A Love Story for the Non-Romantics: Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Landline by Rainbow Rowell is really a book about second chances, as the tagline 'If you got a second chance at love, would you make the same call?' tells us on the front cover. This is a love story for the realists and the non-romantics which kicks off many years after most romance stories take place - after the fireworks have subsided.

Georgie McCool's marriage is in big trouble. After one too many work commitments taking precedence over their family, Georgie's husband Neal packs up their family and leaves to spend Christmas day in Omaha. In the week before Christmas, alone and fearing for the break up of her marriage Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. She has one week to not only write a full season's sitcom script (her reasons for staying behind in LA over Christmas) but to figure out how to either fix her marriage in the future or make sure it never happened.

Georgie and Neal are two people who fell in love once, long ago and have slowly drifted apart. Through conversations with Neal in the past, Georgie paints a not-so-pretty-picture of how their relationship has ground to a halt. The characters for me are what really cemented this novel as top-notch. Neither Georgie or Neal are perfect - Georgie has often neglected her family for work and has a close relationship with her male writing partner Seth which adds to the tension in her marriage while Neal has given up a career for their family but is directionless in his own life wants and needs. 

It was refreshing to read about two people who weren't the answer to each other's problems and didn't need saving. For a romance story to focus on choosing whether to stay together (or not) and to make a relationship work is a lot closer to the reality of love for many people and what made this book so relatable. 

I'd love to know if you've read this book and what you thought of it?!

The Collected Works of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Within the first three pages of reading The Collected Works of AJ Fikry I knew I was going to love this book. For a reasonably short book at 243 pages, Gabrielle Zevin manages to squeeze years of life into her characters and she knows their personalities inside and out. This is a book really driven by its characters rather than its plot which makes reading it a delightful discovery of each characters story.

The first character we are introduced to is Amelia, a book rep who travels to Alice Island on a seasonal basis to sell her book list to AJ Fikry. AJ Fikry is a book store owner who never buys anything that Amelia suggests. He is both rude and a border-line alcoholic whose wife died in tragic circumstances and AJ is still mourning her death. Maya is the baby who is left in AJ Fikry's bookshop and whose mother is found in the icy waters of Alice Island a few weeks after abandoning her.

This is the type of novel that could have had no plot whatsoever and it would go unnoticed as just spending time in the presence of Amelia and AJ is enough keep me entertained. I assure you it does have a plot though as AJ soon finds there are people both new and familiar to him that work their way into his life and he soon discovers that he wants to keep them closer.

What struck me and made me love this novel was just how extraordinarily ordinary Gabrielle Zevin's characters are. Ordinary because their story is small, involving only a handful of people and the events that take place at Fikry's bookshop are neither earth shattering or action packed but extra-ordinary because it's so rare to read a book with characters whose lives are so real and stories so full.

Delve into The Collective Works of AJ Fikry because for a while at least, you will feel like you are part of their tiny world on Alice Island and by the time you close the final page you will have cried and laughed and already feel like you should start reading again.

Harper Lee Has A New Novel Coming Out...And It's Going To Be Amazing

So, in what is pretty much some of the best news to grace the book loving community, Harper Lee author of To Kill A Mockingbird is set to release a new novel and I for one am pretty excited.

To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my favourite and most read novels EVER so the news that Go Set A Watchman will feature characters from To Kill A Mockingbird is pretty epic to say the least. The book will feature the much adored character of Scout, twenty years on as she travels back to Maycomb to see her father Atticus.

Apparantly Lee started writing the novel decades ago but when To Kill A Mockingbird was released she abandoned the project. The fact that she started writing it not long after To Kill A Mockingbird makes me think that this sequel will have a really strong voice much like its predecessor and kind of makes me even more excited to read it.

With favourite books and authors there is always a feeling of trepidation when they start something new or a little different (in this case a sequel to one of the most classics of books in the world and also a fifty year time gap makes me a little nervous) but I for one will most definitely be pre-ordering a copy and putting To Kill A Mockingbird back onto my list of titles to re-read again this year.

Are you a fan of Harper Lee? Will you be reading Go Set A Watchman? Is this the best news ever?