The concept of not judging a book by its cover was absolutely tantamount for this book. I picked it up because it was about a 22 year old girl living in New York, facing all kinds of problems and trying to decide what to do with her life. I felt it might resonate since I'm in a similar situation (except for the fact that I'm not living in New York, sob sob sob). 

In my head, I thought it was going to be a little clichéd and completely over the top, all of which I surmised from the front cover. In short: I was wrong. I raced through Angie's life (which was pretty over the top and outrageous) because it was written so damn well. It felt like I was reading about someone I knew, someone I went to uni went or something. It was authentic and real and whilst I can say I have definitely not been mistaken for a hooker, jumped into the sea to escape a drug-fuelled party or ran away from a guy I loved during a tornado, there was still a lot I could relate to. Angie wants to work in fashion but cannot get a job anywhere, no matter how hard she tries. She's essentially playing adult, which is definitely how I feel a lot of the time. I'm independent, I work hard and I have a strong set of values but feeling well and truly, properly adult? Yeah, that still feels a stretch too far. 

Living with four other girls means there's an abundance of drama that only groups of girls are able to create. There's also a whole host of romantic inclinations and Angie makes some questionable decisions along the way. She also makes some great friends too, which gives me hope that nice people still exist. Somewhere. There's also a lot that occurs which forces Angie to finally bond with her housemates - Pia, Julia, Coco and Madeline - all of whom are wonderfully written and have their own drama to contend with outside of Angie's spiralling. Angie also has to contend with some unresolved feelings concerning her parents and it takes almost the entire novel for the fallout to be rectified.

That's the time with this book, time seems real. There's no quick fix for the big problems but then when it comes to feelings and emotions, Angie can't keep track of quite how she feels. Does she love or loathe those she interacts with? Sometimes it's a quick fluctuation between them both. Which is true of real feelings, really. It's easy to fall in and out of love with people as you get to know them, especially when you're still learning what it is they're hiding. I thought Gemma Burgess had a great grasp on the way twentysomethings address life these days; the novel was current, entertaining and completely gripping. It definitely made me challenge my romantic notions about life in New York too, but I'd still be happy to become a Brooklyn Girl (just not one as wild as Angie!)

Jade x

A quick and easy read, The Peach Keepers by Sarah Addison Allen follows the lives of Willa Jackson and Paxton Osgood in a little town called Walls of Water, North Carolina. Between the two girls, there's a lot of shared history and a lot of secrets that quite literally become unearthed.

It was an enjoyable read for the most part, but it was a little 'small town' for me to love it completely. I had distinct recollections of The Vampire Diaries when I was reading this, with the town's innate history and the implausibility of a single place possessing such magic. I like history and I like fantasy, but the combination here was sometimes hard to digest. I'm also (probably very ignorantly) a bit wary of stories of Southern ladies. Guess I have Gone With the Wind, Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie and my knowledge of the civil rights movement to blame! To be fair, I'm generalising horrifically, but with parts of the story dating back to 1936, it's hard for my history-hardened brain not to jump there. 

Nevertheless, the book is definitely rich in other ways and its sensory detail is welcoming. In terms of characters, I liked Colin best; the twin brother of Paxton who sweeps back into Walls of Water like a breath of much-needed fresh air. He quickly finds himself wanting to win over a woman and the question becomes whether he can see her beyond the way her saw and admired her at school. Where I found the book to lack a little in plot, it made up for on its commentary of women. The way we bond, the way were live - I thought those elements were particularly well captured. There was a whole paragraph that really cinched this discussion on women, during an episode where Paxton gets drunk and finds herself on the streets late at night. I could type the whole thing, but I think The Peach Keeper is worth reading simply for this paragraph. I've chosen just to quote the last few lines but the sentiment is still as strong.

I loved the description of women being part of a collective unconscious because for a large part, I think it rings very true. That's why I think it's such a shame when women hate on other women - do we not have enough to fear in the world as it is, without fearing the judgement of other women? 

So whilst that may not have been what Allen intended as her take away message from The Peach Keeper, that is the one that will no doubt stick with me.

Black Water Rising is billed as a crime thriller, featuring Jay Porter, a lawyer from Houston who finds himself entangled in a messy affair after helping a seemingly troubled girl during a night out with his pregnant wife. From there, Jay's can't figure out if he's paranoid or whether he's right to be worried when he suspects he's being followed. But when his past begins merging with his present, Jay's quick to realise he's in over his head.

The book was pretty good; the premise for the plot was clever and well fleshed out. It had scope and I liked the way the characters were weaved into each others pasts. It wasn't a book I raced through, however, as I felt some chapters were just quite wordy and not that easy to read quickly. This isn't necessarily a bad thing and to be honest, I've been racing through a few books these last two weeks so it could also be reading fatigue! 

I do think that Attica was always on the back foot for me though, since I read an awful lot of Jo Nesbo's crime thrillers and for me, Black Water Rising just didn't quite hold up to Nesbo or Tom Rob Smith, another crime fiction author I really enjoy. I'd definitely read more of Locke's work and with the events unfolding concerning Walter Scott and the police, the racial aspects of Black Water Rising felt quite topical. Jay is an influential activist in his youth, staging protests similar to those we've unfortunately been seeing in places like Ferguson recently.

On the issue of race, whilst I know it was contextually sound to include certain words and terms within the novel, it doesn't mean I'm not going hate reading them. I do really think that this issue had a major impact on my overall opinion on the book. I'm not about to tell people what words to use or how to write because, let's face it, I'm far from qualified! But I am entitled to my own opinion and I personally hate the n- word, so reading a book where it's referenced a few times is never going to strike high on my list.

The book does feel authentic though and I gather it's garnered a lot of praise for Locke as her debut novel. I couldn't choose a particular quote that spoke to me so I'm bypassing my usual quotes collection. I've enjoyed picking books my unfamiliar authors though, feels good to widen my interests every once in a while!

I knew, before reading the blurb or thumbing through the pages, that I'd be leaving the library with this book. Anything on twins interests me. My dad is an identical twin and with the phenomenon often skipping generations, there is a slight increase in probability that I may have twins myself. I even made a set of twins my central characters in my final year creative writing project. And as someone who has often felt something of an outsider, I think I would have loved being a twin. But as Saskia Sarginson tells us in her debut novel The Twins, there too can be a need to escape all of that shared history.

It took me a few chapters to get into the book, even though it is of a similar style to the type of books I tend to opt for. I was determined to stick with it and remain wholeheartedly glad I did. By the time I was a third of the way through, I had slipped into a whole other world completely. It then took me a matter of hours to read the rest, scampering through the pages like a wild thing myself.

The book follows Viola and Isolte, identical twins born to an unsteady mother, Rose, who can never quite keep two feet firmly in the real world. For most of their early childhood, the three live in a commune in Wales, before moving to a forest in Suffolk where Viola and Isolte happen across another set of identical twins, boys this time. John and Michael are raw and wild, often suffering beatings from their father and skipping school. The two sets of twins quickly become intertwined and spend their hazy days together. 

The novel jumps between Viola's point of view and then, on Isolte-driven chapters, it enters the third person narrative. This doesn't distance the reader from Isolte; at least, it didn't distance her from me as I felt closer to Isolte than I ever did to Viola. I thought it was clever the way the novel also jumped between past and present, slowly letting the reader in to the events that sought to separate the sisters. Clearly a carefully thought out plot, that I enjoyed from cover to cover. 

I feel hesitant to give too much of the plot away, since it was such a enjoyable read, but I will say that although some predictability exists, the characterisation is so strong you almost don't mind being able to second guess some elements. Isolte's boyfriend was a welcome addition (and someone I quite fell in love with too!)

As is custom with my book reviews, largely because of my overwhelming to keep and hoard everything, I try and pick a quote that I particularly enjoyed. Again, I could have picked many as Sarginson's style is one that I find particularly favourable. Nevertheless, I narrowed it down to this which I admit makes little sense alone, but has great substance in the context of the novel. I also go crazy for alliteration, so this quote soothes me on several levels.

"The sea swallows things, she thinks, and the sea returns them."

(And if you ever needed written confirmation that I am, in fact, of the geekish nature, I would refer you to that there sentence! Soothes me.. what was I thinking!)

Not my usual novel, I'll admit that straight away. Based heavily in the Hasidic community - a way of life I have next to no knowledge of - this book was certainly illuminating. It was also very complex; the plot, the religious intonations, it all made for a challenging, rather than a passive, read.

I hunger for words, for literature I can commit to mind and memory, so when faced with a language I have never previously been exposed to, I quickly encountered cessations in my reading. Whilst the authenticity of the novel cannot ever be denied, for me, I found the process too halting to be enjoyable. The characters I liked, especially young Josef and his tortured life from childhood through to adulthood. All the women I found to be real, despite having few commonalities to the way I live my own life.

Starting with Zalman, the novel follows his life with Hannah (his wife), his children and the daughter he seemingly adopts as his own. Mila, a Jew that Zalman saves after her parents perish, quickly befriends Zalman's eldest daughter Atara but as they mature it is clear they are destined for different paths. Atara begins to question her religion in ways that Mila cannot understand, whilst Mila hopes for marriage and is happy to become betrothed to young Josef, a devoted studier of the Torah. Together they hope to have their own flourishing family, as Hannah and Zalman did before them. Though Mila tries hard - including enduring courses of fertility treatment - it turns out to be Josef who cannot conceive. Since it is an offence for a man to be tested for fertility as the act is "akin to murder", Josef is not medically diagnosed until it is too late; Mila seeks conception with another man but claims that God was on her lips as it happened.

A daughter - Rachel, named after Mila's mother - is born and Josef battles within himself to inform the rabbi of Rachels' true heritage. As the knowledge continues to haunt Josef, he begins fasting and becomes increasingly unwell. Much of the story follows Mila and Josef, though I longed more to hear of Atara, the daughter of Zalman who is destined to be forgotten. She is weaved back into the story when Judith, Mila's grandaughter, is set to marry one of Zalman's grandsons. Josef worries about the union and wrestles whether to tell Zalman the truth.

The book climaxes in several ways; reunions occur, death makes an entrance and lives are lived. I think that perhaps my ignorance, or simply my lack of exposure to this religious community largely impeded my enjoyment of the novel. The literary construction is lovely; the chapters, the way the book is broken up, is well thought out. Nevertheless, I did struggle at times to enjoy the book despite how intelligent the text truly is. 

After my local library closed temporarily for renovations, my literary life posts have been somewhat lacking. But joy, oh joy, my library is open and alive again! So I wasted no time in nipping in and grabbing a book. I picked up Between Shades of Gray and instantly set down to read it the minute I got home. The story dictates, using first-hand family accounts, the story of Lina and her journey across continents after she is deported from Lithuania. 

The setting is bleak, as one would expect from a war-based novel. Though Hitler is mentioned, it is Stalin's Russia and the Soviet guards who here are the enemy. The harrowing depiction of Lina's journey and the consecutive loss of those she loves is, unsurprisingly, tough to read at times. But glimmers of hope and happiness see Lina and her brother, Jonas, through to the end.

Sepetys begins with incredibly short chapters and I raced through chapters one to eleven in a matter of minutes. In fact, I managed to finish the whole book over the space of a day; partly because the text itself is quite modest, but also because of an eagerness to anticipate what was to follow. From the start it's hard not to root for Lina's mother, Elena, who is everyone's mother at some point or another. The selflessness she demonstrates inspires many a fellow camp mate and she continues to teach and mould her two children into decent human beings despite being faced with desperation and depravity.

Lina, a talented and artistic teenager, manages to make it through her ordeal by committing everything to memory and capturing the atrocities on the page. She draws in dirt when her tools are sparse but nothing is forgotten. The real Lina, who is mentioned in a small epilogue at the close of the novel, hid and buried her writings and drawings to be found in the future. We can assume from the creation and publication of Sepetys's novel that Lina's wish was granted. There is also real truth in the blossoming love story Sepetys captures between Lina and Andrius. The book ends on an uncertain note, with Lina still wishing for Andrius to find and save her. Thanks to the epilogue, we know their reunion was a happy one, a wait most worthwhile. 

Although the section where Lina reads through the book Andrius gives her as a birthday present remains a personal favourite, it is Elena's description of young men that tickled me the most. Sensing some sort of feelings beginning to brew, Elena explains how men are often more 'practical than pretty' but that Andrius happens to be both. But she also highlights male awkwardness, in a speech that I loved, for the picture the words painted were so true to life.