PURPLE QUEEN FAIRY READS

Remember my Dorothy Koomson’s collection ? Well, I’ve read all of them and will be sharing them with you one at a time over the next few months. Let’s get started with The Chocolate Run . No particular reason why this is first. Let’s have a look at the synopsis: Amber Salpone doesn’t mean to keep ending up in bed with her friend Greg Walterson, but she can’t help herself. And every time it ‘just happens’ their secret affair moves closer to being a real relationship, which is a big problem when he’s a womanizer and she’s a commitment –phobe. While Amber struggles to accept her new feelings for Greg, she also realises that her closeness to Jen, her best friend, is slipping away and the two of them are becoming virtual strangers. Slowly but surely, as the stark truths of all their lives are revealed, Amber has to confront the fact that chocolate can’t cure everything and sometimes running away isn’t an option. The Chocolate Run is a delectable tale of lust, love and chocolate. ...

It’s time to talk about The Last Testament after The Righteous Man .  Let’s get the synopsis out of the way : An Iraqi boy loots an ancient clay tablet from a long-forgotten vault in the Baghdad Museum of Antiquities. At a rally for the signing of a historic deal between Israel and Palestinians, an assassin pushes through the crowd towards the Israeli PM. Bodyguards shoot the man dead. But in his hand there’s no gun : only a blood-stained note . A series of apparently random killings follows as tensions boil over, Washington calls in star peace negotiator Maggie Costello. Maggie finds herself in an impossible situation, especially when she discovers the murders are not random. Someone is killing archaeologists and historians – those with secret knowledge of the ancient past. *stare blankly* I actually don’t know where to start. It’s actually quite a confusing book for me. First, readers have to take note of timeline and venue. To compute these into some form of sequ...

Cecelia Ahern is the bestselling author of P.S. I Love You . I have not read P.S. I Love You but I have watched the movie countless of times and each time, I would cry buckets. The first book that I read from Cecelia Ahern is Rosie Dunne (later published as Love, Rosie and subsequently published as Where Rainbow Ends ) which I read in 2006. I thought it was a very creative book especially the way it was written. I shall share Rosie Dunne with you some other time. Today belongs to If You Could See Me Now . The version I got was from Hyperion International Edition. It took me a long time as the fonts are real small. The synopsis : Everything in Elizabeth Egan’s life has its place. Order and precision keep life under control and keep Elizabeth’s heart safe from the pain she has suffered in the past. Being a mother to her 6 years old nephew leaves little room for error until one day, when Ivan comes into their lives. He is everything that Elizabeth is not – carefree and adventuro...

This book was a gift. I am very sure of that. Let me share with you the synopsis: Wilson Velez is a gang lord in solitary confinement, slowly losing his mind. Lizbeth Greene is a celebrated crime novelist whose inspiration is beginning to run dry. When Lizbeth decides that writing a book about Velez could revive her ailing career, she begins to visit him in prison. Gradually, she becomes drawn into Wilson’s dark world and the pair engage in a complex and fascinating dance of attraction and rejection. For Lizbeth needs Wilson to kick-start her career while Wilson needs Lizbeth to get out of solitary confinement. I didn’t’ like the book when I first read it. However, I was intrigued by the relationship between Wilson and Lizbeth, the differences, the similarities, the dependency, the betrayal. I was curious to know how it ended and it wasn’t how I expected it to end but then I couldn’t know how else it should end either. Can I say that in a way, I was sad for both of them? The t...

If you are familiar with SS2 town square in Petaling Jaya in the early 2000s, you would know that there are 2 shops there that you can borrow books home for a fee. One is called Walk-in-Rent-A-Book and the other was called Novel House. The concept is very easy. You go in, browse for the books that you like. They do have a huge selection of books from English to Chinese and even comic books for rent. Once you have selected the book or books of choice, pay a deposit and a fee (the fee varies from book to book) and then you can take the book home for as long as you wish. When you are done with it, you bring it back, check it in and collect back your deposit. While it might not appeal to some people, the concept does work and is an extremely worthwhile arrangement especially if you love to read but don’t want to spend lots of money buying the books or you don’t want to collect these books. It’s also quite a good way to check out authors that you are not familiar with. I have got to kno...

When the Kindle first appeared in the market, it’s only available in the United States. Priced at US$260 or thereabout, it’s not something that everyone can purchase. Couple of years down the road to today, I think the Kindle can now be made available to the rest of the world but are still consider quite expensive. For me, I can purchase probably about 40+ paperback novels for the starting price of a Kindle. Interestingly, today, I saw in the newspapers that Amazon is slashing the price of the Kindle 3G version to US189 and they unveiled the wireless only version at US$139. Still considered pretty expensive but with Christmas just 4 months down the road, I think that’s an extremely good move. Perhaps now more affordable by the mass market, I am still waiting for the day for the price to take an even bigger plunge before even considered getting one. As you know, getting a kindle is just the first step. Unless I can get my hand on an actual Kindle, I have no idea about the features. Bene...

A review from Birmingham Post, taken from the author’s web, read : After reading only the first few pages of Sleepyhead I had my first nightmare in years. I woke up in the early hours shaking and sweating.. ." No, the book didn’t have such effect on me. It was quite a disturbing book but it didn’t have the nightmare effect but I can vaguely know where that statement was coming from. Sleepy Head is the first in a series of novels written by Mark Billingham which features Detective Inspector Tom Thorne. It was published in the UK in August 2001 and is the first out of a total of 10 titles. Classified as a crime novel, the story has the detective inspector investigating a series of murders which involved young women. The latest victim, Alison Willetts survived the murder which made the police thinking that the killer made a mistaken. What they didn’t realise is that Alison was the killer’s success. To quote from the synopsis, ‘ Unless Thorne can enter the mind of a brill...