Reviews: Open House and Goalden Girl…

I am trying to finish off all the reviews before the year ends. So today I am reviewing 2 books, Open House by Elizabeth Berg and Goalden Girl by Tracey Morait.

Open House by Elizabeth Berg.
This book shows Samantha’s innermost thoughts, the heart break and an honest take on her relationships, with her husband and others. Samantha’s husband leaves her at the age of forty with a teenage son to take care of. Although Samantha knew her relationship with her husband was in trouble, she never really expected it to come to this.

Samantha takes in boarders to help pay with her expenses. I enjoyed reading about her boarders as well. Especially Lavender Blue who thinks nothing in the world is worth living for.

This book was really different from what I expected. Firstly i expected it to be really sad and depressing. But surprisingly it wasn’t. Of course Samantha goes through all that a woman whose husband has left her might go through. But the book is refreshing and pleasant to read. Her inner dialogues are funny. Her relationships with her best friend, her mother and her son are brought out really well.

An enjoyable and quick read. I would like to thank Elizabeth for this book. I would never have picked it otherwise. Thanks for introducing me to a wonderful author. By the way, this book is on the Oprah Book Club.

The Goalden Girl by Tracey Morait
After Gemma’s mother’s death, her father remarries Shelley who Gemma’s hates. She also has a young daughter Portia who is as irritating as Shelley. Gemma has her entire world uprooted when she has to leave her old school, her friends and football.
She is unable to fit in the new school. It does not have a football team either. When the PE teacher Cassidy lends his support to introduce a girl’s football team, Gemma is ecstatic. But there are guys like Tyrone and his friends who will do anything to stop the girls from playing.

Then one day among all this chaos, Gemma sees her teacher Cassidy and her step mom Shelly kissing. She thinks if her dad comes to know about the affair, Shelly and her daughter Portia would have to leave the house.
The rest of the book is about how the girls manage to form a football team and the mystery surrounding her step mom’s affair.
I have kind of have mixed feelings over this book. When I started reading it, I was like, ‘okay, not bad, I can read this’. After some time, I was like, ‘Okay, this is interesting’. But somewhere at the middle I kind of started getting a little bored. I felt the story was not moving ahead.

Then suddenly I was hooked. I wanted to know what happened to Shelly and her father’s marriage. I wanted to know what the affair between Shelly and Cassidy was. And I could certainly empathize with Gemma. As the book was from Gemma’s perspective alone, there was hardly any character development for others. But I would not put that as a negative point here, rather just an observation.
The end was unexpected but interesting. This book is funny at times and overall entertaining. I would recommend it to all teenagers, especially those who love playing any team sports. The matches in the book are really well written and those into playing sports would certainly enjoy them. For those who hate football, just skip the pages with the matches in it and the read the rest. It won’t disappoint.

This review was first published on frontstreetreviews. So thanks Barb for the book.