Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

If you have not heard of this book, you are missing out on something great!

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

In this story, we followed the lives of Madeline, Celeste and Jane revolving around drama at the kindergarten with other parents leading to a murder on the School Trivia Night.

The book started from a third party's POV that tells us that something bad had happened at the school on Trivia Night. The story then rewinds to orientation day at the kindergarten where the drama first began.

I love those short interviews/bitching of the other parents at the end of some chapters. They really enhanced the chapters! Those are so quirky and funny to read. It gives hint about the drama between the parents and yet it is so relatable because in reality, parents do bitch about other parents from school! Even co-workers bitch to one another in our life.

Friendship, domestic abuse, school bullying, parenting mishaps....despite the heavy topics, this book is a very light and easy read. The humor within it that comes from the various characters made it so much easier to appreciate it. This is my second book by Liane Moriarty and she is quickly becoming one of my favorite author.

Overall, if you are a fan of Where'd You Go, Bernadette (another amazing book that you must read if you haven't), this book is for you. If you are a parent, you will totally be able to relate to some of the contents in this book because they just so real to everyone out there. An amazing book and one that I will recommend to all my friends to pick it up. 

P.S: Two of my friends already did and they both loved it too!

P.P.S: Do not watch the HBO TV Series! It does no justice to the book. The book is way better!

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

This book has been on my to-read list since the day it was published. Due to my slow reading over the past 3 years, I only picked it up this year. I had quite an expectation for it due to the good ratings and reviews from readers worldwide.

A captivating story of two very different women who build an unexpected friendship: a 91-year-old woman with a hidden past as an orphan-train rider and the teenage girl whose own troubled adolescence leads her to seek answers to questions no one has ever thought to ask.

The story travelled between Year 2011 and 1929 to 1943. In Year 2011, we have Molly who was having issue with her foster family and she met Vivian, an orphan who had experience the Orphan Train back in 1929 and going through various foster family too.

I enjoyed Vivian’s story about her experience on the Orphan Train and the tough times she went through with each foster family. My heart aches for her at times and when things got better, I felt happy for her. The Orphan Train chapters were interesting and I found myself flipping through the 2011 chapters just so that I can continue to read what's going happened next on the train back in 1929.

The story however slowed down when Vivian's story moved into her foster home experience that were predictable. It was still a good read though as she had portrayed a strong character despite the hardship, never giving up her passion for an education.

I found myself having a hard time getting into Molly's part of the story. Her story was like a predictable YA novel about problematic teenagers who behaved badly with a sad story attached to her.

The chemistry between Vivian and Molly was almost non existence. I can see that the author tried to weaved the two stories together into one but I just cannot connect the two.

I would have enjoyed the book better if the whole novel is on Vivian and there were more about the Orphan Train rather than only 5 out of the many chapters in the book.

Overall, the book is an okay read but it did not lived up to my expectation based on the book description and the hype about it from other reviewers.

One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus

I have to say that I wasn't expecting much from this book when I picked it up but it turned out much better than my expectation. I was trying to find an easy mystery book to read and was scrolling through my Goodreads bookshelf when this book cover just caught my attention. The author sounds new to me but the book description sounds good enough for me to pick up a copy of it.

The Breakfast Club meets Pretty Little Liars, One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide 

Pay close attention and you might solve this. 

Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention, Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn't an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he'd planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. 

Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who's still on the loose? Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

The book was easy to read and each Chapter is narrated by one of the four students who soon became a suspect of the murder. The story follows through the event after Simon's death and slowly revealing the secrets that each one of them had to hide.

I loved how each one of the four main characters developed over the course of the events and they all found something new in their life and faced their weaknesses.

The author did a good job in concealing the truth about Simon's death although I managed to guess some of the side stories relating to his death.

Overall a good debut novel by the author and I will look forward to future work by the same author.

If you want an easy read that involves a murder, a mystery to be solved and a hint of romance, this will be the book you might want to pick up next.

I'm Back!

So....after a few years....I'm back!

I have to say that I kind of got so busy with work and personal stuffs that I have not been reading much over the last few years. I can barely manage more than 10 books a year! Here's a quick recap of how I have been doing since my last post...

2015 Recap

2016 Recap 

2017 Recap

Well I guess it is quite obvious that I had went from reading 100 over books a year to 25 in 2015 and down to only 12 books last year!

My life has been in a turmoil for the past 12 months and reading is the only thing keeping me sane right now.

This year, I started picking up my books again. To start off the year, I've got a new Kindle Paperwhite from my BFF for my birthday and it really does helped me to read more because I am so excited over my new reader.

My old bookclub had disbanded so I don't really have many places to talk about books anymore. A friend on Goodreads once told me that she loved reading my review because they are right to the point and no long nonsense introducing the book like many others and once she read it, she can decide if she wants to pick up that book or not. I think that is a really nice compliment so here I am again to try to share more books to others out there!

I'll be updating a few of the books I've read over the last few months first and there will be more to come. Stay tuned!

Happy 2015!!

Happy 2015 to everyone around the world!

2014 was a really hectic year for me. I went on a roller coaster ride through job changes, retrenchment to retained and promoted, lots of travels and made a new bunch of great friends.

With the many ups and downs in my life this year, I slacked back on my reading and had to lower to my goal from 120 books to only 40 books! I barely made it in time behind the clock strikes 12 over my side and 2014 is over.

Here's a quick view of what I have read and rated in 2014! I am hoping to do better in 2015 but I am moving to a new role so I am going to have to mange my time better.