Book Review | Ghosted by JM Darhower

SYNOPSIS

He's a troubled young actor, Hollywood's newest heartthrob, struggling with fame as the star of the latest superhero franchise. Through scandal after scandal, addiction on top of addiction, a flurry of paparazzi hunt him as he fights to conquer his demons.

She's a single mother, assistant manager at a grocery store, existing in monotony with her five-year-old daughter. Every day when she goes to work, lurid tabloids surround her, the face of a notorious bad boy haunting her from their covers. 

A man and a woman, living vastly different lives, but that wasn't always the case. Once, they were just a boy and a girl who bonded over comic books and fell in love unexpectedly.
 

When Kennedy Garfield met Jonathan Cunningham back in high school, she knew he had all the makings of a tragic hero. With stars in his eyes, and her heart on her sleeve, the pair ran away together to follow their dreams. 

But dreams, sometimes, turn into nightmares. 

Now, years later, the only thing they share is a daughter—one who has no idea her father plays her favorite superhero. But Jonathan is desperate to make amends, and at the top of his list is the woman who gave up everything for him and the little girl he hasn't yet met

MY THOUGHTS

'Ghosted' is a beautiful and emotional story of second chance in love, simultaneously dealing with some in depth talk of self love and parents love for their children.

It has been a very long time since I have read a straight contemporary romance, and I think this was a perfect book for bringing my interest for it back to life. 

My favourite part of this book were the characters & their relationships.

I loved both Kennedy and Jonathan, I am not going to say they were perfect and right all the time. There were times I wanted to slap them, especially Jonathan for his actions & choices, but deep inside I knew they were made for each other and loved each other very much. Just the time and situation was not in the favour of their love. Maddie was their sweet little kid whom I absolutely adored.

I really liked Kennedy's relationship with her parents,their love for her really was beautiful to experience, how easily they accepted and forgave her for all stupid choices she made - well that's your parents love for you :-) 

All the secondary characters - either good or bad, served some kind of purpose in the story- which I really liked! I saw a potential romance by the end of the book, wonder we get to see anything about it though!

Second thing I really liked in this book was the journal entries of Kennedy, showing their past lives, which was in second person, was fun and very insightful for the present story. It made us more invested in their love and relationship. I even liked the first person narration of both our MCs for the present time.

JM Darhower is an easy to roll kind of author who also have a very distinct writing style of her own.Would definitely be reading more of her work.

I think this is one of hard to put down book, which will bring a smile to your face with happy tears by the end of it for sure. I especially liked the message of self love it portrayed in between, which is always important when you are madly in love with someone, so much that you sometime even forget yourself in the process.That is a very deep and touching message.

Never make someone else the main character in your own story

Highly Recommended - 5/5 Stars!

AMAZON LINKS  -  AMAZON US/AMAZON INDIA / AMAZON UK

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BOOK REVIEW | The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (AKA Sarah Monette)

The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an "accident," he has no choice but to take his place as the only surviving rightful heir.

Entirely unschooled in the art of court politics, he has no friends, no advisors, and the sure knowledge that whoever assassinated his father and brothers could make an attempt on his life at any moment.Surrounded by sycophants eager to curry favor with the naïve new emperor, and overwhelmed by the burdens of his new life, he can trust nobody. Amid the swirl of plots to depose him, offers of arranged marriages, and the specter of the unknown conspirators who lurk in the shadows, he must quickly adjust to life as the Goblin Emperor. All the while, he is alone, and trying to find even a single friend... and hoping for the possibility of romance, yet also vigilant against the unseen enemies that threaten him, lest he lose his throne – or his life.

MY THOUGHTS

This is one of those few books I coincidentally picked on my own while scrolling through Goodreads. 

And DAMN..... Did I Love This Book?

No..... I completely ADORED it!! 

Story follows our main character, Maia, who at the mere age of eighteen, unexpectedly finds himself taking over his father's throne under some unfortunate circumstances. As he has lived his whole life completely isolated from everyone, so when he finds himself becoming the emperor of elflands, he is not only alone and in danger, but also completely unprepared to deal with his new life among his skeptical courtiers and advisers. The rest of the book deals with his life at the court and how he tackles every obstacle along the way.

The Goblin Emperor is a complete character driven book but however little it is, the whole world building by Katherine Addison AKA Sarah Monette feels so whimsical and unique. I loved her writing, it was great but I did find it difficult to remember the names, places and different fictional words (Thank God we had Glossary for this in the book)

 I simply loved Maia as our MC, we initially see him from being a lonely innocent boy abused by the hand of his cousin to becoming the Emperor worthy of bearing the weight of whole empire on his shoulder. He is half goblin and half elf so he faces a lot of criticism due to his dark colour and different behaviour. You can feel for him and completely empathize with him as he struggles to learn about his court structure and the people in it. He is naive and innocent but mind you, not stupid. He is a great learner, determined and most importantly a kind hearted man, which makes him different from his predecessor. Watching him making his own path and choosing not to follow his father's example was my favourite thing in this whole book. This book was one fine example of character development done perfectly.

The other thing I loved about this book was Maia's  thinking and take on Women empowerment. I loved how he tries to understand his half sister's dream and ambition, which has never done by anyone else before. His insistence on building the bridges and understanding other's pain and thoughts before passing judgement is what made him a true leader. His dynamics with his personal staff (Csevet and his nohecharei) was awesome to read.

“Better to build new bridges, he thought, than to pine after what’s been washed away.” 

Overall, this is one book which gave me a new character to love. Great Protagonist,intricate political system and good characters (both good and bad), it has everything I Completely Loved!

We completely adored it! ;-))

Full ☆☆☆☆☆ Stars!

Get it on AMAZON!

AMAZON India

AMAZON UK

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Book Review - Horns by Joe Hill

One year after his girlfriend Merrin's death, Ig Perrish, a man who is also a suspect in Merrin's death and rape case ,wakes up after a drunken night and finds himself with two growing horns on his head and some kind of power which invokes the real dark truths and desires in every other person he meets. And just like this he finds himself very close to the real murderer of his girlfriend.But what he actually finds is even more dark and sinister than he can imagine...especially if he is becoming one of them!

My Thoughts

Overall it was an okay book.There were few parts I really liked and other few I found boring and little dragged out.Told from the third person narrative, book is sectioned into five parts with ten chapters each , every section fluctuates between past and present time.

What I Liked!

- I really liked the Present chapters of each sections where we see how Ig finds out more and more about his dark powers and how he uses them in persuading others. Every next person he met had something real creepy and horrible secrets to disclose and that was interesting to see even if it was a little creepy and depressing.

- The overall premise and tone of the book was good.It was little spooky and really kept me interested at certain points.

- Relationship between Ig and Merrin was really good.I liked them as a couple.Even hot and cold relationship of Ig with his brother Terry was good.

What I did not Like!

- As much as I enjoyed the present time story and pacing, I hated chapters with flashbacks. Few of these chapters were overly descriptive and little slow. I struggled through them a lot.

- Over Descriptive writing style.Too many words and details for a very short scene...At some places (like in the first section) this was interesting but more often than not I was bored.

- The last 30% of the book!! It was hell for me to read.Everything felt rushed and underwhelming,I seriously did not care about it at all. There were so many things which were not clear to me or left unexplained and last 10% of the book really went over my head. I know what happened at the end but have no freaking clue what actually happened in between. It was that boring!!!!

Overall Rating - ☆☆☆

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Book Review - The Humans by Matt Haig

Cambridge Professor Andrew Martin finally has done a great discovery in the field of Mathematics which can do some extraordinary wonders to humankind.

But...before he can share it with the world, some creatures from other planet kills him and sends one of their agent to destroy all the evidence of such discovery.That alien then takes the body of Andrew to take his place on earth and secretly find the evidences of this discovery and destroy it.

It's simple! right??

 Just take Professor's place and destroy all evidences and go back to his planet 'Vonnadorian'.No need to get involved with stupid and backwards 'humans' and their stupid emotions and irrational behaviours.

It really is not!

First, our 'Alien Andrew' wakes up naked on highway road instead of Professor's office and then get declared as 'mentally unstable' by human doctors.

Also as he gets more involved in Professor's life, he get to know more about human emotions and finds the true meaning human life and its relationships.

But will he able to accomplish his mission?? Will he able to stay 'pure' from all this humanly ways and do anything it will take him to do, even if it is highly immoral and wrong thing to do?

The last few lines of 'Goodreads summary' actually sums up the dilemma and struggles he faced along the way pretty well -

'Can a bit of Debussy and Emily Dickinson keep him from murder? Can the species which invented cheap white wine and peanut butter sandwiches be all that bad? And what is the warm feeling he gets when he looks into his wife's eyes?'

My Thoughts -

I was really pumped for this one.The starting preface of the book was funny and hilarious which actually also tells us what exactly is going to be the tone of the book, at least the first half of it.The first half showed us the Alien- Andrew's experience with the humans and everything related to it.He finally got to know the concept of 'clothes' and its importance on earth.That was quite hilarious to see! 😁😁

Second part of the book was more serious and based on the relationship between alien and the family.While it was nice and executed very well,it did not capture my attention that much and I was quite bored by the end. Also, I was expecting something more as the resolution but what actually came was quite underwhelming.There were also few topics that were not touched properly so it was little disappointing to see. But this book nicely touched the topic of 'true meaning of life' and what is it that makes ones life important and worthy. So it was heartwarming to see and the relationships of each characters by the end of the book really made my day.

Characters-

'Alien' Andrew- He was funny,hilarious but also little frustrating at some points. Reading him as he interacted with humans and learned everything from the scratch was fun.

Isobel - I liked her and can empathize the most with her character. Her struggles, pain, the monotonous marriage and lack of appreciation from her husband and son was somewhat is what most of the women faced in their life. So that was realistic.

Gulliver - He was your typical teenager and the grown distance between him and his parents was also realistic and relatable to many angsty teenagers out there, who somehow also lost the ability to appreciate the value of life.He did grow a lot by the end and that was nice to see.

I completely hated Maggie, she was a complete useless part of the book just to show some dispute at the end.

My absolute favourite was Newton, the Martin family pet dog and he was adorable !

Overall Rating - ☆☆☆☆ (out of 5 Stars)

"You can't find happiness looking for the meaning of life. Meaning is only the third most important thing. It comes after loving and being"

                                                                                        -The Humans by Matt Haig

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Book Review - First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

This was my second read of 2018 after a very disappointing read.I was not even sure why I thought of reading this book, it was a complete spontaneous decision for me.I believe this is the only SciFi book I have ever read in my life, on the top of it ,it is also set around second world war. SciFi and History are two genre which are my least favorite and here I was picking up this book with Zero Expectation.

How completely wrong I was!!

This was an absolute delight and brought me out of my Reading slump.Don't get me wrong,I had my own struggles with this book and God!!..There I am rambling without even starting from the start!

Plot -

Let's start with the summary.As the name itself suggests it is about Harry August,he is a kalachakra (ouroboran)..meaning he dies and born again and again in the same life and on the top of it...he remembers every thing about his previous lives after a conscious age (around 3-4 years old).This makes him valuable and very dangerous at the same time.Due to their nature of life, kalachakra  have the power to change the course of nature and can meddle with the time. And that my friend is the premise of whole book.As Harry is dying in one of his life, a young kalachakra inform him that the world is changing and if we do not do anything it is going to end and that also by the hand of a kalachakra. So rest of the plot (jumbled plots) deals with Harry trying to stop from this happening in his future lives.

Writing and Setting -

Set around second world war, this book gives us glimpses of all the first fifteen lives of Harry August in a very jumbled mess.Each chapter start with a different life of Harry and gives us experiences of him in different stages of his lives. As a reader we sometime have to figure out and pull all these jumbled mess together, which I believe,is the best part.It took me a while to get used to this but believe me guys all this struggle pays very well after the glorious satisfaction you experience after finishing this whole book.

Characters - 

I loved the character development of Harry. From being a soldier to Professor to a Teacher,he tried everything and developed a lot as his life progresses and that was my favorite thing in the world.Each characters though not main but still were interesting and complex.

My Overall Verdict -

- Very clever and smart Writing
- Great Characters - I loved the character development of Harry!
- Little Slow Paced and somewhere dragged and info dumpy, but only to a certain extent
- Interesting Plot Twists

4 Stars out of 5 overall!

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