Book Review 1
Author: Jodi Picoult
Title: Keeping Faith
Very rarely do I find really good books – that has a captivating plot that keeps u glued to the pages, or keeps u interested in the characters. Or even make u take note of the author, so that u plan to read other books from the same author.
This best-selling author in UK, Jodi Picoult, was recommended by my best friend, Sophia who is currently in UK, which I in turn highly recommend to book lovers out there.
The plot is quite unusual, where the title itself (Keeping Faith) does give some hint about what the story is about. The story revolves around Mariah White and her seven-year-old daughter, Faith. Mariah catches her husband with another woman and as she faces divorce with her husband, Faith starts to show many unusual signs or miracles.
Faith starts to have a imaginary friend, which she calls God, and she starts reciting passages from the Bible that she hasn’t never read or heard of before, develops stigmata (bleeding cross marks on her hands and body), performs miraculous healings and even resurrecting her grandmother (from death to life).
As both Faith and Mariah become the focus of the media, cults, rabbis and priests, the questions that arises are: Is Faith really talking to God, and God communicating back to Faith? Or is she a fake – manipulated by her emotionally unstable mother to get attention?
And as Mariah and her ex-husband Colin fights for custody of their daughter, they both go through an emotional roller coaster ride in the courtroom. The old skeletons in the closet gets exposed – Mariah’s past of suicidal depression and Colin’s adulteries…
As the story unfolds, it focuses on Mariah’s struggles, her insecurities, doubts whether she is a good mother, whether she is good enough…
And in the end even the most hard-core nonbelievers may change their view point that “There is no God” to become a believer, or at least half-way there… Perhaps that is the biggest miracle.
A very satisfying and excellent read, and helps us gain some insight into a person’s soul – both the good and bad parts which exists in each of us.
Book Review 2
Author: Sam Bourne
Title: The Righteous Men
Following the footsteps of Dan Brown’s best seller ‘Da Vinci Code’ who rocked the world with his conspiracy theories on Christ, here comes Sam Bourne, one of Brown’s biggest challenger in this mystic-religious thriller.
Someone is killing good people. Why? A series of murders in different parts of the world do not seem connected, except that their victims are secretly very righteous men, who sacrifice and give their lives and possessions to others.
Reporter Will Monroe finds his beautiful wife Beth being kidnapped and the men holding her are not interested in ransom but have their own secret agenda.
In desperation, Will follows a sinister trail that leads to a mysterious cult – linked to the world’s oldest religions. Now he must solve ancient prophecies and riddles buried deep in the Bible to find a secret on which the fate of humanity may depend. And time is running out…
A very exciting and compulsive page-turner; it is fast-paced, yet the plot well developed and has very believable characters.
