Genre: Realistic Fiction

Review: Wild Swans – Jessica Spotswood

Review: Wild Swans – Jessica Spotswood

Realizing there’s more to family than first imagined is something Ivy has to do in Wild Swans, which is a tender story about truly growing up. Ivy has lived most of her life in a small town, where both she, and everyone else knows that her mom left her when she was very young. Since she was two, she’s never seen her mom, but she’s had a stable and good life with her grand-dad and some good friends. Wild Swans unfolds over the span of just a couple of weeks in the summer before Ivy’s senior year at high school, and she has a lot of choices to make about her future. Alex, her best friend and the boy next […]

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Review: The Problem With Forever – Jennifer L. Armentrout

Review: The Problem With Forever – Jennifer L. Armentrout

The Problem With Forever gave me all the feels, and it took me a while to be able to actually write a full review – no coherence for days. I love NA novels that make me sad, angry, happy – sometimes all at the same time. The Problem With Forever really rose to the occasion and made my heart break more than once, and I cried, laughed and cheered. I also screamed a bit – especially at Mallory’s adoptive dad – because characters did or said stuff they really shouldn’t have. Mallory and Rider *sighs* they have been through so much darkness and abuse, it’s truly amazing they can function and have any kind of hope at all. They were […]

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Review: Lilac Girls – Martha Hall Kelly

Review: Lilac Girls – Martha Hall Kelly

Lilac Girls follows three young women from the very beginning of WWII, they are in very different situations, and following them was both tough, terrifying and strangely wonderful. While Lilac Girls is a fiction novel, some of the story is based on a real person, and the letters she sent to people during WWII. I found the story to be incredibly well written, and showing the different points of views of the three main characters in an extraordinary way. One young woman was sent to a concentration camp, with her mother and her sister. Another young woman – who had almost finished her education to become a doctor, and she starts her work in a concentration camp. The third young woman […]

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Review: Relativity – Antonia Hayes

Review: Relativity – Antonia Hayes

Relativity is a gem! Ethan is an amazing tween, smart, open-minded and extremely attaching. His story is complicated, and filled with equal measures of heartache and hope. I didn’t really know what to expect when I started Relativity, such a strong, heart-wrenching story was not it, though. That’s what I got – Ethan was such a great main character to follow. He’s young, but very wise, and so smart! Some of the things he talked about went way over my head, but I still never felt stupid. Since he was a baby, Ethan has lived with his mom, Claire, and they have done really well for themselves. Even with Ethan’s problems – which in many ways won’t really be problems […]

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Review: A Walk in the Sun – Michelle Zink

Review: A Walk in the Sun – Michelle Zink

A Walk in the Sun made me feel the feels! Rose was a strong, young woman, one who didn’t realize her strength until the end of the story One of the main themes of A Walk in the Sun is how grief can change us! Our outlook on life, our plans, our wants even, up to a point, our needs. After Rose’s mother passed away, her father became a shell of his former self, and the only person left to take care of the ranch, the animals and the house – on top of finishing high school – was Rose. She worked herself hard, and while she was tired more often than not, she also felt some kind of satisfaction […]

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Review: Finding Audrey – Sophie Kinsella

Review: Finding Audrey – Sophie Kinsella

Finding Audrey is the brilliantly narrated story about Audrey – who suffers from social anxiety after something very bad happened to her at her school. Because Finding Audrey is narrated by the eponymous heroine herself, in first person present tense – but with some scenes filmed by her camera – reading this story was like living with her for a while. While I don’t have any experience with mental illness myself, Audrey’s story felt very realistic to me, from the way she was hiding in the den, always wearing dark sunglasses, and not able to interact with many people at all. In the middle of a slightly chaotic family, and with her therapist’s help, she was slowly breaking out of her […]

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Review: What We Find – Robyn Carr

Review: What We Find – Robyn Carr

What We Find is a beautifully written tender and slightly nostalgic story about finding love, finding oneself, and moving forward after dealing with loss. What We Find is the kind of contemporary romance that makes you think. About life in general, the choices we make, how to live with those choices, and how to continue moving forward after loss and disappointment. I enjoyed both Maggie and Cal, they were strong characters, but they both were a bit lost when they met, and their meeting gave them hope once more. The camping ground where they met is a crossroads in more than one sense, in the literal sense for many hikers, it is a meeting point, a place to change directions, […]

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Review: A Girl’s Guide to Moving On – Debbie Macomber

Review: A Girl’s Guide to Moving On – Debbie Macomber

A Girl’s Guide to Moving On is a sweet, tender and sometimes sad story about hope. And about love. And how to move on after a divorce. Picking ones life back up and fit the pieces together after a divorce can be harder than it seems, and for both Nichole and Leanne, the new beginning was emotionally difficult. A Girl’s Guide to Moving On started with the two of them needing something to help them get back into the world once more, and so they made a list of things they should do. Let go, help others to help themselves, love themselves so they could love others as well. The relationship between Nichole and Leanne was the most honest and […]

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Review: Me Before You – Jojo Moyes

Review: Me Before You – Jojo Moyes

Me Before You is an emotional read, in which Lou finds herself, and Will makes a decision that can’t be taken back! This was a buddy read with Brandee @ Bookworm Brandee, and part of my review below is our chatting about it. Me Before You is not only the story about Will, how he copes with being a quadriplegic, and how hard it is for him to depend on other people for every single thing he wants or needs to do. It is also the story of Lou, of finding herself, of figuring out what she wants to do with her life. Of living, rather than just existing. To be honest, I think I found Lou’s journey to be […]

Posted 26 February, 2016 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 25 Comments
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Review: What Was Mine – Helen Klein Ross

Review: What Was Mine – Helen Klein Ross

What Was Mine was a strong story, touching on a very difficult subject, made even more difficult because it followed the baby who was kidnapped, her biological mother, and the woman who raised her (after kidnapping her). There were a lot of things I really enjoyed in What Was Mine, and one of them was that the author actually managed to make me understand, and partly even feel sorry for, Lucy. After years of trying to get pregnant, Lucy’s husband decided their lives were just fine without a child, whereas Lucy continued to long for a baby with everything she had! This difference of opinion ended their marriage, and Lucy lived alone in their house in New Jersey for a […]

Posted 22 January, 2016 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 10 Comments
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