Showing posts with label Book Club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Club. Show all posts

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Sisterhood of the Traveling Book Club Review: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15507958-me-before-you
Me Before You
by JoJo Moyes
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Publication Date:
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books/ Viking
Pages: 369
ISBN: 9780670026609
Genre: Adult Fiction | Romance | Chick Lit
Source: Book Club Read

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Available for Purchase:
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Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time. (Goodreads)
Me Before You was the book club pick for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Book Club for February. I was having a bit of trouble deciding on what to read, and my dear friend Kathy suggested that we give this book a try. I immediately agreed, and did so just by going off the ratings that I had seen for the book at that point. I was definitely not disappointed.

I knew this was going to be an emotional read even before I started it, and to be quite honest, the book broke me. I was able to keep my emotions in check for the most part, but in the last half of the book, I was an emotional mess.

You will fall in love with the characters in this story, especially the two main characters, Louisa and Will. Lou was lots of fun and a bit snarky at times, which I love in a character. When we first meet her she has no idea what she wants from her life or her future. But she grows and matures so much throughout the novel, she really felt like a completely different person by the end of the book, in a good way!  As for Will, you just couldn’t help but sympathize with him for what he had been through, and for the decisions that he makes in the novel. But you’ll totally fall in love with him as well.  Lou and Will have a wonderful chemistry together that makes this book so insanely special.

But they aren’t the only characters that you will love in the novel. There is also Lou’s family; her parents, grandfather, sister and nephew. Her family is one that grew on me more and more throughout the novel, and by the end, I was pretty much in love with them as well, especially with her parents. Nathan, Will’s health care worker was also a really great character.

The storyline for this book is one that will really, really make you stop and think... Think about the choices you make in your life, and how those choices can be taken away from you in a heartbeat. It’s about learning to love and to accept things that you can’t change. As I mentioned above, this book was a really emotional read. Sometimes you just need to read something that will give you a really good cry, and this book will definitely do that.

Overall; I’m SO very glad to have read this book with my book club. We all agree that it was so good, and in our discussion we pretty much flailed over all the awesomeness that is this book. It really is a great read, so if you haven’t picked it up, please do so! Now that there the sequel has been announced, I am really looking forward to it as well.

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Don't forget to check out the reviews for the book from my fellow book club members!!

Kathy at A Glass of Wine | Kimmy at Pingwing's Bookshelf | Kelly at KellyVision

https://instagram.com/p/zsgo5EjMTv https://instagram.com/p/zsgo5EjMTv

Thursday, February 27, 2014

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Book Club: Endless Love Book / Movie Review


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61008.Endless_Love http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2318092/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Book Info:

Endless Love by Scott Spencer
Publication Date: January 1st 1999 (first published 1979)
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Pages: 432
ISBN: 9780880016285
Genre: Adult Fiction


I read this book as part of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Book Club with Kathy, Kelly & Kim. I originally picked this book to read because the new movie was coming out around the same time as our book club chat.  As a group, we all pretty much agreed that the main character in this book, David, has major issues, and parts of this book were severely messed up. (I’m talking to you, Chapter 14.) We had a great discussion trying to figure out exactly why David was so infatuated with Jade, and why Jade seemed so indifferent to David. There is definitely a like/dislike relationship amongst us with this book. Some of us ended up liking it, and some of us ended up not really caring for it.  I enjoy that with the book club I can ‘think outside the box’ with my reads, but next time I will definitely choose something less dark and disturbing.

Here is my short review for this book…

Endless Love is described as - “One of the most celebrated novels of its time, Endless Love remains perhaps the most powerful novel ever written about young love.” Unfortunately that is not what I took from this book at all. To me, this book was about an extremely unhealthy obsession and codependent relationship.  I went into this book expecting a somewhat obsessive love story, and instead got something so much deeper and darker than that. 

I had a really hard time understanding the relationship between the two main characters. While David seemed obsessed with Jade, Jade’s feelings came across as indifferent. I’m not sure if this is because we read the novel through David’s eyes, but we all pretty much agreed that we never really got to know Jade, and she never really seemed to care for David. David, on the other hand, has a strange fascination with Jade. While he says that she is the only person he will ever want and love, I still didn’t buy the relationship. The obsession was there, but I really didn’t know what about her he was obsessed with.

The writing style for the novel was very descriptive and elaborate, and the chapters were insanely long. There was so much information included in the book that I felt didn’t really need to be there, and I found myself skimming these parts more than actually reading them. There were some pretty creepy things going on in this novel, and they made me feel really weird. One chapter in the book was particularly disturbing, and no, I’m not even going to go there.

The 2014 version of Endless Love movie is so very different than the book. There are only a couple of things in the movie that are similar to the book. The movie more of a sweet love story, whereas the book was more dark and obsessive. It definitely felt like the movie was geared more toward teens, and that’s totally ok. I just hope that the people that see the movie and then want to read the book after are not completely surprised.

Overall; While I didn’t really care for this book, I know a lot of people really enjoyed it. Unfortunately for me, I just wasn’t able to connect with it.

Check out the other book club ladies review of this book!

Kelly's Review
Kim's Review