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I love the way Simon Van Booy uses language, and particularly enjoyed The Secret Lives of People in Love His words sing. But there is a large portion of this book that just didn't work for me.

The prologue is a thing of beauty, and Book One is a heartbreaking joy of beautiful prose and gorgeously flawed characters. Not much happens for most of it, but it's utterly compelling. 

Book Two is where my infatuation began to wane. There was a sudden switch from third person to second person narrative. It grated, because "you" is actually "Henry" And instead of making me feel closer to him, it forced a distance that wasn't there in the third person narrative. 

It might have worked for me if it was just done for the period of the dramatic event that happened at it's beginning - Henry's shock and disorientation reflected in the way I responded to the change in pronoun - but it continued throughout both Book Two and Book Three and I ceased to care. Until Book Four and a return to third person narrative.

I am almost certain that the jarring disconnect caused by the switch of narrative styles was intentional and it's very cleverly done. But it is cold and calculating where the rest of the story is warm and human and incredibly beautiful.

Drea is definitely a person.

That might seem like an odd thing to say, but I have felt let down in the past by books with characters who have ADHD/Aspergers/autism. They either fudge the issue by not naming it or treat the character with autism as an issue to be dealt with.

Don't get me wrong, I have got a lot out of those books. But then I am a parent to two children with varying degrees of autistic spectrum disorders and ADHD; I myself have no diagnosis. 

I'm not sure I would want my children to read those books until they are more comfortable in their own skins. Because despite the best of intentions, they "other" them. 

I want them to be able to find books that have a character they can identify with, who's like them: a person whose diagnosis or disability is just a part of who they are. Neither good nor bad. This one fits the bill beautifully. 

 I don't know what I think about this book, only that I was completely caught up in it. 

For a book dealing with the subject of sexual assault, it was surprisingly ... I can't think of the right word ... "calm" is wrong, but the closest I can come up with - My emotions were engaged without ever being overwhelmed; There was a sense of being safely guided through events without ever being protected from them. 

And I loved the way Mikey and Ellie's relationship developed, despite it's Romeo & Juliet overtones. The scene where they escape everything for a day and we see experienced, street-smart Mikey's vulnerability when it comes to Ellie is beautifully done and made me sigh at the memory of that first-love rush, and the feeling of wonder that someone else could feel exactly the same about you as you do about them. Of finding out you are worth something, and more than you dared believe. 

I read this trilogy a while ago now, but it has stayed with me. So I want to share it with you.

This, the first book in the series, made me physically ache with joy, pain, hope and despair. It has the most beautiful, equal relationship at the centre of it between two, well, children really - at least by chronological age. 

The setting is kind of Sci-Fi/Western. The pioneer way-of-life, the fact that these people came together as "settlers" on a new planet, allows for Todd's strange combination of maturity and childishness, practical knowledge and social ignorance. 

In Prentisstown, there are no women, they all died over a decade before the story begins, and "Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise." Todd's struggles to filter and control the "Noise" - a world of information overload with no escape, no way to filter out or mask the unwanted thoughts and feelings except to try to hide them in plain view by putting out other thoughts to blur the "Noise" you make - made my heart go out to him.

This book found my vulnerabilities and spoke to them. 

Everyone's response to this book will be different. because this is one of those books that tells you as much about yourself as it does about the characters portrayed. Patrick Ness might well become one of my favourite authors because of his ability to do just that.

There were bits about this book that didn't sit quite right with me, but there was much that I loved too: 

For the first few pages, I thought Pat was an adolescent. It came as a shock to realise that he was a grown man in his 30s. His obsession with his beloved Nikki and his self-absorbed belief that by improving his body & mind he would get her back made his "voice" that of someone much younger.

There's a moment of insight from Pat, quite early on in the book, that reeled me in and had me caring about what happened to him. His friend was warning him off forming any kind of friendship with his sister-in-law because she is "a little odd":

' Ronnie tells me what he believes is the story of how Tiffany lost her job ... He tells me what co-workers wrote in their reports, he tells me what her boss told her parents and what the therapist has since said ... but he never once tells me what Tiffany thinks or what is going on in her heart: the awful feelings, the conflicting impulses, the needs, the desperation, everything that makes her different from Ronnie and Veronica, who have each other and their daughter, Emily, and a good income and a house and everything else that keeps people from calling them "odd." ' 

What I most liked about this book was the fact that there was no sudden recovery from mental illness, no shying away from grief and pain and the ugliness of casual hate, but always a sliver of hope and openness to the chance of happiness. 

This book transported me to a different time and place. I was there, shyly standing behind Rachael. I was her shadow and her witness, simultaneously cheering her on and worried for her - for her inability to pretend to be what was expected of her as a woman of that place and time. 

This is a beautifully written story, it's characters fully fleshed out, flawed individuals. 

I fell in love with clever, angry, rebellious Rachael and then fell in love with Judah as seen through her eyes. My heart broke with hers at the injustice done to quiet, obedient Shona. I adored her brother Joshua and father Yosef - both quiet, kind men and honourable in the true sense of the word, rather than the facade of "honour" required by the society and time they inhabit.

I seethed with anger at the injustice that was a fact of life for the women in this story, and cried for Rachael's family - the men as well as the women. I would despair for my two sons if they had to grow up in a society like this.

In short, I loved this book. Read it and enjoy a tale well told. What you take away from it is entirely up to you.

Recommended to me by Alom Shaha, whose own book Sparkle Wildfire and I review here, this book is just too damn quotable! I fell into the first half of the book as if it was an old friend. 

This memoir reminded me of everything that is good about religion as well as everything that made me reject it. While reading it, I felt intense love for this man whose battles (both internal and external) resonated deeply with me and spoke of a natural tenderness towards all of humanity.

I would love to take Richard Holloway to a quiet, cosy corner somewhere and talk. I have a feeling I could learn a lot about myself and what it means to be truly human from this man.

Jackie

This is a beautiful story of hope, sacrifice and love. The setting, heroine and elements of "magical realism" all reminded me of Isabel Allende's "Eva Luna" only with fewer individual strands in the story and aimed at a younger audience. 

I enjoyed this, but didn't fall in love with it the way I fell in love with Eva Luna. It pales by comparison, which is both unfortunate and unfair to this book. But I can't unread Eva Luna and I can't help my response to it.

I love this book. It feels like a conversation. There are moments of wry humour that made me grin, some utterly heartbreaking bits that had me in tears and as a whole it is never less than warm, compassionate and intelligent in the discussion of why someone might choose to identify themselves as an atheist and the strange feeling of freedom that comes from accepting sole responsibility for one's own happiness and fulfillment. 

You do not need to be an atheist to enjoy this book, and it would be a real shame if people of faith were put off reading this because the word "Atheist" appears in the title. You also don't need to be young, but the title makes sense in that anyone who is questioning their belief in the god they have been raised with will find understanding and reassurance in it's pages. Reassurance that it is not necessary to have faith in order to live a good life, that atheism does not make you a bad person and that following any religion should be an informed choice, made willingly and not imposed.

Jackie

"I'll tell you what happened because it will be a good way to introduce my brother. His name's Simon. I think you're going to like him. I really do. But in a couple of pages he'll be dead. And he was never the same after that."

This is a beautifully accessible and moving (but definitely NOT mawkish) story about mental illness, grief, guilt, love and family.

I read this in a day, stealing moments to sneak in a chapter here, a paragraph there. It was one of those books I didn't want to put down. 

Despite the subject matter, this is not a depressing read. It humanises a condition that is often "monstered" into something to be afraid of, and is by turns poignant, scary, darkly humorous, warm, funny and hopeful.

Jackie

PS - If you want a more in-depth review, check out this, from our very own Sparkle Wildfire

“If you had to relive your life exactly as it was – same successes and failures, same happiness, same miseries, same mixture of comedy and tragedy – would you want to? Was it worth it?” 

How far would you go to help a friend?

Alex is a socially awkward, intelligent teenage protagonist (I have a real soft spot for this type of character) who, aged 10, gets hit on the head with an iron-nickel meteorite the size of an orange, resulting in a memory-robbing coma, epilepsy and sparking an interest in astrophysics and neurology.

The story features a couple of supremely absurd series of events, a slightly dysfunctional yet very supportive mother/son relationship and has at it's heart a friendship between two very different people, who grow to love and respect each other sufficiently to embark on a journey to Zurich which will end with Alex being stopped at customs "...with 113 grams of marijuana, an urn full of ashes on the passenger seat, and an entire nation in uproar..."

There was much I loved about this book, and nothing I hated, but it didn't move me as much as I expected it too. It is, however, a book I would recommend as an entertaining, enjoyable, thoughtful and thought-provoking exploration of friendship, literature, science and assisted suicide.

Jackie