The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

In 1913, a little girl turns arrives in Australia from England on ship all alone .  She can’t remember her name or how she came to be on the ship.  The dockmaster takes the little girl in, gives her a name – Nell and raises her as his own.  When she is 21, he decides to let her know about her mysterious origins.  This knowledge changes her whole outlook and eventually she sets out to England to try and find out who she is and why nobody ever came to look for her.

The story is told from several different points of view, Eliza in the early 1900s, Nell mostly in the mid 70s and Cassandra mostly in 2005.  After Nell dies, Cassandra, her granddaughter, is left to try and solve the mystery of Nell’s parentage and her solo voyage to Australia.  Eliza is the author of a book of fairy tales that was one of the few things Nell had with her when she arrived in Australia.

The story had so many narrators and so many characters that it had the potential to become quite confusing but it didn’t.  It was a long story with lots of twists and turns and while it wasn’t a book I just HAD to read, it was still very captivating and enjoyable to read.  It moved slowly but not in a bad way.  It was a very comfortable read.  It’s the kind of book you like to curl up with on a rainy day.  It reminded me a lot of The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield.

It is a very long book but it didn’t feel like it was too long.  Sometimes books like this that have lots of little ends to tie up tend to wrap everything up at the end too quickly and it feels like the author was rushing to meet a deadline or something.  Not this book – the pace was nice and even throughout the book and it had great flow (even though it was told through so many characters.)  I really enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to read more of Morton’s novels.

Read for: Canadian Book Challenge 3, What’s in a Name? 3 Challenge

I loved this book!  I don’t know how I haven’t heard of it sooner, I know people have been blogging about it because I just read a bunch of reviews, but somehow I’ve missed them all.  Last month at book club a couple of people mentioned it and I decided it sounded interesting.  I’m so glad I picked it up!  I’ve been having a rough week (nothing serious – just adjusting to life with three kids) and it’s been the only thing that’s kept me sane (besides bedtime!).

Anyway, what made the story for me was Flavia, the main character.  She’s an incredible intelligent eleven-year-old who loves chemistry.  She’s inherited a very well appointed chemistry lab (seriously, I used to teach chemistry and some of the equipment she had was better than we had!) and she know how to use it.  I think what I liked best about the novel were all the little chemistry references that were woven into the story.  At one point she’s in a classroom and notices a mistake on the periodic table.  This is too much for her and she has to correct it.  I was cheering her on at that point!

But that’s not even the most important part of the book.  One afternoon, the housekeeper finds a dead bird with a stamp on its beak on the front step.  The very next morning, Flavia finds a dead man in the garden.  After calling the police, she decides that she takes it upon herself to find the murderer.  As I mentioned earlier, Flavia is very intelligent, but she is also eleven and this equals funny!  Another reviewer said the story wouldn’t have worked if she had been older and more mature and I totally agree.  The humour comes from her age and immaturity combined with her intelligence.

The book was fun and humourous and light but still had a great plot and a mystery with an unpredictable ending.   I’m looking forward to reading more about Flavia!

Read for: Global Reading Challenge 2010 – Europe

The second book in Larsson’s trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, was just as intense as the first one (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo).    The book took a little bit longer getting started but once it did it just never stopped!  This time Blomkvist is planning a huge story on the sex trade.  Just before it’s published, the reporter who wrote the story is murdered.  Lisbeth Salander’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon and she immediately becomes the number one suspect.  Blomkvist believes that she is innocent of these murders and sets out to prove it.

I can’t say I liked this one as much as the first one but I still couldn’t put it down.  I love the way Larsson writes.  He just tells it like it is, there is no flowerly descriptions or any extra words.  It seems almost methodical and it’s perfect for this genre.  A couple of things that bothered me this time – there were so many characters, I sometimes had a hard time keeping track of everybody, which didn’t end up being a problem because Larsson makes sure you know enough about the important characters to follow the plot.  Also, there was something about the wrap up of the plot at the end that was just a little too unreal for me.  I had a hard time believing all of it.

But it was still a really enjoyable read and I can’t wait for the next one to come out!

Read for: RIP Challenge

My mom and my brother has recently convinced me that I was totally missing out by not watching the TV series Bones.  So I borrowed Season 1 and flew through it and I’m not just starting Season 2.  And I agree, I was missing out!  But then I noticed in the credits that it was based on a series of books by Kathy Reichs.  Of course, I had to read them!  The book is really nothing like the TV except for the name of the main character and the fact that they are both forensic anthropologists, but it was equally as good!

For those of you, that have never seen the TV show or read the book, Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist.  Basically, that means that she’s really good at reading bones.  In the book, she works in Montreal with the crime lab.  In Deja Dead, she is brought a set of bones that when analyzed remind her of a set she worked on about a year previously.  Then another body is found and the circumstances around the murder creep Brennan out even more.  She does some digging and finds other possible cases.  She’s convinced that they are dealing with a serial killer.  Unfortunately for her, the detectives on the case disagree and she can’t really take it that much further on her own.

I really liked this book and I will definitely be picking up the rest of the books about Tempe Brennan.  There were a couple of times where I found the book got overly technical and I was totally lost.  It didn’t hamper my understanding of the case or the plot though, but I wondered why it was necessary?  Also, it bothered me that Brennan constantly put herself in dangerous situations without telling anyone where she was going, even after the detectives on the case told her not to do that any more and knowing that the killer was following her.  She never even had a weapon!  Otherwise it was an enjoyable read and I can’t wait to read some more!

By the way, how would you categorize this book?  I’m going with mystery for now but let me know if there’s a better label for it.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Read for: RIP IV and 1% Well Read Challenge

The Moonstone is a huge yellow diamond (valued at 30,000 pounds in 1848 – (I have no idea what that translates to in today’s money but 30,000 pounds today is a lot of money!)  with a history.   Originally set in the forehead of an Indian god who typifies the Moon, the diamond finds its way into the Herncastle family in England.  At the outset of the novel, the diamond has been left to a young lady named Rachel.  The diamond is to be given to her on her birthday.  In the days leading up to the birthday party, three Indians are observed in the vicinity of the house acting suspiciously.  Rachel is given the diamond on her birthday as planned and wears it prominently at the dinner party.  The three Indians show up at the party, claiming to have magic tricks to amuse the party.  After the guests have left, the house is carefully locked up (because of the presence of the diamond and the suspicious Indians) and everyone goes to bed.  The next morning, it is discovered that the diamond is missing.  So begins the search for the missing diamond.  Many people are involved and many people are suspected through out the course of the book.

I really enjoyed this story.  There’s lots of plot twists and turns and I never figured out who had stolen the diamond on my own.  It’s a perfect Victorian mystery!  The characters are believable and likeable and entertaining.  Like The Woman in White, the story is told from the point of view of several of the characters but unlike The Woman in White, I found the flow was so much better and the story was so much more entertaining.  I think my favourite narrator was Gabriel Betteredge, the house steward.  He had an obsession with Robinson Crusoe that was really funny.  The second narrator was Ms. Clack, and ultrareligious, self righteous, interferring woman who I also found to be quite entertaining to read about.  She put her foot in her mouth several times but of course never realized how offensive she’d been.

This was definitely better than The Woman in White, which I didn’t love.  The other thing I truly enjoyed about this book was the particular edition I borrowed from the library.  It was published in 1946 and was donated to the library sometime in the 70′s.  So the pages were soft and yellowed and smelled old, which made reading it that much more fun.  It also had some hilarious illustrations.

Read for: R.I.P. IV

Wow! I’ve heard a lot of good about this book, but I still wasn’t expecting it to be quite as good as I found it to be!  Also, I obviously didn’t read the summaries of the book because it was not at all what I was expecting.  For some reason I thought it was a young adult novel and I had no idea it was going to be a mystery.  But I’m so glad it was because I was getting behind with my RIP reading and now I can include this in the challenge!

First a warning – this book is intense and it’s definitely not a young adult novel.  I’m not even sure I can summarize with justice without giving too much of the story away, but I’ll try.  Harriet Vanger disappeared without a trace 40 years ago.  Her uncle has obsessively searched for any clue to her disappearance (what he’s convinced is a murder) ever since that day.  He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who has just been sued (successfully) for libel.  Then there’s Lisbeth Salander, who works for a security agency as a PI, who is initially not connected to the main story but ends up being a major player.

From the moment I started reading this book, I could not put it down.  Larsson just jumps right into the story and then never stops.  At time the story got a little technical but never to the point of losing the reader.  I also really liked the writing.  It was straight forward, without a lot of extra stuff thrown in.  The only problem I had was that there seemed to be either an editing or a translating issue (or perhaps both.)  I know that doesn’t reflect on Larsson, but it always bothers me when there are a lot of typos in a book.  I think it was definitely partly a translating problem because there were a few sentences that didn’t even make sense or used words in the wrong context.  But that is a minor detail and shouldn’t stop any one from running out and grabbing this book!  I’m anxiously awaiting the next one but I’m 68th on the list at the library and there are only 26 copies available so it could be a long wait!

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Read for: Obris Terrarum Challenge and 1% Well Read Challenge

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to read this book!  It was a slow read, but for the most part, I couldn’t put it down.  The story is told by serveral different narrators and each narrator had his/her own voice, which authors don’t always do when they are switching from narrator to narrator.

The story begins in the voice of Walter Hartwright who is walking home late one night and is startled by a woman in white asking for directions to London.  She refuses to tell him her name and just as quickly as she appeared, she is gone.  I can’t even try for a plot summary because there is just too much happening right from the very beginning of the book.  And it never stops happening until the very last page.

There are unexpected twists and turns and although the language and style of the prose are similar to Jane Austen, the story line couldn’t be more different.  The mystery that surrounds the woman in white and her secret hatred of one of the main characters carries the story, but once that is discovered, there’s still more mystery and intrigue!

I would definitely recommend this book and I would give it a 8.5/10.

Size 14 Is Not Fat Either and Big Boned by Meg Cabot

These two books are sequels to Size 12 Is Not Fat which I read a while ago.  I just read both of these so I decided to review them together.  If you’ve read the first book, you’ll find these two to be pretty much the same.

Heather Wells, who works in the residence hall at New York College, seems to get herself tangled up in murder investigations on a regular basis.  Dead bodies seems to have a habit of appearing at her place of work, so much so that people have starting calling it Death Dorm.  Heather tries but just can’t seem to help investigating the murders and of course almost getting herself killed at the end of each book.  (Just like every other murder mystery story.)

Heather is a fun lead character.  She’s kind of silly but she’s smart and kind-hearted and fearless (in kind of a bad way.)  There’s enough romance in these novels to include them in the chick-lit genre but mostly they are just a fun murder mystery.  There is nothing serious or deep about these novels but I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to be deep or serious.  These are the perfect vacation or just in between the more serious stuff books.  Once again, Meg Cabot delivers!