REVIEW || Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

This book. Wow. Just wow.

I bought this on a whim, mainly a guilty pleasure cover buy, but also for the fact that we (myself and the book), share the same name. Rebecca. Obviously!

In this book, we follow our female lead, who begins her take working for a Mrs Van de Hopper as a servant almost. She lives with her, dines with her, holidays with her, and so on, all in exchange for £90 a month. When we first come across the pair, they are holidaying abroad, when they just so happen to be staying in the same hotel as Maxim De Winter, esteemed Englishman and sole owner of the stately homes of Manderley. We see the relationship between our main character and Maxim blossom during the hotel stay, to the point where Maxim asks her to becomes his bride! From there, we are taken on a journey full of twists and turns with the newly-weds, as our main female character struggles to come to terms with life at Manderley, all the while trying to understand her husbands ever-growing silence ad suspicion surrounding his deceased first-wife, Rebecca.

*from here this review will no longer be spoiler free, scroll to the last paragraph to see my overall thoughts and rating*.

I adored this book. I read it as part of my #2016classicschallenge, and have completed it in under a week. Which for me, and a 400+ page book, is pretty damn impressive! Initially I believed our main character to be a bit of a pain, as the author writes in all of these other scenarios playing out in our females head, so I was never really sure what was truth and what wasn't at certain points. However I found that becoming less and less frequent the more I read, which was a definite bonus.

I went through every single emotion I could possibly imagine with almost all of the characters, bar one or two who I loathed from the moment I met them. I have to say, Maxim exceeded my expectations, and I loved his character development throughout the book. I began hating him for leading our poor female on (I've yet to learn her name, it's probably mentioned somewhere and I didn't pay attention), until suddenly it all went up in the air when she confronted him about his feelings. And then - well, that was one hell of a revelation!

***

Overall I'm giving this book an amazing 5 out of 5 stars, which is rare for a classic read (for me anyway). This means that I would highly recommend it to absolutely anyone and everyone. Don't read classics? Read this one. Prefer YA? Try this, trust me you'll love it. I just hope someone somewhere has thought about a novella or sequel so we can see what has happened to our beloved couple since the end of the novel!

Have you read this book? What are your thoughts?

Life Update

Until I consider whether this is going to be a permanent feature in my blog, I will just be calling this a "Life Update".

Okay. So exactly four weeks ago today (I think that's right), I took the plunge and joined my local weight loss group with my mam. She's been going for little under a year now, and has done phenomenally, so I finally bit the bullet and joined myself. Everything was going great. Until...

My hiccup.

I've been weighed tonight (it's just after 9pm) at class and found since last week I've put half a pound on. I'm feeling both frustrated and upset but at the same time I'm feeling nothing at all. And I think I know why.

I didn't stick to plan.

Each week for the first four weeks of your journey, you're meant to fill out food diaries to see what you're eating, what your habits are, and how you can change them if necessary. You pass then back to your consultant who then looks over them and returns them the following week (or texts you like mine does, she's such a good consultant!)

This week however, life admittedly got in the way, and although I was mentally preparing my meals and counting my good and bad foods, I wasn't actually writing these down, not even on a scrap bit of paper, let alone my food diary! So naturally I had a rather naughty week as a consequence (totally my own fault and I take full blame), which I've paid for in my gain. To me, this proves that I really do need my food diaries to help me control my eating habits and make the correct changes I need.

Anyway, this ramble is now over, I've had my say and can't decide if I want to keep up with this segment or if this is a one off.

See you all soon with another post!

REVIEW || We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

Not going to lie - I teared up a little bit when reading this.

This book follows a group of people, some are friends in the beginning, others are not. But by the end, we have this beautiful group of friendship that is almost too cliche, but totally understandable.

*this review many not be spoiler free*

I'd eyed this book up for ages, before finally caving to my own wishes and purchasing it at the beginning of 2016. I knew I was in for a YA, I just didn't know how much of a YA it was going to be.

Turns out, quite a bit actually.

Sometimes, friendships or scenarios felt forced or awkward, as if they were there for the sake of it, as opposed to being there because they had earned the right to occur. Yet this didn't really effect the overall reading experience for me!

I got way too attached to all the wrong characters (naturally), and this book was no exception in the YA format of "wonderful friendship building followed by tragedy". And in all seriousness, I really didn't expect certain things from certain characters at the end of the book. I just really really wanted things to work out for P. He was always in his sisters shadow attention wise and was left to his own devices most of the time I believe, which makes his outcome even more distressing for me.

These are just my initial thoughts, although overall I will be giving this book a 4 out of 5 star rating. Once I figure out how to write down my thoughts and feelings more coherently or systematically, then I may come back to this review!


Have you read this before? Let me know down below in the comments!