin to change between them, and R begins to wonder if there might be more to life than his zombie self realised.
I doubt my summary above conveyed this book properly, and I hope you haven’t clicked away, because I loved this book. I mean well and truly loved it, was completely drawn in by it, found passages in it that I liked and actually marked to remember. If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ll probably know by the lack of quotes around here that I simply don’t take note of it very often. I’m rarely struck by a particular passage to such an extent that I’ll specifically mark it out – I see them, but I generally just keep on reading. Not here.
What most struck me about the book was the fact that Marion used death in order to define life. It was somehow funny and profound at the exact same time – I knew that this guy was an arm-waving, moaning zombie, Marion cracks jokes regularly about how they try to recapture certain elements of their humanness – but at the same time he’s reminding his readers, reminding me, how actually amazing it is to be alive. And now I’ll shut up and just quote the book:
Sex, once a law as undisputed as gravity, has been disproved. The equation erased, the backboard broken.
Sometimes it’s a relief. I remember the need, the insatiable hunger that ruled my life and the lives of everyone around me. Sometimes I’m glad to be free of it. There’s less trouble now. But our loss of this, the most basic of all human passions, might sum up our loss of everything else. It’s made things quieter. Simpler. And it’s one of the surest signs that we’re dead. (p 25)
It just struck me as so poignant – life, messy as it is, is something that is precious, and now that R has lost it, he realises this.
Of course, this is also something of a love story, if one of the most unusual ones that I’ve ever read. I was doubtful at first, I’ll be honest, because who can imagine a zombie as a hero? I’m already not the world’s biggest fan of paranormal romances. But, rather astonishingly, it works, and it’s not because we forget R is a zombie, either, as we’re reminded of this very often. Instead, it’s because we can see inside his head, and we see how he changes as Julie enters his life. It’s quite a remarkable book. And despite the author’s intro amusingly citing his lack of qualifications, it’s beautifully written, and I was pulled into this post-apocalyptic world without any effort on my part.
Warm Bodies is an astonishingly beautiful book – a reminder of what it is to be human and a touching romance wrapped up in a zombie novel, of all things. It’s also wildly funny at times and even disgusting at others, which also makes it one of the most peculiar books I’ve ever read, but it’s oh so worth it. You truly won’t be sorry you picked this gem up.
One last quote, on this post-apocalyptic world:
What is left of us? the ghosts moan, drifting back into the shadows of my subconscious. No countries, no cultures, no wars but still no peace. What’s at our core, then? What’s still squirming in our bones when everything else is stripped? (p 148)
I am an Amazon Associate. I won this book from the publisher on Twitter.
 Thursday has decided to return to Swindon, although she enjoys her job in the book world. When her son Friday starts speaking Lorem Ipsum she knows she has to return to the real world to raise him. Beyond that, she also wants to find a way to uneradicate her husband, Landen, who has never met his son, and she finds herself in charge of protecting Hamlet. There’s also an all-important croquet match to be won, some time travelling of course, and a few discoveries along the way that make this installment a must-read for fans of the series so far.
I’ve always enjoyed this series, but I think I liked this book better than the rest. I found it a little hard to get into – it’s that adjustment period fitting myself back into Fforde’s world – but once I was in I was hooked, and a bit sorry it had taken me so long to actually get to this particular book. Once I remembered where I was, all those emotional connections came back, and I was really wrapped up in the story, particularly Thursday’s quest to get her husband back. Being apart from the one you love is pretty terrible, and even in a fictional world, the fact that no one remembered him was just heartbreaking.
The story for itself was quite a good one, too, and I just love the huge number of literary references scattered throughout. Hamlet was pretty obviously the big one for this book, although there is quite a memorable scene with the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. Fforde pulls in some historical references too with Thursday’s time traveling father, which obviously just pulled me in even further; there isn’t much I like better than fantasy AND history in one book! Especially when the book has an ending as wonderful as this one did – I’m almost not sure I want to go to the next one, but I’m also very curious about what happens next.
This is a bit of a short review as I’m never sure where to go with series books that I’ve already reviewed some of, so I’ll just leave you by saying I enjoyed Something Rotten very much. The whole Thursday Next series is wonderful for those who enjoy fantasy or science fiction and, of course, books.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
Trying to catch up again before the start of October!
 Bombay Time, Thrity Umrigar
In this moving novel, a group of families in Bombay come together for the wedding of one of their children. While there, they are all thrown into reminiscing about their past together and just how they got this far in the future.
I wish I’d reviewed this one earlier so I could look more deeply into it, but unfortunately it got a little lost in the shuffle as I tried to get reviews for actual review books out. I loved it, however, most particularly the depth of the relationships between the people and their all too human foibles. I found it gave me striking insight into some aspects of Indian communities and India itself, how it was growing and changing and the people either grew or didn’t grow with it. The relationships – both romantic and platonic – between all of these people are gorgeously drawn, and what I really appreciated was the fact that they weren’t over. This is a snapshot of lives, not an ending to them. Beautiful book and has me determined to read more by Thrity Umrigar.
 Splendour, Anna Godbersen
I actually haven’t reviewed any of the last three of this series, so this will stand as my summation of all of them. As a result I won’t bother with a summary here; let’s just say that the ladies of New York City are out and about yet again, as things are shifting and their lives are going slightly crazy as always. I have enjoyed this series; I still stand by my original assessment that it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure read as these girls’ lives are so scandalous and probably not quite accurate to history. Unfortunately I wasn’t quite satisfied by the ending, but I am glad I managed to read to the end, and would recommend the whole series to anyone who is interested in a very romantic YA series based around the lives of a few girls in early twentieth century New York City.
 Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne
I’d never read the actual Winnie the Pooh before, so when I found it was free for my Kindle, I decided to give it a read. I was thoroughly charmed, let me tell you; these stories are so enchanting and so quick to read. Even with the black and white screen, the illustrations are just gorgeous and bring the words to life. This is really the perfect book for children and if/when I have some of my own, I fully intend to get them this book for their very own. It was only missing Tigger; when does he show up??
 The School of Essential Ingredients, Erica Bauermeister
As a girl, Lillian uses food to express herself and to bring her mother back to her. As an adult, she runs a restaurant, and on Mondays holds a cooking class to bring other people together with food. The motley mix of students this time each have their own problems and varying degrees of happiness, and Lillian doesn’t offer them a solution. Instead she offers them a peaceful haven to rediscover themselves and to find connections with others that they’d feared lost forever.
This is one of those books I suspect I’d like more if I actually enjoyed fiction about people who have lives just like mine. Unfortunately I didn’t think it dug quite deeply enough; each person got a single chapter, which was just enough to get a taste of their lives and not much else. They were, for obvious reasons, all heavily tied in with food. Eventually they do start to link together, but without the community feel and thoughtfulness of a book like Bombay Time. This one just left me empty, although it did make me hungry as well with its luscious descriptions of food. I’d hesitate to recommend this but I know others have enjoyed it more than me, so it might just be my dislike of women’s fiction popping back up again.
I am an Amazon Associate. None of these books were sent to me for review.
 Mineko Iwasaki was the foremost geisha of her time, to the extent where she became a legend and was invited to entertain the highest levels of world society. When Arthur Golden wrote his novel, Memoirs of a Geisha, he consulted with Mineko but was apparently sworn to silence. Unfortunately, he then went on to tell people that it was Mineko who had spoken with him about the life of geisha in Japan; Mineko herself was upset that he had twisted what she said and as a result chose to write this book, her own memoirs, to explain to the world what geisha really are, what they do, and her own life story (much of which Golden borrowed for his own book).
I read Memoirs of a Geisha a long time ago, but I remember enjoying it thoroughly when I did. I was later dismayed to learn that Golden’s story wasn’t nearly so close to the truth as I’d imagined and that in fact he got a number of things wrong. (Yes, I have always been picky about historical fiction). I’d heard about Mineko Iwasaki writing her own book, and wanted to read it, but for some reason never actively sought it out. Then I saw it on the shelf in a charity shop and I was reminded that I really did want to read it and learn something a little closer to the truth than was portrayed in Golden’s book.
This isn’t the best written memoir I’ve ever read; Mineko Iwasaki has a ghost writer, Rande Brown, helping and presumably transforming her story into better English, but she definitely maintains a distance throughout and the book is very simple in tone. The story she has to tell, however, is far from simple and is completely engrossing. I did have the sense that Mineko purposely picked and chose which episodes to relate in order to emphasize certain facts about geisha (she splits them into two groups, maiko and geiko) which she knew that Golden got wrong or deliberately changed, but that didn’t lessen my interest in the memoir as a whole.
Sometimes, however, I had trouble believing what she’d said. For example, she first says that men rarely got very far into the okiya, the house in which a family of geisha lived. There were prescribed hours men were allowed in, and she uses this to argue that geisha are most certainly not prostitutes. But shortly afterwards she relates the fact that her older sister did bring men into the house and allowed them to sleep over, that she ran into them in the bathroom, and then was nearly raped by her own nephew in that same house. If men could not enter the house, why were these men permitted in?
She also begins the book when she is three years old and ascribes to herself adult thoughts and sayings. I couldn’t believe that a five year old child made the decision on her own to become a geiko, which led me to believe that in fact her parents were willing to sell her like they’d sold her sisters – all of whom became very bitter. Mineko seems like a much more driven and responsible girl, and since she did end up happy with her life, I wonder if she’s forgiven her parents and thus portrayed them in a much kinder light than she might otherwise have done. It is possible that at five she decided she wanted to be a geisha, but I would think her parents had a greater role in such a choice than either she knew or wanted to disclose.
Saying those things, I did thoroughly enjoy this memoir even if I took a few of her memories with a grain of salt. I knew little about the life of geisha and I was happy to be educated. Mineko is something of a rock star; she was the foremost geisha until she abruptly retired in the middle of her career, sick of the rules and restrictions that she couldn’t manage to change. She was so popular that no less than seventy other geisha retired within a few months of her, to pay her respect; she wanted to make changes, not endanger the profession, which is what may have ended up happening after her retirement.
As always, it was the little details that thoroughly captivated me. The clothes Mineko wore – backed up by the amazing photographs in which she looks astonishingly like a painting – the life she lived, the few skills she had as a normal human being. No one ever taught her any conception of money, for example, until she was in her twenties, so she worked constantly knowing she had to support the okiya but without any real conception of how much she was earning or how much money could buy certain things.
Despite my reservations, this was a truly fascinating book. I wish more geisha would write memoirs so I could compare and get a little closer to the truth, but for now, I would definitely recommend Geisha of Gion.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Ellie is a rural Irish girl, born to the snobby family in the village. As a child she feels isolated from the other children, except for John, with whom she shares an immediate kinship. When they grow into adults, it’s only natural that they fall in love and get married; it’s been happening for their entire lives. What isn’t natural is John’s zest for the Irish revolutionary movement and the aim to take the country back from the British. When he is seriously injured and needs an expensive operation to walk again, Ellie faces the reality of heading to New York City for a year and working to pay for his medical care. Once she’s there, though, Ellie discovers that she might not want to leave.
I’m of two minds about this novel, again. It was quite engaging while I was reading it and I loved the depiction of New York City, particularly the differences between the big fancy city with electricity everywhere and rural Ireland with basically nothing. I did think it was a little peculiar that the novel is titled Ellis Island but Ellie spends about three pages there! Still, it was interesting to read about it in fiction now that I’ve actually walked the halls of Ellis Island myself. At least one set of my great-grandparents went through the famed immigration island and even though Ellie goes after the initial rush, it’s still an interesting depiction.
It doesn’t really hold up to Brooklyn, which may be my favorite book this year and which covers a similar theme of an Irish girl moving to New York City to make money, and that definitely colored my interpretation of it as well. Ellie and Eilis are completely different girls and lead totally different lives; unfortunately I related more to Eilis. Ellie seems almost vain at times, especially closer to the end of the book. Mainly I loved that she eventually decided to make something of herself and seize the old American dream.
Unfortunately, I disliked most of the ending and I felt she was giving in to a life she didn’t really want to lead. Others have interpreted her return to Ireland differently, but I saw a girl giving up her real dreams for a man, and that’s just something I can’t get behind. Even if she still retained her ambitious bent, she isn’t living the life she wanted out of guilt.
While an engaging read, Ellis Island lacks substance and doesn’t really satisfy the ambitious female reader. While some might say that Ellie found what she really wanted, all I saw was her giving up her newfound happiness for the sake of tradition.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 A man and his son wander through an ash-filled America. The apocalypse has happened and the entire world is cold, gray, and lifeless. There are no animals. There are few people, and those that exist are likely planning to kill you and steal everything you own. It isn’t an atmosphere to raise a child in, but the man has no choice. He must keep himself and his son alive, must keep them moving, even though he isn’t sure what’s out there to live for.
What a dark, creepy read this was. There isn’t a single happy moment in this book. Virtually the whole of the narrative consists of the man and his son, neither of whom have a destination in mind, trying to find food, get warm, and avoid any of the other people, or creatures, wandering the road with them. It seems as though the world burst into flames, but the actual cause of the apocalypse is never made clear. At one point the boy and man run into another survivor, but he clearly states that they have no common cause because they did not survive together. This really made me wonder exactly what happens – but McCarthy never tells us.
He also never tells us anything about the evil that stalk the land, simply that they’re there. These creatures – I assumed they were vampires or something like that – eat people. Adding to the pervasive feel of danger is the endless fall of ash and the constant corpses they come across everywhere. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been for the boy; we’re never told how old he is, but he wasn’t alive before the apocalypse happened. He has never experienced the world as his father has.
Miraculously, though, he still has a sense of good, a desire to help people, which is simultaneously childish and incredibly wise. Out of the literal ashes of the world, a good spirit has risen, and even though the rest of the book is dark I would never say that all hope was lost, even when I worried that they were close to death. Even more hopeful is the fact that the father and the boy clearly still love each other and strive to live even when it looks like all is lost. The power of the human spirit is incredible and is in large part a reason we can still care for and worry about these characters in a world that is otherwise unrecognizable and terrifying.
The Road was completely different than I expected, but almost more powerful in its own way. The air of mystery lent it terror, but the relationship between the boy and his father is really at the heart of this novel. Recommended.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
Because otherwise these books are never going to get reviewed!
 Ten Things I Love About You, Julia Quinn
Annabel Winslow is looking for a rich husband to rescue her family from the poorhouse. And she’s found a potential suitor, an aged, lecherous earl, of whom she isn’t at all fond, but she figures she has to resign herself to her fate – even if he does nearly assault her. Then she meets the earl’s nephew, Sebastian, and everything changes. They may be falling in love, but will Sebastian have the funds to save her siblings?
Much the same as the last book in this series, What Happens in London, this book is very sweet and very funny. It’s easy to become fond of both characters and believe in their romance, even if everything is far too rosy for real life. The series lacks the real fantastic romantic potential of the Bridgerton series, but still all of them provide a nice, quick diversion from every day life.
 Lead Me On, Victoria Dahl
Jane Morgan has worked very hard to get her position as an administrative assistant to an architect. She rescued herself from years of bad behavior as a teenager in order to turn herself into a real adult – even if that means she’s neglected her family. But she can’t seem to kick her attraction to big, tattooed, rough men, no matter how many businessmen she dates. When Billy Chase steps into her office, she simply can’t resist him – but can she fit him into her new life?
I think I may be the only romance reader in the world who had some issues with this book – I just found that it wasn’t really to my taste. Dahl’s writing is funny and smooth, so no problems there, but I couldn’t connect with her characters and the book was a little too raunchy for my tastes. Jane spends most of the novel as a complete snob, and it bothered me that she judged people so heavily on their appearances when she knew perfectly well that people could be more than that. I should have been delighted that her prejudices got absolutely torn apart and she had to face reality, but I was already too annoyed with her to bother!
My negative reaction to this book won’t really stop me from reading more Victoria Dahl, though – the concept of the book was very good and I liked the writing a lot. I think I’ll try another one of her books and see if the characters annoy me less!
 Stealing Water, Tim Ecott
Tim’s parents give up their home in Ireland to move to South Africa, a land where Tim’s father believes he has a respectable job waiting, and where Tim’s mother believes she will finally be free of the boggy Irish weather. But things don’t turn out as they expect and the family become virtual vagabonds, struggling to get by.
This was okay, but I think is one instance where I enjoyed the idea of the book more than the book itself. The family’s South African life is so full of crazy, illegal antics that, even though they were often necessary to survive, it made me uncomfortable. There were aspects I enjoyed, though; my favorite bit was when Tim worked in a Johannesburg hotel, at a total contrast to his home life, and became acquainted with guests solely based on their voices. It was clever and funny. I also enjoyed glimpses of period department stores and cities.
I also struggled because I couldn’t really understand the way his parents worked; I would basically never do what they all did, much less not return immediately, or as soon as I could, once I realized things were going haywire. I felt for Tim quite often but it was hard to relate to everything that happened.
 Visions of Heat, Nalini Singh
Faith is an F-Psy, meaning she can predict the future. She’s one of the best, which also means that she is bound to go mad eventually, but she’s making her family rich in the meantime. Outside her home lurks Vaughn, a changeling jaguar who longs to know more about the girl he senses behind the walls of the compound. When Faith comes out, she and Vaughn collide, opening her to emotions and physical sensations she’d never dreamed of. When the Psy world no longer begins to make sense, Faith wonders if she and Vaughn can make a life for themselves without it.
I definitely enjoyed this, and the world-building that went on, but I didn’t really find it to be anything particularly out of the ordinary. As usual I find Nalini Singh’s love scenes a little too racy and a little too frequent for my personal taste. I’ve read that she tones down the heat in the next volume, though, as well as lays on the plot, and I’m really interested to see what happens to Judd, so I think I’ll keep on reading.
I am an Amazon Associate. I did not receive any of these books for review.
 Mattie dreams of being a writer, filling notebooks when she can get them and choosing words of the day to expand her vocabulary, but since her mother died and her brother left she’s been more like a housekeeper to her father and three younger sisters. She longs to move to New York and make a go of her talents at Barnard College, so she starts slowly saving for the day when she can escape her rural life. She takes a job at the Glanmore, a fancy hotel for tourists, to get enough money to go, but her attention is distracted when she discovers an unsettling truth about a capsized boat and a death that once looked innocent.
Told back and forth over two different time periods in Mattie’s life, Mattie’s story quickly gains suspense while retaining its literary bent. I loved the fact that each chapter has a word before it and the author works the word into the story over the course of the chapter. Mattie herself loves reading and adores writing, and she’s supported in that by her school teacher, who firmly believes that she can make something more of herself than becoming a simple farm wife. Mattie is torn between her ambitions and the attention paid to her by a handsome local, which adds another dimension to the story as she struggles with immediate infatuation and long-term dreams and desires.
I also just loved the setting. In rural New England, life is not easy, and Mattie’s father and uncle experience all the risks of a country life. Mattie herself endures the hardships of it, with backbreaking work constantly and reluctant days missed off school – which she adores – to help out around the farm. But there’s also a beauty to it which shone through in Donnelly’s writing, really rounding out the book. I got such a feel for the time period that I immediately wondered why more books aren’t set in early twentieth century New England; it’s in such stark contrast to the rest of the nation.
Finally, there was the suspense of the murder, and the slow reveal of precisely what happened and why. We begin to understand why Mattie holds the secret, what she fears, and this laces the entire book together as it heads toward its conclusion, both towards her decision for her future and the final discovery of why a girl drowned in the lake. It was surprisingly gripping at times and I got through it very quickly. Mattie’s character, despite her fervent desire for independence, was completely believable and I appreciated both her literary mind and her romantic impulses. She felt like a real teenager and I was anxious for her to make what I considered the right choice.
A Northern Light is a beautiful and enthralling book, with a main character to root for, a fantastic setting, and a curious and heartbreaking mystery. This is the kind of book teens should be reading, and I would have loved it even more had I been one.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
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