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?

2016 Classics Challenge!

Okay, we all love a good classic. There's no denying it, be it music, books, films or food. And today, I thought I would share a little blog post to contribute to some 'good classics'.

I recently watched a video from the wonderful Lucy, in which she shared her love of classics, and the idea of the "#2016ClassicsChallenge". Normally, I scroll through my YouTube subscriptions feed, watching videos whilst playing games on my Kindle, or colouring. But when something peaks my interest, I drop everything to watch it again, paying more attention the second time round. This was one of those moments.

The 2016 Classics Challenge is being held and run by The Pretty Books, and the sign up link for the challenge is here. In this blog post, Stacey (the lady behind The Pretty Books), states that the idea behind this challenge is to read one classic a month and blog, tweet, instagram or video your journeys! Completing one a month however, isn't a limit, and it also isn't a target. If you read more, thats fantastic, less, it's no big deal (which is a relief for me considering how poor I'm doing at the moment with this challenge).

Now, I know what you're all thinking "another generic post about classics", which is probably true. However, I just wanted to share with you all my aspirations for the completion of this challenge, and to let you all know that I will be aiming to take part in all aspects of this challenge! If you wish to join me, the sign up is linked above, as is Lucy's video!

Thanks everyone for reading!