The Ghost Bride

Title: The Ghost Bride published by HarperCollins Publishers

Writer: Yangze Choo

Year published: 2013

 The Ghost Bride, written by first timer Yangze Choo, a Malaysian settled in the US tells the story of Li Lan, a young motherless girl in Malacca in the late 19th century. What pulls me about this book is not the characters, nor the plot but the setting. Set amidst the hustle and bustle of colonial Malacca, a port city in then Malaya, it brings to life the realities of historic and colourful Malacca. I enjoyed reading about 19th century Malacca, partly because I am a Malaccan and also for the beautifully described cultural scenes. 

Lee Lan is a genteel Chinese girl, whose mother had died of smallpox when she was just a child. Brought up by a father who is more often clueless and drugged on opium, she depends a lot on her old Amah. The family fortunes had dwindled and now they are living in almost poverty, when one day Lee Lan is told by her father that one of the richest family in Malacca had approached him to propose her as a wife for their dead son! Fortunately her father had rejected the offer. 

However things changed when Lee Lan was invited by the Lim family to play mahjong with the matriarch. Wandering around the house after going to the rest room, she comes across a young man and is at once fascinated by him as he courteously explains to her the intricacies of the clocks in the house. She did not realize that young man is actually the nephew and heir to the Lim family, Tian Bai. Soon after Lee Lan takes her leave but just before she leaves the Matriarch of the house asks for her hair ribbon. 

That night Lee Lan dreams of the young man who had  died. His name he told her was Lim Tian Ching and he was courting her. Frightened, Lee Lan blurted out "Aren't you dead? " which kind of made things disappear. She wakes up sweating in bed, too frightened to go back to sleep, until she finally dozes off in the early hours of dawn. 

F

From that night onwards Li Lan is haunted by dreams of Tian Ching who insisted that he loved her  and wanted to marry her! 

The first part of the story is rather slow and in spite of Li Lan's  journey through the spirit world and her experiences there I found that I really had to push myself to read on. If the romance part of the novel had been better developed it would have made better reading. In the second part we follow Li Lan through the spirit world in her fight against Tian Ching. She finds help with a spirit guide, Er Lang and with his help finally makes it back to the real world just in time to claim her body which had been stolen. 

I spite of its slow start, this book does have  a satisfying ending and I would recommend it to anybody who enjoys something different. Li lan as a character is different from other girls of her time. She is educated, strong and brave and even though pulled  into the underworld, fights against it.

A book that has many things to offer - ghosts and ghouls, demons, dragons, good guys and wicked vengeful spirits. Very interesting read. I'd give this book a 4 star rating, out of 5.

A new interest - Percy Jackson!

My girls have been trying to get me to read their fantasy books but for a long time I resisted. I don't really know why - after all I did read all the Harry Porter books and I loved them. I also read Madeline L'Engle's books and even the Narnia books. A few months back I started reading The Hunger Games and got so engrossed I began looking for the continuation until I had read all the books in the series.

Last week I finally read the first book of the Percy Jackson series and immediately got hooked! It's a bit late of course - those books have been out for years - since Sarah was still in school and both Sarah and Shasha have been discussing Percy Jackson and his exploits for years and years. When I ask them they will say - you ought to read the book Mum - you'll love them. But somehow I never got around to reading them because I always had my own books to read. I read Harry Porter because the girls were just so excited about the books and there was the movie of course. 

Well anyway I have started reading Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series and I must say they bear up well. Percy is not as great a character as Harry Porter but he is just as lovable a character. The idea of mythical creatures being real and that the Greek Gods have children with mortals is rather interesting but not really new or gripping. Perhaps it's not fair to compare the Harry Porter books with that of Percy Jackson but one cannot help it. Both the main characters are teenage boys and the books began when both boys are the same age - 12 going on 13. But where Harry seems to be a more developed character, Percy seems more like a shadow of him. Percy Jackson is the son of Poseidon and all the years he was growing up he thinks that his father had died and that his mother, just a normal mother. However one thing about Percy is that he always gets into trouble and is often thrown out of one school after another. After an episode in which he sees The Furies at a museum visit he is again thrown out of school but this time his teacher, Mr Brunner tells his mother to send him to a camp called Camp Half Blood. This is where Percy finds out that he is Poseidon's son and that he has been accused of stealing a Lightning bolt belonging to Zeus. 

Camp half Blood is a bit like Hogwarts and all the children there are also children of the gods, like Percy. He makes friends with Athena's daughter, Annabeth Chase and a young satyr Grover and together they set out on a quest to look for the lightning bolt. 

It is a good enough read - I enjoyed it and was fully engrossed reading the adventures of this young demi god Perseus. But that is mainly because I have always enjoyed reading the Greek Myths and its quite fun to imagine Olympus as on top of the Empire State Building and that pegasus or flying horses exist or that the entrance to the underworld is in Hollywood. 

And the Mountains Echoed

This is the third novel by Khaled Hosseini published by Bloomsbury. Thinking of the other two novels by Hosseini at first I didn't want to read it. The first book, The Kite Runner  pulled at my heartstrings - it was beautifully written and haunting. Like the first, the second book - A Thousand Splendid Suns grabbed my imagination and made me cry. This one however, And The Mountains Echoed is slightly different. Like the other two, it also tells of love and betrayal but here Hosseini has a different approach. It is not about this or that character but about many different people, loosely connected in some way. 

It starts off very well - with a fable of a djinn who steals children from a village and takes them away. One child who was taken away from his father was so much loved by the father that he went in search of the djinn and at last after many days of near starvation and physical torture, he found the djinn's lair. But what

he saw there surprised him because the children there were all happy and healthy. When challenged, the djinn told him he could take away his child but would he take the child away from a place that was beautiful and clean with plentiful food back to his own pitiable existence? This seems to be the central theme of the story - Abdullah, the main character in the story too loses his little sister, Pari who was sold to a rich family in Kabul. As his father later told him, sometimes you have to make choices that are difficult,  just to save the others.

This loss affects not only Abdullah but  also the main instrument in the deal - Nabi, his uncle by marriage. For Abdullah, the loss is not just of his sister, but his friend, his only real family. The two had been inseparable since Pari's birth and their mother's death. It was Abdullah who cared for the child, who woke up at night when she cried and fed her and the one who changed her soiled linens. He was both mother, father and brother to the little girl, and her loss was to him as if a limb of his had been cut off. He never recovered from it and never forgot his sister.

But this novel is not only about Abdullah and his sister , it is about the whole of Afghanistan - its people,  its aid workers, its government servants,its culture. It is a story of a servant's devotion and love for his employer and who looked after the employer through illness and political upheaval. It is about the employer's unacknowledged love for his employee - a love that is secret and forbidden and it is also about the love between two cousins who grew up together and loved each other like brothers and yet drifted apart.

However it is not as gripping as the other two books by Hosseini.The passion is there but it is almost as if it was a forced passion, with none of the honesty and brutal frankness found in The Kite Runner or even A Thousand Splendid Suns. It does make good reading but for once I did not cry at the end of the book. We find out about Pari, the little girl who was stolen from her brother but by the time we reach her story, the earlier effect  and its traumatic action on our feelings have diminished. We are introduced to numerous other characters who all play a part in the new Afghanistan - Timur and Idris and the stories of their lives in America, how  they see Afghanistan later and meet with Amira the aid worker from Bosnia and her charge - all these change our attachment to the first main characters.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading it but after The Kite Runner, I feel just a little let down. a little disappointed. I'd give it a 3 star rating though, a good read but there were better.

The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles - review

Title : The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles (published by Penguin Group July 2010)

This book, a first effort by Lebanese journalist, Hala Jaber, tells of  some of the horrific consequences of the Iraq war.It tells of the determined efforts of childless journalist Hala who was covering the war with her photographer husband when she was told of the sad case of a child Zahra, badly wounded in a misile attack and her efforts to save the child. The child Zahra had suddenly become an orphan as almost all her family died in the burning taxi - her six year old brother, her teenage sister, her parents and her grandmother. The only members of the family that survived were Zahra (3 years) and her baby sister Hawra, just a few months old, both of whom were thrown out of the burning taxi by their mother knowing she herself could not be saved and hoping that her two youngest might yet survive.


It is a painful reminder of what 'collateral damage' really means and what it costs to human lives. Jaber tells the story of her hunt for the orphaned children through her research and visits to so many hospitals across Iraq and of her experiences while looking for Zahra. It is a picture of war and devastation told in an objective yet compelling voice. When at last she finds the children, however, it is too late to save them but Hala Jaber moves on, using her experience and knowledge to save other victims of war. Childless Jaber maybe, but in these harrowing accounts of Iraq's war with America, she shows us that motherhood does not only mean having and giving birth to children and that there are other ways to be a mother.

I would vote for this book and give it a 4 star rating. Some incidents may be a bit too harrowing for some readers but it is well written in journalistic style. Hala Jaber is a well known war correspondent and has been named Foreign Correspondent of the Year twice at the British Press Awards. Today she lives and works in Beirut and still chases after war stories.

Kissing Shakespeare by Pamela Mingle

a great book for Shakespeare lovers 

 Miranda is an ordinary girl with an extraordinary talent - she loves acting and is actually quite good at it. She also loves anything Shakespearean and hopes one day to be a stage actor like her parents, until that is her opening night at her school play when she was playing Katherine from Taming of the Shrew. She thinks that she had humiliated herself disastrously and flees backstage to think about it.While berating herself about her acting ability, along comes a school mate and fellow actor Stephen Langford who asks her  whether she wants to meet Shakespeare in person.

Thinking it a big joke, Miranda follows him to the rooftop of the building and Stephen who is actually a time traveller from the 16th 

century whisks her off to Shakespearean England! When they arrived Stephen tells Miranda that he actually needs her help to get Shakespeare away from the persuasions of a Jesuit priest, intent on converting the young Will into a Jesuit priest.

Miranda agrees and gets into the biggest role of her life - that of Stephen's younger sister who is falling in love with the young Shakespeare and is trying to seduce him. According to Stephen, if Shakespeare were to become a Jesuit priest the world would lose the greatest writer and dramatist ever known in the English language and the world would be different all together. So Miranda must try to get Will to follow his dreams of being a writer and poet and away from religion. Dangers abound - Elizabethan England has outlawed Catholicism and Jesuit priests if caught are hanged or even burned as traitors. In fact Will Shakespeare is being betrayed by one of the women he thinks is a friend and the county sheriff is looking for him as well as a Jesuit priest he is friendly with. Will Miranda be able to save him? As for Miranda herself she finds her true love but is love enough to keep them together?

This is a really good read by Pamela Mingle, one I enjoyed reading late into the night.

Georgette Heyer's The Foundling

Georgette Heyer is always one of my favourite writers - I enjoy her characters and her stories and this one The Foundling is another of her well written books.
Gilly is a Duke, no less and a very rich one too but he is also shy and slightly lacking in confidence. He is sheltered by everyone around him - his kind though strict uncle, his valet and his personal footman and even his older cousin. One day though he feels enough is enough and he escapes gleefully into the unknown as Mr Dash, from nowhere. He wants to try and see the world on his own without being kept under wraps by his minders. He finds out that one of his cousins is being blackmailed by a beautiful foundling's so called "uncle" and promises to help his young cousin out of the problem. However it is no simple matter - the young Duke has plunged into a different world - one of intrigue and even murderers. He manages to escape using his own sense of self worth, helps a young boy out of a scrape and even outwits his kidnappers.

Gilly discovers that he is capable and strong enough to outwit robbers and murderers and that he is indeed "a man, not just a Duke" and as readers we spend a delightful day following him on his adventures and win his bride.

Books again!

Oh yes... how I miss my books. Staying in Malacca, being away from Repin and the best bookshop in Malaysia is hard indeed.Here we only have Popular Bookstores and MPH which are actually not real bookshops (according to my bookaholic daughter Shasha) but beggars can't be choosers can they? So anyway yesterday being an off day for Sarah my other girl, we decided to browse Popular's book shelves. And decided to become a member as well, so that we could get the 20% discount they offer to members. Let me tell you, books are very expensive here in Malaysia, which is one reason why few people can afford to read. And unlike our Singaporian counterparts, we can't rely on the library. Do we even have one in Malacca? I have seen one anyway - in the mall in town. It's quite popular among school students because most of their books are school references and exam papers. But there was nothing worth reading on the fiction shelves and even the magazines were years old! Maybe I should donate some of my books to them.

So I came home with this lot to read - at least it will keep me in books for the next week or two!

New books for this week

I'll keep the J.D Robb for last - because I love Roarke, Eve Dallas' dishy husband! First on my list to read is Sleeping Helena, a spin off from Sleeping Beauty but very very different.I've already started on this book and is half way through... and  oh yes, there are curses and a sleeping beauty but this sleeping beauty is no fairy princess full of love and kindness, because when her aunts gave her the gifts of beauty, intelligence, etc everyone forgot to give her kindness. And she can kill without remorse or pity.

Next to be read will be The Duke is Mine, by Eloisa James. I've never read her yet so will find out whether I like her books or not. But the blurp at the back of the book sounds interesting. I've looked for some fantasy books - but the only ones that can be found here in Malacca are by Rick Riordan and George Martin. So maybe I have to drive to KL one day for books.

Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer

I think I've had this book for almost 2 weeks - sitting on my night stand, night after night , beckoning, but I didn't take the bait. Why you might ask. Just simply - I had little time and normally by the time I get to bed I would be so tired that I'd just go off to cuckoo land without a thought. Finally though I decided to start reading it and am glad that I did - I had read the first chapter but always pushed it aside, trying to "water" my farm before I got too sleepy! So this morning, when my part time helper came to do the cleaning. I finally found myself a bit free.

And once started I couldn't really put the book down. Granted, at first I was rather annoyed at some of the silly things the heroine of the novel did and her bigger ass of a husband too but then I was also tickled by the pair of them and got quite involved with the couple I just had to continue reading.

The novel begins with young Lord Sherrington (Sherry to us) proposing to his favourite girl ,the Incomparable Bella. Bella however is wise to the young Lord's way and refuses him outright and criticising his behaviour as an irresponsible, devil may care, gambler to boot. The angry Lord Sherrington vows to propose to the first lady he meets and who should it be but the young Hero, one of his neighbours and who was crying because she was to be sent to Bath as a governess unless she married a curate, a much older man and who had offered for her. Hero had always hero-worshipped Sherry and was delighted to accept the proposal. The wedding takes place and even this is a masterpiece of comedy - Sherry is waiting for her at the church and she comes with two hackney coaches full of band boxes - her luggage it seems , which she had bought on the way to the wedding. When they were pronounced man and wife, he realsed he had forgotten the ring and she had to make do with his best man's signet ring. At first she does come across as a flighty, shallow person but further reading shows us that she does have a character and that that she is caring, warm and intelligent, in spite of Sherry's total lack of love (at first) and also other obstacles. She tries to win his love, at first by copying his actions - yes she did - she went to a gaming room, she visited a bachelor in his house and she parties till the wee hours of the morning, just to get his attention.  

Georgette Heyer again charmed me and I enjoyed reading about the escapades of the young lady Sherrington.Often I was caught smiling and sometimes breaking into laughter at some of her exploits. When will Sherry realise that he actually loves her, I wonder?  And of course he realises it later - only to be faced with the idea of losing her completely. The title of the book is so suitable  Friday's child is loving and giving, which Hero is.

This book is totally charming and totally funny. I admit there are times when I thought Sherry a bit of a nitwit and felt like shaking him but I think Hero does that very well - gave his heart a real shake so that he finally woke up to find that he may lose his wife if he didn't take her back.

 A thoroughly enjoyable book suitable for a rainy day, which it was today! Or not so rainy ones either. But then I've always enjoyed Georgette Heyer.

Jodi Picoult - My Sister's Keeper and other books

Today I promised myself I will try to finish reading the Jodi Picoult I got last month. It's called My Sister's Keeper and I have already read it half way. However Jodi Picoult often makes me feel slightly depressed and I tend to ask myself a lot of questions even after I have read the book. Normally the stories pull at your heart strings - there are so many issues that are often controversial. LIke her other book that I read early last year Handle With Care, about a child born with severe osteogenesis or brittle bones.
I could never read her books all in one go - it needs digesting and you need to take a break in between reading to avoid being pulled into the story with all its pain and questions that are not answered. I first read Jodi Picoult's  Vanishing Acts sometime in 2003 - about a girl who had been kidnapped by her father and told that her mother had died. Told from the viewpoint of the child who had been kidnapped, now a young woman, it is poignant and questions the ambiguity of love and lying. In Handle With care the young couple who gave birth to the child with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) struggle to cope with bringing up a daughter who could break so easily, so much so that they are also accused of abusing their own child and taken to court by the police who believe that the signs of broken bones in their child's xrays were caused by abuse.

In this book, My Sister's Keeper, a young couple again finds out that their two year old daughter has a rare form of leukemia, and the only way she can be saved is if they purposely had another daughter with the same blood group. And so Anna, the younger daughter was conceived to help keep Kate alive. Anna would donate her bone marrow to Kate and the young couple would have two beautiful daughters instead of one sick one.

However when Anna grows up she  decides she no longer wants to donate her bone marrow, she wants to retain control of her own body. Is she wrong to want to do so? There are so many moral issues here - should her mother force her to go through all the painful procedures of extracting bone marrow just so another child could be saved. FRom the little that I had read I find that I liked Anna as compared to the mild and timid Kate. Anna has spunk and is a vibrant character with a mind of her own. She remembers being poked and prodded even as young as three, donating her bone marrow, and lying down in the hospital bed as often as Kate is sick. Its almost as if it is she who is sick , and yet their mother is always pampering and worried about Kate. It is kate who gets all the attention and the sympathy, so much so that I felt that Anna is just a body that is being used to keep Kate alive.

I stopped reading just to get some perspective and also because I was quite upset. Hopefully I will finish it late this week.

The White Queen by Phillippa Gregory

I have always enjoyed Phillippa Gregory’s novels. The first novel that I ever read by her was The Other Boleyn Girl, about Anne Boleyn’s younger sister Mary, who, like her was also fascinated by Henry the 8th.We know about Anne Boleyn and Henry the 8th but I never knew that there was another Boleyn girl who was also the King's "wife", or actually his mistress for a short time.

 In this book, Phillippa Gregory has again caught me with her depth of knowledge about the history of the English Kings and her portrayal of the women of the time. The White Queen is set during The War of the Roses, sometime during the 15th century. Written in the voice of Elizabeth Woodfield, this book takes a look at the court of England during this period and what a woman will do to protect her own.

When her husband dies in the Battle of St Albans, his young widow, the Lady Elizabeth sets out to try to win back the lands that she had lost, for her young sons. In the first chapter we see her, purposefully beautifying herself in order to get the attention of Edward IV, the man her family hates and the one who had caused her father to return from battle, white faced and beaten.  She stops him in the middle of the road on the way to another battle, and wins his heart by her courage and beauty. According to her enemies however, this is because she purposely seduced him using magic and witchcraft. She ends up being the new Queen anyway amidst the politics of envy and greed that surrounds the court. When Edward dies young, she has to learn to fight and persevere to retain not only her position but also her very life. Her two young sons are taken away from her, never to be seen again. The throne is taken over by Edward’s brother Richard III and nothing seems to be going for her.

At times the story seems a bit long-winded and confusing, but generally the suspense pulls you in. Will she end up dead or imprisoned? Elizabeth is seen with a sympathetic eye in this story and it is surely a page turner. There is romance,passion, drama, and intrigue to intrest most people. I quite enjoyed it but it can be a bit heavy going, especially in the middle. If you enjoy historical novels, then this would be a good one for you to read. Its fairly serious reading although told fairly simply.

Books read recently

I'm stuck here in the boondocks - at least where books are concerned. There are no good bookstores in Malacca. What passes for a bookstore is Popular Bookstore which sells mainly school texts, revision and examination books as well as outdated popular novels. Afte two trips and returning with nothing I decided to at least get one or two books, even if they are outdated or even worse, expensive! So I came home with one Nora Roberts (she's always a good one if you have nothing to read) and The White Queen which I had wanted to read before but didnt want to pay through the nose for.

Anyway the Nora Roberts was new -its called The Next Always and one of her family/relationship stories which she is very good for.The book is centred in a small town called Boonsboro where 3 brothers have bought over an old hotel and renovating it. The hotel had been there for centuries, surviving war and peace, watching the town grow and now that it is very old, the Montgomery brothers have bought it and they are going to turn it back into what it once was - a beautiful classic looking hotel. But the old hotel has its secrets too and its own ghost, staying there. Beckett Montgomery is the architect and is the only one of his brothers who had seen the ghost. Clare Brewster is the owner of the local bookshop, as well as the girl Beckett dreamed of long ago in his student days. Now she's a young widow with 3 boisterous boys to bring up.She does not believe in ghosts or spirits but one day when she was visiting with Beckett at the slowly developing hotel she 'sees' the ghost and is quite shaken by the experience. Her relationship with Beckett is also getting closer and she's even thinking of marrying again - until one day a crazy suitor traps her and plans to elope with her!

Nora Roberts is at her best writing about family and relationships and this book is no different. Boonsboro comes alive with details of the characters and their lives with a little adventure and mystery thrown in.

New books for September and October

 The following were bought for August and September actually:

• Jill Mansell - To the Moon and Back (read it and can give it 4 for readability)
• Mary Balogh - Yes I bought 4 books together because I wanted to read about the Huxtable family all at once. These are : First Comes Marriage ; Then Comes Seduction;  To SEduce an Angel; At Last Comes Love; and the last one to marry - Constantine Huxtable in A Secret Affair

I really enjoyed reading these books and would recommend Mary Balogh for anybody who loves Regency romances. Just a word of caution though - Mary Balogh does not hide the real social scene behind parties and non stop gaiety. The society that she describes has war and its inevitable consequences as well as all the horror of poverty in 18th century England which she integrates so well in her stories that they give us readers different and  seldom shown view of the period.

I also bought a re-telling of a famous and well-known Shakespearean play - Hamlet, called Falling For Hamlet, written by a new comer to the writing scene - Michelle Ray.

Falling for Hamlet follows the Shakespearean tragedy fairly closely but we see the whole thing from the eyes of Ophelia, Hamlet's girlfriend, whose father is the King's advisor - Polonius. OPhelia is a girl of 16 - young and in love with the crown prince of Denmark who is a college student. Although the Queen, Getrude , does not really like it, she bears with the relationship, even befriending the motherless Ophelia and going shopping with her sometimes. Things however change when the King dies suddenly and Hamlet who was close to his father suspects that his father was murdered, and by his own uncle, the greedy Claudius. The rest of the story follows closely to the original, except that this has been modernised, that is the setting is modern day Denmark and Hamlet and Ophelia use phones and send text messages and the media is very much in the picture. In fact the story begins with a television interview - Ophelia is ready to face the press and tell her story. As we can see, Ophelia does not kill herself in this story. She is a young woman who has faced a lot of challenges and heartbreak but is strong against the storm.

THis is one book I literally could not put down until the last page. Its a stupendous read and whether you like Shakespeare or not, I recommend that you read this book. It has everything you want in a book - great characters, superb plot, stunning detail and lots of sex and murder. Shakespeare is ever a master story teller and the re-telling is not half bad!

Mary Balogh's Huxtable series

Now that all the hullabaloo about Eid is over, I've got more time to sit and read a bit. Actually I have been reading, just not writing about it, mainly because I discovered a very addictive pastime - playing Angry Birds, City Story, and Empire Story on my new Ipad. I can tell you that it is very very addictive - I can sit there with my Ipad and forget about cooking or cleaning or reading for that matter! Repin comes home from work and when he sees me sitting with my Ipad he'll say - "Oh Mama is busy empire building or city building or fighting angry birds!" Which makes me feel very guilty...

Anyway now that I have a bit of time I'll just tell you all about these books I've been reading. They're about the Huxtable family which is a fairly big one. There's Constantine Huxtable, a tall, dangerously sexy and formidable guy who was the illegimate son of the Earl of Merton. He was illegitimate only by a technicality - his parents - the first Earl of Merton married his mother two days too late - and because of that he could not inherit the title and property of his own father, even though he was the first born. His second brother, who was born much later and slightly retarded, inherited the title instead. BUt his brother died early, when he was only 16 years old so the title went to a  second cousin, as the only one who was a direct descendent.

The first book- First Comes Marriage is about this second cousin's family - a family of 3 young beautiful women and one handsome young man who was to become the next Earl of Merton. Elliot Wallace is a trustee of the Hustable Estate and when the young Earl of Merton dies, it is his job to look for the next heir. He is Constantine's cousin on his mother's side and actually looks very much like him - tall with dark good looks and dangerously sexy. However, due to false rumors and prejudice, he hates Con's guts and refuses to acknowledge him, even though they are cousins and had been best friends in their teenage years. After much search they manage to find the heir to the Huxtable estate and the Earl of Merton in a remote village where he found the 4 siblings living in genteel poverty, with Margaret, the most beautiful of them all and the eldest, trying her best to keep the family afloat. Stephen, who would soon be the next Earl of Merton was a mere boy at only 17 years old. Margaret was wondering how she could send her brother to Oxford to continue his studies, as a gentleman's son should. But their father - the former Vicar of Throckbridge - had so angered their grandfather by marrying their mother - his family had cut him off without a penny, or even acknowledging them. So apart from what Margaret and Kate earned from teaching at the local school, they had no means of support.In fact soon, even their cottage would no longer be theirs and Margaret was desperate enough to think of moving somewhere where she could find work.

At this stage, along comes Elliot with his announcement that their brother Stephen was in fact the new Earl of Merton and that he would not only inherit the title but also a large sum of money and an estate that was rich beyond their imagining. The only flaw was that they found Elliot arrogant and slightly condescending and that he meant to take Stephen, their baby brother away from them! So they all refused to budge, unless they all went along to the new place. Elliot, who was supposed to guide Stephen into his new role and act as mentor was forced to accept the ultimatum and finally took all of them, including the widowed Vanessa Huxtable, the second oldest sister. In fact, Elliot who was soon to be the Earl of Moreland decided to marry one of the Huxtable sisters, which one though he was not so sure, until one of them , the most audacious of them all - proposed to him!

This is one of Mary Balogh's finest books - I always love her style, which is slightly like that of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer combined and really enjoyed the read. Her characters are lovable and real and the situations they find themselves in sometimes funny and hilarious. If you like Regency romances, then this is the book for you.

There are 5 books in all - First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Seduction, At last Comes Love, Seducing an Angel and finally A Secret Affair.

These books tell the stories of the three sisters, Vanessa (First Comes Marriage), Katherine (Then Comes Seduction), and Margaret (At Last Comes Love) and of their brother Stephen (Seducing an Angel) and second cousin Constantine (A Secret Affair).

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Jill Mansell's newest book

Ellie and  her husband Jamie seem to have it all - they are desperately in love and married! Jamie is fun, gorgeous and the perfect husband, until fate takes its hand and jamie is killed in an accident on the way to a class gathering. How can Ellie cope, can she cope? She is devastated and at first just goes on from day to day without even knowing whether she has eaten or not. But sooner or later she has to go on living, and she does - she changes job, moved from a louzy apartment to a very nice neighbourhood and gets the perfect boss!

 She definitely doesn’t need a new man, not while she has a certain secret visitor to keep her company...

Ellie's boss, entrepreneur Zack McLaren seems to have it all, but the girl he can’t stop thinking about won’t give him a second glance. Why can’t she pay him the kind of attention she lavishes on Elmo, his time-share dog?

Having moved to an exclusive flat in North London, Ellie becomes friendly with neighbour Roo who’s harbouring a secret of her own. Between them, can both girls sort out their lives? 

This is just the sort of book to lift you out of your doldrums - Jill Mansell's newest certainly does that and more! A funny, yet touching romance with characters that are lively and personable. I enjoyed most of her books and this one is yet another of her romances that are full of humour and humanity. A really good book that you wont be able to put down until you've finished reading it!

I'd recommend it to anybody who enjoys chick lit once in a while and for those who love light romances. 4 out of 5!

Re reading old books

I'm in my re reading mood these days - didn't feel much like reading romances or thrillers either, so I went through my bookshelves and got out some much loved classics - Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty by Robin McKinley and my much loved Alice in Wonderland - the book for when you are tired, or despondent or just plain bored. When I was 10 and very very sick, my father bought this book for me - Alice in Wonderland. I was at once fascinated and engrossed in the book and forgot to be cantankerous and demanding or whiney and attention seeking.

Today the book that he bought for me is still around, though tattered and hanging by its bare threads. It should be put in a museum of much loved books - together with all the Enid Blytons, Hans Christian Anderson and Frances Hodgkins. Anyway, last year I came upon this beautiful hardcover edition with illustrations by the original artist, Sir John Tenniel at the Big Bad Wolf Sale and quickly grabbed it, thinking myself the most lucky person that day! There were only 6 copies and they cost, can you beat it, RM8.00. Gem of the year!

What I loved about Alice, and still do is the no nonsense style of Lewis Caroll. In those days I didn't care who the writer was nor how the book came about. I loved the conversational style of Alice, the main character and narrator of the story and I enjoyed her adventures. In fact for a long time after that, I wanted to be Alice and wished we had rabbits in top coats in hot tropical Malaysia, one I could follow down a rabbit hole and have adventures that were both funny and brave.

Another book that I loved and enjoyed reading recently was a re-telling of Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty. This was  written by Robin McKinley and called Spindle's End. It is a truly spell-binding book full of rich detail and colourful characters. The main story does follow the original - about the baby princess who was about to be baptised and on her baptism day the wicked fairy came and sent out a curse. But after this there are so many twists and turns in the story that at times one forgets that it is the story of the sleeping princess. McKinley's baby princess is rescued by a fairy, but a fairy who is not even one yet. She is only a young girl who happened to be at the christening and who happened to overhear the curse. Out of the goodness of her heart she runs to the cradle and holds the baby and says "No, no it will not happen... it will not happen.. You will have all my magic, all knowledge if it will help you at all and it will protect you." Words that became actually the little princess's protection for this young fairy had a gift of talking to animals. Somehow she found herself with the little baby princess in her arms on her way home to her village which is at the very furthest corner of the kingdom. It took her almost 65 days to to reach home , having to keep away from the main pathways and using only the forest track that wound along the borders of the country. Along the way, the little princess was helped and nurtured by all the animals in the forest - bear, fox, cow, even wolf gave their milk readily to help keep the princess quiet and safe. The fox was the first creature to help her, though generally foxes avoided humans as much as possible.

" All the creatures of forest and field and riverbank knew the infant was special. She was the princess, spirited away from the evil fairy Pernicia on her name day. But the curse was cast: Rosie was fated to prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a poisoned sleep - a slumber from which no one would be able to rouse her..."

Rosie as she was later called grew up never knowing she was a princess, away from palace rules and curses. The wicked fairy along with the whole palace, looked for her but nobody suspected that the little girl growing up with two fairies far away in a corner of the kingdom was actually a princess. For one thing she grew up to be robust and tomboyish, liking all manner of boy adventures rather than to sit at home and learn to spin. She was also, inspite of the gifts by her twelve fairy godmothers, quite homely looking. Her hair was beautiful it is true, being long and golden and blond and soft as silk. She had a very happy nature and the gift of friendship - everyone who knew her loved her. But she had a nose which while not ugly, was a trifle big for er face and eyes which were as blue as the skies with long curly lashes but which were too big for her small inquisitive features. She was protected by the very ordinariness of her upbringing and thus it was that she never knew that she was the princess the whole country was talking about, until just the week before she turned 21, when a stranger came to the door and claimed to be from the palace and that she Rosie was actually a princess.

After that night things happened very fast. Penicia the wicked fairy who had been looking for her finally realised where she was. The handsome young man who had come to work as Narl's apprentice was actually a prince and her bethrothed, but he was in love with Peony her best friend. Rosie herself realised that she did not want to become the princess and rule a kingdom but preferred to be in her village looking after the animals. But curses as we know cannot be thwarted and so things become even more interesting after this. All in all , this is a very satisfactory book to read, even if you are not really a fan of fantasy or fairy tales. The writer weaves a tale that is really magical and yet so astoundingly real that once you start, you cannot put the book down until you have reached the end. Because the end is not like the fairy tale. There is a ball where the princess was supposed to be introduced to her family and her kinsmen but Pernicia comes to this ball too. And the curse is thrown except that this time, it is Rosie alone who can rescue herself. And this she does, with the help of all her animal friends (very Disneyish this one) but also Narl the blacksmith who is actually a fairy in disguise and who loved her. Like all good fairy tales there is a happy ending, though it is not the ending we all think it would be. I would give this book a 4 out of 5!  Very good read indeed and one a lover of words would love - beautifully written with lots of descriptions.

New Books

This will be my fourth entry for Naida's Romance Reading Challenge.

Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts is another one of her gems.  I say this because her books are  mostly polished -the characters real and multi dimensional, the plot flawless and the background very well researched. This book, like most of her other books has a well researched background on the careers of her characters - this time the book is about fire jumpers. Fire jumpers are just like fire fighters except that their work involves jumping into the heart of the fire and killing it from the inside. It is serious, dangerous work and her two main characters - Rowan Tripp and Gulliver Curry seem to enjoy the hard dangerous job.

Like in all of her books, Roberts fills Chasing Fire with details that really brings the story's world to life. She shows how smoke jumping is a high stress, physical career where one mistake can mean death. Smoke jumpers have to carry everything they need when they head into a blaze: food, drink, equipment for putting out the fire, sleeping bags and they cannot go home until the fire is out. This can mean days or even weeks of digging, spraying, clearing bush and sometimes running from certain death. The isolation of the areas where they fight fires means that if a smoke jumper, or a team of smoke jumpers, gets stuck, they are often too far away to receive outside help. Roberts really makes the smoke jumpers' experiences multi-dimensional with firefighting lingo and such vivid scenes that readers will be able to feel the heat on their faces and smell burnt trees.

Like many of Roberts' heroines, Rowan Tripp is gutsy, hot-tempered, fiercely loyal and can drink like a man. In fact she behaves almost like a man, except for the fact that she loves perfumes, especially one that smells of peaches. Gulliver or Gull on the other hand is more romantic, is easy going and flexible, kisses well and is smart and respectful. In fact the perfect hero. And to add to all this macho image, he loves to read and is rich as well. Who wouldn't fall in love with such a hero? Well, Rowan for one didn't, or refused to. Brought up by a bachelor father (her mother ran away and later died), Rowan has few feminine traits and has a lot of relationship issues.

He's the type of man who can tell a woman he loves her in spite of her not giving an inch:"I care about you, Rowan. The you who's got a laugh like an Old West saloon girl, the you who picks out constellations in the night sky and smells like peaches. I care about that woman as much as I do the fearless, smart, tireless one who puts her life on the line every time the siren goes off." (sigh...)

The two however find that they are fast falling in love, although Rowan refuses to admit it. However when the crazy lady who is running around vandalizing the smoke jumper's equipment targets Rowan, Gulliver's laid-back attitude is finally shaken off and his protective inner self is revealed. Mean while there are two burnt bodies found in the forest fires and because of her altercation with the "crazy lady who had vandalised her room" Rowan becomes a suspect. There is plenty of action in this, novel, not less the romance, sexy action type. You get nose to nose with the forest fires - the details are amazingly real and indepth and if you still can't fall in love with Roberts, then you are a hardcore anti romance type.

Like all her books, this one is a keeper - you want it for yourself! I'd give it a 5!

This is not part of the review though I definitely want to say something about this particular writer. I've always enjoyed her books though I mostly loved her series - the Quinn Brothers, the Born In series, even her tryout of a fantasy cum vampire novel series starting with Valey of Silence and Dance of the Gods.However my absolute favourite is the Quinn Brothers series. Here she portrays 4 men - strong, responsible, charming. And their women are all strong women but not domineering. All with different careers - one is a cleaning lady - but her women are all very real and very down to earth.

Reflections

The wedding is over now and things are back to normal. Mulan my cat is convalescing - after her operation. Do cats take time to recuperate from operations? As I see it Mulan is swishing her way everywhere, as if that scar on her tummy is not there at all, but I worry, in case she overdoes it. I try to keep an eye out for her, to stop her if she attempts to jump on to the sink (her favourite place to sleep) or on to the window sill. I worry that her stitches will burst open. That did happen to one of my cats ( I think it was Moshu) who had to go back to the Animal Hospital and be warded and re-stitched! WE told the doctor to keep her at the hospital until she could be safely let out and roam again. Mulan looks to be just as active, though yesterday she was fairly quiet.

Among other things, I'm back to my reading (YES!) and I'm glad to say I've finished reading Nora Roberts' romantic thriller The Search and am now reading another of her books - Chasing Fire. I've always enjoyed Nora Roberts and these are just as good as her other books. In  The Search, we have a spunky heroine, Fiona Bristow, who was once the victim of a serial killer; the only difference is that Fiona managed to get away while his other victims didn't. At that time Fiona was still a university student. Eight years later Fiona is a successful dog trainer and also a member of a dog rescue team, based on an island in the Puget Sound, off the coast of Washington State. Although she would never forget the trauma of being kidnapped, tied and gagged in the trunk of a car and with the knowledge that the man was a serial killer who had already killed 12 young women - all just like her- Fiona believes that she has control of her life and the past is well behind her. She reckons without the coming of Simon Doyle, a successful wood artist who creates gorgeous furniture out of wood. Simon wants to send his dog for obedience training and thus the two meet. From the first meeting sparks seem to fly - and Simon, who is used to more beautiful women than Fiona, wonders why he is attracted to her.

Fiona on her part is drawn to the kindness she sees in him and his quiet strength. But then something else comes into the picture - a serial killer who is killing athletic  young women is again on the loose and his methods were exactly like the man who had once kidnapped Fiona, the man they called the "Red Scarf killer " or RSK2. Is he Perry, the original killer, now let loose or a copy cat? And he is coming nearer and nearer to where Fiona is. And his method is exactly the same - and Fiona is again attacked by her nightmares.

I've always loved Nora Roberts' writing style - her descriptions are detailed and alive and her characters real. Her love scenes are usually very passionate without going over board. A really wonderful read, one that you simply cannot put down. I'd give this a 4 star rating - there are still other books that deserve that 5 star.

I'll keep the review of Chasing Fire for next time. I'm still reading it and also three others:

• Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
• Water For Elephants  by Sara Gruen 
• 
• Thirteen Reasons Why  by Jay Asher

I got them at 30% discount from Borders yesterday!

Latest reads

I finished two books this week,one of which was The Bride's Bodyguard by Elizabeth Thornton. Set during the Napoleonic Wars in the early and mid nineteenth century, this book is about young ,wilful and headstrong orphan Tessa Lorimar, who runs away from her legal guardians in London to live with her grandfather, a Paris banker. Here she meets Ross Trevenan, one of the most attractive men that Tessa had ever met. But  from the first, the two are at loggerheads. She finds him infuriating and arrogant whilst Ross thinks she is too headstrong and unconventional. After losing his gentle young wife to a suspected murder, Ross cannot easily find love in the vibrant beauty but against his wishes he has been made Tessa's bodyguard to escort her out of wartorn France, back to England. He had sworn to her grandfather that he would guard her with his life and that he would do anything to keep her safe - even if it meant that he had to marry her! However finding herself a bride to the attractive bodyguard seems more dangerous than any other situation and unknown to Tessa she holds the key to a mystery that goes back to her school days - a girl who drowned in the lake at her school. Nightmares, young women who die in mysterious circumstances and secrets - these are some of the things that taunt Tessa and finally she finds herself in the grip of a vicious murderer who would  do anything to keep his secrets safe. Would Ross be able to guard her and still keep her love? 

This book has all the elements of a good novel - well-drawn characters, a plot that keeps you glued to the pages and plenty of romance. I'd give this book a 4 star rating - a book I found really interesting, with lots of spine-chilling action and yes, plenty of sexy scenes!


The second book I read last week was a Jane Austen spin-off - Searching for Pemberley by Mary Lydon Simonsen.  The best thing about this book is that I got it at a mere RM8.00 at the book sale. This is not the ordinary boy meets girl romance though it does have romance in plenty. However I found the writer rather long-winded which made the book  a bit of a bore to finish. Although I've always loved anything to do with Jane Austen and Mr Darcy, this one is a bit slow going. The story is set in post war Britain - just after the second world war, about a young American woman who decides to escape the boredom of her hometown in Pennsylvania, US to look for Pemberley, or the house which was believed to be Pemberley. She did find the house which at one time belonged to the Laceys, (Darcy's).While there she meets an American pilot and begins a relationship with him but at the same time she finds out that the people who have been showing her and telling her about Pemberley and the Darcy family are actual descendants of that family, ie. the Laceys. Maggie (the American girl) is attracted to Michael, son of the family, yet she is also happy with her pilot. As she finds out more and more about Darcy and Elizabeth as well as the rest of the Bennet family, she is also falling in love with the last descendant of that family - Michael. But is it really love or is she only 'in love' with the whole idea of falling in love with Mr Darcy?

I didnt really like the writer's style which is very reminiscent of early 20th century writing.Maybe I'm used to the thrilling and fast paced writing style of more modern writers. The story in itself is interesting and the characters of Maggie and Michael are realistic. Maggie is a romantic yet down to earth type and a person one can believe in.

I'd give this book a 3 star rating. An okay book but nothing to shout about.

Recent reads

Jill Mansell is one of my favourite chick Lit writers and I try to read her books as soon as they come out. However due to my recent absorption in all things Regency I haven't read her later books. But I managed to catch up with her when I found her in the National Library - yes, surprise, surprise! So she made a good Romance Challenge number two for me.

This one Rumour Has It  was first published in 2009 by Headline Review and has a pretty cover to boot! Very chic, I'd say. The first lines are:

" How weird that you could push open the front door and know in an instant that something was wrong.

Tilly stopped in the doorway, her hand fumbling for the light switch. Back from work at six o'clock on a cold Thursday evening in February,there was no reason to believe anything should be different.

But it was, she could feel it. She could tell.

Flick went the light switch, on came the light. So much for spooky sixth sense; the reason opening the door had felt different was because the hall carpet was gone."

Tilly Cole has just been dumped by her live in boyfriend of two years. Surprised  and rather fed up, she decides to leave her job and make a fresh start in the small town of Roxborough, as Max Dineen's girl Friday. Max is hot and every woman's idea of the perfect man. Tilly however isn't interested in her boss, in fact she's not interested in any male as yet and is quite happy working as Max's assistant. But she meets Jack Lucas, Max's friend and partner and  wham - all her innerds are shivering with lust and longing. Jack is irresistible ... and it looks like he too is attracted to Tilly. Then Tilly hears the rumour of his wicked reputation and alarm bells ring. She refuses to be just another notch on Jack's bedpost.

Should she just ignore the rumours and go for him (or better still allow him to go for her) or should she avoid him, which is nearly impossible ? Things come to a head when Jack confesses his attraction for her. How long can Tilly pretend to be mature about it all and stop running from the one man she could really love? But where there's a rumour, usually there's some truth too. Or is that wrong?

I find this book hilarious and unputdownable! Tilly is a down to earth, briskly  independent,funny and romantic  heroine while Jack is the typical handsome "rake" who is often misjudged. A lovely book for an afternoon read.

Rating: 4 star

Romance Reading Challenge

 I don't normally take part in challenges - reading or otherwise but this year I thought I'd join Naida's Romance Reading Challenge.  You can read about it here at Naida's blog - TheBookworm07.blogspot.com I read a lot but I don't often bother to write reviews of the books I've read. Too lazy guess! Last week   I read two books - A Summer to Remember and Then Comes Seduction, both by Mary Balogh, a recent favourite of mine.

 A summer to remember is a sequel to One Night for Love. The story begins with Kit Butler, a young dandy  who has just heard that his father wants him to marry and is planning to marry him off to their neighbour's daughter, Freya, his one time love. But Freya had chosen his elder brother, who had since died, and now Kit refuses to marry her!

Kit decides that the beautiful and very elegant Miss Edgeworth would do wonderfully for his bride but Lauren thinks otherwise. She would play the part of his betroth though, if he on his part would give her "a summer to remember."  

But both are caught in their own web - Kit is physically attracted to the beautiful Lauren and she falls in love with him without realising it! Will they succumb to their attraction and forget about their pretend engagement or will they make it real? 

A really wonderful and romantic read and one I'd recommend to lovers of historical fiction.
I'd give this book a 4 star rating - really loved it.