Ann Brashares: The second summer of the sisterhood

 

Like the title already tells us, this is a sequel of the book "Sisterhood of the traveling pants". I haven't read the first book, but i've seen the movie where Amber Tamblyn, Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera and Blake Lively starred in. Eventhough already in 2005 i wasn't probably the main audience agewise, i really liked the movie and when "the opporturnity came" to read this book, i took it.

So basically to describe what this book is about, you should know about the first one. Obviously this continues with the four girls lives where the last book/movie left off. But to not to give anything away the main idea is, that these four girls who have been friends since their childhood find a pair of pants that fits all of them even when they are sizewise different. In the first book they decide that they'll share the pants and each can have them for a spesific time until they have to ship them for the next person and include a letter that tells what happened while they were wearing the pants. 

And stuff do happen while they have the pants. Even events that changes their lives. This second book continues with the path that was shown in the first book. It was a good read, the story was consistent and it was easy to read. I really enjoyed it and can recommend it to anyone who like these kind of somewhat light books.

Denise Mina: Garnethill

 

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One of the persons who suggested me to read Ian Rankin, suggested also this book. After having these disastorous moments with Ian, i did have some trouble to really grab this one. But i'm glad i did.

Story of the book is about Maureen who gets involved in a murder after she wakes up in her aparment and finds her boyfriend dead. The night before she was so drunk that she can't really remember what happened. The thing she remembers is that she didn't kill him but of course the police suspects her. 

As the story goes, you'll learn a lot more about Maureen, her family and their past. At some points it was kind of hard to follow all the different characters but in the end you kind of learned to know the important characters a lot better that way. 

This was the first crimenovel in a long time where i didn't guess the murderer right away, so a huge plus for that.

Sophie Kinsella: Mini-shopaholic

Classic Kinsella and very enjoyable story of Rebecca and Luke. Unfortunately at least i believe that the title of the book is little off. Yes, they already have a kid and yes she has a minor role in the book. But overall the story is about everything else than the kid, so little dissapointing there...

Suzanne Collins: Mockingjay

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This is the last book of the Hunger Game-trilogy.

The game from the second book ended a little differently as before and Katniss finds herself staying at the sector 13, the one that she didn't believe existed.

All the other sectors have started to rebel and she, wanted it or not, is the leading figure of the fighting against the Capitol. Because of that a little different "Hunger Game" begins and she will fight along Gale, Peeta and others against the cruel President Snow and his ruling over the 12 sectors.

Overall the book was good, but in my opinion weakest of the three. But what i really did like about it that the story wasn't stretched into even more books. Trilogy is definitely enough for this story eventhough i do think i'll miss Katniss and would kind of like to know what their future holds..

Suzanne Collins: Catching fire

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This is the second book of the Hunger Games-trilogy and it continues around the same subject.

Although this time around Katniss has survived from the Hunger Games and believes she would be coaching the next gamers for the game just as Haymitch did for her and Peeta.

Unfortunately it doesn't happen so. She and some other old survivers are put back into the game and for the second time they all have to fight for to come back alive from the game... Read yourself what happens..

Suzanne Collins: The hunger games

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Northern America is divided into 12 sectors and the Capitol rules over every sector. Some of the sectors are richer than others and some - poorer.

Katniss lives in the sector 12. She is the older daugher of two from a family where the father has died in a miningexplosing. Her mother has been quite devastated because of that and that has made Katniss the "head of the family".

Sector 12 is very poor and Capitol doesn't really believe in feeding them, so they have to provide food to themselves. Katniss, for example, is quite good hunter and therefore her family survives little better than maybe some of the other families.

For the Capitols entertainment (and to let everyone from the sectors know their place in the world) the Capitol organizes the Hunger Game in every year. It means that from every sector a girl and a boy gets to chosen to take a part in a competition. Winning of the competition means that the Capitol will provide food for the whole section and they'll have the chance to live in luxury for a while. The downside is that in order to win the competition all the other competitors must be killed.

Katniss's little sister gets to be one of the chosen ones but Katniss offers herself instead and then the game begins...

Candace Bushnell: The Carrie diaries

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The Carrie Diaries shows us the part of Carrie Bradshaw that Sex and the City never had before. Carrie is quite opposite as a teenager than what she really is when all grown up. She seems well spoken young woman, but you kind of sence that she is a little more shy and she is quite innocent.

In the beginning of the book it was quite hard to get used to this side of Carrie. You kind of didn't recognize her although after you got pass that point, the book was really semi-good teenage literature. Of course in the back of your head you kind of understand that this is most definitely a way to cash up even more from inventing Carrie Bradshaw and keeping her alive eventhough the series on TV is over and it's unsure if there'll be anymore movies. But yet again, when you get past that point as well, you kind of like to hang around Carrie and live through the boy-drama with her.

Ian Rankin: Knots and crosses

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A group of friends of mine recommended this book to me because they thought the bookseries is similar to all the great Swedish crimenovelists (Anne Holt, Henning Mankell etc.) but this one didn't really do much for me.

Considering that this is the first book of the John Rebus-story, i would have assumed that you'd learn much more about the maincharacter, but you really didn't.(if you don't consider his past to be enough) And to me that was pretty much the reason why i couldn't really crasp the book.. I really didn't feel any kind of connection to John and the whole story fell kind of short. I don't think i'm going to read the other books at all...

Sophie Kinsella: Shopaholic and baby

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This was probably the best shopaholic book i've read (so far). Becky is still the same overspending person but the situation is a little different and therefore after reading a lot of quite similar books, this is a nice change.

As you might assume from the title, Becky is having a baby. She hears that there's a maternity clinic who has (almost) only famous customers and she is determend to have her baby over there. What she doesn't realise is that the doctor is actually Luke's ex who wants Luke back and maybe in the end she isn't that happy she wanted to be among the famous.

Lauren Conrad: Sugar and spice

I believe that most of the people who read these books of Conrads are intrigued with them because of her personal past. This third book of hers was the first book for me where i didn't all the time think about her past. This was maybe the first book out of the seriers where i just enjoyed the book and it's writing - of course the storyline but not with thinking every second that did that really happen to her in real life. Very good indeed.

Lauren Conrad: Sweet little lies

I'd say this book was a little bit better than the first one. You already had an idea of what the book is about and because of that you kind of didn't wonder "who is who in real-life" all the time - ie. you got to enjoy the book a lot more.

I also liked the fact that this book had an ending. Yes, i know that there's a third book coming, but in a way you could stop your reading into this one. I really am not a fan of continuing stories. Most of them are just to make the story longer and "make money out of it". Of course all things didn't get closed with this book, so there's some mysteries waiting still ahead...

Lauren Conrad: LA Candy

Those of you who are not aware of the reality tv-life, the author is a star of couple of them (Laguna Beach and The Hills). The book is as well situated into a reality tv-world and therefore the only problem i had with it was the constant speculation happening in my head that "did this really happen?", "was all that made up in the show as well", "who is who in this book", "Jane doesn't really seem like Lauren, but neither does Scarlett", "what is real?!".

Other than that i kind of believe that the second and the third book will get my mindset in more relaxing mood. To read them just as novels is something that i hope i could do...

Agatha Christie: Five little pigs

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Classic Agatha.

I'd like to say she never fails, but i've read one book where she in my opinion fails, so i can't really say that anyways. But this book didn't fail. Yet again it was hard to think of who could be the murderer because the way obvious suspects never end up being them.. Don't really know what else to say.

If you like Agathas books and Poirot, you'll like this one as well... Maybe this was different from the others in that sence that a lot of the parts consisted of letters sent to Poirot by the 5 people who were suspects of in a old murdercase.. So this one had less of the thinking of Poirot and his old gray cells, but to me it didn't bother.

Patricia Cornwell: Scarpetta

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I have almost all of these Kay Scarpetta-books but somehow along the way, i lost my intrest on them.. but my mother kept buying me these books anyways.. I didn't read them in years but this summer i read this one and yet again i found myself hooked and now i want to get my collection filled and read them all over from the beginning!

Patricia Cornwell: Postmortem

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This is the first book of the series of Kay Scarpetta, but this was the last book of hers that i've read. Therefore i may not be totally fair for this book because all the other books kind of determine the destiny of this one. If i could think this was first of the books, i would be very pleased. The storyline is whole and she writes well. It was also nice to see Lucy as a ten year old genius than the plus 20 year old genius.

But because this was the last book i read, i found the story bit same as all the other ones. I know it's not fair to judge it because of it, but it's kind of annoying how almost all the books in the series are about someone betraying Kay at her office and some serial killer breaking into her house. I've actually never realised this before.. but maybe i did realise this now when i got the bigger picture of what this series is about, right from the beginning... Eventhough this kind of repeats the same story over and over again, i plan to read all of the books, in order, again..

Katherine Neville: The Eight

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I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed Dan Browns books. This has a similar storyline - she didn't copy him, this was written in the 1970s! And... Just a hint for someone who wonders/is scared: you don't have to know anything about chess to be able to follow the books storyline ;) Truly amazing storytelling!

Stephenie Meyer: Twilight

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I know there's forever ongoing battle between Harry Potter and Twilight, and that is one reason why i thought i should give this series a fair trial.. With HP you don't really need to be a teenager to keep up the intrest of reading, but with this one i really think you do. And i'm not a teenager anymore, so it took forever to get into a mindset that i'm just reading this anyways. It didn't wow me, story was somewhat fine, but i have no intrest of reading the other books or seeing the movies.