The Light We Lost - Jill Santopolo

'We've known each other for almost half our lives. I've seen you smiling, confident, blissfully happy. I've seen you broken, wounded, lost. But I've never seen you like this. You taught me to look for beauty. In darkness, in destruction, you always found light. I don't know what beauty I'll find here, what light. But I'll try. I'll do it for you. Because I know you would do it for me.

There was so much beauty in our life together.'

Hello!

I picked this book up because it's been pretty popular since its release last year. After I started it, I could certainly tell why; it's very addictive, interesting and compelling. I found myself ranting to Daniel about the latest events just like it was a friend of mine making these decisions and not just a character in a book.

The main idea is that the main characters, Lucy and Gabe, meet on the day of 9/11 in New York and immediately fall in love.  However, life pulls them in different directions, Gabe to Middle East and Lucy to make a TV show and finally, to Darren. He's a perfectly decent guy, and he makes Lucy happy. Just not quite as happy as Gabe, with whom she crosses paths every now and again...

This book is written as Lucy speaking/writing/thinking their life together to Gabe, which certainly gives it a different feeling from just a traditionally written love story. It felt like this book was a story that could only be told by her, and more specifically, I felt like I was part of the story too.

The setting of this book wasn't the most interesting thing to me, but 9/11 quickly takes a backseat and the story becomes about people seemingly not directly affected by it making decisions because of this big disaster that happened in the home.

Both Lucy and Gabe make lots of decisions in this story that I don't agree with. It annoyed me for a while, but it also made them feel more like real people with actual lives. Characters that are trustworthy and respectable role models are important, but so are characters who are not. We make mistakes and bad decisions.

I've got quite a lot of thoughts about the plot points and especially the ending of this book, but I'm not going to spoil it for you. As a whole it was quite a special and interesting take on this kind of a story, and I'd like to read more of Santopolo's works in the future,

Josir Jalatvan eriskummallinen elämä - Siiri Enoranta

'Ja joskus vielä ostaisin Miholle oman ilmalaivan ja tusinan täysiverisiä hevosia ja lakritsitehtaan ja kaikkien Aurosian hylättyjen rautatieasemien valtavat kellot.'

'And one day yet I would buy Miho his own airship and a dozen purebreed horses and a liquorice factory and the huge clocks of all of Aurosia's abandoned railway stations.'

Hello!

You can also find my reviews on Gisellen kuolema and Surunhauras, lasinterävä by the author on my blog!

As I may have mentioned previously, Siiri Enoranta is one of my favourite authors, and her Nokkosvallankumous is one of my favourite books. Therefore I'm obviously always on board when she releases a new book. Mum bought me this one in Helsinki at the end of my Christmas break, and I finally finished it [in March, whoops update speed]!

Josir Jalatvan eriskummallinen elämä ('The Bizarre Life of Josir Jalatva', if I were to translate it myself, although you could also replace 'bizarre' with 'queer' and you'd describe this book pretty well) sees Josir, the son of the owner of the famous Circus Maximissimi, fall in love with Micholei, who's a clocksmith in the making. Their life of parties, drugs and hedonism is soon interrupted by a vasar, a person with powers supposedly bestowed upon them by God, cursing Miho to switch bodies every now and again. Because the only way to undo such a curse is to get the same vasar to undo it, they put together a circus and travel the continent of Aurosia to fix things.

Along the journey people are picked up to join the circus, cities are visited, shows are had, and there's quite a few adventures of different kinds. The characters are the highlight of this story, but sometimes it felt like there were simply too many for all of them to stay relevant and separate in my mind.

I love the circus, honestly. I've gone just about every year for most of my life. So this book called out to me immediately when it was first announced. However, the circus and the travels kind of take a back seat in the story, and the main focus is on questions of self, gender and body. It was interesting, but I felt like often the same revelations were announced multiple times, dressed up slightly differently. I think I wanted a different book based on the same premise and would have liked this one more if it was dressed up differently.

On the other hand, Enoranta's writing style is incredible, and I love her run-on sentences and the storytelling that's borderlining stream of consciousness. There's also chapters from the point of view from many different characters, and they all have a very distinctive voice. It's a beautifully written story that explores many questions that the contemporary world wants answered every single day, but the plot of it left me hoping for a bit more.

PS. The raspberry pastry on the cover of this book looks so tasty and I want one now, although bad things happen because of it in the book and I'm not sure if it's worth the risk.

PPS. Enoranta's new book has just come out so stay tuned while I hunt down a copy somewhere!

The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella

'So I buy it. The most perfect little cardigan in the world. People will call me the Girl in the Gray Cardigan. I'll be able to live in it. Really, it's an investment.'

Hello!

I've had this book on my shelf for a long time, and I read half of it once upon a time, but now I picked it up on BookBeat as an audiobook. Hooray!

The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic (hereafter just Dreamworld) is the first book in the very popular Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella. The main character, Rebecca Bloomwood or just Becky, is a shopaholic - she loves shopping all too much, and she can't even actually afford it. She works for Successful Saving magazine, even though she doesn't really understand any of the financy things she works with. The rest of the story is really just about her mishaps, fighting evil Visa bills and trying to Save Less or Earn More.

Becky is a great character. She's like that impossible friend who always screws things up but whom you love regardless. Her internal monologue is very funny, and she never becomes unlikeable even when she's doing the exact things she should not be doing. I want to shake her, but I still could never dislike her.

Naturally, for me Becky's work in a financial magazine was really exciting. Even though this book is the epitome of chick lit, you could really tell Kinsella has a background in working as a financial journalist herself. These things were never dumbed down for the reader, even when Becky herself couldn't fully grasp them. I fully believe chick lit doesn't need to be dumb and ditzy just because it's meant to be fun and feminine, and I'm glad this book did exactly that. There's also a plot with a love interest, but that was never the whole overarching plot of the story.

Overall this book was better than I would have thought and I'm really glad I gave it a read. It wasn't quite 5/5 but regardless worth a read (though I'll admit it is defnitely not for everyone). Props also for the reader of the Finnish audiobook, Elsa Saisio. She was absolutely excellent and I believe she was actually Becky Blomwood. One big gripe I did have with this book is that it was clearly written with a sequel in mind; no matter what Becky grows through in this book, in the end she isn't allowed much character growth; instead she just remains the same person she was when the book started so that the sequel could keep the silly ditzy shopaholic she was in this one.

Also, as a side note; there's really something comforting for me about reading British books in Finnish. It's a bit hard to explain, but it makes me feel like maybe I'm not the only person ever to be living between these two countries. It makes me feel at home.

PS. These reviews are of books I read earlier in spring - missing between this one and the previous is The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli, because I honestly have nothing to say about that book. It was okay. Not my favourite by a mile.