Book Review: Titanic: The Long Night

Katie June 19, 2012 0 Comments

It looks like I found another Titanic book that I hadn’t read yet! Titanic:The Long Night is historical fiction novel by Diane Hoh.  It tells the story of two girls aboard the Titanic – Elizabeth and Katie.

Elizabeth is a first class passenger and is heading back to America after a trip to England.  When she gets back to America she will be making her debut to society and marrying Alan – a gentleman that her parents have arranged for her to marry but that Elizabeth doesn’t love.  Elizabeth wishes to go to college instead, but her father and mother have other plans for her.  While on the Titanic her parents introduce her to a friend’s son, Max, and the two quickly fall in love with each other.  When she tells her parents that she is not in love with Alan and doesn’t want to marry him, her parents don’t want to hear it.

The two girls trips almost parallel each others, but Katie is a third class passenger from Ireland.  She is heading to New York – Brooklyn to be exact to live with her aunt and uncle and she hopes to be an actress.  She is traveling with brothers Brian and Paddy.  Of course, a love triangle develops.  Paddy thinks that Brian and Katie should be together and gets upset when Brian starts being friendly with a Swedish passenger.  Brian urges Katie to tell Paddy how she really feels about him and that she doesn’t love Brian and urge him to get on a lifeboat with her when the boat starts sinking.  Katie does manage to get Paddy in a lifeboat by saying that he is a seaman.  This ends up getting him taken off the boat to go back and look for survivors.

With Paddy on another lifeboat looking for survivors – and Elizabeth having no idea if Max got on a boat after she left him on the deck – will either girls be reunited with their loves? Or will Elizabeth be forced to carry out her arranged marriage to Alan and Katie be forced to finish her trip to New York alone?  Find out all this – and more! In Titanic: The Long Night.

I’ll admit it, I was a bit excited that the girl in this book was named Katie.  Unfortunately she is quite Irish and has red hair so I couldn’t quite picture her as me – that and she had quite an accent – even in print.  But it was fun to see my name there. I kind of hoped for a bit of a different outcome with the book – I won’t go in to too much more detail but some of the tales of how some people survived versus how others didn’t, didn’t really seem to make that much sense.  But considering it is fiction (albeit based on a historical event) I guess I won’t try to look too much into the logic of it all and just take it for a historical fiction love story instead.

I received a free e-copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for writing this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

Two teenagers discover true love aboard the doomed ocean liner

Elizabeth Farr never wanted to return to America. During her family’s vacation abroad, she has fallen in love with England, and is despondent when her father refuses to let her stay. Returning to New York means having her debut into society, and that means a swiftly arranged marriage. Elizabeth will never go to college, never learn to be a reporter—as she sees it, her life is over as soon as the Titanic reaches port. Of course, if she’s unlucky, her life will be over far sooner than that.

As Elizabeth and her family settle into their first-class cabins, Katie Hanrahan, a young Irish girl with dreams of finding fortune in America, makes her way to a steerage berth. Both girls have plans for the future, but love and death are about to intervene.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Diane Hoh including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Book Review: The Twitter Diaries

Katie June 17, 2012 0 Comments

The Twitter Diaries: 2 Cities, 1 Friendship, 140 Characters is a book by Georgie Thompson and Imogen Lloyd Webber that follows a year im the life of Tuesday and Stella.  The twist of this is that almost the entire book is told through a series of twitter direct messages (DMs)!  The epilogue and prologue are the only portions of this book written like a “normal” book.

It was quite an interesting approach at telling a story and I think that it told the story quite well.  (And made me say “Why didn’t I think of that!?” a few times.) I didn’t feel like I was missing out on any aspect of the story due to how the story was being told, it seemed more like I was “creeping” on someone’s private conversation. (Which I guess in a way I was, but they are fictional characters so I don’t feel too bad about it!)

The only “down side” to the book was that the list of players in the book was at the end.  Easy to flip back and forth to see who is who if you have the print copy in your hand, not so easy to do with an e-book.  Though you do tend to figure out who is who from context clues as well. (While it was mentioned in the table of contents, it didn’t dawn on me at the time what the section titled “Characters” actually was.)

You can follow Georgie and Imogen (the authors) on twitter @OfficiallyGT and @ILloydWebber and you can also follow the main characters of the story, Stella and Tuesday at their twitter handles: @StellaCabill and @TuesdayFields.

The Twitter Diaries was released May 21, 2012 and should be available at all your favorite book buying hot spots!

I received a free e-copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

The Twitter Diaries tells the story of pen pals for the 21st century. Two parallel lives separated by an ocean but united over a social network.

Tuesday (@Tuesday Fields), a sports reporter and Stella (@StellaCavill), a men’s shoe designer, are Brit 30-somethings who are introduced in NYC on NYE by a mutual friend, a notorious transatlantic TV presenter. They strike up an instant bond.

Over the next 365 days,  and  put the world to rights, one tweet at a time. From Melbourne to Monaco to Magaluf, the girls flirt and fall out with sportsmen, movie stars… and TV presenters. And then there’s their mothers…

December 31st of the same year and  and  meet again, for the first time since the last time. A lot can happen in a year. It turns out just 140 characters can change everything.

The Twitter Diaries is an instantly recognisable yet fictitious tale all generations can relate to, whether they are one of the world’s 140 million and counting transfixed Twitter users or not. Accessible, funny and heart-warming, it’s this summer’s must read.

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Book Review: Knee Deep

Katie June 15, 2012 2 Comments

When I saw that another book from Jolene Perry was available for review, I jumped at the chance because I had loved her book Night Sky which I had read previously.

Knee Deep is about a girl named Ronnie (short from Rhonda), she is in highschool and dating a guy named Shawn who she believes she will be with forever. Shawn begins to change and become abusive and her best friend Luke is trying to get her away from him.  Meanwhile, Luke and Ronnie are playing opposite each other in the school’s performance of Romeo and Juliet and Ronnie isn’t sure if she is falling for Luke because of herself or because the connection that they need to have with each other in the play.

When Shawn gets abusive towards Ronnie in front of Luke, Luke tells her that she has to leave Shawn, but Ronnie is torn.  Should she leave Shawn and go for Luke? Or leave Shawn and spend time alone? Or stick it out with Shawn who is obviously going through a tough time?

I loved this book as well, I guess I just really like the young adult genre and I also really love Jolene’s writing style.  I completely feel like I am in the story with these characters and rooting for them to make it through alright, although there were times I wished I could have jumped in to the book and yelled at Ronnie to listen to Luke.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone else who loves YA books or is a young adult themselves as it is helpful with trying to show how to deal through abusive relationships, which happens all the time.

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to participate in this blog tour.

About the Book

Shawn is the guy Ronnie Bird promised her life to at the age of fourteen.  He’s her soul mate. He’s more uptight every day, but it’s not his fault. His family life is stressful, and she’s adding to it. She just needs to be more understanding, and he’ll start to be thte boy she fell in love with. She won’t give up on someone she’s loved for so long.

Luke is her best friend, and the guy she hangs with to watch girlie movies in her large blanketopias. He’s the guy she can confide in before she even goes to her girlfriends, and the guy who she’s playing opposite in Romeo and Juliet. Now her chest flutters every time he gets too close. This is new. Is Ronnie falling for him? Or is Juliet? The lines are getting blurry, but leaving one guy for another is not something that a girl like Ronnie does.

Shawn’s outbursts are starting to give her bruises, and Luke’s heart  breaks as Ronnie remains torn. While her thoughts and feelings swirl around the lines between friendship and forever, she’s about to lose them both.

Jolene Perry’s Bio

Jolene grew up in Wasilla, Alaska. She graduated from Southern Utah University with a degree in political science and French, which she used to teach math to middle schoolers.

After living in Washington, Utah and Las Vegas, she now resides in Alaska with her husband and two children.  Aside from writing, Jolene sews, plays the guitar, sings when forced, and spends as much time outside as possible.

She is also the author of Night Sky and The Next Door Boys.

Book Review: Fifty Shades Trilogy

Katie June 14, 2012 0 Comments

The latest popular book that everyone seems to be reading is Fifty Shades of Grey (and the 2 additional books in the series – Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed).  These books started out as fan fiction about Twilight – in an alternate reality where Edward and Bella are not vampires. (Which is good because I’m not sure I can handle a vampire book. I tend to avoid them because I think it is overdone.)  In order to be published the names were changed and a new popular book series was born.

The books are about Christian Grey, a rich business man who makes something like $100,000 per hour.  He meets Anastasia Steele when her roomate Kate is too ill to do an interview with him for their college paper.  Christian ends up interested in Ana and a relationship develops.  However, Christian is looking for a submissive and the rest of the story becomes extremely sexual. (And I’m not sure if ‘extremely’ is extreme enough of a word)  At first I heard that the books were nothing but sex and when I got to page 80 and still nothing had happened, I thought maybe people were exaggerating.  Let me tell you – they weren’t.  Once everything started happening… well, then it didn’t stop.

The books really are not all that well written, which is to be expected of fan fic.  But there was just something with this story and the characters (mainly Christian) that kept me wanting to read more.  Christian is certainly an interesting character and while Ana does try to get some back story out of him throughout the series, he is not always forthcoming with information about his past.  We know that he was born to a crack whore who died and he was left with her for several days and then he was adopted by the Greys.  We get told a little bit about what got him into the lifestyle of being a dominant to his submissives but it really takes him quite some time to fully explain everything to Ana and I’m not sure that everything is even out there.  I’d definitely be interested in a spin off book about Christian as a child / young adult because I think there was a lot of background to his character that was left to be desired.

There is talk now about the books being turned in to a movie and honestly I am not sure how they are going to do that. It would have to leave out a LOT of the sex scenes, I would think, and that seems to be what draws most people in to reading them.  I have no idea what actors I would want to see in it either.  I did have someone in mind when reading for Christian, but I have no idea who I’d pick for the role of Ana.  If you’ve read the book(s) – leave a comment with who you think should be cast for the movie, if it were to happen, or who you pictured in the roles. (Even if it is a hybrid of several celebrities)

I was not asked to post a review on these books. I read them on my own time and decided that I wished to share my thoughts on them with my readers.