Book Talk: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: 2025 Updated Edition!

2025 Update: I recently watched Netflix's latest release, the movie Frankenstein, and I have to say it is SO GOOD. "I loved it" would be an understatement, which is saying a lot because I usually do not enjoy renditions of classics especially when they take liberties with the storyline to make it, well, like a movie. BUT this one is amazing - the gothic setting, the characters, the dialog - everything's top notch. BUT before you go watch, I'd highly recommend getting your copy from Amazon and reading the book first. :)

***

Everyone must have heard of Frankenstein, even if they never knew that it is a book by Mary Shelley, who started writing it at the age of eighteen, and publishing it when she was twenty. Even fewer people would know that the idea for this book came from an evening's pass-time activity when Mary, her fiance and poet Percy Shelley, friend Lord Byron and John Polidori were sitting in Geneva during a tour of Europe, and had to invent a way to spend their evening. They came up with a contest among themselves for the best ghost story, and the idea of Frankenstein was conceived in Mary's dream that night.

Written nearly 200 years ago, Frankenstein is the story of a young and ambitious man who is taken to the natural sciences at a very young age. Contrary to popular thought (and this is why it is crucial to read books), Frankenstein is the name of that young man rather than that of the creature (or 'monster', 'devil', 'demon', 'fiend') he created. The story has no name for the creature, and probably that's why the cartoon and film versions have named the monster Frankenstein for convenience (and it hurts to know that movie versions would, naturally, differ from the text). Victor Frankenstein belongs to a well-bred family, and his keen curiosity, facilitated by two professors at University, brings him to his doom. He discovers the secret to life, and attempts to create a being to whom he would provide life. The story takes a turn when the creator is appalled by his own creation as soon as it comes to life, and Victor abandons it. 

Frankenstein is not really a story of a monster and his evil deeds. It's more about the side-effects of knowledge, meddling with nature, trying to play God, and how unkindness and being loveless can turn one into a monster. The creature is at first loving, and very much like a new-born (except for the minor defect that he looks like an eight-feet tall and gigantic man). However, he has no one to take care of him, and his creator has abandoned him, so the creature goes out into the world on his own and realizes how man would despise him because of the way he looks. He learns to live in the wilderness, and gradually facing rejection from every kind of being he meets, he turns bitter and seeks revenge against his creator. 

The story follows the acts of the creature and Victor's increasing despondency. Though the creature acts cruelly, one can't help sympathizing with him. When you read about how much the creature craved love, and how frequently he was denied the basic need for existence, you do feel that his acts were justified and, strangely, human.

Frankenstein is a compelling read. It's written in an epistolary form - that is, in the form of letters. The initial introduction is made by a third observer, a Captain called Walton, who is travelling in the North in his ship. He comes across Victor Frankenstein, lost and barely surviving, and that's how he gets to know his story, and records it in his letters to his sister. 

I found Victor's lamentations to be a bit tiring towards the end and too frequent, but apart from that I couldn't help reading all the way. I was also amazed that the author was so young when she wrote the novel, which, apart from being Gothic in theme, also addresses topics like intolerance, delicateness of human nature, and effects of knowledge and ambition. I'm also listing facts about Frankenstein I got to know as a result of reading the book:

1. Frankenstein is the creator, not the monster. His full name is Victor Frankenstein, and he is not a mad scientist either. He's just an ambitious man driven over the edge.

2. Mary Shelley's father was the philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. 

3. Frankenstein created the creature in a makeshift laboratory in his hostel room. Unlike the movies, there is no lab on a cliff, nor is there a hunchbacked assistant. 

4. In the book, the creature neither has green skin nor bolts protruding from his neck. The physical description describes him as a gigantic, eight-foot tall man. Frankenstein had chosen handsome features for him, but his eyes were white and his skin stretched across his body in a contorted manner so that it made him look very much like an anomaly. 

5. The creature was never evil from the beginning, nor was it in his nature. It was the circumstances and lack of empathy that led to him being a monster inside.

6. The novel was originally called: Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. It was first published anonymously in London in 1818.

7. There is really a Frankenstein Castle around Germany, where it was known that a scientist (alchemist) was engaged in experiments. Mary Shelley had traveled there with her group, and had thus come across it before writing her novel. 

8. The first theatrical production of Frankenstein was a twelve-minute silent film, in 1910. (Watch on YouTube here) 

Cool, isn't it? If this is not enough, let me share some quotable quotes too:

“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.” 

“I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.” 

“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.” 

“What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?” 

“How many things are we upon the brink of discovering if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries?” 

Mary Shelley

Book Title: Frankenstein

Author: Mary Shelley

Published: 1818 (and many subsequent editions)

Pages: 273

Buy it at: Amazon

Genre: Classics/ Gothic/ Horror

My Rating: 4.5/5

Meanwhile, check out the delicious cover in this special edition hardback copy!!

Run Away by Harlan Coben

It's been a while since I last enjoyed a Harlan Coben book, but I have always enjoyed anything Coben writes (Fool Me Once, for example). Run Away was an absolute thrill to read - exactly what I expect from a gripping mystery to provide.

Title: Run Away

Author: Harlan Coben

Pages: 371

Published: 2019

Find it on Amazon: Run Away

My Rating: 4/5

Simon has been looking for his estranged (more like lost) daughter Paige, who had a fairly decent childhood until she left for college and got herself an abusive boyfriend Aaron. When a neighbour lets Simon know he "might" have spotted Paige at Central Park busking for money, Simon is pained and stunned to find out that the frail, poor girl he sees is indeed his daughter. But right before he can confidently get her away to safety, Aaron steps in and Paige runs away with him.

The story follows Simon's hunt for his daughter as he tracks down her old classmates and tries to piece together things he never knew about Paige. I found Run Away having a mix of murder-mystery and family relationships - the recipe for a compelling read that makes you feel things. I could understand Simon's frustration and helplessness as we learn more about the family, Paige's nature and the little details that shape our relationships and personalities. 

Simon's wife Ingrid is a strong woman with a mind of her own, and I quite liked her from the beginning, even though to Simon she seems to have let Paige run away. There's an air of mystery around her which intensifies when a drug dealer shoots her when they both go looking for Paige in the drug den she was supposed to frequent. We also meet other characters in a side-storyline - paid assassins whose targets make no sense until towards the end. Now that I think about it, the alternative stories going back and forth somewhat broke a momentum as they didn't seem to be linked that much in the beginning. Nevertheless, the writing was gripping and fast-paced, and both storylines were pacing well.  

I'm also not sure what I feel about the supporting character Cornelius - he was there and served a strong purpose but he was also very conveniently coming and going when Simon or us, the readers, needed useful information about Paige. The ending, though!! I liked how the suspense builds up and unravels slowly, not in a rush, putting the pieces of the puzzle together and leads to a shocking ending! It made me whoop and suffer a shock at the same time. I am very happy with the ending, indeed.

I would surely recommend giving this a read if you're looking for something fast-paced and relatively light. It's not too heavy on the head like some of the recent psychological thrillers I've read lately. It can get quite fun, too. If you've read this already, share your thoughts! What do you think?

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Another Goodreads choice awards pick! The Silent Patient follows the story of Alicia Berenson, an artist accused of her husband's murder. Alicia did not speak a single word since she was found with the murder weapon and her husband's body. A psychotherapist, Theo, has been following Alicia's story since the event and feels the need to dig deeper as the years pass, because of his fascination and curiosity about what happened.

Title: The Silent Patient

Author: Alex Michaelides

Pages: 325

Published: 2019

Find it on Amazon: The Silent Patient

The book is narrated from two perspectives, one is Alicia's diary and the other is Theo's point of view. Alicia's diary narrates the story from when her husband gets her the diary to encourage her to write her feelings when she's overwhelmed. We get snapshots of her life and build up of the story along with Theo's POV narrating the current time - Theo finding a job at the institution Alicia stays at, and doing his best to try and get Alicia to talk.

I found the storyline and writing very engaging. The mystery about Alicia's silence unravels slowly while providing readers a complete backdrop of the past - Alicia's own personal troubles, her relationship with her husband as well as other characters who are linked in her life. As Theo continues trying to elicit a response from his patient, he shares with us his discoveries about things that seem to make Alicia respond, things that matter to her. 

Overall, I found myself flipping through the pages to get to the end and unravel the mystery. I did get a hint of the twist and the killer mid-way through the book, even though I found it exciting and wanted to read to understand how it could be! It was a fresh idea, it wasn't too predictable, and the setting was more contemporary than I've been reading lately. The suspense was built up throughout the book, so I didn't get bored. The little snippets and perspectives from Alicia's art was also something new to be found in this book - references to Greek myths, exploring storytelling through art and reading meanings through painted images. 

As for characterization, I felt like Alicia was the only character the author seemed to focus most on - perhaps because the story demanded it, but a couple of characters didn't seem to add much to the story other than being red herrings, I suppose. Otherwise, the plot and the narration was on-point for me. Also, a well-rounded and well-explained ending is a rarity these days in thrillers, so I was very happy with this one.

I would definitely say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it - it was one of my fastest reads this year, and would surely recommend it for today's psychological thriller recommendations. I do feel it's now a bit over-rated, but highly delicious to read anyway!

PS - The book cover totally drew me in. 5/5 to this cover idea.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Title: Sharp Objects

Author: Gillian Flynn

Pages: 254

Published: 2006

Find it on Amazon: Sharp Objects

My Rating: 4/5

This was my second book by Gillian Flynn after Gone Girl. Flynn's characters seem to have some things in common - a disturbing past that has influenced these women in deep, unnerving ways that turn them into unreliable narrators. 

Camille Preaker is a reporter based in Chicago. She's sent to cover a murder and disappearance of  young girls, aged 9 and 10 respectively, in the small town of Wind Gap. She dreads returning to the town she grew up in and seeing her family after eight years - sure enough, as soon as we start reading about Wind Gap, a whole gothic, creepy vibe takes over the book and doesn't go away till the end.

Reading this story was highly uncomfortable. Everything made me uneasy - the dialogues, the people in Wind Gap, the kids, the police officers. It gives the air of something sinister hiding deep within the town, although to be fair, I can understand that Flynn made this deliberate to create a certain atmosphere, and it works. Right from the beginning as Camille enters her home town, you get the feeling that something is wrong. Camille's mother Adora behaves and talks in a strangely controlling way, her younger sister Amma feels unreliable and scary with her discordant personality, stories of how young kids behave and what they talk about in the town also have a dark tone to them.

Despite being disturbing, this book absorbed me. It was compulsive and I found myself reading this every free minute, reading late into the night till my eyes screamed shut in protest. I dreamed about it and kept thinking about this strange story where two young girls get murdered and have their teeth removed. As Camille learns more and we get a glimpse of her past, dots begin to join a little. Commonalities in both murders are discovered, leading to the possibility of a serial killer, possibly someone local. 

As we gain different perspectives, including a great (yet dark) view of small town gossip and interactions, things seem to get more sinister. And when we realise we have reached a satisfactory (and disturbing) conclusion, we read on to find there's more. That's what I liked best - tricking me into believing something only to find out there's a lot more to it! Lately I've been finding thrillers to have unsatisfactory endings because there's little explanation, however with Sharp Objects I have no such complaint! It lives true to its promise as a thriller. I would recommend this as a mysterious, fast read. However, it does have gory details related to self-harm (cutting) and psychological issues due to an unconventional and disturbed childhood.

Did this book have an impact on me? YES

Did I enjoy reading this book? Hell YES

Will I recommend it to you? Absolutely!

Buy it here.

Enjoy!

Review: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Author: Paula Hawkins

Published: 2015 by Doubleday

Pages: 316

Find it at: Amazon 

My Rating: 3.5 stars

Genre: Mystery/Thriller/Psychological thriller

My Thoughts!

For a long time, I did not know whether or not I wanted to read this book. When it first became a rage, I did not want to read it. But it became a regular feature in several lists, and I couldn't hold back anymore. Never has a book gone on and off my Amazon cart as many times as this!

Rachel takes the same train every morning to go to London to work. She is familiar with the landscape outside her window. The train often stops at a red signal near a residential street, and Rachel glimpses the lives of people living there... sometimes with painful longing, because she used to live there once. A few houses down from her old house live a beautiful couple who had come to stay there a little while after Rachel had left. She calls them Jess and Jason, and thinks they're lucky to live the kind of life she had dreamed for herself. Until one day, she sees something that disturbs her, something she can't get off her mind.

Almost as soon as you begin reading, you can see that there's something about Rachel that's off the mark. Then you realize that she is an alcoholic. Her muddled mind is a cause of concern not just for her, but also for the reader, because she can be what some people refer to as an 'unreliable narrator'. What are you supposed to believe? Unwittingly, Rachel finds herself entangled in a criminal investigation. She knows what she saw, but her own interpretation of it, combined with her own doubts about her actions, makes it difficult to stay focused on facts alone.

I was hooked onto the book right from the beginning, spending a whole day reading it. That felt nice, especially as it had been quite a while since I'd had that sort of reading engagement. Whatever else it doesn't do, I'd give it a full score for being able to hold my attention throughout. The storyline is fast-paced; you wouldn't find it dull. The book is also about the secrets we all keep. How you cannot really know a person from afar, how there's so much behind closed doors that it becomes essential, and uncomfortable, to go into uncharted territory to really understand what's going on.

It was the writing style where I thought it could have been better. Perhaps it was the same format (first person narration in diary-entry style) for different character narrations, but there seemed a slight lack of distinction among the three different narrating characters. They seemed to have the same voice. And then the characters--I'm not sure I liked any of them. Sure, everyone has problems, and the plot needs people to behave in weird ways to keep up the suspense, but the dumbness and sadist pleasure needs to be controlled somewhere! [Spoiler: I haven't been as frustrated with a character as I have been with Anna, wife of Rachel's ex. For a while in the later half of the book, I thought I'd like to really shake her by the shoulders and shout some sense into her ears.] I also felt that the overall impression of women seemed negative. All the women characters in the book are either weak or unreliable or insecure or dependent on some male. None of them can think for themselves. Not really a good thing to show.

Nevertheless, that's the thing about this book, something I'm having a hard time trying to put into words--No matter how I thought that the writing style was not up to the mark, I still read the book in one sitting. The tight plot was a good idea. I just wish whoever thought of that had also thought of making the characters more interesting. The ending began to feel intriguing, but then it became a mess yet again. I admit to not having guessed the culprit (that could have been because of my general lack of interrogation as a reader), but even then it somehow fell a little flat. 

I would still recommend it to anyone who's looking for a quickie read in the thriller category. Final verdict: A bit overhyped, but can be read if you're craving some quick-paced thriller.

Anyone who's read it too? What do you think about it?

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Alice Sebold

Author: Alice Sebold

Pages: 328

Published: 2002, by Little, Brown and Company

Find it at: Amazon

Blurb

The Lovely Bones is the story of a family devastated by a gruesome murder -- a murder recounted by the teenage victim. Upsetting, you say? Remarkably, first-time novelist Alice Sebold takes this difficult material and delivers a compelling and accomplished exploration of a fractured family's need for peace and closure.

My Thoughts!

I had encountered this title in way too many lists (which I keep looking up from time to time) to feel like reading it. Yes, I'm among those who get wary of a book when it's being praised too much. Not without good reason, too. Although The Lovely Bones was not really disappointing, it was surely lower than what I'd expected out of it.

The story is narrated by a fourteen year old girl who's dead. That's probably one of the reasons I found this interesting. Susie Salmon ("like the fish", as she says) is the eldest sibling in the Salmon family. One late evening as she's returning home, she encounters Mr Harvey, a man in their neighbourhood, who rapes and then brutally murders her. Susie dies and goes to heaven, which is different for different people. Susie's is like high school but there are no teachers and she can do all she wants. There's another girl named Holly and a mother-figure named Frannie she meets up there, but she can never stop gazing at her family and friends on Earth. Fair enough, because that is how she will tell us the story.

Soon after Susie's death, we see the devastated family trying to accept the fact that she's dead, and murdered. The story revolves around the lives of people after Susie's death. The writing is good, for the author is able to make a reader feel the intense rawness of feelings one goes through after a tragedy. Susie's father, who I think is the best character in this story, meets Mr Harvey and, just because he's too numb to think of much else, helps him build a tent in his (Harvey's) front yard. BUT. In some sort of instinct, he begins to feel something's wrong... the man knew something about Susie. Of course the clever Harvey denies it and goes back to claiming his lonely life (no wife, no kids) for having weird hobbies, but that only cements Mr Salmon's suspicion that Harvey killed his daughter. This part of the book was really interesting, because I began to feel that he'd do something rad and would get Harvey caught (Harvey being a psycho and having killed children and women before as well). However, despite his conviction, Mr Salmon is not able to prove it. Len Fenerman, a detective, does what he can (almost) but he has no ground to suspect Harvey. Mr Salmon is left alone. Lindsey is the only one who believes him, and tries to help him out.

There are a bunch of other characters who form a good part of the story. Ray Singh, Susie's schoolmate who had a crush on her, and Ruth Connors, an artistic person who was widely considered weird in school. Ruth has been used to depict one form of 'meeting point' between the living and the dead, which was an interesting element in the story.

The Lovely Bones has potential, and I can see why it became popular when it first came out. It promises so much! I found it emotional, and something that offered a view of reality--that there could be disappointments and you can be wronged even when you've done nothing, and it's not necessary you'd get redemption. Some people can go unpunished even after committing sins. Tragedy can break families, and it is oh-so-difficult to keep it together. I also found it heartbreaking. It tells how different people cope with loss in their own ways. Since it can turn out to be high on the emotional quotient for some, maybe you wouldn't want to read it if you're anyway feeling sad or low. As for plot... I don't think there's much to go on. Susie sees her loved ones doing things she is missing, sees them growing up and learning to live without her, makes some connections, but it's just that. It could have had some exciting passages about the killer, but there are few, and not very exciting.

The writing was engaging and gripping, and no matter what you feel while reading, you'd want to keep reading it. Some characters (read Mr Salmon) are believable and lovable. Sometimes you read things so utterly beautiful and painful, you can't help but love the book!

But to be fair, I did find some things quite disappointing. I did not get some parts about Ruth and her abstract ideas, connections and thoughts. I think I can attribute it to some lack of understanding on my part. Second, I did not like Susie's mother, and it's not only because of what she did (it's a spoiler, so I'm not mentioning it), but also because--what an escapist! Sure, I can't imagine a person facing such a tragedy, but woman, you can't do all those things and not do important things (also a spoiler!). Another thing that seemed overdone was how almost all characters engaged in physical relationships to forget their sadness. Like there's nothing else that can make a person feel better. It really annoyed me. It's not only because I have differing personal views, but what sort of messages are being sent to the readers? Finally, the ending. Had it not been for the messed up ending, I might not even have thought of the other 'disappointments'. WHY did that have to happen? I wouldn't like to mention it because it'd be a spoiler (bah), but it was not good. 

Still, every reader experiences a book differently. It is surely worth a read if you're looking for something emotional or different. Just don't expect too much. If you don't, you might end up liking it more than I did!

Here are some quotes from the book for you:

“Nothing is ever certain.” (The most-quoted line in the book)

“Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.”

“Between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. That doesn’t mean the weaker one doesn’t love the stronger.”    (What do you think about this one?)

“You look invincible,' my mother said one night. 

I loved these times, when we seemed to feel the same thing. I turned to her, wrapped in my thin gown, and said:

I am.”  

(Honestly, this one broke my heart)

Review: Confessions of a Murder Suspect by James Patterson

James Patterson

Title: Confessions of a Murder Suspect (Confessions #1)

Author: James Patterson, Maxine Paetro

Published: 2012 by Little, Brown and Company

Pages: 372

Find it at: Amazon

My Rating: 3.5/5

Goodreads Blurb

James Patterson returns to the genre that made him famous with a thrilling teen detective series about the mysterious and magnificently wealthy Angel family... and the dark secrets they're keeping from one another.

On the night Malcolm and Maud Angel are murdered, Tandy Angel knows just three things: She was the last person to see her parents alive. The police have no suspects besides Tandy and her three siblings. She can't trust anyone -— maybe not even herself. 

Having grown up under Malcolm and Maud's intense perfectionist demands, no child comes away undamaged. Tandy decides that she will have to clear the family name, but digging deeper into her powerful parents' affairs is a dangerous -- and revealing -- game. Who knows what the Angels are truly capable of?

My Thoughts

I've read several James Patterson mysteries, but few have as exciting and intriguing a set up as the first book in the Confessions series has. The last book by the same author I read was called Invisible, and it turned out to be my favourite James Patterson so far. I had really high hopes on this one just as the story began, but it did not live up to those high expectations.

It's a good story, actually. The Angels have always been high achievers, above normal, exceedingly smart. Malcolm and Maud Angel are demanding, strict parents, but they have their children's best interests at heart. With their careful and calculated manner of parenting - watching strictly educational movies, learning foreign languages and geography, having exceedingly high IQ levels. The children excelled in their fields, but they didn't know what it was to be normal. What would happen when their ultimate support system is ruined? Are they strong enough to handle that?

Tandy Angel, the sixteen year old daughter of Malcolm and Maud, addresses the reader and gives the story from her perspective, beginning from the night her parents were found dead in their room. She realizes that apart from the Angel kids and Maud's personal assistant Samantha, no one was in the house. That is a terrorizing thought, and soon enough, the Angel kids, especially Tandy (Tandoori) Angel, are suspects in their parents' murder.

Among uncertainty and doubting each other, the kids grieve in their own ways, strange to an outsider but perfectly normal to each other. Uncle Peter, their guardian, arrives at the scene, now the sole owner of Angel Pharmaceuticals, previously co-owned by his brother, Malcolm. Maud was a high profile financial agent. Tandy is distrustful of everyone around her - her twin Harry, her younger brother Hugo, her elder brother and NFL superstar Matthew, Uncle Peter, Samantha, their neighbours, and even herself. She's been raised in a way that made her emotions nearly non-existent, a good thing according to Malcolm and Maud, for it improved focus. Her memory of certain events of the past is hazy, thanks to countless sessions with their counsellor.

The atrocity of her parents' deaths, the rude intrusion into their apartment, and their life, makes Tandy pledge that she would find out the killer, even if her siblings hate her for asking such questions. She begins her very own investigation, throwing into focus the dysfunctional manner of the Angel family, the past and many hidden secrets. She discovers her own secrets in the process, trying to figure out the identity of the real Tandoori Angel.

Even though the ending was a bummer, it was a good story with respect to a family driven into the quest for perfection, and going to any limit to achieve it. What was disappointing was the manner of narration and writing. Regular questions that seemed familiar, delaying information consistently by saying 'that's for later', hinting that the killer could be Tandy herself, are things that somewhat marred the fun of reading. I get that those hints were meant to keep the reader guessing, but because it happened very frequently, it succeeded in pissing me off instead. Not a very impressive tool, really. Perhaps it would have been more effective had it been used only a couple of times.

I liked how the story involves a personal history and development of the siblings along with solving the mystery. Even though for a crime thriller, it should have been more focused on solving the crime with lots of twists. There were twists, but very few of them. I would see this more as a mystery intertwined with emotions and family drama than a thriller. It is the first book in a thrilling teen detective series. At the end of the book, Tandy decides she wants to become a detective, so I guess more stories are in progress. I'm hoping they would be better and up to their potential. Nevertheless, it is an entertaining read for when you have nothing else. At least till the end, it keeps your heart pacing. 

“Anne Frank wrote, ‘How true Daddy’s words were when he said: all children must look after their own upbringing. Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.'” 

Thank you Random House publishers for this book. :)

Review: The Girl With All The Gifts

M/R. Carey

Book Title: The Girl With All The Gifts
Author: M.R. Carey
Published: 2014 by Orbit (Little, Brown Book Group)
Pages: 403
Find it at: Amazon
My Rating: 5/5

Goodreads Blurb!
Not every gift is a blessing...

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class.

When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.

The Girl With All the Gifts is a groundbreaking thriller, emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end.

My Thoughts!

The Girl With All The Gifts is what would leave you shuddering, for various reasons, depending on how you interpret it. Melanie, a ten year old girl living with her classmates at the 'base', knows no other home. Getting strapped into a wheelchair every morning with a gun pointed at her, she gets ready for classes, and a few other routine things every week or so. As you read this book, get ready to dive into a future where nothing seems safe anymore. Guard yourself with arms, lots of e-blocker and only then go about your day. If you have a day left, that is.

At the base, Melanie takes classes with different teachers, none of whom are as good as Miss Justineau, who frequently tells them stories. Nobody likes Caroline Caldwell, the woman who runs the 'programme'. What happens when one day, Mrs Caldwell asks for Melanie? Who are those men slinking around the boundaries of the base? And when everything is turned around, how can things get even worse? But they do. And that's when you, as a reader would start realizing what is happening. Set in a dystopian setting (or something more imaginative and horrifying than that), this book is about the life of a girl who likes imagining herself as Pandora - the girl said to have all the gifts. This book is also about fighting for survival and about goodness in the midst of evil. It is also about personal life goals and crossing limits, boundaries and whatever has been set for you, just to achieve those. It's about love for fellow humans, even strangers, because sometimes those are all you have. It's also about surrender and about why it can be okay to give up, to make the best of the situation at hand.

The story has been written in third person, but even that narration seemed different to me somehow. It transitioned from nearly one person's perspective to someone else throughout the book, which I thought was inventive. This is also a great book if you want to increase your vocabulary. I've underlined so many words I didn't know even existed! Other than that, I liked all the characters, even the horrendous Mrs Caldwell, since they all seemed to be carrying their own back stories and even if you hate anyone, it's not without good cause. More than that, it's Melanie and Miss Justineau's relationship and their strong character sketches that keep the book going. It's hard not to empathise with characters like them. The sequence of events is such that the book's bound to keep you hooked, especially since it'll be a long time when you start understanding what's it all about. That's when you'll find yourself in a confounded state, because you'll be wanting to shut your eyes as you read on about unimaginable stuff, but you'd be automatically reading it nonetheless. 

I really can't talk a lot about this book without giving away anything, which I don't want to, because that'd be spoiling the reading experience for you. But I'd recommend all lovers of futuristic, apocalyptic, horror stories to read this book. It's also part fantasy, but mostly about human relationships, especially that of a child and parent. It's classified under horror not because it's the 'OMG-there-comes-a-foul-ghost' kind of scary, but the kind that slowly seeps into your veins as you read the words, and since it's already running in your blood, you'll feel cold all the time. Yes. That kind.    

Quotes marked from the book:

'You can't save people from the world. There's no where else to take them.'

'Melanie finds this interesting in spite of herself. That you can use words to hide things, or not to touch them, or to pretend that they're something different than they are.'

'It's not just Pandora who had that inescapable flaw. It seems like everyone has been built in a way that sometimes makes them do wrong and stupid things.'

'When your dreams come true, your true has moved. You've already stopped being the person who had the dreams, so it feels more like a weird echo of something that already happened to you a long time ago.'

'The horror of the unknown is more frightening than any horror you can understand.'

Review: Invisible by James Patterson

Title: Invisible

Author: James Patterson and David Ellis

Published: 2014 by Century

Pages: 399

Find it at: Amazon

My Rating: 5/5

Goodreads Blurb!

Everyone thinks Emmy Dockery is crazy. Obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases, Emmy has taken leave from her job as an FBI researcher. Now all she has are the newspaper clippings that wallpaper her bedroom, and her recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire.

Not even Emmy's ex-boyfriend, field agent Harrison "Books" Bookman, will believe her that hundreds of kidnappings, rapes, and murders are all connected. That is, until Emmy finds a piece of evidence he can't afford to ignore. More murders are reported by the day--and they're all inexplicable. No motives, no murder weapons, no suspects. Could one person really be responsible for these unthinkable crimes?

INVISIBLE is James Patterson's scariest, most chilling stand-alone thriller yet.

My Thoughts!

I don’t exactly remember why I wanted this book. I already had a few James Patterson mysteries lying unread, but the blurb sparked something and I wanted to read this as well. It’s one of the best decisions I made, when it comes to book choices. Not only was the mystery well plotted and narrated, it was presented and created in a way that would make you hide under the covers, especially if you’d be reading this book at night. Emmy Dockery is a researcher with FBI, on temporary leave, but totally consumed by information about fires breaking out in different homes across the country, the victims charred to death, just like her twin sister Marta. She was in an accidental house fire in January, and no one but Emmy was convinced that she was murdered. When she tries getting the FBI’s help, her boss, also known as the Dick, ensures that she isn’t taken seriously, not until Emmy manages to get Books, her ex-fiancé and ex-FBI agent, onto the case.

That’s when things gradually make sense and the team with minimum resources initially, study the data and try figuring out the serial killer, the one dangerous criminal who has killed more than seventy people across North America, and not very swiftly either. It’s a gradual chase, but let me tell you at the onset that it’s going to keep you hooked (for example, it took me a day and a half to complete it, forgoing sleep for hours and resuming it first thing in the morning). Be ready to be hoodwinked, both by the author as well as by the characters. The story catches pace gradually, introducing characters, but never goes away from the central plot. As the events unfold one by one, you are left grappling with facts and clinging on to someone as the killer, but it only gets worse, especially in the later half of the book. This book will make your hearts beat faster, make you breathless with fear and you’d probably mutter stuff like ‘no, shit!!’ or ‘ohmygod! How did that happen?’ or perhaps be speechless, but feel goosebumpy nevertheless. I’d give it a full star rating just for this effect; it’s been done so brilliantly.

The writing is fun: it’s quirky, yet serious. The characters seemed perfect in all their glory and flaws. I liked Emmy a lot, even though she’s been shown as someone with trust issues or thinking a bit too independently. But then, that’s who she is, and this story is about how she wants to find her sister’s killer, along with hundreds of other victims. It’s about facing so many obstacles, getting rejected, crushed, defeated numerous times, but with a little support and marvellous conviction that she’s right, Emmy goes forward even when she’s all alone. Other characters have their own stories as well, but thankfully those don’t interfere with the plot. I loved this book: for having a gut-wrenching, heart-racing, mind-blowing mystery, for being presented in a way that you wouldn’t know what’s coming in the next page, for making your jaw drop and crying out loud when you discover the killer and make sense of the story, for making you feel like calling up James Patterson and demand a longer explanation in the end. Seriously, I wish the end could have been wrapped up better, but I suspect this is a plot in itself – to make the reader go back and read the book again!

I’d recommend this book to every mystery lover but only to those who’re used to, or are ready to read gruesome details and gory murders. It’s not an easy book to digest, what with perfect detailing as to how the killer tortured his victims. So I’d ask the soft-hearted to be careful, but if you ever get the heart, read it! It’s brilliant.

“You’re your own worst enemy, Marta always said to me. You don’t need anyone to torment you because you do it to yourself.”

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

“You must do today what nobody else will do, so tomorrow you can accomplish what others can’t.” 

Thank you Random House publishers for this book! :)

Review: The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith

J.K. Rowling

Title: The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike #2) 

Author: Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Published: 2014 by Sphere (Hachette)

Pages: 455

Find it at: Amazon

My Rating: 4.5/5!

Goodreads Blurb!
Private investigator Cormoran Strike returns in a new mystery from Robert Galbraith, author of the #1 international bestseller The Cuckoo's Calling.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days—as he has done before—and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives—meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.

When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before..

My Thoughts!

The Silkworm, the second book in the Cormoran Strike series takes off some time after the first book introduced this ex-army-super-intelligent-guy-now-a-private-detective. Apart from his turbulent relationship with his long-term girlfriend, getting a new assistant, Robin Ellacot, who's been quite an excellent apprentice, the first book, The Cuckoo's Calling, had ended with Strike solving the famous Lula Landry case - a supermodel who apparently jumped to her death, but Strike proved that she was killed. So now with The Silkworm, we see how Strike got all popular because well, Lula Landry was a real big star, and now he's having a long waiting list of clients wanting to avail his services. Robin is busy working out her own priorities, as well as handling Strike's office deftly. Strike is somewhat bored of tailing unfaithful wives and husbands, so when a simple woman, wife of a novelist called Owen Quine, comes to ask him to locate her husband, Strike couldn't refuse.

It had to be a simple case. Owen Quine was used to performing such dramatics, running off for days on end, not telling anyone where he's gone. Just this time, his absence was longer than usual and it had upset his wife. Strike finds an overwhelming honesty in Leonora Quine, and sets on solving the mystery, trying to find the real criminal while simultaneously trying to protect Leonora from false accusations from something that you might expect to have happened in a crime novel - Owen Quine was found murdered. And very brutally. 

The Silkworm has gruesome detailing, twisted minds, incredible plot, clever detection and a lot more beyond an ordinary crime thriller. It's J.K. Rowling all over again: characters you can't seem to get enough of, moral messages hidden even in the worst of crimes, an acceptance of all sorts of people. The novel explores different themes and situations with the help of intricately developed characters, who're shown reacting to varied situations. The book also talks about 'behind-the-scenes' talk of the publishing industry, often including character traits, metaphors or dialogues pointing to something eye-raising. The mystery is well-woven and unpredictable, making readers throw themselves at different suspicious characters and then being provided teasing clues from time to time, making one question their choice of criminal! Just like in the previous book, I loved the way Strike solves mysteries. It makes one think. True, there's less action, but there's a lot more thought. And I love it!

I did like the ending as well, feeling it was elaborate enough to guarantee understanding, but for someone who wants to do a double-check on any character's actions in the previous pages of the book, it demands a re-read. All things bright and wonderful here, but there is one thing I was slightly put off with. Surprisingly, it's the writing style somewhere in between the book. I couldn't comprehend why it became the way it was, because it was not good. The first book seemed a lot better with respect to how it was narrated. This one needs work. Not the descriptions and all - those were as good as they could be - but something like Strike's thought process. The sentences just seemed off at some parts. Besides that, the book has graphic detailing of gory murder scenes, and let's just say that Owen Quine's novel, because of which he was killed, isn't really a children's book. 

Another thing that I really like about this series is that the characters are just so realistic that you can't help thinking of them as real people, and that you're reading a real life story. It makes the story so much more engaging to see Robin and Strike develop themselves as characters, get their own personal lives sorted (or get worse) and really grow as people, just like in real life.

To fulfill your desire for some mind exercise, or a really involving mystery, I'd recommend The Silkworm, but I wouldn't recommend it to younger readers.    

Some quotable quotes from the book!

“...writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.”

“We don’t love each other; we love the idea we have of each other. Very few humans understand this or can bear to contemplate it. They have blind faith in their own powers of creation. All love, ultimately, is self-love.”

“Like most writers, I tend to find out what I feel on a subject by writing about it. It is how we interpret the world, how we make sense of it.” <-- ^_^

“You are not writing properly unless someone is bleeding, probably you.”

Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman

Book Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Published: June 2013, Headline Review
Pages: 248
Find it at: Amazon
My Rating: 4/5!

I was introduced to Neil Gaiman only recently, and it made me feel somewhat stupid, not knowing him already, considering he's been writing since forever. It's alright, though. Better late than never! The first book by him I got to read was The Ocean at the End of the Lane, a fantastical account of a middle-aged man as he remembers a time as a seven year old boy in his old home in Sussex, England. Filled with magic and nightmares as we all would have related to as children, this book is one of the most unique I've ever come across. Reading up on Gaiman revealed that that's his style. I'm now quite looking forward to read his other books!

Goodreads Blurb!

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.


My Thoughts!

As the unnamed middle-aged man visits his childhood home and sits in front of a pond, his memories of a time when he was seven come rushing back. He remembers the house at the end of his lane as one belonging to the Hempstocks, and his eleven year old friend Lettie Hempstock, who used to call the pond her 'ocean'. I'm still not completely sure what the underlying meaning of the whole book was. Is it simply a fantasy tale in essence (considering the ending) or an attempt at celebrating and remembering our childhood? The memories of the man as a seven year old revolve around the suicide of a tenant they had, at the end of the lane. This suicide opens up a series of events that seem to come straight out of the nightmares of a child. Is all that real?

The parents of the boy bring in Ursula Monkton, the new nanny for the children, and the boy takes an immediate dislike to her. He fears she is the result of his mistake at the magical farm when he was with Lettie. She had asked him not to let go of her hand, but he had, and what ensues in the form of the "flea" that Ursula Monkton is, is all his fault. Or so he seems to believe. He tries escaping the monster in his home, one who is manipulating his father and making his home a living hell. He seeks Lettie Hempstock's help. She's eleven, but she is very much capable of making the horrors go away.

The story is captivating, although at some parts I felt it went on and on about the same thing. Even then, it's unpredictable and you wouldn't know where its heading, what with the absolute uncertainty as to what is real and what isn't. For me, it was something befuddling. And something that seemed like a combination of many imaginative nights I had as a child. There's no telling for children as to how they see the world around them, how one incident can trigger off a series of nightmares, not necessarily related, making one feel like they're living in a monster-infested world. There have been some moments, some things one does or feels sometimes, that have been included in the book. This seven year old feels like what we all might have felt sometime in our lives.

There was one paragraph that I was surprised to read. I'm not the only one who gets into these kind of moments! *yess!* Here it goes:
'I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who I was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn't me, and I knew it wasn't, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then what was me? And what was watching?'

The author's writing style is also simple, and the book is a quick read. The main character is the boy (the middle-aged man who starts the story), with other characters of prominence being Lettie Hempstock and her mother and grandmother, Ursula Monkton - the flea - and the narrator's father. Even though most characters did not have a brief sketch about them, they're very easy to sketch out using their actions and behavior. The ending was satisfying, if not somewhat delightful for a person who loves the idea of a fantasy world running parallel to the one we live in. For all its genuineness, I'd recommend the book to lovers of fantasy, imagination, young adult fiction. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is considered a fairy tale for adults, probably because of a few mature scenes or more so because of the content of the book, which adults will very well relate to, reminiscing their childhood.

Some marked quotes from the book:

'Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.'

'Growing up, I took so many cues from books. They taught me most of what I knew about what people did, about how to behave. They were my teachers and my advisers.'       

'Lettie shrugged. "Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don't. I don't. People are much more complicated than that. It's true of everybody."'

'I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled.'

'I said, "Will she be the same?" The old woman guffawed, as if I had said the funniest thing in the universe. "Nothing's ever the same," she said. "Be it a second later or a hundred years. It's always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans."'