This was my first book of the year completed & I feel like it was the perfect place to start. What an uplifting & liberating message to begin a new year. While some pages of the book had me tearful & worried for the future, others had me pondering my own existence, my longings, desires & dreams, inspiring me to reach further into my capabilities. I really enjoyed the journey & feel like these ladies were teaching me about life. A life where just accepting is sometimes not the best option. Oh, & I am so keen to start a book club of my own.

I really enjoyed this book. It was well written & the detail was not overbearing in its descriptions of "the olden days", like some books set way back when. Hannah Kent is quite a talented writer & I would be interested in reading some of her other works after completing this novel. This is a great book if you love historical fiction, as I do.

Burial Rites is a fictional story based on the events surrounding Agnes Magnusdottir. Agnes is a women accused of murder & arson during the 1800's in Iceland. She is awaiting her execution & is sent to the farm of the Jonsson Family, to wait out her life sentence. The family does not take to this obligated intrusion into their lives & at first treat Agnes poorly. It is the young Reverend, Toti, that finally brings about a change, when he is able to bring out the life story of the accused & an element of sympathy is ignited in the family members. Eventually the whole story unravels & it is not how I expected the story to go, not having known about the history surrounding the true story to start off with.

It will tug at your senses, I really recommend this one!!

From the first page I knew this wasn't going to be an easy book for me to read. I persevered anyway, for reasons I'm unsure of & sadly put this book down with a bit of stink eye facial expression.

I love to read & I tend to read quickly, but some writers write in a way that is hard to read quickly. Their punctuation cutting off sentences before they've even had time to form. Deborah Meyler is one such writer. Her sentences are short & to the point. But this often makes them blunt & void of full emotions. Without having read the Author's description I had assumed that the book had been translated into English. I admit I was very surprised to find out that Meyler is in fact English, & this is just her style.

The story line is formed around young Esme Garland, who moves to Manhattan & forms a relationship with the very rich & elitist, Mitchell van Leuven. Both these characters irritated me to no end. Esme was ridiculous in her over the top devotion to this obvious creep. He was disgusting from the word go. I kept waiting for this story to get better but the more I read the more I hated the characters. I felt anger towards them both, her for not seeing what an idiot he was, & him for being so undeserving of her affections... & just plain horrible. Long story short, she gets pregnant, he walks away, then comes back, then walks away again.... all the while she's pining after him while being all awkward & weird.

This book really didn't do it for me.

I really struggled to read this type of story. Knowing it was only a "what it", fictional take on Peter's life made it harder to stick with. I ended up flipping through the rest of the book to read chunks but felt like this wasn't the kind of book I was looking for.

Watch the most recently made movie adaptation whilst finishing the book. The storyline lacked substance & plot. I did not find this novella enjoyable.

The Husband's Secret is a book about several woman all discovering something life changing. A secret love freshly exposed, a letter written in a moment of raw emotional progression & a woman haunted by the death of her teenage daughter many years before, all bought together unknowingly in this crime thriller, whodunit, cross almost love story!

After reading Moriarty's previous book, The Hypnotist's Love Story & not really loving it, but not exactly hating it either, I wasn't sure what to expect with this second book. As with the first, my final assessment is much the same, I like the concept of her story but feel she adds irrelevant detail & takes too long to get to the point, often drawing things out throughout several chapters.

I would still suggest keen readers do give her books a try as I'm always happy to suggest some homegrown writers and I do agree she comes up with some good plot lines!

I really enjoyed this novel.

I loved the similarities to Harry-Potter, with a twist of Twilight Saga to make it so relevant to today's culture. I loved that the two male characters in the fan fiction were gay. I loved how Cath & Wren's twin relationship was not without the normal issues of sibling turmoil. Two young adult personalities trying to find their own path, two very different personalities with individual experiences.

It was well written & exciting enough to keep me hooked till the very last page!

I wanted to love this book. I just felt like the storyline wasn't strong enough & the ending didn't go at all the way I would have liked.