First thriller in a long time. It was great to be lost in a story in the midst of chaos and sickness 🤧
I liked the characters. Although the end felt a little flat. The explanation felt so rushed and I didn‘t like it. It ended so abruptly. There‘s still some questions I‘d like answered. Wasn‘t a huge fan of the constant change in POV and going back and forth between 1st&3rd person. But overall good and easy story, great if you like thrillers

A weekend away honouring our baby angels‘ first birthday this Sunday 👼👼🤍

Spending a quiet evening hidden away from that horrendous windstorm, reading books. All cosied up 🙈
sky looked very pretty this evening, despite the weather 🌅

💘

A much needed break. This was my favourite place, the weather was amazing and the whole scene looked out of a movie. The pictures don‘t do the justice. Standing on top of the hill overlooking the view with the castle… I felt like a princess in a story, I did not want to leave!

I‘ve much neglected my reading and my book club again, sorry! Back to my actual box filled with unread books. (+another 10 I acquired along the way…)

A little late for the book, but what a cute sticker I found! #DeadPhilosophersSociety

Much needed catching up to do.

“Watch me…😑”

I get a very toddlery-vibe from them.

#DeadPhilosophersSociety

“When you work with fish, they have no idea they are in a tank, somewhere unnatural. With octopuses it is totally different. They know that they are inside this special place, and you are outside of it. All their behaviour are affected by their awareness of captivity.”

Went to a plant shop with fish & although ‘they have no idea they are in a tank‘ I felt sorry for them swimming around in circles always hitting a wall.

#DeadPhilosophersSociety

Anyone else gets annoyed by these? ://

Almost always can‘t get my focus back

Hm. Not the greatest writing for me. Story was ok.
Although I feel I haven‘t gotten an answer to a sort of big thing in the story. So the point of that was..?

It was too long for what it was and the end also felt quick compared to the rest of the story. Too much repetition of events. And the actual ‘secret‘ was underwhelming.

Currently only through Part l but it‘s already such a good read.
This should read by everyone who deals with children.

Children need to be dependent on you, they should never question your ability to take care of them and their needs.
- the example for this was so interesting! >

Recommended by my SIL. Not something I read, ever. A very soft pick. But I enjoyed it. I think listening to the audiobook made the whole experience a lot better. Would listen to something of hers again.

The overall story is good, typical romance. Very cringy. Very predictable. Only thing I hated was how the whole town was so overprotective over a Big Grown Man.

I don‘t know if anyone here has Instagram but I just saw this and had to share!!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAFSBJZvdnl/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

If anyone is wondering why I‘m suddenly following them again after being sure I already followed them - this app unfollowed almost everyone for some reason!
So ignore me - just passing through again…

Who‘s read this? I‘m only 30 pages in but can‘t feel myself being into it. I‘ve read so many good reviews but I‘m not liking the writing so far. :/

Is it worth continuing?

I really enjoyed the beginning. But soon as she moved into the Rochester house, I could not deal with the amount of gibberish they talked! Everything was a metaphor, everything was some ‘floating feelings like the night sky on a summers day‘ whatever! Some example above^ If shorter and more to the point, this would‘ve been a pick for me. The end also was way too rushed. And last characters introduced way too late into the book, did not like it.

Really enjoyed this book. First one in a while that got me hooked into the story, made me remember why I loved reading so much. Entering a whole new world & going from ‘who‘s that‘ to knowing the characters almost like your best friend.
Sometimes predictable. Some actions could have been avoided, unnecessary. Overall, it was still very good and I‘d recommend it for anyone interested in these kind of stories 👏🏻

I adore the film and have been wanting to read this for such a long time. I cannot believe how different it is! There is almost nothing of similarity between Movie Holly and Book Holly, other than occasional sentences.
I still have enjoyed the book, learned more of her past and of “Fred”.

The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Indifference emotionally, indifference physically.

No one, though, has any idea of the churn of a secret life. Your desire to crash catastrophe into your world is like a tugging at your shirt. But only sometimes, and then its gone. With the offer of a bath, or a cup of tea, or the dishes done.

You don't have, any more, a sanctuary in kindness and good deeds and surrender; you're changing, you can feel the souring. A thrill plumes through you when couples split, a feeling that order's restored, that it's the way we're all meant to be, alone.
...

What have you become? Unhinged, no longer a doormat, just like everyone else?

"'Poor greenheads', wrote the Puritan Daniel Rogers of those who married purely for love when a year or two had passed and they had skimmed the cream of their marriage, they would soon envy the good fortune of those whose union was built on stronger foundations."

"She [Lettice Morrison] was an exceptional character, not only for her beauty, but also for a genuine love of study, which marked her out from most girls of her time: 'oft-times at a book in her Closet when she was thought to be in bed'."

... Frances Purbeck, the wife sought 'for wealth', and Robert Howard, who sought her for love.

"He saw that interests weren't always a sexy thing. A shared passion for a subject, large or small, could quickly put two strangers into a special state of subdued rapture and rivalry, distantly resembling love;"

"Grandmother Kane and Grandmother Cabot said they would never travel in such an infernal contraption, and they never did, although many years later Grandmother Kane was driven to her funeral in a motor car, but was not informed of that fact."
Lol

“Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”

"If you start out by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work toward getting it."

"Your head empties of everything else," he went on. "Whole hours go by. Without moving you wander through lands that you imagine you can actually see, and entwined with the story your mind gets involved with the detailed descriptions, or follows the twists and turns of adventures. It mingles with the characters; it seems as if it is your own heart that beats beneath their clothes."

"Yet shouldn't a man know everything, excel at many different pursuits, introduce you to the power of the passions, the niceties of life, to all its mysteries? This man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing."

"Before she got married she had believed she was in love. But when the happiness that should have come from this love didn't materialize, she thought she had made a mistake. And so Emma tried to understand exactly what was meant in real life by the words bliss, passion and rapture, which had always sounded so beautiful in books."

"You cannot tame a wild animal, because it will always remember where it is from, and yearn to go back."

❤️

"But then, I tell myself, vanity is one of the attributes that distinguish us from animals, so perhaps we should be proud of it."

"So that's how it happens: mutual need is what makes people co-operate; nothing to do with trust or kindness or any such sentimental notion."

Murder, corruption, infidelity, abuse... no. There's something more. Something true in it. It's honest. It's sophisticated. It is what I love.
There was a lot of action in it. It was real action. Not the one making your heart pound, but one to make you question yourself.

"But then we live in a time in which all horror has been commodified into entertainment."

?

Man has a horror of aloneness - not physical aloneness: no one fears that, in ordinary degree at least. Mental, spiritual, emotional, social aloneness is, however, very different.

'There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.'

!!!