Sophie has kindly requested me to write a guest post for her
blog and as she is always doing such great reviews, I decided that for my guest
post I would review my top 5 books! Reading is a passion of mine as is music
for Sophie, so for this post, I will be generating all my passion into short
reviewing each book.
“The
Fault in Our Stars” – John
Green
TFiOS is a teen/young adult novel written by the multi-talented
author John Green. TFiOS is an emotional story, about a 16 year old girl named
Hazel who is suffering from thyroid cancer, and a 16 year old boy named Gus,
with osteosarcoma cancer. The story follows the life of the two cancer patients
and we shed multiple tears over their story in so many ways. We experience,
life, death, heartache, happiness, fear and so many other emotions throughout
the 336 pages in the book, but most importantly we experience love. It may
sound cliché, but the love shared between Augustus Waters and Hazel-Grace
Lancaster is so rich and pure, it’s indescribably loveable.
Quote: "I'm in
love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple
pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is
just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all
doomed and that there will come a day when all our labour has been returned to
dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am
in love with you.”
“Paper
Aeroplanes” – Dawn
O’Porter
Quote:
“What's the point in worrying about the
future? Who says there will even be a future? What happens if you die tomorrow
and all you ever did was sit in maths classes and play the clarinet and moan
about your family? What good is the future to you then?”
“Before I
Die” – Jenny Downham
I may only be half way
through this book at the moment, but I have seen the film adaptation ‘Now is
Good’ and although film adaptations tend to ruin the story quite so often, it’s
fair to say I have a pretty good idea on how it goes.
Young Tessa is a teenage sufferer of acute lymphoblastic
leukaemia and after battling with chemotherapy for 4 years, she is now told her
life is coming to an end. After coming terms with the situation reasonably
well, Tessa creates a list of things to do before she dies including some very
risky behaviour for her health. Alongside her best friend Zoey and recent love
interest Adam, Tessa carries out her bucket list marking off each activity as
she goes along. Once Zoey is resulted with a positive pregnancy test, Tessa
makes it her wish to out-live her expectancy to see the baby born before she
dies. With an overprotective father and a younger brother Cal who doesn’t quite
understand, Tessa lives the life she has to the fullest never wasting a moment,
battling cancer, life and love.
Quote: “There's a
terrible stillness. I notice a small tear in the wallpaper above her shoulder.
I notice finger marks grimed on the light switch. Somewhere down in the house,
a door opens and shuts. As Zoey turns to face me, I realize that life is made
up of a series of moments, each one a journey to the end.”
“Looking
for Alaska” –
John Green
Another teen/young adult novel by John Green is ‘Looking for Alaska’. Miles Halter aka
‘Pudge’ starts a new year at Culver Creek Preparatory High School in Alabama,
where he meets new best friends The Colonel and instant love interest Alaska.
Alaska Young, the wild, moody, unpredictable, beautiful and enigmatic girl that
Miles Halter can’t help but fall for. With an obsessed for smoking and
uncountable quirks, Miles finds himself oaring over Alaska, despite her
constant attempts to set him up with Romanian friend Lara. During the book,
Miles expresses his love for famous last words adding to his many quirks. After
setting up the schools best prank ever, the unexpected turns as Alaska involves
herself in a car accident causing the worst to happen. Miles and The Colonel
are devastated, and spend the rest of the school term trying to fix life up for
Alaska, and also trying to work out why she did what she did. Why was she so
angry? Why did she drink so much? Why didn’t they stop her? Why did she have to
go?
Quote: “What is an
"instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second?
Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her
lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw
panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five
minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain
feels particularly instantaneous.”
“Dear
John” – Nicholas Sparks
Nicholas Sparks is known for his many romantic novels and yes
‘Dear John’ is another one. It’s
often known for the film adaptation but to be quite frank with you, ‘Dear John’ is a much better book.
Savannah and John share a beautiful relationship after bumping into each other
on the beach. Despite John’s work with the army, Savannah and John do all their
best to keep their romance blooming overseas through uncountable amount of
letters to and from each other. When John’s father dies, he returns home to
mourn his loss and grieving arguments with Savannah take place. No story is
complete without a disruption, and when Savannah becomes tired of the constant
distance between herself and John and the infrequent visits home, she decides
to move on with her life. Savannah remarries a family friend who is soon to
die, leaving Savannah alone again. John later returns home where they meet for
the first time since.
Quote: “And when
her lips met mine, I knew that I could live to be a hundred and visit every
country in the world, but nothing would ever compare to that single moment when
I first kissed the girl of my dreams and knew that my love would last forever.”
So that’s 5 of my favourite books! Have you read any?
Written by Amy Peet
