Tink's Book Reviews

The Help by Kathryn Stockett Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Mississippi 1962 Eugenia "Skeeter" doesn't want to be like every other white woman in Mississippi. She doesn't want to find a husband, settle down and have children at her age of twenty-two. She wants to be a journalist and excel in her dreams and ambitions, but finding the right things to write about let alone find a job is more difficult than it seems. Especially with her over controlling mother, who wishes her to join the crowd and be like every other woman.  Though finding the right thin...

The Red House by Mark Haddon Two families. Seven days. One house. Angela and her brother Richard have spent twenty years avoiding each other. Now, after the death of their mother, they bring their families together for a holiday in a rented house on the Welsh border. Four adults and four children. Seven days of shared meals, log fires, card games and wet walks. But in the quiet and stillness of the valley, ghosts begin to rise up. The parents Richard thought he had. The parents Angela thought she had. Past and present lovers. Friends, enemies, victims,  saviors Imagine going for a weeks holiday with another half of your family that you don't get on with much and never have. Well, this is what happens with two very different families but very much related set on an adventure together, and this is there tale of what can happen. Being in close proximity, having to put up with the other side for a week and you're parents and children forcing you to get along with everyone....

The Greatest Love Story of All Time by Lucy Robinson It's Fran's thirtieth birthday and things are good . . . She's bluffed her way into a Very Posh Job and her outlandishly handsome and talented boyfriend Michael is escorting her to the Ritz with a bulge the shape of a ring box in his pocket. But something has gone wrong. Very wrong. By the end of the evening Fran is howling in bed with a bottle of cheap brandy and one of Michael's old socks. In her quest to figure out why her life has suddenly gone down the pan, Fran comes up with a failsafe plan: live like a badger, stalk a stranger called Nellie and cancel her beloved Gin Thursdays in favour of drinking gin every night. But then Fran's friends force a very different plan on her and it's nowhere near as fun. How could eight dates possibly make her feel better? But eventually she agrees. And so begins the greatest love story of all time . . . What do you do when you're having the time of your life on y...

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky 'I walk around the school hallways and look at the teachers and wonder why they're here.  Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day...or wondering who did the breaking and wondering why.' Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it.  Charlie is attempting to navigate his way uncharted territory: The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But Charlie can't stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique percept...