Book Review #651 - Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

Doomed to—or blessed with—eternal life after drinking from a magic spring, the Tuck family wanders about trying to live as inconspicuously and comfortably as they can. When ten-year-old Winnie Foster stumbles on their secret, the Tucks take her home and explain why living forever at one age is less a blessing that it might seem. Complications arise when Winnie is followed by a stranger who wants to market the spring water for a fortune.

My Rating: 4.5/5

I am going to add this book to the list of books I wish I had read as a child because this book is simply amazing and mythical and perfect for a child's imagination. 

The book was written in 1975 and definitely feels like it, but I felt like this added to the books immense charm. It made the plot more believable. 

The only issue I had with this book is that I would have loved more of the Tucks' perspective at the beginning of the book, and more of Winnie's perspective at the end of the book. I know that had it had that, it would have created too much depth for a children's book but the book felt almost incomplete without it. 

I found the relationship between Winnie and Jesse weird considering the age difference between them but I am not sure if this is just because I am reading it with a modern perspective. 

Book Review #650 - The Game of Their Lives by Nick Richardson

As the Great War raged in 1916, two teams of Australian soldiers played an Australian Rules football match in London. It was the first time the world had seen our national game. But this was more than an exhibition match. It symbolised sport's role in driving young athletes to enlist and fight.

The players came from every corner of the country - some of them stars in the VFL or champions in their city or state leagues. For all of them it was a chance to forget blood and battle and simply play, a final kick of the footy before the Western Front, from where some would never return.

Now, 100 years on, Nick Richardson rekindles an incredible moment in our history and pays tribute to the men who played The Game of Their Lives. 

I received this book for review from Pan Macmillan Australia. 

As I am a huge AFL fan and interested in history, particularly World War I, I had a real interest in reading this book. I also had a further interest from an ancestry perspective as I have a distant cousin who died in WWI that I recently discovered played and umpired football at WAFL level. 

The book mainly follows VFL footballers, but as a sandgroper I was more interested in the WA footballers, particularly the Scullins from Kalgoorlie as that is where my mum was born and I still have a lot of relatives living there. 

What amazed me most about this book was that even though Australia was only a mere 15 years old at the time, football was already being played with the spirit and passion seen today. 

I read this book on the back on watching a number of WWI documentaries, and so I knew what an antagonist Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes was, but I found it really interesting to learn how desperately he wanted to bring Australian sport down. 

The book is written by a journalist and so the book is unsurprisingly very fact heavy. This made it quite slow to read. 

Book Review #649 - Me Before You (Me Before You #1) by Jojo Moyes

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

This was a book that I knew what the ending was going to be from the outset - not only was the name of the sequel (which happened to be printed on the cover of my edition) a massive tip off, but it just followed the trend of similar type books. 

The main difference with this book from the others was that I was actually really accepting of the ending of this one which really surprised me. 

The book starts with Will's accident and then carries on with him struggling with the transition from being a really active guy to being stuck in a wheelchair. 

The accident hurts Will as much mentally as it did physically and when he shows no signs of improvement in either, his positive thinking mother hires Lou as a carer. 

I loved that this novel delved into Will's family so it gave a broader view of how his accident affected everyone in his life. 

Lou was such a bright, yet lost character. She tries to hide behind her eccentric wardrobe. Her family were loving yet very dysfunctional. 

The relationship between Lou and Will was rather slow paced, and I never really grasped the 'romantic' spark between them. I really did enjoy their friendship though. 

I have yet to see the film adaptation of this book which I am really interested in seeing as none of the actors are really what I pictured for the characters.