This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman
Jake wakes up one morning after a party and finds an email in his in-box from a young girl he met at the party. Attached is a sexually explicit video she has made for him. He forwards the video to a friend, who then forwards it to a friend. Within hours, it's gone viral, all over the school, the city, the world.
The ensuing scandal threatens to shatter the Bergamots' sense of security and identity, and, ultimately, their happiness. They are a good family faced with bad choices, and how they choose to react, individually and at one another's behest, places everything they hold dear in jeopardy.
Just from reading the blurb on the back of the
book I was instantly fascinated with the storyline. I’m actually
quite surprised there haven’t been more books about this sort of thing with
kids being allowed pretty free access to the internet these days. Or is there
and I just haven’t found them?
The House in via Manno tells the story of a woman (the narrator's grandmother), her life, her marriage and her loves. Nonna married late in life to a man whom she did not love and he did not love her. she also suffered from kidney stones and whilst visiting a spa for treatment, she meets the love of her life.
I enjoyed book being told from Jake and his family's point of view, not the girl’s and although there was a little written about the
girl, it didn’t impact too heavily on the main story. Her side really didn’t interest
me at all for some reason, I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.
The idea that a simple action can have such
disastrous consequences is something people either don’t care about anymore or
we have been brought up with no concept of the consequences of these
actions. In this book I did feel that
too little was said about this point. I know that sounds an odd thing to say
with the whole point of the book being about the consequences, I still felt too
little was said to or by the main characters. I particularly enjoyed the fact
that the mum was constantly on the net, thereby teaching the kids that it’s ok.
I enjoyed this book and would definitely
recommend it as the characters were well written and the topic was as
interesting and thought provoking as I hoped it would be.
Four new short stories from the Outlander
series featuring our favourite Lord John Grey as well as Jamie’s step daughter
and his nephew and Jeremy’s mum and dad.
You can’t really read these unless you have
read the Outlander series, that’s the downside. Also, if you are not a Lord
John fan, which quite a few Outlander fans aren’t, you won’t want to read this
either.
However, if like me you are desperate for the
next book in the series, Written In My Own Heart’s Blood to be released (late 2013);
then this is the perfect book to fill in some time whilst waiting.
As always with Diana, the books are full of
wonderful historical facts, each character is ‘real’ (as in they all have
faults and aren’t romanticised) and it was lovely to get more information and
background to minor characters from the series. I was also very happy with the
fact the endings weren’t too depressing! Except one story, that is, and even
that one was kind of happy in a way; I’m not saying anymore – spoilers!
I loved this little book.
I thought the Nonna was amazing, the way she
told her granddaughter everything without censoring it, was scary and brilliant
too.
Poor Nonno, although that man gave as good as
he got though, especially in the bedroom department. He was far more loving
towards her than she ever seemed to be towards him even if she felt guilty
about it at times.
I was surprised her son and granddaughter
turned out even halfway normal!
I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone and
everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment