Category Archives: Novels

I read a book Dark Angel written by Mari Jungstedt. It was first published in 2008 in Sweden and in 2012 in Great Britain. Mari Jungstedt is a swedish journalist and author. She has written 11 novels and two of them has been filmed for TV. All of her books are about crime fiction and she is said to be one of Scandinavia’s best crime writers’ according to The Times.

The book is a crime novel. I just read another crime novel in Finnish a few months ago and I thought it was great. Comparing it to this book it was nothing. Only the fact that this was written in English made it so much better. The language was much more colourful and interesting, although it was sometimes a bit hard to understand. The story really concentrated on the theme. There was nothing that could have been removed because of it didn’t fit the theme.

There were many main characters in the book. In the beginning the connection between them was unclear. First, there was of course the inspector, Knutas, who tries to solve the murder in question. In the middle of investigation he notices some problems in his own family, that are similar to families he questions. Then, there is a journalist called Johan who reports every move of the investigation, but he isn’t said to have any special connection to Knutas or anyone else. Then there is one unknown man. His story is told from his childhood to adulthood, but I had no clue who he might be. I compared him to every man there was, but he couldn’t be anyone of them. The real victim and her children were of course a crucial part, but they were involved in only about half of the story. She was the mistress of the man who died by accident instead of her.

The plot was a bit complicated. First a wrong person died and the police followed wrong clues. Then one person committed suicide and finally the murderer succeeded to kill the person he was already tried a couple of times. The police had many suspects, but none of them really was capable of murder. The ending was a bit surprising. I had a suspect myself and I was sure it would be him. But I was wrong. I would never have guessed the real murderer.

In my opinion the narration was great. The unknown man told his own story so his personality wouldn’t reveal. Otherwise there was an omniscient narrator. It brought variety while reading. Although i first hated that there was two narrators, but it was still exciting to wait when I would find out who the mystery man is.

I really liked the book. First, when I started I was a bit confused about all the characters and because I didn’t know who the one man was. But when I made progress in the book I realised more and more. Now when I think about it, I wouldn’t even have wanted to know anymore in the beginning. It would probably have ruined the whole reading experience and the surprises. As i already said, I preferred reading in English than in Finnish. I thought it would be more difficult than it really was. I even had a feeling I never want to read in Finnish again, because the language just isn’t as interesting as in books written in English. In conclusion, the book was magnificent. I can recommend it to everyone.

Shopaholic ties the knot is the third book of the shopaholic book serie. It was published in 2002.It is a chick-lit novel written by Sophie Kinsella. There are all together seven books in the shopaholic series. These books are in my opinion directed to teenage girls. In each book the story is about Becky Bloomwood’s life. The theme in the books are mainly the relationships between people.
This book consentrates on Becky’s and his fiance Luke’s wedding. Becky has big problems on deciding which kind of wedding she really wants. Luke’s mother wants a giant princess wedding and Becky’s mother wants a small family wedding. Becky can’t make the choise in time because she doesn’t want to upset anyone. So after all she ends up with two weddings one in America and one in England. So the book mainly is about this cituation and Becky trying to solve it. And of course she didn’t tell anything about it to Luke or to anyone else.
I haven’t read the earlier parts of the serie but it didn’t really matter. The characters were introduced well in the beginning and all the other basic things the reader should know. The book was really fun to read. There were many humorious parts and they were plased right. While reading this book I all the time imagined in my head what the charaters and the wievs would look like. The writer describes just enough everything still leaving space for the reader’s own imagination. It was also quite easy to read. Not just the language was easy but also the story. While reading this book you don’t have to think all the time what’s going on or who is the writer now talking about. It isn’t filled whit too many characters and places but on the other hand there is enough things to keep the readers interest high.
I have also watched the movie Confessions of a shopaholic which is based on the Shopaholic book serie. I myself didn’t even at first realise that they were connected to each other. I had read the book before i watched the movie and I had imagined everythig so different in comparison with the movie. There were many little details that weren’t in the movie which were in the book and vice versa. But after watching the movie and comparing it to the book there were also a lot in common and many things came up.
I would recommend this book to people who just want to read without thinking too much. In this book the plot is easy to follow and it is easy to identify with the characters. This book is entertainig and definetly will make you laugh, just like GLAMOUR commented on the book: ”a laugh-a-minute read that’s guaranteed to entertain you.”

“Sweet little lies” is a novel written by Lauren Conrad and it was published in 2009. She has also published a few other novels and beauty books.

The book is about a girl named Jane Roberts who is no longer an average girl, because she and her best friend, Scarlett Harp, have started their own reality show called L.A. Candy. After wild photos are leaked to the press, she finds herself in the middle of a scandal. Jane turns to her new BFF, Madison, unaware that she is scheming behind her back. The two girls, Scarlett and Jane, become more and more distant from each other. And Scarlett has a scandal of her own. So the plot is full of drama.

The narrator of the book is mainly Jane Roberts herself, but occasionally it’s an omniscient narrator. I think the theme of the book is that “the lies are only as sweet as the people telling them” and that you can’t always believe what you hear or see. The author, Lauren Conrad, has had her own reality TV-show, and I have watched it so I can say that the book reminded me many times about the happenings in the show.

The topics of the book are typical and close to the girls my age, so the book was easy to read. The text was easy to identify with, and every once in a while I found myself imagine myself in the situations of the book and forgetting that I was reading English. Even though the author was quite young when she wrote the book, the text wasn’t too simple. But I liked the book very much, especially because I could immerse myself in the book without noticing the time passing by.

You can see some stereotypes in the characters. For example Scarlett is a girl who doesn’t date. She doesn’t fall in love with a guy. She gives a wrong name or a wrong number after she has spent a night with a guy. But Jane, she loves being in a relationship and she is maybe a little wide-eyed sometimes, because she likes to see the good in people.

Enough said, I want to recommend this book (and probably the other books of her too) to the girls who like drama. I myself love drama in books and movies. Especially when the characters are at the same age as me. You can tell that the book is written from a girl’s perspective, but you can still read it even if you’re a guy. If you want to.

I red a book called Slam witch is written by Nick Hornby. Slam is published in 2007. Slam tell about a boy called Sam. The story is written Sam’s perspective. Sam is sixteen and he loves skate. The other significant characters in this book were Alicia and Sam’s mother. Alicia was Sam’s mother’s co-worker’s daughter. Sam got know Alicia through his mother and very quickly they started dating.         Let’s open the plot little bit. So Sam and Alicia started dating. All went well in the beginning until something irreversible happened. Alicia became pregnant. Sam went into a panic and he run away. In the end Sam returned and took responsibility of his actions. The book focuses on Sam’s thoughts in this difficult situation.                                                                                                                                                                       At the same time i liked the book and i did not like. The book theme was good but the method of storytelling was not my favorite one. The book tells only Sam’s thoughts in this hard situation. The book did not tell how Alicia feel. The second thing that i did not like was that sometimes Sam saw his own future. Easily i was left wondering whether the things happened or not because the things could be Sam’s future that he foresaw.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Frankly i did not like any of the characters in the book. Sam was a coward because he did not took any responsibility for his action. Moreover he ran away and got everybody else to be worried about him. Alicia seemed little stubborn. She did not  really understand how big of an undertaking is was to have a baby.  Especially if you are teenager. Sam’s father seemed very indifferent when he heard that he son was about to become a father. It annoyed me. After all i was glad about one thing. Sam grow up during the book and ultimately took responsibility from what he had done.                                                                                                                                                                               Although i did not like the characters of the book the theme was great. It got me wondering about how much having a baby would change normal everyday life.

Skellig is a fantasy book written by British author David Almond. It was published in 1998. Skellig was Almond’s first book for young people and probably the best known. The book has won some prizes for example The Michael L. Printz Award. There is also a film based on it. Film was released in 2009.

The main character of the novel is Michael a ten years old boy. Mina and Skellig also have a quite big roles in the story. Other characters are Michael’s mom, dad and baby sister, Mina’s mom, Dr. Death, Leakey, Coot and Mrs. Dando. The author has described the characters and their personalities well. Story is told from Michael’s point of view.

The book tells a story about Michael. He and his family move into a new house and Michael doesn’t like it. His baby sister is ill and everybody are worried about her. At the new house’s yard there is a dilapidated garage. Michael is told not to go there but when others are inside the house he defies the proscription and goes in the garage. Inside he finds a lots of dust, old items, dead bugs and something strange in the corner. It looks like a human but it can’t be. At first Michael thinks that he doesn’t tell anybody about what he saw but when he gets to know Mina, a girl from next door, he decides to tell her. Here begins Michael and Mina’s adventure.

Skellig is a great story about friendship, curiousness and the healing power of love. I think that the book was pretty good and I would like to watch the film too. I haven’t read any books in English before so Skellig was perfect for me because it was easy to read and the plot was clear and compelling. I can recommend this book especially for those who haven’t read much in English but also for others who like this kind of books.

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is a fantasy novel published in 1937. It’s written by J.R.R. Tolkien whom most of us know as the author behind the well-known trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Actually, the events of the trilogy date back to The Hobbit for the unexpected journey of Bilbo Baggins’ takes place exactly 60 years before Bilbo’s adopted son, Frodo, is driven to another adventure of which The Lord of the Rings is about.

The Hobbit has always been described as a classic of fantasy literature and it also fits with the category of children’s literature. It’s been said that Tolkien was the one to pioneer the genre of modern fantasy with The Hobbit and its influence on literature has been significant. There would be no Harry Potter or other illustrious book series if Tolkien had not invented the mighty world of Middle-earth as a bedtime story for his children.

The plot of The Hobbit is presumably familiar to everyone for the film version of the book has just been brought to an end. ”In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”, is the very first sentence of the novel, which introduces us a hobbit, a creature so small that many other inhabitants of Middle-earth have never even heard of them but who will in the long run turn out to be very important, brave and loyal little fellows. The idea of both The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings is how surprisingly wary and tiny hobbits who are often regarded as inconsequential creatures by men, elves and dwarves, are the ones to save Middle-earth from destruction. The major theme of The Hobbit is the quest, one of the oldest themes in literature. The main character, Bilbo, embarks on a quest and so the unexpected journey among twelve dwarves shall start. They aim at conquering the Lonely Mountain guarded by Smaug the dragon and taking back the kingdom that once was dwarves’. The journey allows Bilbo to encounter various characters and circumstances that are unfamiliar and even threatening to him.Through the course of his life he hadn’t experienced any adventures and now he suddenly had ended up in one. Bilbo encounters goblins, elves, Gollum and Smaug, for example, during his task to help the dwarves to retrieve their treasure, and he travels well beyond the hobbit-lands through Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains to the Lonely Mountain. The group including the hobbit, the dwarves and Gandalf the wizard faces many dangers and challenges on their path and especially in the thrilling end of the novel. After defeating Smaug and taking back Erebor the old enemies confront and thereby starts ”The Battle of the Five Armies”, which is the name of the last Hobbit-movie premiered two months ago.

Bilbo Baggins, the burglar, is one of the most essential characters as well as the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield, the leader of the entourage and the reightful heir of the Lonely Mountain, and Gandalf, the mysterious wizard who helps the group on their dangerous path. Bilbo is that wary and comfort-loving type of hobbit who wouldn’t have the heart to leave his dear home. As a matter of fact, not a single hobbit would do such a thing, after all, the freedom from care and ignorance of the rest of the world’s problems belongs to the true nature of the species. Unlike others, Bilbo, however, has a thirst for an adventure deep inside of him, which the dwarves and Gandalf raise by appearing behind Bilbo’s door. Most of the time on their journey Bilbo still dreams of his warm and comfy home but in the end returns to Hobbiton as a changed hobbit,as a more adventurous and experienced one. Thorin on the other hand is a bit grim and proud dwarf. After Smaug is defeated he’s the one to become the king of the mountain. Greed possesses his mind and for a while he forgets the true order of importance; family and friends before power or wealth, which is actually the novel’s deeper lesson too. Thorin doesn’t really like Bilbo at first, to his mind Bilbo is just a useless burden on their task whom Gandalf insisted to take along. But eventually, the hobbit turns out to be useful as he saves the dwarves from many tricky situations. Towards the end of the book a human called Bard is also introduced to the reader. He’s the one to slay the dragon after it has already caused destruction in Lake-town.

The language in the Hobbit is a bit archaic, word order differs from modern language repeatedly. It doesn’t complicate reading but it did affect my writing after finishing the novel. I had that odd obsession to write like Tolkien did. The narrator telling about the incidents happening in Middle-earth is omniscient.

The Hobbit as a fantasy novel belongs to the elite of the genre. It’s an amazing reading experience and every one should familiarize oneself with it at least because it’s one of those must-read classics. It’s a lot lighter to read than The Lord of the Rings was and even in English it didn’t require an incessant need for a dictionary. I love how the stories in the Hobbit and in the Lord of the Rings merge into, how Bilbo finds the One Ring by accident and doesn’t understand its real power. This ring will take Frodo for even a bigger and more dangerous adventure sixty years later. Tolkien owned the most incredible imagination ever and the Hobbit is only the beginning of the great story of Middle-earth and its amazing inhabitants.