Twenties Girl

Dates Read: January 2012
I was craving a light-hearted easy read and this book was perfect! It started a little slow but once it picked up, I couldn't put it down! The main character has some boyfriend troubles, a ghost that is trying to run her life, and she has trouble telling her family the truth about what's happening. In essence, it's a great chick book!

Summary: (from Amazon.com)
Lara Lington has always had an overactive imagination, but suddenly that imagination seems to be in overdrive. Normal professional twenty-something young women don’t get visited by ghosts. Or do they?

When the spirit of Lara’s great-aunt Sadie—a feisty, demanding girl with firm ideas about fashion, love, and the right way to dance—mysteriously appears, she has one request: Lara must find a missing necklace that had been in Sadie’s possession for more than seventy-five years, because Sadie cannot rest without it.

Lara and Sadie make a hilarious sparring duo, and at first it seems as though they have nothing in common. But as the mission to find Sadie’s necklace leads to intrigue and a new romance for Lara, these very different “twenties” girls learn some surprising truths from and about each other. Written with all the irrepressible charm and humor that have made Sophie Kinsella’s books beloved by millions, Twenties Girl is also a deeply moving testament to the transcendent bonds of friendship and family.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Dates Read: January 2012
This book was ... odd. The story is told from various perspectives (the little boy, letters from the grandma, letters from other people) and a lot of the sentence structures are run-ons (like some pages have no paragraphs and only a few periods but a ton of commas) and sometimes it was hard to keep conversations straight (quotes ran into each other and I had trouble keeping track of who said what). This is one case where it was nice that I saw the movie first because I think I would have been really lost if I read this book without knowing something about it. The story was interesting and thought-provoking and it was fun going on the journey with Oskar but it took me a while to read the book because of the structure of the sentences and storyline.

Summary: (from Amazon.com)
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey.