Gone Girl Review: Read with Reni

So the month is over now and that means the review of Gone Girl is now due. Let's hop straight to it shall we. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is hands down the most intriguing book I've read this year. And I know you're probably thinking "Calm down Reni, you've only read like 2 books..." But that's not entirely true, I've read tons this year already, it's pretty much all I do with my time these days. I really don't want to give too much away because it's one of those books that's absolutely ruined if the plot is given away.

So what's it about? It's about a man Nick Dunne whose wife, Amy suddenly goes missing with no clues, mixed messages and of course the prime suspect is none other than her husband. It's told equally from both their vantage points with alternating chapters for each of them. It's so full of twists, turns, dead ends and horrifying betrayals and revelations and I think the writing is just brilliant.

"I've suffered betrayal with all five senses."- Amy Dunne

I'm not really a fan of mystery novels but this is definitely not your typical mystery, it doesn't follow the regular flow of events and I think that's what makes it all the better. I've never read any of Gillian Flynn's other novels and so I can't really say whether or not this type of literary genius is the norm for her or not but I would definitely be reading more in the near future.

It seems to have an underlying theme of "What do we really know about each other?" running through the entire prose not only between the husband and wife but through their relationships with everyone around them and that was a little scary for me and made me think quite deeply about how much I truly know about my friends. 

"Tell me. What can it hurt, tell me everything, because you and I can't go forward with this pretend story."- Nick Dunne

It tells a very true story about how very often, guys and girls alike pretend to be a different version of themselves to try and impress members of the opposite sex but of course this is never ever sustainable. Unfortunately, or not, we only know as much information about a person as they offer to give us and some times there's no way of verifying if this is the true version of themselves or one of their many characters.

"Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl [....] Every girl was supposed to be this girl, and if you weren't, then there was something wrong with you."- Amy Dunne

It also shows how the dynamics of relationships change as time goes by and as people are confronted with things they never thought they would have to face.

"There's something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold."- Nick Dunne

All in all I'd describe the book as very realistic, it shows the flaws in human relationships and the lengths some people would go to to make sure that they are understood and appreciated. Of course not everyone goes to the extreme but I can't really say much more without ruining the book so I'd stop there.

Did anyone else read it? If you've written a review to it recently or in the past then feel free to link below or drop a comment and let me know what you thought of it.

The book for April is "On Black Sisters' Street" by Chika Unigwe. Buy it, download it, borrow it... Just make sure you're reading with Reni ^_^

Reni xx

Read with Reni: Bloggers Book Club, Re-Introductions

*Pinch, punch, first of the month* to all of you my lovely readers! I hope January was an amazing start to the year for you and it's set the tone for the rest of the months ahead. If you remember, I very randomly decided to start an online bloggers book club "Read With Reni" but I didn't really put much thought into the structure of it at the time. Partly because I was having a "Eureka!" moment and didn't want to ruin it by overthinking things! Haha. So anyways, now I've had the chance to sit down and think about how I'd like things to go this year so here we are, formally re-introducing "Read with Reni" with all the bits and bobs attached!

What is it?

Well, it's simple really, it's an online book club open to any and everybody that like me, sometimes just wants to get lost in the pages of a great book. We'd be reading one book a month and on the first of every month, I'd put up a review of sorts of the previous month's book. I say "of sorts" because personally, I hate spoilers! My review might be in the form of a short story the book inspired me to write, or some part of the book that really struck a chord with me. It would not always be a structured typical review so I promise it would have as little spoilers as possible, for the sake of the people who might not have finished reading it yet.

What do you have to do?

Absolutely nothing! Well except read of course, and that itself is optional. There's no pressure to join and nothing to subscribe to. If you've read a particular book and want to share a review on your own blog then that's great! I'd have an open link-up at the end of each of my reviews so we can all share our thoughts! And if of course you don't have a blog, you can drop as many comments as you want. I'd always be there for related discussions etc. 

When do we start?

NOW! It's a little impromptu but why wait another day? We've already missed January!

And possibly the most important question...

What shall we be reading?

I'm going to try and make the choices as mixed and diverse as possible, reason being I really want to widen my horizons. It would mostly be a mix of classic, modern and african literature and I'd announce the books at the beginning of every quarter of the year. There would be three 'Readers Choice' months in April, August and December where readers get to decide through a poll what books they would like to read that month. More info on that later.

The books for this first quarter are

February: And the Mountains Echoed- Khaled Hosseini

March: Gone Girl- Gillian Flynn

April: Readers Choice- TBC

I hope you guys are as excited as I am for this to get properly underway. I can't wait to get tucked in to Khaled Hosseini's amazing writing this month. If you would like to suggest a book to be in the poll for the "Readers Choice" months feel free to drop a comment or send me an email at lilactintedviews[at]yahoo[dot]com.

Hope you have a lovely weekend and an even better month!

Reni xx

P.S. Don't forget to enter my giveaway! There's another winner to be announced tomorrow! 

Read With Reni: Online Book Club Intro

So. This is new and exciting! I decided to try and write an entire blogpost with the Blogger app to see if it's really worth it's salt. Sometimes the whole reason I dong blog is because I really can't be bothered to open up my laptop! It acts so crazy and slow sometimes. But I suppose I wouldn't mind writing shorter posts on my phone/iPad from time to time :)

So as most of you know, my current job status is not one that I relish so whilst I'm in this small rut of applying for jobs and waiting for feedback I decided to use my time wisely and enjoy myself. What better way to do that than by reading? People that know me personally know how much I love reading so the other day I popped into Waterstones and bought 2 books "And the Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini, author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" and "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn. I picked the former based purely on the fact that I've read his other two books and LOVED them! He's such a fantastic writer, I don't even think I full read the back of the book to see what it was about. Gone Girl was highly recommended to me by my friend a little while ago and since it was on offer, I figured why not?

The third book "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) is one that I came across whilst reading a blogpost by someone else, I wish desperately that I could find the post because it was so inspirational to me as a woman at the time. All I do remember is the author of the post recommending this book for males and females alike and for some reason, I wanted to read it instantly! I was busy searching for an e version of the book when my lovely mother called me and told me she had this book called "Lean In" which was given to her at a conference and she thinks I should read it. You can't imagine how excited I was! Haha. Lean In is not a novel though, it's about women in the workplace and their will to lead, I hope it's the first of many books of it's kind I shall be reading! 

A brilliant idea came to mind after I posted the picture above on Instagram, my friend commented about a book club and I thought, omg that's a great idea! Lol. So here we are, my first attempt at starting an online book club! This is the order I'm reading them in "Lean In", "And the Mountains Echoed" and then "Gone Girl" but I'm going to officially make "And the Mountains Echoed" the book for February. If you think you might be interested then please drop a line in the comments box or send me a message on Facebook. 

I'm not sure if I will review the books after I've read them yet though, I'm not very good at giving completely unbiased opinions without spoiling at least some of the book! I think I'd just come back and say what I've learnt from each book or something similar. This could be the start of an exciting new journey! Who's with me? Come one, come all! Let's start a book club!

Don't forget to leave a comment below if you think you might be interested.

Reni xx

P.S. I didn't end up posting this up with the blogger app because I found that I can't schedule posts from there, and I can't justify my text... I HATE unjustified text. Lol. I also couldn't change the size of the picture or move it! And I also lost my social media icons at the end of the post (go on, click on one of them, you know you want to...) Basically, the app is great for short snappy posts but not so awesome for longer ones. 

P.P.S Don't forget to enter my giveaway! Check it out here "An Upgrade and A Giveaway" there's four awesome prizes to be won! :D