I don’t know where to start my review of this book. So, let me just start from the beginning.

Please understand that this review contains MANY spoilers!

New York, US, where the whole story takes place, fictionally of course.

Thomas is a Hikikomori, or in other words a recluse- a person who withdraws himself to one place, mostly his room, but away from society. Obviously, something terrible has happened to him. His wife lives in the next room. Yes, same apartment but they’re not sharing a room together anymore. You find out soon enough that Thomas’s reason as to why he is this way is because he lost his son and blames himself entirely for it. To be completely honest, I thought it’d be something else, not that losing a child is not a big deal but I just thought it might be more… of a mystery? I guess people grieve in different ways, and the loss of a child is not a pain I ever wish to know. His wife Silke hasn’t left him. She stuck with him while talking to him between the wall/door, screaming at him, crying constantly, but mostly going about a relatively normal life for three years. Yes, he has been a Hikikomori for three years!

Silke’s last attempt to save their marriage, is to bring in a rental sister. A “sister” who is not a direct family member but someone who can possibly coax him out of the shell he’s created. Apparently it’s a phenomenon in Japan, a Hikikomori and a rental sister, one wouldn’t exist without the other. So Megumi, just an ordinary Japanese woman who is a clerk at a store somewhere in NY, starts to show up and talk to Thomas regularly. But she has her own deep and dark past of course. Her brother was a Hikikomori and died after being in a room for four years. She came to the US to escape everything.

Now, I understand why some people might think that this story is perverse. All three of them have issues. Thomas eventually has sex with Megumi and develops feelings for her that are totally different from the feelings he has for his wife. “A heart can love twice” he says. For him to start a new life with Megumi might be easier. Megumi,while her brother was still alive, wanted to take her brother away from his harsh reality where he was beaten up everyday for being half Japanese and half Korean. So she started to have sex for money. But her brother died before she could raise enough money to save him. She also falls for Thomas, it’s a pull that they feel for each other and honestly, I couldn’t understand it. Maybe he made her feel needed? She could save Thomas when she couldn’t save her brother? What was Silke thinking, bringing a young Japanese girl into her husband’s life? Did she know of the consequences that might happen? Was she okay with it? And Silke herself, sometimes brought men into the apartment to entice Thomas to come out and do something about it. Yes, it is all very wrong. But when I think more about it, that is what life is about. You become desperate and do anything and everything to cling on to what little hope you might have. We don’t live in a fairy tale world where you find the love of your life, your soul mate and live happily ever after. You work at a marriage, make mistakes, forgive them and move on, and sometimes move on with someone else.

So, I didn’t think this book was perverse, it was just writing about what was real. Ultimately, Thomas came out of his room because of his room to try and set things right with his wife but then she attempted to kill herself by setting the apartment on fire. His instincts failed him when their son died in a car accident three years ago but this time they kicked in just in time for him to save her. Later Thomas asks Silke why she thinks they still have a chance in their marriage, what has changed? Silke says that she knew when Thomas came for her during the fire to save her life, even before their bodies hit the floor, that he chose to live and he ultimately chose their marriage, after all. Which, unfortunately, could have been her big misunderstanding since he would have left if not for Megumi’s new situation which I will explain in the next paragraph.

During the time that Megumi was falling for Thomas, she finds out that her mother, who abandoned their family to go back to Korea, was actually pregnant when she left and has since returned to Japan to start a new life. They all want her to come back to them there. She ultimately decides to go back for the sake of her little brother, who is also half Japanese and half Korean. Her decision is what decides the outcome of this book, leaving Thomas with Silke, who are now also left to try for a new beginning. Who knows what will happen to them, maybe Thomas would’ve been better off with Megumi, but we will never know.

The dust jacket of this book kind of tricked me into thinking that this was an odd love story where a relationship worked with three people in it. What I should have known is that relationships never work that way- at least not that I’ve ever known.

I don’t know what to think of them. I don’t know if I should pity them or be scared that it could so easily happen to anyone I know.

This book was written beautifully and it read like music. I can say that it was the most “REAL” book I’ve read in a long time. I will be looking forward to his next book.

“Firelight,” a wonderful and a delight of a title if you ask me. And to think that it tells a story about dragons! Needless to say, I was a bit excited. Any significant series that I know of that are based on dragons is the “Eragon” series, but I never developed the taste for it. Many Young Adult books has written countless books on ‘vampires’ ‘werewolves’ ‘angels’ and even ‘fairies.’ It’s about time someone picked other magical species, like DRAGONS!

Firelight, Vanished, Hidden by Sophie Jordan 3.5/5 stars

The story flows as though you are drinking a decent red wine when you are already tipsy. You know, when you know that the wine is good since you’ve been drinking all night but after you are a bit tipsy, you wouldn’t notice a difference between a $50 bottle and a $8 dollar bottle? The story felt like that to me. As usual, I didn’t have much expectation but the world itself was pretty fascination and the author’s description of her dragons was quite beautiful. So, I got sucked into it. But soon enough, I found flaws and annoying side characters as well as main characters. But it was just soooo easy to read through it all!! Which is why I finished all three books in about a week!

*this review may contain spoilers*

Jacinda is a VERY rare fire breather even among her kind. She is treasured but protected in the most twisted way. As a teenage dragon who loves to fly, she rebels. She is quite self righteous and won’t stick with a plan for five whole seconds. She falls in love the worst possible guy and puts everybody she loves in danger. (no surprise there)

Will is a dragon hunter. He finds the human form of Jacinda irresistible as well as the dragon. He has more than a handful of secrets himself including his whole family and no doubt the prince charming of this story. A loner at heart until he found Jacinda, now he just won’t leave her alone.

Cassian the next leader of the dragon clan, is not much introduced in the first book. But he makes his presence from the second. He is big, tall and powerful, he always thought he would be mated with Jacinda, thus making him a worthy opponent of Will. (a character I pity the most in this series…)

Tamra, Jacinda’s TWIN sister, totally caught me off guard. So, I won’t say much but I would’ve like to read more about her.

These four main characters mingle very nicely throughout the story. Sophie Jordan writes it in a way that a reader could imagine at least a dozen outcomes and never a dull moment. Also all three books reads like a whole story instead of having months in between books. Although I have questions unanswered, (that’s only because I pick at ever little things! lol) I would recommend these books to anyone who is in need of a fast and furious read!

It’s already April and personally, I haven’t had enough of Winter to let it get away.

I mean, the cherry blossoms are starting to bloom in Washington D.C., which means I’m pretty much going to have to live with the fact that Spring is coming… Whether I like it or not. It’s not that I don’t like Spring, I just wish I could have seen more snow this year. Field covered with fresh snow that it hurts to look at it directly kind of snow, half your leg is stuck in snow that you can’t move kind of snow, making a snow man and his family kind of snow, and of course, streets are too slippery you can’t go to work/school kind of snow. =D

So, I tried to compensate the loss I felt with a good book that reminded me of Winter.

“The Snow Child” by Eowyn Ivey

“5 STARTS!”

Let me just start off by saying that it is a great book. But if you are the kind of person who gets crazy with ambiguous endings, you might not like this book at all.

The story is based on a Russian fairy tale, an elderly couple who cannot have children of their own builds a child out of snow, the next day the child comes to life and soon she becomes their center of everything. They say the fairy tale has many different endings and the author has chosen to leave us with a conclusion of our own.

The background of it all is not that different, two couple who has already suffered from a loss of a child decides to move to Alaska, away from family and friends. At first they are distant, indifferent to each other. But when the first snow came, it was like a new beginning. They make a child out of snow, a girl. Now, you don’t have to be a detective to know that this girl they made out of snow, becomes a child in flesh and blood the next day.

The book is divided into three sections.

First, it’s all about the dynamics of the couple, how they came to be. The narrative also goes back and forth from wife to husband which makes readers understand a whole lot better of what’s going on both of their minds.

Second, they both have very different sentiment for the girl. Wife, who thinks that she is a “snow maiden,” from a book her father read to her when she was a little girl and grateful for the fact that she has something to love again. Husband, who has seen the other side of this girl and thinks of her as nothing but a lost child and mourns for her. It portrayed two sides almost perfectly and when they finally shared with each other of what they knew of the child, the collision was so real yet troublesome.

Third, a new narrative is introduced, which I thought it was the weirdest part of the book. The Snow Child, at this point, gave me wonder as to if she was a real person? or a snow maiden? And it worried me to think that there won’t be a perfect ending for this story after all. Also it was by this point that I thought I would be okay either way.

The story is written so poetically at times that I kept reading the same sentence over and over again. It draws you in deeply and forcefully like the white snow in the mountains and makes you feel like you are the only person in the world when you are reading it. I teared up many times during the story, felt the heart squeeze itself from time to time. I recommend this book for all those who already misses the Winter and an adult fairy tale.

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(a passage or two from the book)

All her life she had believed in something more, in the mystery that shape-shifted at the edge of her senses. It was the flutter of moth wings on glass and the promise of river nymphs in the dappled creek beds. It was the smell of oak trees on the summer evening she fell in love, and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond and turned the water to light.

I remember with some shame that the rest of us teased you about seeing such spirits, but now my own grandchildren chase similar fancies and I do not discourage them. In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believe as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.

She had thought often of Ada’s words about inventing new endings to stories and choosing joy over sorrow. In recent years she had decided her sister had been in part wrong. Suffering and death and loss were inescapable. And yet, what Ada had written about joy was entirely true. When she stands before you with her long, naked limbs and her mysterious smile, you must embrace her while you can.