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Saturday 7 February 2015

Book Review: 32 Seconds by Johanna K. Pitcairn

About the book

To the average onlooker, the city of Los Angeles represents glitz, glamour, and the celebrity lifestyle. But to seventeen-year-old Julie Jones, the city is a vast host of problems she’s longing to get away from. The latest? An unfortunate disagreement with her ex-boyfriend Mark—one that could land her in some serious hot water.

So rather than face the troubles that torment her, Julie decides to run away from her old life and start fresh somewhere new. But her parents aren’t on board with the plan, and she soon finds her bank accounts frozen and her wallet empty.

With just seventy-five dollars and a full tank of gas, the troubled teen is far too stubborn to turn around and head home. So what’s a girl to do?

What Julie doesn’t know is that her travels are about to take her somewhere unexpected—a place where she’ll be forced to come face to face with the ghosts of her past in order to secure her future.

A tale of redemption, hope, and freedom lost and found, 32 Seconds is a thought-provoking exploration into the human spirit and the nature of forgiveness.





About the author:


Johanna K. Pitcairn has dreamed of becoming a writer since childhood--authoring her first novel at the age of nine, and countless poems, stories, and screenplays by the age of seventeen. Later, rather than pursuing a career as a director and screenwriter, she decided to go to law school, driven by her father's opinion that "writing does not pay the bills."





Ten years later, she moved to New York City, which inspired her to go back to the excitement, wonder, and constant change of being a writer. Pitcairn is a huge fan of psychological-thriller novels and movies, and delves into her hopes, fears, friends, enemies, and everything in between in her own writing.








Contact the Author:

























My review:

When the story began, I figured it must be a category of YA novels tracing the life of a crass, rich, spoilt girl. I couldn't have been more wrong, for soon enough (read: two chapters later), the story was on a track entirely contrasting and different from what I had initially anticipated. And the contrast was a good one. With symbolic meanings and a parallelism throughout, the author has brought out a refreshing narration and story form. here's a cue: Julie is in her own brain. And she tries to figure out and make sense of, when she became the insensitive, indifferent and merciless moron that she had become.

I especially like how the author has described the problems of youth, teenage, the mess and confusion that life becomes. All the thoughts that cross a teenager's mind are there in black and white, in their bare and unaltered form.
"I didn't like people staring at me, especially when they thought they knew who I was." 
Silently but powerfully, memories play an indispensable role in the whole story. They overwhelm us, they empower us, they weaken us, they abandon us, we wipe them off, we try to stick to them, it is as if all paradoxes are associated with them, all at once.
I opine that if a book is able to surprise you and bring in a suspense to keep you hooked, then a lot of thought has gone into its writing. This one scored brownie points just because of that!
Also, unlike other books I have been reading of late, this one is embellished with literary pleasures, and ultimately the pleasures of reading. It has a lot of dialogues, thoughts and monologues expressed in a way that enables us to extract more to contemplate than just the plot. Which is what I like the most in any book. Consider this, "My guts twisted in knots a well-seasoned sailor couldn't disentangle"

My Judgement:
I definitely recommend this book to readers who'd love to read to keep a memory of having read it1


Book links:



This book review is a part of b00k r3vi3w Tours.


Thursday 5 February 2015

Book Review: Love, Latte and Mutants by Sandra Cox

About the book:

Finding love is hard, even when you are a mutant.
Like most seventeen-year-olds, Piper Dunn wants to blend in with the crowd. Having a blowhole is a definite handicap. A product of a lab-engineered mother with dolphin DNA, Piper spends her school days hiding her brilliant ocean-colored eyes and sea siren voice behind baggy clothing and ugly glasses. When Tyler, the new boy in school, zeroes in on her, ignoring every other girl vying for his attention, no one, including Piper, understands why...

Then Piper is captured on one of her secret missions rescuing endangered sea creatures and ends up in the same test center where her mother was engineered. There she discovers she isn€™t the only one of her kind. Joel is someone she doesn€t have to hide from, and she finds herself drawn to the dolph-boy who shares her secrets. Talking to him is almost as easy as escaping from the lab. Deciding which boy has captured her heart is another story...


Author website: http://sandracox1.com/


My Review:

The story is meant to make you fall in love with it. Tyler is the ultimate male protagonist every fangirl will obsess about. These are the kind of YA book series we all wish to read every day. So, here's the deal. The female protagonist of our story is Piper, a dolph girl. And at school, she tries to keep a low profile to keep her secret a secret. But as luck would have it, keeping company with Holly and Tyler, the popular twins, defeats her purpose. And she lets go, because, well, Tyler is someone you'd do that for. Her character is the one that drives the whole plot, and that is delightful for YA readers. She has a family history, she has a secret, she is the one Tyler is chasing, she is the one who will decide how this story twists. Her attempts at keeping a low profile, like wearing oversized clothes and donning nerdy glasses, multiplied how adorable and endearing she was to us.

At one juncture, the story takes a turn and frankly, had it not turned bak to where this all had started, i would have been heart-broken.
There is an element of hilarity as well. Although why anyone with a name like Edgar should be arrogant is beyond me. Even this Edgar guy, the character is so well-etched, underneath his social facade of arrogance is meanness and cruelty, and that goes on to point how shitty High school can get.
The story never got boring, and I liked it the way I like reading Jenny Han.
I am definitely looking forward to the next in the series, and hoping it has more of latte.





This book was received from Net Galley for review.



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Kritika's bookshelf: read

Angels & Demons
The Story of My Life
The Hunger Games
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Ruined
A Tale of Two Cities
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
Sense and Sensibility
Emma
A Christmas Carol
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Kidnapped
The Time Machine
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The Da Vinci Code


Kritika Narula's favorite books »


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