Tobias Reeks

“The Secret” first came to my attention when I saw Samantha reading it in a scene from the Sex and the City movie and I decided to investigate further.

I suspect that maybe a lot of people will pick this up or click “Add to Basket” as they are eager to find out what The Secret's secret is, but in reality once you've read a few pages you'll be familiar with the concept - I have heard of the concept before now at least.

Keeping this idea in mind, the book itself is very easy to read and you'll finish it within a few days of starting. The ideas, instructions, suggestions, points and counterpoints all make sense and are straight forward. I can see no reason why everyone cannot benefit enormously.

My grumbles, although minor are more due to the clever marketing/branding of the book and also the multiple personality aspect the book seems to have. It is as if Byrne has collated many ideas, cut and pasted them together with a few additional musings of her own and then slapped her name on the front.

I am generally positive about this potentially life changing book. I did enjoy it and will re-read it again as well as recommending it to others to read.

Keep and open mind and see what it can do for you.

Sookie's narrative introduces us quickly to her world where a mixture of romance, mystery, humour and the supernatural make for an entertaining and well paced read over twelve chapters.

Positives - The tone is lighter than the television series. The writing is fresh as well, Sookie acknowledges Anne Rice's success and “Bubba” gets a mention too.

Negatives - The chapters are quite long and at times it does feel like an advertisement for product placement.

I came to the source, via the inspiration in that I've watched and throughly enjoyed “True Blood” on the television. So if you've enjoyed “True Blood”, then you may enjoy “Dead Until Dark” - just prepare yourself for some differences, courtesy of Alan Ball and HBO.

This was one of the texts, studied during my first year at university, back in 2003, though originally in Spanish. All these years later, I thought it high time to sit down and properly read one of the texts I was supposed to study in depth at university, though now without the socio-political and historical context to go with it.

The story's protagonists are The Colonel and his wife, who live in a small town in Colombia, possibly in the same time period as characters such as Aureliano Buendía, who appears in García Márquez's “100 Years of Solitude”.

The story tells us of the misery and desperation they face on a daily basis, whilst the Colonel awaits his long awaited war pension, which never seems to arrive, and money the couple could make from their dead son's fighting cockerel and it's sale.

We spend most of our time spent in limbo, pondering - Is the Colonel's pension ever going to arrive? Will the fighting cockerel ever win a fight? Will life ever get better for the couple?

There's no chapter structure in the traditional sense of a novel and at times, I also found the lack of names annoying as well, and to me, these are what frustrated me more than anything else.

I may read it again in the future, but for the minute, I'm left with a sense of relief that I've finished it and can move onto something else.

Veronika decides to die... a rather morbid title, don't you think? This is my second Coelho book, having battled with “The Alchemist” some years previously. I just didn't get it at all, despite all the (online) praise.

What did I like about “Veronika”? Coelho is a gifted writer, very able to transport you to another world, in this case, a psychiatric hospital in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Did Coelho need to include himself as a character in the book in the opening few chapters? Not really...

It is in no way a perfect novel, but at its core, it has inspiring messages that many of us could take into our day to day lives, especially with 2018 now on our doorstep and when perhaps many of us have gotten bogged down by winter blues and want a fresh start. Am I likely to revisit this again in the future? Yes.

This book allows the reader to reevaluate the importance of life and that each day is precious... not to be wasted.

Ursula has, and always will be one of my favourite Disney villains. The cover is beautiful, she looks divine (much like the drag queen that inspired her), with a slight look of menace in her eyes and originally I liked the idea - to fill in the back story of Ursula and figure out why she came to be who she was.

The novel opens frighteningly, with perhaps a very graphic description of Ursula's wrath upon others, so I'm not sure if it quite fits for the opening to a Disney novel. I add that this takes place in in the (Essex) town of Ipswich no less - dare I say chosen just because of the name, nothing more...

Shortly after, new characters are introduced, three sisters who are friends with the sea witch. They've a cat... but we're now at the point where things take a second flight of fancy, where their cat has the same name as the author? Pardon... Excuse me?

Elsewhere other Disney characters are mentioned and somehow the Disneyverse is intertwined? I don't want a story featuring Snow White, Maleficent or The Beast... this is supposed to be about Ursula. Granted, I read this as a standalone novel, rather than part of a series. By this point, I think I had slightly lost the plot with the book as a whole and found great delight in picking out its flaws thereafter.

Sebastian and Flounder don't exist in this version of the story, but somehow Scuttle does; “Mum” features a few times; Tea is taken with cream and sugar and the one that takes the biscuit is that somehow The Enchantress from Beauty and The Beast has a major plot role of The Little Mermaid.

From what originally held so much promise and could have been potentially entertaining, we end up with dialogue straight from the 1989 story in places, and the end result not really being about Ursula at all...

Perhaps someone younger than myself, would enjoy this, but me, as a diehard fan of the original 1989 classic film, I feel this is a poor unfortunate soul of a book.