Blurb: Portia Kane is having a meltdown. After escaping her cheating husband and their posh Florida life, she finds herself transported back home and back to square one. In need of saving herself, she sets out to find and resurrect a beloved high-school English teacher who has retired after a violent incident in the classroom.

But she quickly learns that it's not a one-woman job. Luckily she meets a few people on her journey. Can Chuck, the handsome brother of Portia's old school friend, together with a sassy nun and a metal-head little boy, help Portia's chances in her bid for renewed hope in the human race?

It's going to be quite a ride.

Moving and funny, Love May Fail is about the heartache and daring choices it takes to become the person you know deep down you are meant to be.

Review: When I finished this book I was a bit in two minds about it so I decided to wait a couple of weeks to write the review to have more of an insightful view of it. I think it was a good idea because now, almost three weeks after finishing it, I can tell you that I am glad I read this book, the whole of it. When I started it, I first thought it was ok-ish but then, after reading some more, I really thought about just abandoning it. But Matthew Quick being such a famous and acclaimed author (and after really enjoying Silver Linnings) I decided to persevere and I am glad that I did. All in all, I'm left with a good feeling of the book.

Love May Fail is divided in four parts, each part narrated by a different character. They are all linked and end up forming quite a unified story told chronologically with flashbacks to the past (especially in the first part). We start reading about Portia Kane who has just realised her marriage and her entire life don't really make sense and leaves her cheating husband to go back home. But home is not the welcoming place you might think, her mother has mental problems and struggled all her life to raise and care for her. That is when we learn about a very important figure in Portia's past, her high school teacher, Nate Vernon. 

Nate Vernon takes over the second part, where we find a hugely depressed man who has lost all hope in life. It's quite shocking to compare this shallow man with the idealized figure Portia presented. And when the two reunited, something didn't really work for me. I couldn't understand how Portia couldn't see what was in front of her eyes. The old Mr Vernon was no longer there, instead he was a man in great need of help, something she failed to provide in my opinion.

Next comes the third part which I found myself skipping more than once. It's made of letters from a mother to a son who has no intention of listening. Here is when I seriously thought about just leaving the story as it didn't hold my interest any more. But I was curious about the last part, narrated by Chuck, also an old student of Mr Vernon who is now part of Portia's life. This was by far the most interesting part. We learned a lot about all the character and it really helped me understand them and their actions better. This part was a bit the piece that made all the other parts fit. 

All in all, Love May Fail is quite an interesting read but in my opinion it drags a bit too much. During the book several years pass but the pace of the story is quite slow. As I said, I am glad that I finished reading it because at the end it really made me think. The topics it covers are important and quite well managed and you end up caring for the characters a great deal. 

Blurb: Twelve-year-old Bobby Nusku is an archivist of his mother. He catalogues traces of her life and waits for her to return home.

Bobby thinks that he's been left to face the world alone until he meets lonely single mother Val and her daughter Rosa. They spend a magical summer together, discovering the books in the mobile library where Val works as a cleaner. But as the summer draws to a close, Bobby finds himself in trouble and Val is in danger of losing her job. There's only one thing to do -- and so they take to the road in the mobile library...

Quirky, dark, magical and full of heart, Mobile Library is both a tragicomic road trip and a celebration of the adventures that books can take us on. It's a love-letter to unlikely families and the stories that shaped us.

*First of all I would like to thank the publishers for sending me a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

Review: Mobile Library is probably going to be on my top 2015 reads. I hadn't read Bed, David Whitehouse's debut, so I started Mobile Library with no clues about his style or narrative. Imagine my surprise when the book started with a chapter called The End. Weirdly enough it was the perfect beginning to this contemporary fairy tale. Just reading those first pages, I was completely invested with the story. 

After The End, we go back in time to get acquired with the quirky characters of this book. There's little Bobby whose mother has left him with a not-caring father who ignores him. So he has decided to keep everything he finds and learns on files so he can show his mother when she's back. He has not a lot of friends and is teased and abused in school so his best friend decides to turn himself into a cyborg to protect him. A real lesson about friendship, although the result is not the expected and Bobby finds himself alone again. Then's when we meet Rosa, my favourite character in the story. She always speaks the truth and her honest comments and actions were incredible insightful. She and her mother become the family Bobby no longer has and their love for each other grows with every page.

The story is told through different points of view so he get to read about Bobby's feelings, Rosa's thoughts and even about the frustrations of the detective who is in charge of finding the elusive Mobile Library. I think this was very clever as it made me feel part of the story and had me glued to its pages from cover to cover.

But what makes this novel so special and unique, apart from its characters, is the love for books you can feel through the story. With references to some of my own children favourites like The Little Prince, Huckelberry Finn or Harry Potter and also to some great classics like Moby Dick, The Secret Garden or Of Mice and Men, Mobile Library is an ode to books and reading. I am sure that any book lover is going to love it. 

David Whitehouse takes us on a magic road trip on a mobile library. The story is beautifully written with a unique narrative and a mixture of adventure, fantasy, love and friendship but also with some darker details. A real gem of a book, I highly recommend it. 

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