All She Ever Wanted- Rosalind Noonan

Disclaimer: I was sent this book by the publishers, via netgalley, free of charge in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis (from amazon)

For years, Chelsea Maynard has longed to be a mother. She’s imagined caring for a new baby in the lovely house she shares with her husband, Leo, fondly planning every detail. But after a difficult birth, those dreams of blissful bonding evaporate. Chelsea battles sleep deprivation and feelings of isolation. Little Annabelle cries constantly, and Chelsea has dark visions fuelled by exhaustion and self-doubt. Her sister, Emma, insists she gets help for postpartum depression, but Chelsea’s doctor dismisses her worries as self-indulgent. Doubting her ability to parent – even doubting her own sanity – Chelsea is close to collapse. Then an unthinkable crisis hits.

Review

This book reminded me strangely of Beneath The Shadows it shouldn’t have really. There’s a similarity in plot, in that in both stories focus around a person going missing, and both include a baby. However that is where the similarity ends. There were some similarities in writing style, but not enough to really explain why I kept thinking of Beneath the Shadows whilst reading All She Ever Wanted.

I expected a little more soul searching and a little less blaming anyone but herself. From the synopsis given on netgalley I had imagined Chelsea being frantic that she may have done something to her baby, but whilst that element did come into it she seemed more to want to find someone else to blame than to try and find something inside herself. This made it a bit more of a mystery novel than I had expected.

Having said that it was more than your stereotypical mystery. There were the usual twists and turns, and maybe just a few to many suspects, and I wasn’t able to guess what had happened. However there was a deeper emotional aspect than you would get from most mysteries.

The postnatal depression sections were done well too. You could really see how Charlotte felt. Most people know a little about postnatal depression but this really got through what it’s like in reality.

4/5

All She Ever Wanted is out on Kindle now and is released as a paperback in February, but you can pre-order it now

Buy it:

Kindle (£6.68)

Paperback (£9.89)

Mockingbird- Kathryn Erskine

Image from Amazon

Synopsis (from Amazon)

11-year-old Caitlin has Asperger’s syndrome, and has always had her older brother, Devon, to explain the confusing things around her. But when Devon is killed in a tragic school shooting, Caitlin has to try and make sense of the world without him. With her dad spending most of his time crying in the shower, and her life at school becoming increasingly difficult, it doesn’t seem like things will ever get better again.

Review

I read a really nice review of this book last year and added it to my wishlist. By the time I actually got around to buying it I had kind of forgotten why I had put it on my list. I remembered that I had read a review but didn’t really remember much about what the review had said, or even what the book was about. I mainly bought it because I wanted to add new books to my Kindle before I went o holiday and it was quite a lot cheaper on Kindle than as a paper book (I really have a thing about Kindle books having to be cheaper).

I was a little unsure about having Asperger’s and a school shooting in the same book. It just seemed as if Erskine needed to add an extra issue to make her story a book. Actually though on reading the book I didn’t find it to be so. It was really interesting to see the shooting through Caitlin’s eyes. No, that’s not true really because the shooting didn’t so much come into it. It was more seeing the loss caused by the shooting and the effects of it on other people through Caitlin’s eyes was the interesting thing. It didn’t really matter much what the sad event was, it was the response to it that really mattered.

I thought the way Caitlin’s voice was captured was really authentic, you could tell that Erskine was drawing from personal experience.

It was funny, and sad, and sweet. I loved Caitlin.

It’s a quick and easy read without loosing any substance and I would really recommend it to anyone.

5/5

Buy it:

Kindle (£2.62)

Paperback (£4.12)

 

The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath

Synopsis (from Amazon)

Esther Greenwood is at college and is fighting two battles, one against her own desire for perfection in all things – grades, boyfriend, looks, career – and the other against remorseless mental illness. As her depression deepens she finds herself encased in it, bell-jarred away from the rest of the world. This is the story of her journey back into reality. Highly readable, witty and disturbing, The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s only novel and was originally published under a pseudonym in 1963. What it has to say about what women expect of themselves, and what society expects of women, is as sharply relevant today as it has always been.

Review.

This book was really beautifully written, almost poetic. I felt I could really see into Esther’s mind, or almost like I was her. It was really clever in that I didn’t really feel sympathetic for her because she was so matter of fact about it, it was like I didn’t feel I should give her sympathy [highlight for spoiler]I almost even wanted her to succeed in her suicide attempts because she seemed to want it so much, but I wanted her to get ‘better’ more. I found some parts fascinating [highlight for spoiler]especially the bits with the ECT but they were also quite hard to read. I liked how the story was open ended and that the reader could almost pick what happened in the end.

4.5/5

The Secret Scripture- Sebastian Barry

Image via Wikipedia

Synopsis (from Amazon)

Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she’s spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr. Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne’s story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland’s changing character and the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.

Review

I seem to find books I struggle with become more rewarding, and this was the case with this one. I found it difficult to get into, almost giving up at one point. But something kept me going and by halfway I was hooked. I know little about the history of Ireland and I found this and interesting way to find out. I began to really feel for the characters, I think I liked Dr. Grene the best, but can’t really say why, I think maybe he just he seemed the most real. And I wanted to punch the priest so many times (is that a bad thing to say?!) (highlight for spoiler) he really seemed to have it in for Roseanne, and for no real reason, and he seemed to have a part to play in everything that went wrong for her. Generally though the thing that disappointed me was that I worked out the twist (which comes towards the end) really early on, possibly that was because of the synopsis on the back of the book, I would recommend not reading that bit

4/5