Love Marriage

Love Marriage is the story of Yalini, an American born daughter of a Sri Lankan family. She and her family care for her dying uncle she had never met and through this she learns and keeps a record of the past generations of her family and the turmoil in Sri Lanka.

I really enjoyed the writing style of this book, little vignettes about her different relatives, usually related to if they got married/how/to who. I especially liked the story of Yalini's, father's mother, Tharshi. At first these little stories almost stand alone and then towards the end the whole story starts to come together as one.

At times it became hard to remember who was who and what we had learned about them so far. I also wish we got to learn more about Yalini herself, I felt I knew her family better than her.

All in all I was very pleased with this book, I found it easy to read because of the quick little vignettes, the broke the story up very nicely.

ARC from Librarything's Early Reviewer's Program.
3.5/5 Stars

Secrets of the Hollywood Girls Club

Secrets of the Hollywood Girls Club follows the lives of four friends in Hollywood. Each chapter is told from an alternating viewpoint but their storylines always cross paths. At first I suspected it may be similar to all the other chick lit I had read and in a way it was, but at the same time it was much more fun that I remember other chick lit books being. Maybe because it was set around the movie business which is something I'm really interested in. I also felt the alternating viewpoints was a great strength of keeping the story interesting. I feel chick lit stories told from one perspective always turn into "poor me stories" where the main character is always feeling sorry for herself about something. I didn't feel that so much with this story. I also loved the bit of mystery to the story, it helped me keep reading because I wanted to know what happened. I also enjoyed the characters of Kiki and Boom Boom, some people not directly in the circle of the four main characters. I do feel it would have been best if I had read the first book first (didn't realize there was one until I started reading the book) it would have been nice to get the background on the main characters families and so forth, in the second book they are just mentioned in the background mostly. This was a fun book that I really enjoyed!

ARC from Librarything's Early Reviewer's Program.
3.5/5 Stars

Gossip of Starlings

The back cover says it all. Prep school, drugs, friendship, tragedy. Already knowing that, there was nothing left for me to be engaged by.

Gossip of the Starlings is the story of two girls (Catherine and Skye) and their friendship while attending an all girls boarding school. Catherine is a new student leaving her old school for her "bad girl" ways and Skye is the daughter of a senator with a constant spotlight on her.

I thought I was in for a shocking tragic read, it was more sad and not totally unexpected based on the premise. I didn't find myself connecting with any of the characters or really caring what happened to them. I would have enjoyed more of the prep school atmosphere, with more teachers and students and their interactions. I felt the story was pretty simple and almost quiet in a way. It would have been nice to see Catherine and Skye framed by a few more characters.

Overall it was a ok read, I did enjoy the writing, it was beautiful, just would have liked more character development and characters.

Out June 10th. ARC from Librarything's Early Reviewers program.
2.5/5 Stars

Gifted: A Review

I recently got the chance to participate in Librarything.com's Early Reviewer's program and was selected to read and review Gifted by Nikita Lalwani. I'd suggest if you aren't doing so already, the join librarything and join their Early Reviewer's program. It's great fun. This book is scheduled for release September 11th.

The story of young Rumi Vasi, math genius, and her family explores many themes including adolescence, the nature of genius, and an Indian family living in England. At a young age it is discovered the Rumi is gifted in mathematics and her father takes it upon himself to nurture those skills and help her get into Oxford at the age of 15.

Immediately the book “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri and the movie, “Bend it Like Beckham” written and directed by Gurinder Chadha came to mind, both sharing some storylines of Indian family’s displaced. While these two stories memorized me, “Gifted” did not.

I tried desperately to connect to Rumi, succeeding only a few times. I felt bad for her mother, and did not like her father. The parents both seemed confused in their parenting abilities and I wished for them to have more compassion and realize that things were not as they seemed with Rumi.

Three parts of the story were specifically enjoyable for me, Rumi interacting with her little brother Nibu, Rumi’s two trips to India, and Rumi living away from home while attending Oxford. Maybe I enjoyed these small sections because I was in someway able to relate to them, unlike other parts of the story.

I connected to the idea of the story but not the execution. I am sure some people will enjoy this book, it just wasn’t for me and that happens.

1 and 1/2 stars of 5
Manuscript from LibraryThing Early Reviewers