I’m linking up with mutteringmummy’s blog once again with a round up of what I have been reading in May.

Take Me Home – Daniela Sacerdoti

At the start of this book we learn that Scottish girl, Inary, has the gift of sight, which enables her to see spirits, but at the age of 8 she saw something which frightened her so much that she lost this gift.

Flash forward and she has affectively run away to London after a relationship break up. With both parents deceased, she leaves her older brother as the sole carer of their younger, sick sister, Emily and despite feeling guilty about this, it isn’t enough to make her stay. In London she meets Alex, but refuses to be more than friends with him, believing she can never fall in love again.

When Emily’s condition takes a turn for the worse, Inary returns home to nurse her sister through her final days and in the weeks that follow she works through her grief by coming to terms with her failed relationship and learning to love her home town once more. Inary’s sight also returns and she realises that someone needs her help. Researching the lives of the spirits who have contacted her helps Inary to come to terms with her own loss and her feelings for her friend, Alex whom she left behind in London.

I’m indifferent about this book. It was an easy read and I found the storyline about the ghosts from the past interesting, but I felt a bit bogged down with the grief over the lost sister. There were a couple of things that I felt didn’t get tied up at the end of the story and I was left wondering what happened and why they were in the story in the first place. There is a lovely sense of place about this book though, which made me want to take a trip to Scotland!

Fractured – Dani Atkins

This book reminded me of Life on Mars and the idea of living in a parallel world. At the start of the story, Rachel is enjoying a last night with friends before they all head off to university when a tragic incident changes all her plans.

Five years later Rachel is heading home for her best friends wedding when another incident leaves her hospital bound. When she wakes up, Rachel’s life as she knows it is completely different from the one that she has supposedly been living the whole time. Rachel has to make sense of this new reality and what it all means.

As you read this book you wonder which of Rachel’s lives is the real one and how it will all end. With a long term boyfriend, Mat and best friend, Jimmy both vying for her affections, the question is, who will she end up with?

Out of Mind – Jen McLaughlin

This is the sequel to Out of Time, where rich girl, Carrie, a Senator’s daughter, meets and falls in love with Marine, Finn who unbeknownst to Carrie is sent by her father to be her body guard whilst she is at college. It is a story of two people who are polar opposites yet fall hard and fast for each other, despite knowing that. When their relationship is discovered, Finn is sent away on a tour of duty, which results in him getting badly injured and the rest of his platoon being killed.

The sequel, Out of Mind is the aftermath of this incident, in which Finn struggles to cope with what happened to him. In so doing he self destructs and destroys his relationship with Carrie believing that she is better off without him.

I enjoyed the first half of this story better than the sequel. Both are easy to read, though, but I spent most of the second book thinking that Finn should either get a grip or get some help and the whole post traumatic stress disorder became a bit wearing. I don’t think that I am unsympathetic, but tackling this subject perhaps needed a stronger storyline to go with it.

Hope this collection has inspired you and I would love to know what you are reading too.