The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train is a psychological thriller set in London and its outskirts. It is bestseller book, so I thought I would give it a try and see what I thought myself.

It is narrated from three different perspectives, thought only one of them belongs to the protagonist - Rachel. She got divorced some years back because of a drinking problem that she developed, which she still has not overcome. Everyday, she takes the same train to go to London and back, even though she also lost her job a couple of months ago because of the same problem. While in the train, every time she observes the houses she passes by, though there's two in particular that she is interested in: her old house, where she used to live with Tom (her ex-husband) and where the latter still lives with her new wife; and one on the same street where a couple that seems perfect to Rachel lives. One day, the woman in the perfect couple disappears. 

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender - Lesley Walton

Simply wonderful.

To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel

I am completely destroyed by the effect this book had on me. As a quick description, I will just say it is such a beautiful story, so beautifully written. 

"Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga.
Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava—in all other ways a normal girl—is born with the wings of a bird.
In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naïve to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the Summer Solstice celebration.
That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo.First-time author Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and unforgettable mythology of what it means to be born with hearts that are tragically, exquisitely human." (Goodreads)

Cova Reviews | Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan

Will Grayson, Will Grayson tells the story of two guys who have the same name - there are two guys called Will Grayson living nearby. They do not know each other, and their lives are pretty different: one of them has a stable family, with two surgeon parents and a gay best friend; the other Will Grayson lives with his mum, needs pills for his mental health issues, does not want any friends and has a big secret. Eventually their lives intertwine in the most unexpected circumstances. Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a book about love, friendship and finding one's sexuality.

As you have probably already noticed, it is written by two different authors, who have tremendously different writing styles. They write alternate chapters, each of which is about a different Will Grayson. This means that each author writes only about one of the Graysons, following the order Green, Levithan, Green, Levithan... This makes the book and the characters so much richer, because the writing of the authors is as different as the two main characters, shown through the 1st person narration. 

Sway, by Kat Spears

"Boy meets girl. 

Boy charms girl...

For someone else."

Sway is a young adult novel about a guy, Jesse Alderman, who makes a living at school out of arranging stuff for people. Whatever you want, he can get for you. He has everything under control, but one day he is asked by the captain of the football team at school to get him the most beautiful girl in the school, Bridget Smalley, whom he's asked out before, with no good result. However, everything is turned up-side down when Jesse starts to have feelings for this girl, who is not only pretty, but also the most attentive, intelligent, and good person.

I personally really enjoyed this book, mainly because the story is original and refreshing. 

The writing is good, though nothing spectacular. Spears uses different types of language depending on the situation the main character is in, which also helps the reader learn things about Jesse's personality, and the style changes quite a lot when the narrator (Jesse) talks about Bridget.

The characters in general are well developed, and I think the author did something quite impressive and original with the main character: the reader learns more things about him, his past and what he does the more he realises that he likes the girl. As it is written in first person, it feels as if he started giving secrets away to the reader the more he opened his heart to himself.

Something else that really caught my attention is that the chapters are very much differentiated one from another, which I am still not sure how I feel about as, even though it is another thing that makes the book original, also causes for a certain discontinuity in the plot.

What really got to me was the story per se, and the development of the main character throughout the book. He makes decisions that, even thought are not the ones I would have made, are justified through his beliefs and the consequences that different ones would have brought. As you read further, you learn enough about him as to guess the lies he tells other characters and himself, which is somewhat rewarding.

I really liked this book as a whole, and I gave it a 3.5 out of 5 stars (3 stars on Goodreads).

Let me know what you thought about it or the feelings you got from the review!

wonderful literature.

The Ruining - Anna Collomore

I will start this review by stating that I find psychological thrillers quite very interesting. I think that novels that take into account the complexity of the human mind and all the problems that this carries along can either be fantastic and blow your mind, or simply just not quite get to you.

The Ruining is about a young girl, Annie Phillips, who moves from Detroit to San Francisco on her first year of university. She has a difficult relationship with her family, so she sort of runs away to the house that will be her home for the rest of the school year - the Cohen family, for whom she will work as a babysitter in order to earn money to pay for her university fees. She is very excited to start over. However, what seems like a dream will not look like so for too long, and everything will turn upside down, and eventually Annie will start wondering whether she's becoming crazy.

In my opinion, The Ruining, by Anna Collomore had all the chances to be a fantastic novel: the plot was interesting, and the way the author treated the psychological part of it was actually pretty decent. However, what made me quite dislike this novel is the writing of the author.  If the writing had been right, she could have written such an amazing novel... 

Let me explain myself. First of all, the length of the book is roughly 300 pages, which is not long enough to develop the plot that the author presents. This causes for the story to go too fast at times and for parts of the book to be unclear, which confuses the reader. Quite a few times I got the feeling that I had skipped parts of the book and found myself going back a few pages, unsuccessfully trying to find answers. Also, I think the way the main character reacts to situations is not believable sometimes. These two points made me consider a couple of times stop reading the book and just forget about it.

Anna and the French kiss - Stephanie Perkins

Hey there!

Anna and the French kiss is a romantic novel for teens. 

The story is about an American girl, Anna, who is forced by her father to spend her senior year of high school in a boarding school in Paris. There, she makes new friends, but she starts feeling attracted to one in particular, Étienne St. Clair. However, he has a girlfriend, so she starts denying to herself that she actually really likes him, because she know it's impossible. Moreover, one of her new friends, Meredith, has an eternal crush on him too, and she can't do that to her.

In general, the story isn't anything that I haven't seen before: girl is annoyed about moving away from her friends, girl meets boy, boy makes her forget about her past in her old town, they fall in love. The fact that he has a girlfriend and she left the possibility of a "something" with a guy back in Atlanta could be the addition to this typical romance. But, as you go through the story you'll find that there are other topics (that I won't mention, due to a possible spoiler) that have been quite used as well and, honestly, when I got to a particular one, I thought "Oh, please, not again". Luckily, that particular topic I'm talking about and that you'll surely recognise when you read he book is not a huge part of the novel and does not interrupt the flow of the story. The book as a whole is quite entertaining - not too long (around 400 pages), and quite a good one for in-between long, complex books. 

Something else that caught my attention is that in this book, the main male character (Étienne) is not the typical strong, tall, perfect guy. He does have that self-confidence factor, but he also has some weak points that make him unique, and I think that is something many authors lack lately. I'd say he is quite an interesting character.

The writing is quite simple and thus the book is easy to read. 

Overall, I quite liked it, and I gave it a 3.5 out of 5 stars (3 stars on Goodreads). Hopefully you'll soon get used to my rating and will understand what I mean with these numbers!

See you soon!

wonderful literature.