Tag Archives: Harper Collins

Review | Arranged, Catherine McKenzie

Posted on by
11

After a string of bad relationships, Anne Blythe signs up at what she thinks is a dating service, but actually turns out to be a company that facilitates arranged marriages. She decides to go for it anyway, and in a few months, she travels to Mexico to meet her future husband Jack. Catherine McKenzie’s Arranged is an absolute pleasure to read. It’s fun, flirty and romantic — I spent a day off from work with this book, and just had a great time getting lost in Anne’s search for love, and in her growing relationship with Jack.

Think about all the awkward blind dates are — you’ve probably been on a few. Now imagine going on one and knowing that the man across the table from you is the man you will marry. It’s actually not that far-fetched a concept. McKenzie points out that arranged marriages have actually been the norm for centuries — romantic love is a fairly modern invention — and, in fact, some cultures still practice arranged marriages today.

To be honest, some of the tenets from the arranged marriage company in this book make a lot of sense to me. Not the part where a company chooses your spouse for you, but the company’s ideas on romance. A company psychologist tells Anne that many people have unrealistic expectations about romantic love and marriage. He also says that the type of marriages the company arranges are based on friendship, and his counselling sessions are designed to make the couples focus on cultivating that friendship rather than search for romance. True enough, I thought. I actually didn’t really see how the company’s methods were supposed to cultivate friendships other than matching couples up according to shared interests, but I did get their romance-squashing message, at least.

Anne, however, is very romantic, and fortunately for her, she and Jack hit it off almost immediately. The psychologist cautions them against falling in love so quickly — old patterns might resurface, and their relationship might fail like their previous ones had — but Anne finds herself genuinely falling for Jack. Anne’s a fantastic heroine — smart and far from love-sick, but still emotionally vulnerable. Jack is also a loveable hero — fun and adventurous, with a bit of a temper, but that will be explained later on in the book. Hint: Jack has his secrets.

Arranged is a fun, romantic read, perfect for a weekend afternoon or a long commute. The book’s cover asks, What’s love got to do with it? In Arranged: everything.

WIN A COPY OF ARRANGED!

I won this book from Harper Collins Canada, when I was randomly selected as one of their Facebook fans of the week. They have over 60,000 Facebook fans — what were the odds, eh? It was such a fantastic surprise, and a wonderful way to end a particularly hectic work week. Thank you for that, Harper Collins Canada!

Now, I’d like to pass on this bit of literary goodness, and give one of you a wonderful surprise this Friday. I’ve read Arranged, and loved it, and am now passing on my copy to one of you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

So, how do you win? Along with the Facebook fans of the week, Harper Collins Canada does a lot of other great things to thank their readers and to generally involve their readers in literary fun. One of my favourites is their HCC March Madness tournament for books. More fun than basketball, but I, a lifelong bookworm, may be biased.

Since I got to read this book through the generosity of Harper Collins Canada, I figured it’s only fair to give a little something back and give a shout out to another of their fun book programs. So, to enter the draw for a copy of Arranged, all you have to do is cast a vote at hccmarchmadness.ca. Then, comment on this post to let me know. Just for fun, I’d also love to know which book you want to win HCC March Madness and why. Lots of really good books competing this year!

Need help deciding which book to vote for? If you’re a Catherine McKenzie fan, her book Spin is in the running. I’m a total Agatha Christie and Hercule Poirot fan, so heads up on the fantastic Death on the Nile as well. I also have this post, with a few other suggestions, some of which I hope are still in the running.

BONUS: If you vote in all four brackets, you can enter a draw to win all 64 books in the tournament! Pretty cool, eh?

Contest ends this Friday, March 16th.

Vote for Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile in HCC March Madness!

Posted on by
2

How awesome is Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile?

It has ROMANCE: Spurned woman Jacqueline follows her ex-fiance and his new wife (Jackie’s best friend Linnet!) on their honeymoon.

It has ADVENTURE: The murder takes place on a cruise of the Nile river. Luxurious cruise in an exotic locale — where better to commit a murder, eh?

It stars HERCULE POIROT! Nuff said.

Death on the Nile has been adapted for TV at least twice. The first one, in 1978, stars Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot, and features amazing actresses Bette Davis (All About Eve!), Maggie Smith (Professor McGonagall, anyone?) and Angela Lansbury (best known for Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote, but she’ll always be Mrs. Potts to me.

Check this out:

In 2004, Death on the Nile was adapted again, for the Agatha Christie’s Poirot TV series, starring David Suchet. Anyone recognize the actress playing Linnet? (hint: She’s also in Devil Wears Prada and The Adjustment Bureau.)

Amazing novel, and just as exciting on TV! Death on the Nile is also competing in this year’s Harper Collins Canada March Madness. I say we get Agatha Christie into Round 2, eh? Best part, every day you vote, you are entered into a draw to win all 64 books in the tournament! Have five minutes? Head over to hccmarchmadness.ca and vote now! Vote for your favourite books in the tournament, and, just for our favourite egg-headed Belgian detective, cast a vote for Death on the Nile as well.

Need a bit of help choosing from all the books in HCC March Madness? Permit me to offer a few suggestions.

And if you still haven’t read Death on the Nile, do read it. Such a great book!

Harper Collins Canada March Madness 2012

Posted on by
4

It’s time for March Madness for book nerds! Here’s how it works: Harper Collins Canada has posted 64 of its books on the HCC March Madness website and you vote for your favourites until one book takes the title. You can vote once per hour, and — here’s the best part, for book lovers everywhere — you get to enter once per day for the chance to win all 64 books in the tournament! Cast a vote, win 64 books — can’t beat that, eh?

The tournament just started, and there are still so many awesome books in play! Not sure how to vote? Let me make a few suggestions…

ROOM, EMMA DONOGHUE

Room is so powerful that it prompted me to begin this book blog in the first place. Seriously: check out my very first post Emma Donoghue’s Room lives up to the hype. It’s an emotional, gripping tale from the perspective of a five year old boy, Jack, who has known nothing but the tiny room in which his mother had been held prisoner. I particularly love the incongruity between the innocence of the narrator’s perspective and the horror his mother had to face every day. When the mother tells Jack that she wants to escape and Jack wonders why, my heart just ached for them. On one hand, I totally understand where the mother is coming from, yet on the other hand, the experience of freedom is as strange and frightening for Jack as the experience of captivity would be for us. Amazing book.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, HARPER LEE

To Kill a Mockingbird is probably my sister’s favourite books of all time, and so it has a special place in my heart. It’s definitely a classic — how can you resist this story about the young, feisty Scout and her strong, admirable father Atticus? It’s a tale about the fight for idealism in a world where injustice and discrimination are believed to be natural. How often do we watch the news and wish Atticus Finch is real, or that lawyers could be more like him? To Kill a Mockingbird is far from an idealistic story — the truths it reveals are downright harsh — yet it has become a beloved classic because its characters still believe in the potential of idealism. Atticus and Scout still believe that right can triumph over wrong, and that good has to triumph over evil. We cheer for them, we cheer for their belief, and we wish we could believe as they do.

DEATH ON THE NILE, AGATHA CHRISTIE

If you follow me on Twitter, or read my posts on last year’s HCC March Madness, you know what an Agatha Christie fan I am. I love Agatha Christie books so much that I even challenged Jason from Harper Collins Canada to a Christie Quiz: Challenge and Results. Christie is the Queen of Mystery, and for good reason — her books revolutionized the mystery genre, introducing ridiculously complex twists and turns while still adhering to the “fair play” principle.

Death on the Nile not only features my favourite detective of all time — Hercule Poirot — but it also has one of my favourite Christie plots of all time. A woman named Jackie loses her fiance Simon to her best friend Linnet. It’s a soap opera, until Poirot runs into the trio in Egypt three months later, on Simon and Linnet’s honeymoon, which Jackie has crashed. To escape Jackie, Simon and Linnet join a Nile river cruise that Poirot is on. Unfortunately for them, Jackie gets on the same ship, and in a fit of rage, shoots Simon in the leg, and has to be confined to her room with a nurse. The next morning, Linnet is found murdered, and the nurse swears Jackie was in her room the entire night. Who, then, killed Linnet?

It’s an English country house mystery transplanted onto a cruise ship, where everyone on board is a suspect, and only Poirot’s little grey cells can unravel the various psyches and motivations. The answer to whodunnit is nowhere near as important as the whys, and in true Christie fashion, Death on the Nile takes us into the minds of an entire cast of fascinating characters.

Only one could win when Jason and I duked it out, Christie style, last year. But anyone who reads Christie is a winner, in my book. If you haven’t read her yet, definitely, definitely, check out Death on the Nile or any of her other books. And definitely, vote for her in HCC March Madness!

DEAD SIMPLE, PETER JAMES

Peter James is one of the nicest authors I’ve met, a soft-spoken librarian type who happens to ride along with police officers and write about crime. I absolutely adored his Perfect People, and the latest Roy Grace mystery, Dead Man’s Grip, turned me off smoked salmon for weeks. Dead Simple is the first in the Roy Grace series, and begins with an interesting premise: four friends pull a stag night prank on the bridegroom by locking him in a coffin and leaving him for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, they are then killed by a van. Now bridegroom’s fiancee has asked Roy Grace for help to track him down. Honestly, locking someone in a coffin — even with air holes — is such a horrible, twisted, nightmarish prank to pull. What were these friends thinking? The Roy Grace books are fast-paced, thrilling stories, with James showing all perspectives.

DOOMSDAY KEY, JAMES ROLLINS

I love the Sigma Force novels! Think scientists with guns — kick ass nerds! Each of the Sigma Force characters is a specialist in some kind of science or technology field, and they are therefore assigned the weirdest mysteries that ordinary agents can’t understand. In Doomsday Key, a geneticist, a Vatican archaeologist, and a U.S. senator’s son are killed, each in a different continent. The deaths are connected by a Druidic pagan cross burned into the victims’ skin. If you like Michael Crichton, Dan Brown and Simon Toyne, you’ll love James Rollins. His books are always meticulously researched, so even the weirdest scientific twists have some basis in fact. It’s hard to put a James Rollins novel down — it’s just too exciting! — and it’s great feeling smarter after having read one.

HUNCHBACK ASSIGNMENTS, ARTHUR SLADE

I cannot gush about Arthur Slade’s Hunchback Assignments enough. It’s an innovative, endearing concept — a hunchback named Modo has the power to change his appearance for limited periods of time and is therefore trained to be a secret agent from a young age. He is in love with beautiful fellow agent Octavia, and too shy to show her how he really looks. I fell in love with this book when I read it. It has adventure (steam punk!), romance, and the all too relatable tragedy of feeling self-conscious about your physical appearance. I’ve recommended this for reluctant young readers — I think the adventure and excitement will get them to fall in love with reader. I also highly recommend it to book lovers everywhere. Amazing, amazing book, and the beginning of a wonderful series.

VOTE HERE!