Showcase Sunday #33.

Showcase Sunday is a weekly meme hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea. Its aim is to showcase your newest books and to see what everyone else received for review, borrowed from libraries, bought in bookshops and downloaded onto eReaders this week. If you'd like to join, click here.

Gifted:

I'd seen Me Before You on a couple of blogs so when I saw it at the charity shop I thought I'd give it a try. To be honest, the synopsis didn't really appeal to me at first but in the end I loved this book. Me Before You is about Will Traynor, a rich, active businessman, whose life is turned upside down when he is involved in a motorcycle accident and paralysed from the chest downwards.  His mother is desperate to find a full-time day carer for him and finds Louisa Clark, a recently unemployed young woman who doesn't have any qualifications. At first, Will and Lou don't get along at all, but they learn a lot from each other as time goes on. This is a heartbreaking story about two people whose lives are irrevocably changed from the moment they meet. 

Me Before You is written from the first person perspective of Lou, the female protagonist. Lou is a really likable character and I thoroughly enjoyed reading her narrative because she's really funny and fearless but also sensitive and unique. She is the sort of girl who wears yellow and black striped tights even though she's twenty seven and you can't help but love her. I really connected with her character and felt both her happiness and her pain as I read this book. There are a couple of chapters which give us an insight into the minds of some other characters including Will, Nathan (Will's medical carer), Camilla (Will's mother) and Katrina (Lou's sister). The book starts off with a small chapter from Will's perspective on the day of his accident which is great because it means you can really understand what Will was like before his accident and see the tremendous difference afterwards. 

The story line of this novel is really moving. I've never really thought about what it would be like to be completely paralysed or how it would make me feel but having read this book I feel that I have a greater understanding of what life must be like for those with disabilities. Obviously I'm still nowhere even close to really understanding the life of a quadraplegic but I can certainly appreciate that it's a lot more difficult that one might at first imagine. This isn't the sort of book I usually read, in fact, I usually avoid 'illness'-related books but I seriously regret keeping this book on my shelf, unread, for the past year. 

This is a completely different sort of romance to any that I've read before because it doesn't really involve any physical touching and, in fact, it's not even really mentioned until the last few passages of the book. Even though it is not explicit, you can feel it developing between the characters, a real connection, a not the whimsical ones you often find in romance books. This is, without a doubt, the most beautiful and heartbreaking love story I have ever read in my entire life. This is the sort of love that creeps up on you when you least expect it. There was one moment whilst reading this that I actually started sobbing, like full on sobbing, and I had to put the book down for five minutes whilst I got all my emotions out. This was not the only time I cried whilst reading this novel, oh no, I was pretty much crying not stop for the entirety of the second half and this book touched my heart in a way that no other book has. In some ways, you could call this an adult version of The Fault in Our Stars, as there are similar-ish issues explored, but I was much more moved by Me Before You - if that's even possible! 

Lou and Will learn a lot from each other as the book progresses, so in turn, I too learnt a lot. I think reading this book may have even made me a better person because I certainly have a completely changed perspective on quadraplegics, on life and on love. I cannot recommend this book enough. It is absolutely phenomenal and a must-read for everyone! For teenage readers, if you liked TFIOS, then Me Before You is probably also up your street. For adult readers, anyone with a heart will love this book. 

I'm not sure why, but when I picked this up about a year ago in the charity shop, I was under the impression that this was a young adult book, but I can assure you, it is not. Before I Go To Sleep is a chilling thriller about a woman who suffers from a severe form of amnesia that means that everytime she falls asleep she loses most of her memories and wakes up thinking that she is still in her mid-twenties. She has absolutely no recollection of the accident that caused her amnesia or the fact that the man she wakes up next to everyday is her husband, Ben. Every morning Ben explains the situation to her and Christine keeps herself busy in the house until Ben comes home from work. One day, she receives a call from a young doctor who wishes to try and help her regain her memories. She starts seeing him in secret, her husband would not allow her to see any more doctors for fear it would 'distress' her further, and he suggests that Christine should start writing a diary of everything that she has learnt each day so that she read it back to herself later. In this way, Christine starts to remember more and more of her past and as she re-reads past diary entries she starts to doubt the people that she trusts and wonders who is really telling the truth. This story is about Christine's journey to finding her memory.

This book starts off with an exchange between Dr Nash and Christine as he returns her notebook to her. She has already been writing in it for a few weeks and finally decided that she was ready for Dr Nash to read its contents, though of course, when she woke up that morning, she had no recollection of ever giving him the notebook, or that it even existed. This exchange is soon followed by all the diary entries that Christine ever wrote in her diary and it ends with Christine back in the present dealing with the events that follow the re-reading of her diary.

As the main character of this book is an amnesiac, we are constantly shrouded in mist as we trudge our way through this novel. There are so many mysteries and it's almost impossible to predict what's coming next, because, of course, Christine can't retain any of her memories. It's obvious that something is amiss in Christine's life but you're not really sure what because it's impossible to know who's telling the truth and who isn't. As we go through the novel we learn more and more bits about Christine's past but you're still not really sure whether her memories are real or whether they're just dreams.

I wouldn't say that any of the charcters are particularly likable but you certainly feel a sense of sympathy for Christine. It's all written from the first person perspective so you know exactly how Christine feels at each moment and she's the only character you can really connect. There aren't very many characters so this book is quite intense and I was totally absorbed whilst reading it.

The best way to describe this book would be to imagine that you, as a reader, are collecting more and more puzzle pieces as you work your way through this book, but you don't have any idea what the bigger picture is until you reach the very end. I absolutely zoomed through this book because I was so desperate to find out the truth. I could not have been more surprised at the ending and you're literally second guessing everything until the very end. I would highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone. I am not a fan of thrillers but this book is one of the most interesting and intense books I've ever read.

Showcase Sunday #33.

Showcase Sunday is a weekly meme hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea. Its aim is to showcase your newest books and to see what everyone else received for review, borrowed from libraries, bought in bookshops and downloaded onto eReaders this week. If you'd like to join, click here.

One more thing!

Enter my random giveaway in honour of BEA 2013! I live in London so I couldn't make it this year but next year, NEXT YEAR I WILL! Anyways, win a book of your choice, up to £8/$12, from The Book Depository as long as TBD ships to your country :)

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is part of a group of books that have had their covers completely redesigned by 'street artists' which are all rather snazzy looking so you should definitely go check all of those books out.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this book at all and to be honest it's not the sort of book that I'd usually go for. It's basically about a young man named Changez who moves from Lahore to the USA after gaining a place at the presitigious Princeton University. He then secures a very good job with a Underwood Samson, a huge valuation firm, and he really does seem to be living the dream. However, after the events of 9/11, people start to treat him differently and he ends up back in Lahore.

Curiously, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is written from the first person perspective and is basically one side of a conversation that Changez is having with an American he has just met in a cafe in Lahore. It is written retrospectively so you never hear anyone else talk and the replies from the American are inferred by Changez's replies. This is the first book of this kind that I've ever read and it was most fascinating. I would say that the narrative technique is the best thing about this book because it was just so unique. As you never hear what other character's are saying or feeling, it almost becomes a sort of game whereby you have to guess what the other person said by Changez's reaction which is interesting.

As for the plot, I wasn't particularly impressed. I believe that some people study this book at school and I can see why because it raises many issues to do with racism and immigration, subjects which are still a hot topic in the USA, but in some ways, I wonder how it made its way onto school reading lists. The plot doesn't have that much substance in the sense that not a lot actually happens. I thought that this would focus a lot on the treatment of muslims post-9/11, but this was not the case. The story was slightly convoluted by a sub-plot involving Changez and an American girl, Erica, but what she brings to the story becomes less and less significant to the greater plot even though it starts to take up more and more of the narrative which is perplexing.

To top it all off, the ending was thoroughly confusing. It is a sort of plot twist (I think?), but to be honest, I wasn't really sure and this is one of the flaw's of the one sided conversation style of narration because it's all about what Changez is saying, not really what he is feeling and so it wasn't that clear what was going on and who was doing what.

Also, I had no idea that this book had been made into a film that was released in 2012. I haven't watched it, but judging from the trailer it doesn't really seem to have followed the pattern of the book that stringently so I'm not keen to watch it.