The Descendants - Kaui Hart hemmings

Matt King has a loving wife, a good job and two daughters. His life is turned upside down when his wife Joanie, is comatose after a boating incident and he is left in charge of his daughters without a clue how to deal with them. His world has been work, he has dipped in and out of their lives, leaving the raising of the girls to his wife and the nanny. And worse of all, he has found out the his wife was having an affair.

His eldest child, Alex has already been shipped off to boarding school, so someone else can deal with her drug abuse and his youngest, Scottie, puts herself in danger in order to grab attention, any attention. He worries about their lives, about how they may have to grow up without a mother. It isn’t long before his worst fears are realised and he is told that his wife will never wake up.

He rushes off to bring his oldest daughter home, in order to say goodbye, but in reality he needs her here to help him deal with her sister. With everything he is trying to deal with, he also has a huge decision to make in respect of an old land claim. He is a descendant of one of Hawaii’s largest landowners and the time right if they want to sell, and all his cousins want him to sell.

The book takes us along the journey with Matt and his family as they deal with Joanie’s infidelity and impending death. It isn’t a book that moves at great pace, that covers a vast storyline, but is one that engages from the very first page. It’s all about the tiny observations of the people coping with the tragedy. How one remark or even just a look or a nod can change how people perceive you. It was fantastic to watch it unfold. You see how much pain they are all in. How a pothead, named Sid, keeps them all together and you have to like him, with all his faults.

This is simply an observation of life in general, and how people react under difficult circumstances. It made me cry but also laugh and I loved it.

The Scorch Trails - James Dashner

After their escape from the Maze, Thomas and his companions are unsure what to expect of a world destroyed by the sun, with disease taking over what’s left of the population. Can there be anything out there for them? Did the experiment work, will they make a difference to those that are left?

Once they are given food and a bed for the night, they see a glimmer of hope in all this madness. However, when they wake to screams and the faces of those infected by the Flare, known as Cranks, they are soon thrown into another world of pain and suffering. They have to travel across the scorch plains, where the infected are sent to slowly lose their minds and eventually die.

The group face the heat, the cranks and Wicked in order to find a safe haven and the cure for the flare, which they have been told, each and every one of them now has.

As with the last book, the pace is fast and flows well, yet it never takes a breath, never slows down for the group or the reader. For me the constant attack grated on my mind. I understand that the trails had to be continual in order to confuse Thomas along with the group, but it needed some time to slow, even if it was for a minute or two, to look for the answers though it was obvious that there were never going to be any.

It was long, bogged down with action, as good as it was, and nothing at all was answered other than the fact that Thomas and Teresa are a lot more involved in Wicked than they wish to be. Teresa’s change in personality is a nice twist, though she seemed to take what Wicked told her without question, unlike Thomas.

I must admit that I put the book down a couple of times, just for a break from the horrendous ordeal they had to continually face and hated the fact that nothing was answered. Maybe James Dashner could have given us something, anything to cling onto. I will probably read the other books, as I need to know exactly what influence Thomas has in Wicked, I have a feeling that it goes all the way to the top, but I won't be in a rush to do so.

The Here and Now - Ann Brashares

Prenna James moved to New York when she was twelve but not from a different country rather from a different time. A future where catastrophic conditions and a blood plague have left a world no one wants to return to.

Prenna and the rest of the travellers follow a strict list of rules. They have to blend in, be part of society without ever standing out as different. There can be no interference in the past, no one can ever know when they are from, and they can never be intimate with anyone outside the community, known as time natives. She feels isolated and unprepared for the outside world. Who and what is being done to irradiate the plague of the future? She wants to make a point, be heard but no one is listening or are they?

Ethan is a local boy who knows there is something different about Prenna, and it’s not just because he saw her enter his time 4 years ago. There are other people who know the truth, others who know that the leaders of the community are hiding rather than trying to rectify the problems of the future.

With Ethan’s help, Prenna will take a stand, alter the future and hopefully change her destiny and that of her family.

Time travel is always a hard thing to write about, the cause and effect of the simplest changes make mapping it out so difficult. This book doesn’t do a bad job, it paints the picture of the future and how Prenna turns it with the little things she does.

The relationship between the main character and Ethan is very one sided at first, however she quickly falls for him and lets him influence her without much question. The bleak future and Prenna’s story telling when she explains it to Ethan was well written and at times it flows nicely.

I wanted a little more from this read, it was gentle and not too taxing and I did want to know what happened to Ethan after reading the newspaper article, and it set it up for a possible second book. For me it needed something more for me to dig my teeth into but was enjoyable enough.

The Lebrus Stone - Miriam Khan

Crystal had a hard childhood, she lost her parents in a car accident and her only other family was killed in a fire. After that she went from foster home to foster home until she ended up working in a bookstore for Jared, a father figure who keeps a close eye on her.

When a stranger walks into the shop and states that she is a distant relative with information about her mother, Crystal is drawn to Isobel and is happy to meet and talk. After a few months and still with little information she agrees to travel hundreds of miles to the woman’s home, Thorncrest Manor.
There she meets more family, none seem too friendly and she soon questions her agreement to travel so far from home. One man, Cray seems downright hostile to her, yet she can’t help but be pulled in. Her subconscious tells her there is more to this, to him, causing terrifying nightmares. Are the dreams warning her that there is danger to come?

I had no idea what to expect from this book and I have to say I am still not sure. At times the writing flows nicely and there are some great pieces of description. When she writes about Crystal’s hometown and the honey locusts it brings a clear picture to mind. For me her character wasn’t quite strong enough for the situations she found herself in. It is a personal opinion but when she was surrounded by the hateful family and it is obvious that she was going to learn nothing more about her mother, why would she stay? If she didn’t it would have been a much shorter book and I understand the need to present a hostile group, however it needs to be realistic and for me I didn’t get that. The fact that Isobel psychoanalyses everything that Cray and Crys does grated at me. Why was she not standing up for herself?

There is a section once everything is revealed that as we are in first person we simply jump from one situation to other with no idea what is going on. This is keeping us in Crystal’s mindset but I felt that the reader still needed some structure and it simply confused me.

I liked the fact that though there is a strong supernatural element it was kept in relativity rather than fantasy which held the book together. Overall the story was a good one watching the true motives of the family unfold was interesting. I feel that it would benefit from a good edit to present a more structure story. From the ending I am not sure if there will be a sequel but it will be nice to see how the writer develops.

Hunting Lila - Sarah Alderson

17-year-old Lila has two secrets she's prepared to take to the grave. The first is that she can move things just by looking at them. The second is that she's been in love with her brother's best friend, Alex, since forever.

After being involved in a mugging Lila races to where she feels safest, and flies from London to California and into the loving arms of her brother, Jack. Or at least that is how she sees it. What she finds is a relative who wants her out of his life as soon as possible. From the moment she arrives, Jack and Alex refuse to leave her alone. There is something wrong but unable to simply turn around and go home, she tries to find out exactly what the two of them do in their military unit and why there is a need for members of the unit to keep a close eye on her.

She is soon dragged into a supernatural battle between the unit and a group of individuals who are capable of using their minds just like her. Where is the line between good and evil and which side, if any, will Lila chose?

This book was on my TBR for quite a long time and I am just sorry it took me so long to get to. It caught me within the first line. We are thrown straight into action, at the very point that Lila is attacked and what she does to stop it. The writing flows well and I found I needed to know how things would develop for Lila, Jack and Alex. The characters are well defined, each bringing something to the story. There is action as well as romance which means there is something for everyone. With no really surprises here and nothing new when we think about the military, it still kept my interest and I read it in one sitting.

I have just ordered the second and will be reading that as soon as I get a chance.

The Theory of Everything - Film review

Release date: 1^st January 2015

Top Billing: Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones

It starts as Stephen and Jane meet at Cambridge. Maybe a little awkward at first glance but they become close friends and it quickly develops into something more. Stephen initially shows an odd tremor in his hand, the way he carries himself is a little off, though it is only taken seriously when he takes a terrible fall. Once tests are completed, he is told he has two years maximum to live and there is nothing that can be done.

Rather than run away, Jane becomes his rock and the marry knowing that time is not on their side. He slowly deteriorates, first finding it hard to walk and then in a wheelchair, even unable to breath. As time goes on Jane begins to lose her spirit and her mother advices her to join the church choir just to remove herself from the situation for an hour a week.

There she meets Jonathan who kindly agrees to help the whole family, yet however harmless it begins, feelings grow. A rift is opened within the relationship but when Stephen is in trouble she races to his side, and demands that he is operated on even when the doctor suggests that letting him go would be better. Time moves on and the couple separate but stay great friends as his career hits new heights.

This was a really good film. Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are great as Stephen and Jane, and I couldn’t help but immediately sympathise with the two lead characters. As you can tell from the story it doesn’t concentrate on his illness rather on the relationship, however you can’t get away from his condition. Watching him slowly slip away from Jane was hard to watch. He seemed rarely to let it get to him though that may have been more because the screenplay was based on a book Jane wrote so you tend to see things from her point of view.

I would think that most people know his story but it is brought into clear focus with this film and I couldn’t help but be surprised that they only gave him two years and nearly 50 years on he is still going. The film may have put a little gloss on the couple but you can’t fail to really feel for both of them.

Forgotten - Cat Patrick

Every night when London falls asleep her brain resets, and she wakes with no knowledge of her past. Of course she writes notes each night so that she knows what people have said, what she’s done. There is something else about London that is unusual, though she forgets the past she sees into the future. Not just a day or two ahead but whole lives of those around her.

Her world turns upside down when she meets Luke. At first it would seem that things are moving on and her life is getting better. Now she has a boyfriend, but her friend Jamie is heading down a dark path, her mother is lying to her and why does Luke never feature in her future memories?


I liked this concept, the fact that she didn’t freak out with the lack of memory thanks to seeing the future is something that I hadn’t read before. Slowly explaining her situation, and through her eyes, we see how she pieces her past with her future. The story expands, not only with her fractured relationship with Jamie, but with the growing mystery around Luke and now her father. I found that it grabbed me and I needed to read on. The pace is nice and the little snippets handed out are enough to keep you hooked.

As a whole it isn’t too taxing. It is a short read that gives us a slice of her life, a very important part but a slice nevertheless. Read it two sittings I would recommend this for a change to the norm.