MORE book reviews for you all! These three are some of the books that I read while I was on my trip to Europe. Although I was busy all day in Paris and Barcelona, I had plenty of free time in Alicante to relax and read!
I also want to note that I just updated by Book Review page, so you can find all the books I’ve reviewed since I started the blog!
The first book is The Woman in White by Wilke Collins.
I actually started this one well before my trip and it took me quite some time to read since it’s pretty long. However, I really did enjoy it. Here’s the synopsis from Goodreads:
‘In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop… There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth, stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white’
The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright’s eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his ‘charming’ friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.
Matthew Sweet’s introduction explores the phenomenon of Victorian ‘sensation’ fiction, and discusses Wilkie Collins’s biographical and societal influences. Included in this edition are appendices on theatrical adaptations of the novel and its serialisation history
I actually found this book from a reading list produced by BBC, so it’s not surprising it’s written by an English writer and set in England. I don’t often pick up older books, but I was more than happy with this selection. The story kept me guessing constantly; unlike some of our modern romantic comedies, I could never guess what was coming next or how the story would end.
The book is written from the viewpoint of several characters, as though the author had gone around collecting recollections from each character, trying to piece the story together of what really happened surrounding The Woman in White. If you can handle reading an older, and longer, novel, I highly recommend picking up this book!
The next book is also about women in white, but much more modern! It’s called Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close.
Here is the synopsis from Goodreads:
Wickedly hilarious and utterly recognizable, Girls in White Dresses tells the story of three women grappling with heartbreak and career change, family pressure and new love—all while suffering through an endless round of weddings and bridal showers.
Isabella, Mary, and Lauren feel like everyone they know is getting married. On Sunday after Sunday, at bridal shower after bridal shower, they coo over toasters, collect ribbons and wrapping paper, eat minuscule sandwiches and doll-sized cakes. They wear pastel dresses and drink champagne by the case, but amid the celebration these women have their own lives to contend with: Isabella is working at a mailing-list company, dizzy with the mixed signals of a boss who claims she’s on a diet but has Isabella file all morning if she forgets to bring her a chocolate muffin. Mary thinks she might cry with happiness when she finally meets a nice guy who loves his mother, only to realize he’ll never love Mary quite as much. And Lauren, a waitress at a Midtown bar, swears up and down she won’t fall for the sleazy bartender—a promise that his dirty blond curls and perfect vodka sodas make hard to keep.
With a wry sense of humor, Jennifer Close brings us through those thrilling, bewildering, what-on-earth-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life years of early adulthood. These are the years when everyone else seems to have a plan, a great job, and an appropriate boyfriend, while Isabella has a blind date with a gay man, Mary has a crush on her boss, and Lauren has a goldfish named Willard. Through boozy family holidays and disastrous ski vacations, relationships lost to politics and relationships found in pet stores, Girls in White Dresses pulls us deep inside the circle of these friends, perfectly capturing the wild frustrations and soaring joys of modern life.
I thought this book was cute if you’re looking for an easy beach read, but to be honest when I started writing this review I couldn’t remember what happened, even after reading the synopsis on goodreads… Haha. Great review, right? Apparently at the time I thought it was worth 3/5 stars. Sorry this review is so short, but I guess that says something?
The last book for today is Chasing The Sun by Natalia Sylvester.
And here is the synopsis from Goodreads:
Andres suspects his wife has left him—again. Then he learns that the unthinkable has happened: she’s been kidnapped. Too much time and too many secrets have come between Andres and Marabela, but now that she’s gone, he’ll do anything to get her back. Or will he?
As Marabela slips farther away, Andres must decide whether they still have something worth fighting for, and exactly what he’ll give up to bring her home. And unfortunately, the decision isn’t entirely up to him, or up to the private mediator who moves into the family home to negotiate with the terrorists holding Marabela. Andres struggles to maintain the illusion of control while simultaneously scrambling to collect his wife’s ransom, tending to the needs of his two young children, and reconnecting with an old friend who may hold the key to his past and his wife’s future.
Set in Lima, Peru, in a time of civil and political unrest, this evocative page-turner is a perfect marriage of domestic drama and suspense.
I actually only read this book because I got it free from Amazon Prime, however I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to read it! It’s not at all a story I would have just picked out myself, but I love the way the author makes the characters realistic. He shows the complex relationship between the husband and wife – having a rough time in their relationship but having a respectful love as well as the husbands willingness to do anything to get her back.
I also appreciated the fact that this was a very real story for many people in the world. In the US we aren’t as affected by kidnappings and terrorists, but it’s a daily reality in other countries. This book definitely opened my eyes to what other people might be going through and trying to protect their own families.
When was the last time you read an “older” book?
Do you ever read books and later forget what they were about???