elouisedouglas's Reviews (721)

 I had a copy of this book as an ARC from NetGalley, the cover drew me right in, and the blurb seemed like it could be a very well timed book for me: 

” How do we get through dark times when we feel like giving in to fear and despair, and when existential dread has convinced us of our smallness? “ 

Unfortunately, the style of the book was not my cup of tea. It was written kind of like a stream of consciousness, and I found that the author changed the subject what seemed like quite randomly at times. I found it quite hard to follow and even harder to find a connection to the book to keep me enthused to keep reading. 

I think this is a reflection on me, not the book though. I can definitely see how for some people this would be a lovely book with a lot of insight to bring. 

Part memoir and reflection on life following her recent marriage, and part a lesson on hope and restoration in turbulent times, the author had many good points that I saved as quotes into my notes as I was reading. 

The author talks a lot about her experiences in Sunday school which I could definitely relate to, and I loved this quote: 

For me though, I don’t feel like the book quite lived up to what I was expecting from the blurb. I was expecting to come away with some techniques for coping with dark times, but I think because of my lack of connection to the book I just didn’t get that. 

I’m giving this book 3 stars because I can see how it could be the perfect book for other people, but it just wasn’t for me unfortunately. 

 I’m not going to lie, I only really bought this book because it’s narrated by Carrie Hope Fletcher, who I really love. She has such an emotive voice and a way of bringing stories to life, so I would probably buy any book that she narrates (there’s nothing worse than a great story ruined by a poor narration). 

It took a while for this book to warm up for me, it felt like I’d been listening quite a while before I felt the momentum pick up, but I am glad I persevered because I thought the book was good. 

Penny Bridge has been through a lot in life, but it seems like life is finally going well. All that is, except her love life. Penny wants to have a baby, but there’s no-one on the horizon. That is until Francesco shows up and they fall hard quickly. It feels like everything is perfect, until life turns upside down for Penny and things with them end on a wrong note. 

After this, Penny falls for another man, and then another. And then Francesco appears back on the scene. What will Penny do? 

I thought the story was fun and light-hearted (although with deeper parts to the storyline too), but I didn’t feel an emotional connection to Penny, probably because I didn’t really agree with the choices she was making. It felt like she was just toying around and given that I wouldn’t appreciate that if it was coming from a man, I didn’t like it here either. I don’t know if it was supposed to be a take on female empowerment, but it wasn’t for me really. 

What I did like was the diversity of characters in the book and the fact that it didn’t feel forced, and the friend/sister relationships that Penny has are perfect – if anything they should be the highlight of this story, not the men. 

I have another book by this author on my shelf (paperback rather than audio this time) and I’m looking forward to picking that up, I liked the author’s style and I’m interested to see what it’s like. 

 I first saw this book as an ARC on NetGalley, but it was in the middle of Covid-madness and I just didn’t have the time to read it. I was annoyed because I knew I would love it, so when I saw it in paperback recently at the supermarket, I had to pick it up. 

And I was right, I loved it. At times hilarious, at times heart-breaking, it was amazingly written to draw me in and immediately love Andrew as a character. 

He’s a bit of a strange guy – he works for the department of the council that deals with funerals for people who die with no family around. His job involves going into the houses of the deceased to try and find any details about potential family members and also to find out if there might be enough money to pay for the funeral. I’d never even considered that this would be a job, but I suppose someone has to do it… 

To his colleagues, Andrew seems to have the perfect life at home – a wife and two kids and a lovely house to go back to at the end of the day. But what they don’t know is that this is all a lie, and at the end of the day Andrew goes home alone to his slightly depressing flat. 

Andrew seems happy with this situation. Or at least, he thought he was, until Peggy arrives in his department and it seems like Andrew can’t keep up the facade forever. What he has to figure out though, is whether he wants to. And what might happen if he comes clean… 

I thought I had this book pinned and I knew how it was going to end, but without giving any detailed spoilers, there was a plot twist that made me gasp with shock. I feel like that might be giving too much away, but I need to talk to someone about this book and I don’t have anyone! 

I devoured this book in one day, I just loved the characters and the storyline so much and I felt completely invested in knowing how Andrew’s life would turn out. Laugh out loud funny, but also bringing tears to my eyes at times, it was a fantastic book to curl up with on a rainy Saturday afternoon. 

I’m just sad I left it so long before I read it. 

 I’ve been trying to make an effort to read more diverse voices and educate myself more on perspectives different from my own. 

This book was a collection of essays by 21 different writers, writing on what it means to be Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic in Britain today. 

The essays brought perspectives that I’d never thought of before, they were insightful and brilliant, but also sad and heart-breaking. To read first-hand about how it feels to be treated like a foreigner in a country you were born in (and your parents and their parents), just because people judge you on your appearance. It definitely made me consider how much privilege I have solely based on a factor of my genes. 

Each of the 21 essays has a different style, some are funny, some are definitely not, but all of them made me question how a 21st century society can still be like this. Where we hold up people of colour if they win medals or tv competitions, but treat the people around us with contempt, suspicion or downright unqualified hatred.
 

I really appreciated this book’s UK centric collection of authors – I’ve read a few other books in this genre over the last couple of years, but they tend to have an american focus so feel less relatable or easier to brush off as ‘happening over there’, but this was so close to home. 

The book was also published by a crowd-funded publisher, which is pretty cool! I’ve never seen that before! 

I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to read more diversely and learn more about inequality on today’s Britian – not an ‘easy’ read in terms of subject matter, but the essay format meant it was easy to read a section then spend time thinking about it before moving onto the next. 

 I wanted to love this book so so much. It was one of my Dad’s favourite books, and I was even reading his copy. To be holding and reading a book I knew he loved so much made me long to love it too. 

But I don’t know if it was just bad timing for me to read it, because I just couldn’t get ‘into’ the book. I didn’t feel connected and I couldn’t keep track of what was happening in my head. 

I started reading it a couple of years ago and ended up almost abandoning it, but I just finished the last 3rd over the last week and it felt like a different experience. All of a sudden the pace felt faster and the action felt more exciting and I was gripped in a way that I just wasn’t before. 

I’m disappointed in myself to be honest that I didn’t feel that connection in the start, but I think what I might need to do is read it again in future when my head is perhaps in a different place. I think the loss of my dad was too raw when I first started and I put too much pressure on myself. 

I have the rest of the Dune series on my shelf (also my dad’s copies), so I will definitely come back to this in future and see if I can love it anymore than I did this time. I don’t really even want to do a ‘proper’ review of it now because I don’t think it’s fair to not do the book justice. 

 I started reading this book before lockdown 1.0 last year and unfortunately it just wasn’t the right time for me to be reading it, so I’ve only just got round to finishing it – not a reflection of the book, just a crazy year! 

Focusing on how to remain true to your Christian self while interacting online, this book was so interesting. With topics like wisdom and discernment and sewing a digital seed, it covered a wide range of topics. 

I think my favourite one was about digital sabbath. This may look different for everyone, but I’d never really thought about doing it. Obviously I know that taking a screen break is a good idea, but practising it as a sabbath and being intentional about what I replace that time with is such an interesting idea. 

Each chapter contains a description of the way things are, a section that goes a bit deeper, then a bit about how to go forward. Each then finishes with a biblical perspective, wisdom from the Psalms and some questions designed to make you think (or to be used in a group discussion). 

It’s definitely made me think a bit more about how some of my online interactions may not be ideal and how I could do better. At only 150 pages, it was a nice short book full of punchy truths. 

 I picked up this book after seeing it advertised on social media by Waterstones and I didn’t really know what to expect, apart from the fact that the cover really stood out to me. I’m so glad I took a chance. 

In the book we meet Addie, an 11 year old girl from a small town in Scotland. When she learns at school that her town held witch trials, she immediately feels a connection to the women that were killed for being different. 

You see, Addie is autistic, and she struggles to fit in at school as she’s different too. Her best friend has just decided to be best friends with someone else, her teacher is the hugest bully of all, and her older sister has gone off to uni. It’s safe to say she’s not having the easiest time. 

So when she stands up at the town meeting to say that she wants a memorial built for the ‘witches’ and she gets turned down, it’s not something she can forget. 

We follow Addie as she tries to make sure these women are remembered as more than just witches. 

Aimed at a young audience, the book is a great way to introduce children to the topic of neurodiversity. In such a gentle way, the author introduces you to the behaviours that Addie has that some people would not consider normal, and because we’re inside Addie’s head, we learn about how we can be supportive rather than judgmental. 

I genuinely loved Addie as a character, she was forceful and determined, and I felt connected to her almost immediately. Which made the book really hard to read in some places, like the ‘thesauraus incident’ (no spoilers) which made me want to cry for how awful it was. 

I would definitely recommend this book to any parent of young children. The story was fantastically engaging and will help children to learn that being different is not a bad thing. I loved it. 

Posted on: https://emmaloui.se/2021/02/23/elle-mcnicoll-a-kind-of-spark/

 I requested this book as an advance reading copy from NetGalley as I thought it might be useful for my youth groups. Although the book is pitched at a lower age range than I usually teach, I thought it would have some material that would be helpful. 
And I think I was mostly right. I think actually if I was to use this book with my teenagers, I wouldn’t have to do much adaptation in terms of aging the material upwards as some of it was pretty complex stuff (I had to read some parts a couple of times to get it and I’m definitely wayyyy above the target age range). 

One of the reasons I don’t think I’d use this book with my groups is that it was very American. And that’s not meant to be an insult, just that the stories in the book that are supposed to make it more relatable just weren’t for me and wouldn’t be for my teens. 

However my bigger problem was that there were a couple of parts I read where I cringed a little bit. 

There’s a section where the author compares the spreading of sin to the spreading of coronavirus. And I know that it was meant more to describe how fast and wide sin spreads, but when I first read it my immediate reaction was “did they just say that coronavirus was caused by sin?!”. And I know that’s not what they’re saying, but if that was my reaction, I wouldn’t want my teens to think that too, especially knowing how deeply Covid has affected people. I think it’s just an analogy that’s too close to home. 

There’s also a part which goes into the literal creation story, which we’ve talked about at youth group before and about how we don’t think it should be taken literally, but the book is very clear on its opinions and I think that would put my kids off. 

All in all, I think this book was a great way to introduce kids to the many different names of Jesus and how we can see the different aspects of who he is, but I don’t think the book was really one for me. 

Posted on: https://emmaloui.se/2021/02/23/tony-evans-a-kids-guide-to-the-names-of-jesus/

I absolutely loved this study. I’ve been struggling to commit to spending time in my Bible and a two week study felt like a perfect opportunity in the run up to Lent. 

I knew the rough outline of the story of Esther, but this is the first time I’ve read the whole book through, and it was such an eye opener. 

First of all, I never realised that God isn’t mentioned by name in the whole book of Esther, because it feels really clear that God is all over the story. 

I loved the focus of the study book on the ‘coincidences’ and ‘reversals of fortune’ and the questions at the end of each day which made me focus on what I’d read. I was shocked by how many times things were turned on their head in such a short book. 

And as always, a beautifully put together and laid out book by the wonderful people at She Reads Truth. 

Ahhhhhh nostalgia. This book felt like a hefty dose of comfort, taking me back to my teenage-self who read the Twilight series repeatedly for a few years. I loved those books so much, and although in hindsight they’re not the best books in the world, they’re what got me into reading fantasy, and for that I’m thankful. 

Midnight Sun is basically the first Twilight book (not all three, like I originally thought from the size of it), but written from Edward’s perspective, not Bella’s. 

Because of that, it felt hugely familiar; the same story but from a different angle. It did, however, answer a lot of questions that I had when reading Twilight, and it shone some insight onto some of the strange behaviour that you kind of just accept in those original books. It also gives you a lot more backstory and allows you to see some of the torment that Edward’s character goes through. 

That said, the book felt about 50% longer than it needed to be, and when I got to about two-thirds of the way through I was kind of just willing it to finish. I enjoyed that we were inside Edward’s head, but boy can he go on and on and on. 

I think what I may have appreciated more is either a shorter book, or perhaps for this book to have covered all three of the original Twilight series, so that it didn’t feel like it dragged quite so much. Maybe it just felt like it dragged because I already knew the story and if I had been reading it fresh it wouldn’t have felt the same, but I also feel like the book doesn’t mean anything if you haven’t read Bella’s side of the story first. 

All in all, it was great for reminiscing, but I probably won’t be compulsively re-reading it like I did for the first series as a teen. 

Posted on: https://emmaloui.se/2021/02/13/stephenie-meyer-midnight-sun/