One Day - David Nicholls

You can live your whole life not realising that what you're looking for is right in front of you...
15th July 1988. 
Emma and Dexter meet on the night of their graduation.
Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.
So where will they be on this one day next year?
And the year after that?
And every years that follows?

*~*~*

Emma and Dexter meet on their graduation day of University and end up in her bed. They begin to discuss life and their plans. Jokes are made whether “this is love”. The story then follows their lives, showing snapshots of the 15th of July every year and where both characters are, emotionally and physically.

It took me 5 Months and 15 days, but I finally finished this book and believe me it is well worth reading a million times! I read most of the book in March, and loved it and raved about it....but then it upset me...and I refused to read the ending. (I can be quite childish and stubborn like that!)

Raimy and Keris finally convinced me that I had to reread the book, and with the upcoming movie I felt like I might as well give it another go. I am sooo happy I did. I generally can’t reread a book, but if I don’t finish it I have to start it from the beginning, so I can feel the same feelings again (if that makes any sense...). As I began it took 3 pages before I was quoting and laughing at bits that I had read the first time and loved, unfortunately I was not allowed to do that too much as my cats got bored of listening to me.

I read the entire book in one sitting...which I appear to have a habit of doing on a weekend! At some points I wanted to bang Dexter and Emma’s heads together and yell at them to get a move on and sort it out! Even though in age they may be 30/40, they still act like 15 year old
teenagers who refuse to admit they are in love. Which although makes you want to scream at them, actually makes me realise how invested into the characters you become. With it being set so that you only see a snapshot of their lives, there are often unanswered questions regarding previous partners, jobs they were doing and family matters. However because the snapshot is often around 25 pages long, you are too enthralled in what the characters are
doing and saying to realise where people are!

The book isn't always happy and laugh filled. There's some bits where you can't help but laugh at a sarcastic comment or want to cry when something sweet and lovely has happened. There's also points where you want to throw the book down and announce to the whole train carriage that the book is cruel and evil and you refuse to read it. (Yes, I threw a tantrum on a train about a book...). But it's a book that defiantly sticks in my head, and I think very few people could dislike it.

I think the main theme in the book I love, is the impact you can have on someone’s life, which was very highly shown in “13 Reasons Why”, but in this book you get to see it from both sides, and not just the side of one character.

One last thing...GO READ THIS BOOK! =)

Teaser Tuesday - 23/08/11

  Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teaser: 

"On coming home from work and hearing my parents argue, instead of escaping into the water like a troubled teen, 

I should have stayed and supported my mom. If I'd taken better care of her when she needed me,

I could have prevented everything."

Pg. 6, Forget you by Jennifer Echols

Impromptu Break

So I appear to have taken a very random impromptu break from blogging, and I really haven't meant to!

Life just likes to get in the way!

I have a few posts scheduled up now, and should be around more!

Thanks for continuing to read :)

Steffikins xx

Teaser Tuesday - 16/08/11

  Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 


My Teaser: 

"They'd come to this comprise early on - instead of hand-holding in public, they could hand bump. It was their secret signal , and at first Avery had loved it."

Pg. 147, The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson

IMM (#9) 14/8/11

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren as a way of showing off our addiction to books every week. You can learn more about this here.

Cross My Heart & Hope to Spy - Ally Carter

The Bermudz Triangle -Maureen Johnson

 Yey! Raimy leant me both of these. Reallly excited to read Cross My Heart...I loved the first one (review here) and was super excited when I picked the book up from the post office. I'd actually completely forgot that she was going to lend me the Bermudz Triange...I actually bought her it for her birthday! Super excited to read it and know I need to be quick as their appears to be a list...!  

So this has been a very very long week...My sister moved to London...and then came back 4 days later because of the riots (She's okay though!), I was placed under consultation for redundancy, and I read lots and lots of books! That is at the expense of the housework of course...but anyway it's Sunday and I believe I need to get some more sleep and chill out! 


Hope everyone has had a good week and what books did everyone else get?


Did anyone else jump up and down in the post office?!


Steffi xxx

Undead - Kristy McKay

When their ski-coach pulls up at a cafe, and everyone else gets off, newbie Bobby and rebel Smitty stay behind.

They hardly know each other but that changes when through the falling snow, the see the others coming back. 

Something has happened to them. Something bad. Soon only a pair of double-doors stands between those on the bus and the Undead outside.

The time has come to get a life..

*~*~*

Bobby is stuck on a school trip and would prefer to die, rather than "face them all again"...and by "them" Bobby means her classmates...but that is until people begin to change and act weird. Suddenly Bobby and 3 other classmates are on the run from the Undead following them...

First of all I have to say I have to say I never believed this sort of book would exist...and I was so excited to hear about it! All I had to hear was Zombie Young Adults and I was ready to beg to borrow it from someone!

The novel spent no time explaining anything you did not need or care to know about, it took me 6 pages to realise the main character was female! I really liked that, I don’t enjoy books that decide to spend 10 sentences describing every inch of how the character looks and how they will act through the book, I like to be surprised and have twists within the story...keeps it interesting!

The book was written so well that part the time it felt like I was reading an adult horror story and then suddenly there would be a comical moment or reference and I would suddenly remember that it is not supposed to be all serious! Looking back on it I feel like it should distract from the story but it didn’t at all. I remember thinking how odd it was about a chapter later that it hadn’t phased me and how it just flowed so well.

The characters were introduced in about 3 sentences each within the first 20 pages, and there was very little back story which kept the action still going without getting dragged into character story. You didn’t learn much about the characters, but then on reflection there is no time to learn about their families/past/pets/childhood dreams as they are busy running from Zombies!

I read this book in about 4 hours! It was just so easy to read and with me having a big geeky thing for Zombies kept me very excited and I read it in one sitting. Even with the topic it was a very funny and quite light. I want to say a good Summer read, but then I feel like I’m throwing it in a random pile of books and cornering it! I think the humour and tone in it is very good!

I just hope I can find more Zombie books young adult novels, if anyone knows of any please let me know!!

Undead will be published by Chicken House books in September 2011. Thank you to Raimy at Readaraptor for sending me her proof copy. She has also reviewed the book here.

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You - Ally Carter

Gallagher Academy might claim to be a school for geniuses - but it's really a school for spies. Cammie Morgan is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man in seven different ways (three of which involve a piece of uncooked spaghetti). But the one thing the Gallagher Academy hasn't prepared her for is what to do when she falls for an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl.

Sure, she can tap his phone, hack into his computer, and track him through a mall without his ever being the wiser, but can Cammie have a normal relationship with a boy who can never know the truth about her?

 

*~*~* 

I've seen many people have this book and although it sounded good, I never thought it would be my sort of book. I even read a taster in Keris Stainton's "Jessie <3 NYC" and still wasn't sure about it...but I was very very very wrong! 

While on her first Covert operation Cammie meets Josh, a boy from the local time, and instead of letting the school know and the school investigate him...her and her friends decide to investigate his life themselves. Which  was always going to be amusing, but added with the girls go to private girls school they have a lack of knowledge of interaction without “legends” (fake back stories) or knowledge of boys.

I flew through this book in about 4 hours...only stopping because the partner was complaining he needed food cooking! I found myself giggling like mad and explaining excerpts to him. for example.. 

Number of empty Ben & Jerry's ice cream containers: 3 - two mint chocolate cookie, one plain vanilla. (Who buys plain vanilla ice cream from Ben & Jerry's, anyway? Is there a greater waste?) 

Which really brought it home to me that the author still wrote them as normal teenage girls, even though they were super spy girls!

I have to say I didn’t really like Macey as a character...Maybe you are not meant to...she is brought in late and you get to see how she is introduced to the spy world...but she seemed like a snob, and then suddenly was nice and they all got on...something to me did not work there and it could have made it more entertaining having an arch enemy in the form of another school girl...however that is also a major cliché so the author may have avoided it for this reason! 

The ending felt a little rushed. It was all sorted out and finished but it just seemed to be over in about 10 pages, and a bit of a let down after the rest of the book but it was still amazing!

I am really excited I got to this book a little late, as the next 3 are already out and Raimy is sending me the next one! Overall the book is brilliant and reminded me a bit of the Alex Rider series (a series about a 14 year old spy who has been trained since a child by his uncle in preparation to join MI5, first book is called Stormbreaker!) however very directed towards girls. There is a good mix between a girly boarding school book and a spy book which is an interesting and very well thought out mix!