4E1 English Blog

Change of heart by Jodi Picoult

Twelve years ago, June’s husband, Jack, died in a car accident. Kurt Nealon, the police officer, showed up personally to inform June that the drunk driver, who ran down her husband, was caught. After that, he kept going to their house to ensure that June and her daughter, Elizabeth, were all right. Years later, June and Kurt got married and found that they were going to have a baby. They had contacted with many carpenters to build the additions in the new baby’s room, however, none of them was free. Shay Bourne just showed up unexpectedly one particular day and he was hired then.
Shay Bourne was nothing like everyone expected. He murdered both Kurt and Elizabeth. After many trial and conviction, Shay Bourne was sentenced to death. Eleven years later, Elizabeth's sister, Claire, had a heart defeat. She needed a new heart, if not, she would die. Her name was put on the list for a transplant. Soon, Shay decided to donate his organs after execution. He wanted to give his heart to Claire. It was the only way he could redeem himself. However, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection and lethal injection was designed to stop the inmate’s heart. So, Shay had requested to speak to the in-charged in order to hire a lawyer to change his way of execution such as hanging, that would left him brain-dead and the organs would then be viable for transplant.
In the end, Shay won the case. He could donate his organs at the time of his death. And Claire was saved in the end.

This is really a fabulous novel. I will dare to say that this is the best novel I have ever read before. There is a twist in the end of the story. As it turned out, shay was not intending to kill anyone. It was all an accident when Shay tried to save Elizabeth. It's so shocking when Shay said the truth out. I had never expected it to be like that. It is really interesting and exciting. No one would know what will happen in the end. Although it started a bit confused in the first few chapters, after reading the whole book, it makes me want to read this book again. It's a very addictive book. Everyone should read it.




The Betrayed by David Hosp



Elizabeth Creay was found murdered in her house. She was brutally murdered. The police believed that the guy who murdered her was looking for money. They were lucky to get a clean print off the pocket torch that was found in Elizabeth Creay’s apartment. It was Jerome Washington’s, a local drug dealer. He was arrested and assumed to be murderer. The case was closed then.
However, both detective Sergeant Darius Train and his partner, Jack Cassian had many doubts. Due to a corpse being found in the park, a piece of new evidence was found and it proved that Jerome Washington was not the murderer. In the mean time, Sydney Chapin, Elizabeth Creay’s sister, was attacked on the way back from the Jurvenile Institude for Mental Health. She was there to find out what her sister was investigating before her death. Then, they began to link the whole incident back. Elizabeth Creay visited the Institute a week before she was murdered and Sydney Chapin was attacked less than an hour after she left the Institute. In the end, many innocent people were killed. The mastermind was Irskin Elliot, a former governor of Virginia, a one-term senator and also one of the Chapin family‘s oldest friend. But, before the police could arrest Irskin Elliot, he commited suicide. Luckily, another man that was involved in the murderer was willing to cooperate with them.

This is a well-written novel with interesting story line and characters. Every little thing in the novel is specifically described. The story is fast-paced and interesting. David Hosp is good at keeping the readers to wonder from the first page of the novel until he revealed the murderer. He could make the readers believe that the particular person was the murderer, but as it turned out, the person that I least expected was the murderer. It’s a complete surprise. I’m now looking for more of David Hosp’s work.



Little Face by Sophie Hannah

Alice Fancourt was only out for 2 hours. When she returned, she found out that the baby that was in the cot was not her baby, Florence; it was a stranger that she had never seen before. Her husband was supposed to look after the baby but he was asleep when Alice returned. However, David insisted that the baby was Florence. He swore that Alice must be lying or mad.
Ignoring David, Alice phoned the police and reported that her baby was missing. She then phoned her mother-in-law, Vivienne, and her mid-wife, who both had seen Florence before, to prove that she was right. However, neither of them could tell an exact answer. They said that babies changed a lot in their early days. Coincidentally, all the pictures that were taken with Florence were all destroyed and deleted. Therefore, the police still did not believe Alice. They could not think of any possible motive that anyone would want to swap one baby for another.
In the end, the police found out that it was all actually a lie. It all started when Alice was pregnant. She found out that Vivienne’s behavior had changed totally. She began to think that Vivienne must be definitely involved in Laura’s, David ex-wife, murderer. She was supposed to tell the police about everything that she had found out about Vivienne but she could not risk it. If Vivienne was alerted by the police that Alice was suspicious, she would end up like Laura. Thus, in order to keep Florence away from Vivienne, Alice pretended that someone had abducted her daughter and that the baby in the house was not Florence so she could ran away with her to alert the police to look into Laura’s murder case again.

This is an originally and beautifully written novel. I like this novel because it will keep you guessing about what could have happened to the baby, whether David or Alice was telling the truth. Besides, the ending is also very interesting. But, I don't think that this novel is the best as I do get annoyed by some of the things in it. However, it's still worth reading.

Perfect mistake: A privilege novel by Kate Brian

Ariana Osgood faked her own death and got herself a new identity- Briana Leigh Covington. She had murdered Briana Leigh Covington and assumed to be her so that she could attend APH, Artherton- Pryce Hall. All her troubled past was dead and buried.
However, Kaitlynn Nottingham’s arrival changed everything. She wanted to get everything that Ariana had. She had taken Ariana’s money and was supposed to migrate to another country, but she used the money to secure a place in APH instead. She had a new identity too- Lillian Oswald. Ariana was going to see her, talk to her and deal with her every single day. Although they had been this way before, but back then she had not known that Kaitlynn was an evil girl. Ariana had always wanted to kill Kaitlynn. However, she could not risk it. If Kaitlynn was killed, the police would find out that there was no such person as “Lillian Oswald” and would also discover Ariana’s real identity and everything about them.
Kaitlynn wanted to get into the Stone and Grave society because the members of society would help “Lillian Oswald”, who had no background, to create one. But only four among the five of them that were selected could enter the society. Thus, Kaitlynn asked Ariana to get rid one of them so that both of them could enter the society. Kaitlynn even threatened to kill Ariana or hurt her friends. In the end, after two attempts to sabotage her friends who were selected were failed, one of Araina’s friends was killed. And Kaitlynn was the one who did it.

This novel is interesting. I never know that this is actually a novel with many series and this is already the 3rd series until I read the first few chapters and found out that I had many doubts about it. This is the first time I have read this kind of novel, which I think is really interesting. But there is one thing I do not really like about this kind of novel is that you will not be able to know the ending as soon as you want and you will have to wait for another series to know it. But I’m definitely looking forward to the next series which will be released in June 2010.

The cluttered corpse by Mary Jane Maffini

Charlotte Adams, a professional organizer, would not have believed that Emmy Lou Rheinback had organizations issues. It was until she got upstairs and found out that all her rooms were overflowing with stuffed animals. Emmy Lou’s collection of stuffed animals was getting out of hand.
Her neighbor, Kevin and his friend, Tony, both were development disabled, were pulling all sort of horrible pranks at Emmy Lou. But no matter how horrible their pranks were, Emmy Lou did not want to report it to the police.
A few days later, Tony was found dead in Emmy Lou’s house. Emmy Lou claimed that she had killed Tony and she was arrested then. However, Charlotte could not believe what Emmy Lou had said was true for she was so fragile and vulnerable. She came up with many theories that Emmy Lou might be feeling guilty because Tony had tripped onto one of the stuffed toys on the stairs or Emmy Lou might be protecting her husband who had killed Tony. But when Charlotte found out more about Tony and Emmy Lou’s husband, it showed that all her theories were wrong. And the more she found out, the more trouble she was causing for herself. She and one of her friends, who had helped her, ended up injured and being hospitalized.
The truth, as it turned out, Kevin was actually Emmy’s Lou’s son and Emmy Lou was just trying to protect Kevin, whom she thought had killed Tony. It was actually Emmy Lou’s neighbor, Bonnie, who pushed Tony down the stairs when she was searching all over Emmy Lou’s house for a toys that contained a safety deposit key.

I truly enjoy reading this book, especially with the fun and likable protagonist. The plot contains many twists and turns. I reckon that everyone who read this book would not have guessed that Bonnie, the one who discussed the most with Charlotte about who might be the murderer, was actually the murderer. It’s definitely worth reading.