"I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing, With a broken heart, That's still beating" Broken by Lifehouse

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Do you want to laugh, cry, and travel through time and space with a love story that will stick with you? Than look no further, this is the book for you. This story will melt your heart and give you some food for thought. The Time Traveler’s Wife raises so many questions about life. Questions like, Is the idea of fate real? Is there a God and what is His role in this life? Is there really just one person out there that is the exact fit for another person? I’m not sure if I’m the best person to answer these questions in detail, but to quickly answer the above questions in my own personal opinion… (Yes, Yes-to be glorified, No).

Clare was never an ordinary girl, she never had the chance to be normal. Because there was always Henry. Clare first met Henry when she was 6 years old and Henry was 36. Life after that moment was never the same, or was it never the same after they first met when she was 20 and Henry was 28? It is for the reader to decide. We follow this romance from beginning to end. It will make you laugh and cry and believe that love is out there waiting to find you.

My absolute favorite element of the book was the characters. Henry was my favorite. He is one of those characters that after the book is over you continue to think about him and the life he lived. He was a wonderful diverse character that was in a horrible predicament. You could only feel bad for him and love him with Clare. From the title a reader would assume that the book only would be from Clare’s perspective, or at least that is what I thought when I picked it up. Surprises of all surprises, on the first page we are seeing the story from Henry’s perspective. I personally enjoyed it because the audience would not know him half as well if we had not seen half the story from his point of view.

I did have a couple of gripes about the book that other people probably loved. I did not enjoy the multiple name dropping of authors, poets, musicians, and other famous people that I had never heard of. I feel that my liberal arts education prepared me well for the world and gave me some knowledge that I would not have normally picked up, but I looked up some of these people and knew that there was no way that I would have ever heard about them. Also, she changed languages throughout the book (French, Italian, & German) with little to no explanation of what the phrase, sentence and sometimes paragraph meant. Although the language changes were very real and natural, for any audience member who was not multilingual it caused confusion.

With fate in mind and in my own life, I can look back on my own story with Simon and see that if certain things did or did not happen then we would probably not be together (what if he would have accepted one of the many tennis scholarships, what if I wouldn’t have accepted the internship at my church, what if I would have gone to a different college, what if he never went to Brookhill?). Did we actually make those choices or were they made for us? Was it predestined from the beginning of time for us both to end up at Christian Ministries Church so that we would be together? Only God knows, but I do know that I’m incandescently happy that it did happen just the way it did. I wonder if Clare would say the same, or would she have liked to go back and change her decisions based on the outcome of her decisions.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is an excellent read. I would recommend it to all readers (some language and sexual content may not be suitable for younger readers). It was addicting from the very beginning and it only took me a week to read. The author’s style was perfect for the story line and theme. On the cover of the book, the short biography about the author stated that this was her first novel. BRAVO!!! For her first novel, she did outstanding, and I hope that her other books (if there are any) are just as great and just as addicting.

Well all of that to say, what did you think? Did you read the book? Do you agree? Is it a good read? Have you seen the movie? What did you think about the movie? Give me some feedback down below!

A kiss on the hand can be quite continental...

Kiss by Ted Dekker and Erin Healy

Shauna McAllister wakes up 6 weeks after a near fatal car accident with no memories from the past 6 months. She has woken up to an alleged drug charge, her family blames her for the wreck, and they are keeping her from seeing her brother and best friend, Rudy. With no where to go she moves into a guest house on her estranged father’s estate with her boyfriend Wayne Spade, who she doesn’t remember. When she starts receiving urgent text messages warning her to leave the past behind her, she starts to get worried about whether the car wreck was actually an accident or not. As her story starts to unravel, she learns more than she was looking for and it might just cost her life.

One of my friends sent me this book and I have had it in my position since March. Since I’ve been a little distracted with A Song of Ice and Fire, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Finally, my reading schedule opened up a little and I dug into this book. Kiss was well written and had a great story line. It was a perfect balance of suspense and drama that it kept you wanting to read while not keeping you up at night. One fun fact I didn’t know was that Dekker was a Christian author. The content of the book was so well written that the little spurts of Spiritual inner personal struggle didn’t seem to be a turn off. I enjoy a good book that any person from any religion can pick up and there’s enough Christianity in the book that could speak to someone’s heart, but that is not overbearing or repulsing.

What I liked about the book, was the story line. The way the book begins is practically the car accident itself, therefore we know nothing about Shauna and so we are unable to guess whether the charges that are being pressed against her are actually true or not. We have very little to base any sort of opinion on our main character and so we are left to the writer’s work to lead us through the story. Also, I enjoyed how the audience learns everything through Shauna asking questions. It reminded me of Potter, when Harry doesn’t know something, he just asks questions.

Something I did not like about that book is that there were no real surprises in the book. As long as you kept your eyes open and saw things that were going on in the background, you weren’t left to much guessing. On second though, I’m not sure that this is such a bad thing though, with more thought on the subject, I think that the authors led us to the answers. Another concept that I didn’t much care for was the title. I think that the authors wrote the ending of the book first, with the thought that whenever she kissed someone she could steal their memories; well that isn’t how the memories came to her at the beginning, so I’m not sure that Kiss is the best title for this particular novel.

Have you read this book? What did you think? What would you name this book, or did you think the title was perfect? Let me know what you think in the comment section below.

Back, Back Again, Elena's Back, Tell a Friend...

The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall by: L.J. Smith

(yawwwwwn) oh, I mean, hello… this is a blog about the above mentioned book. I decided to read the Vampire Diaries series because someone from a blog that I love to read had read them and had loved them. Also, from the same blog there was a clip of the new series coming out this fall and it looked intriguing. So, I decided to give them a try. From my previous blog about The Vampire Diaries you might have read that book 4 was the conclusion to the story. Well, little did I know that there was a book 5 recently written and this blog is about that very book.

Elena’s back, but she’s not herself lately, she’s a childlike spirit that can’t talk, walk, read, or anything else a normal 17 year old girl can do. She has Stephan, so things seem to be going good for her. Well on the other side of the story, Damon is getting into trouble again, this time with twin Japanese shape-shifting vampires that are wreaking havoc on Fell’s Church. Suddenly, Stephan leaves and the only thing left behind is an entry in Elena’s diary, stating that he can no longer be with her because he’s afraid of turning her into a vampire (again). Now, it’s up to Damon to set things right, can he do it? Will he be able to lay his dark-side to rest while he saves the woman he loves and her friends? You’ll have to pick this new installment up to find out!

Sadly, I did not enjoy this book. I was about 300 pages into it and almost decided to quit (out of 586). I complained the entire time while reading it. I complained about how boring it was and I was advised many times by multiple people to just stop reading it. I didn’t stop though and I’m glad I didn’t because now I can write this great blog! I can’t seem to put my finger on exactly what I didn’t like about it, but if I was forced to hash it out, I would say that I’m just not that interested in the characters. When Stephan left, I was like, ok, whatever, I don’t even care… Unlike other stories that I’ve read when main characters leave and they rip my beating heart out and take it with them just to put me through more agony (Edward in New Moon).

One compliment that I would like to pay to Smith is that I can’t imagine putting a story to rest for over 10 years, picking it back up and keeping the characters the same. I would have messed that up, but I couldn’t tell there had been a gap, it felt as if days had truly gone by. I think that with time I would have changed so much that the characters would have changed with me. Kudos to you Smith on a job well done, with character simulation, that is.

One lasts item of discussion is, no matter how much I didn’t like this book, and no matter how much I would like nothing more than to forget that I ever picked it up in the first place, the end was a fantastic cliff hanger. I really would like to go on the next journey with Elena, Damon, and Matt. I want to see what crazy adventure lies before them and hopefully it won’t be so boring when it happens. I have a feeling that this will not be the last we will hear from Elena and the Fell’s Church crew.

So, what do you think? Do you think I’m crazy for not liking this book? Have you read any of this series? Should I try a different series by Smith, or are they all kind of the same? Let me know what you think and give me your insights to this series!