And the Winner Is....(July 2013)

And so begins a new month, and we all know what that means. Yes, that's right. It's time for my favourite books of July. Which book/s had the most impact on me, and is/are the clear winner/s this month? Read on to find out.

Last month I had three books in my winners, labelling them 1st, 2nd, and 3rd respectively. This month I've got two, so I've decided on a winner and a runner up. Let's start with the latter, shall we?

My runner-up for this month is.......

Review here

A beautifully written story about the love and bonds of one Irish family. The main plot behind it is the unusual behaviour their youngest member has begun displaying, but what got me in this book was the relationships between the people. For fans of Little Women or Little House on the Prairie, it's the same basic premise as those. Not in plot, but in that the characters carry the story, not the plot. Of course, you still want to know where the plot goes, but it's the characters that you keep going for.

And the winner of this month's And The Winner Is......

Review here

What starts off as quite a slow story, gradually builds like the hurricane that is forever hounding the characters. The plot is a little complicated to explain, but I'll be very basic with it. It's the story of one man giving everything for the woman he loves. Without question. There's also a murder mystery thrown in for good measure. What makes this book so hard to describe is it's numerous genres. It's like a melting pot. There's romance, there's slice-of-life, there's murder mystery, there's thriller, there's a little horror, there's real-life, there's survival, etc. Some may think it too chaotic to work, therefore. However, while the changes in genre are not seamless, they aren't off-putting. The first couple of times it can be a little disorientating, but you get used to it, and just roll with it. If I had to pinpoint what works so well in this book, I'm not sure I could, because it's the conglomeration of all the individual aspects that make it such a great read. If even one of those things was removed, I don't think this book would work anywhere near as well as it does. A wonderfully haunting tale, that you won't soon forget.

So that's been this month's edition of And The Winner Is... I hope you all enjoyed it. Let me know what your favourite books of July were. After all, the joy isn't just in reading the stories, it's in sharing them too.