A Girl in Three Parts, by Suzanne Daniel

Hey guys, this is Abi here,

And I honestly can't remember the last time I posted a book review! A Girl in Three Parts earned 5 stars from me on Wednesday, so I figured this was worth going into more detail for, especially as it's new out so you can read it too if you so desire.

Enjoy!

Title: A Girl in Three Parts

Author: Suzanne Daniel

Genre: Middle grade.

Status: Standalone (also debut)

Pages: 310

Blurb: "Allegra Elsom

is caught in the middle.

Some days she's eleven, and others she feels closer

to nineteen. Some days she knows too much, and

others she feels hopelessly naïve. Some days she is

split in three, torn between conflicting loyalties to

her grandmothers, Mathilde and Joy, and her father,

Rick- none of whom can stand to be in a room

together since the decades-old tragedy that hit

their family like a wrecking ball.

Allegra struggles to make peace in her family

and navigate the social gauntlet at school while

asking bigger questions about her place in the

world: What does it mean to be "liberated"? What is

it about "becoming a woman" that earns her a slap

in the face? What does it mean to do the right thing,

when everyone around her defines it differently?

As the feminist movement reshapes her Sydney

suburb, Allegra makes her own path- discovering

firsthand the incredible ways that women can

support each other, and finding strength within

herself to stand up to the people she loves."

My Thoughts

How do I start this? Gosh it's been such a long time since I've done this.

A Girl in Three Parts is very much a novel about family. Not a family of mother, father and child as you would think, but Allegra, her two grandmothers, Mathilde and Joy, and her father Rick.

A significant part of why I loved this book so much was to do with the characters, they were so fleshed out, I had no problem distinguishing them from the other grandmother.

Joy is a free-spirited woman, who keeps her tears in bottles, who encourages Allegra to live her "true essence". As strict as Joy is uplifting, Mathilde keeps Allegra on the ball, encouraging her to work her very hardest so she can become a doctor.

Rick, her father, escapes to the waves so he deal with his grief. At the start of the novel he doesn't have much to do with Allegra's upbringing, the love of her both her grandmothers have elbowed him to the outside.

Although these women seem kind of two dimensional at the start, as I progressed further into the book, I grew attached to both of them, as I learned more about them.  

As both grandmothers try and mould Allegra into the person they'd both like her to be, (all while Allegra's trying to figure who she is in herself), you're constantly wondering in the back of your head, what happened with Allegra's mother, and why has it created this division between everybody else. I did have a couple of theories about what happened (but all of them proved false, thank goodness.)

As large as the battle raging inside Allegra, another part that I particularly enjoyed was how the Women's Liberation Movement was brought in as a theme for the second half of the book. A Girl in Three Parts is set in the 1970s, and even though it's set after World War II, where the women were keeping the country going when all the men buggered off to fight in the war, some of the characters, (one in particular) were still under the thumb of the men who didn't care one cent of the hard work that went into their work. (If you can't tell I'm angry about this.)

What I liked the most was how this theme was introduced, it didn't feel rushed at all, it didn't feel like I'd blinked and suddenly the book was completely different, it felt like it was relevant and well-written. I very much liked how the existence of the WL movement seemed to affect the characters in the novel, this theme was actually something that made me care for a certain character a whole lot more than I'd previously done.

Another thing I want to mention is how much I enjoyed Allegra's narrative. She was at the point in her life when she's on the brink of finishing primary school and gaining some independence. She's also at the age where she's starting to question who she is as a person, all at the time that her grandmothers and father are trying to influence her constantly and mould her into someone they each want her to be, so that was an interest POV to read from to say the least.

To sum it up, this was one heck of a debut, and I can't wait to see what else Suzanne Daniel has in store. Before I started A Girl in Three Parts, I was hesitant as for whether I was going to gel with the writing, the characters, the story, as we all are when picking up a debut author's work. But I honestly had absolutely nothing to worry about it, because I loved it just as much as I thought I would when I ordered it.

There, I did it.

Okay! That's the end of my review, I'm quite happy with how it turned out, and I'm glad it was about this amazing novel!

I hope you enjoyed it, and let me know what you thought in the comments below!

I hope you have a wonderful day and I'll see you all at the end of the week with my monthly wrap up!

Byeeeeee!

-Abi

The Pros and Cons of the Goodreads Reading Challenge

Hey guys, this is Abi here,

And today I will be discussing the pros and cons of the Goodreads Reading challenge. I just think it's an interesting topic, one of which has many points, which I think are worth discussing.

Let me know in the comments if there are any other points that I may have missed.

Pros

It gives you a goal for the year.

As much as reading is for the joy of it, I always like to try and either equal or raise the amount of books I can try and read in the year. A goal to strive for is a huge motivator for the start of the year.

It's a good tracker for how far behind/ahead you are for your reading goal.

I'm talking about the line under the reading goal stating how many books you're ahead/ behind your target on. You have more of an idea of whether you can relax and pick up a big book, or whether you need to binge on the short stories and graphic novels to catch up. For me, it's fun doing both!

It's a good reference point for posts like "Favourite books of ______" and the "Mid-Year Freakout Tag".

They're also a good reference point when doing posts like these, when you need to select a book for each category, it's good to have a reminder of all the books you might have loved, or even hated in the year. I love doing both of those posts, I do them every year, so the Goodreads Reading Challenge is a good place to start putting together the list of books that I want to include in those posts.

It can be nice to see all that you've read in the year.

It's nice to look at your achievements once in a while. Even though the yearly wrap ups are up at the end of each year, if you click on to the 2019 one, you can skip to the 2020 one, to find out what was the highest rated, the lowest rated, and how many pages you've read so far this year. There's that, and it's nice to see all of the beautiful covers of the books that you've read.

Cons

Pressure to catch up on reading challenge.

This probably just isn't me, but falling behind, and having to read books quicker than what I thought I could, is my worst nightmare. There are worse things to stress about, but I always come up with a Goodreads Challenge that I think I'll be able to achieve, without too much trouble, but a number I'll have to try hard to achieve. So the minute I fall behind, I have to try extra hard to catch up again. But even when you're not behind, there's always that pressure to read more, to make the most of your free time with reading. And that pressure will never go away.

Pressure at the start of the year to read more books than before, or to read as many as your friends.  

I touched up on this in the point above, but whenever I see some of the book counts of my friends on Goodreads, my jaw drops. See, whenever I make a Goodreads goal, I estimate how long on average I'll have to finish each book. For example, 52 books in a year, is a book a week. So whenever I see one of my friends attempt to read 100 books in a year, I can't help but want to try the same, because to be honest, I'm quite a competitive person. I can't help it. But, I just have to accept that I'll never be able to read 100 books in a year, even if they were all re-reads. But, when each new year rolls around, I always watch to aim to be more productive, to read more than what I read the previous year. Let me know if you're the same guys.

Seeing what friends are reading, and wanting to read the same.

I've seen some booktubers struggling with this: the want to always be reading the new releases, when they continue to neglect the books that have been stockpiled in their houses, for years sometimes. As readers, we always want to be on top of the hot new releases, because it's what everyone else seems to be loving. But at the moment I'm trying to get out of that habit, I'm trying to pursue the books that seem interesting to me, myself, and if I'm reading what everyone considers to be the new hot release, then great! But I'm not going to beat myself up if it's not.

Okay! That's my discussion of The Pros and Cons of the Goodreads Reading Challenge! This was a lot of fun to do, and let me know if you want to see more of these discussion type posts in the future because I'd love to do more!

That's going to be it for today, but I'll see you all soon! I love you guys!

Byeeee!

-Abi xxxxxx

Reading Habits Book Tag

Hey guys, this is Abi here,

And today I'm doing the Reading Habits Book Tag!

I don't think I've done this one before, so I'm looking forward to answering some new questions. Enjoy!

Do you have a certain place at home for reading?

The most comfortable place for me to read is on my bed, lying on my belly, with a book in my hand. I haven't quite mastered having a cup of tea whilst on my belly yet but I'm working on it.

Bookmark or random piece of paper?

Bookmark. I've got a number of bookmarks that I use for whenever I start a new book. I've had the odd time when I've forgotten to take a bookmark with me when I picked a new book up, but I've always replaced the receipt or whatever it was when I've got home.

Can you just stop reading or do you have to stop after a chapter/ a certain amount of pages?

I always like to try and get the end of a chapter or a part before I stop but as I read a lot during my lunch break, that isn't always a definite. Most of the time I'm lucky though.

Do you eat or drink while reading?

I often have a cup of tea while reading in the evening, and I'm always snacking on my lunch in the afternoon. I suppose I do, but not in the evening.

Multitasking: Music or TV while reading?

I always play music when I'm reading, but it's a specific list that I know won't distract me from the words on the page in front of me.

One book at a time or several at once?

Unless I'm working through a mammoth size book (like Queen of Air and Darkness, last year), it's always 1. If I was to read a big book, and be working through others at the same time, they would most likely be small and easy to fly through, (it would probably be a graphic novel, or something like the Wayward Children series.)

Reading at home or everywhere?

Everywhere. That's how you read as much as you possibly can: Always keep a book with you, just in case you need it. You never know when you'll be able to get another couple of pages through. So, I try to read everywhere I can.

Reading out loud or silently in your head?

A bit of both, I sometimes switch to reading silently in my head, but I've been told that I tend to mouth the words that I'm reading, sometimes even say the dialogue. So, both?

Do you read ahead or even skip pages?

Never. I used to skip to the last page when I was younger, but there's no way I'd do that now. I only skip to the last page to see what the page count is.

Breaking the spine or keeping it like new?

I always try and keep it like new, but before I discovered Booktube, I didn't realise how good it feels to keep a book looking nice, so I try not to crack the spine, even a little bit, though the more often I read something, the more messed up it tends to be. I don't know why.

Do you write in your books?

No I don't, though I should probably buy some post it notes, so I can start to review more books. The amount I've posted in the last year or so has pitifully small.

Readabit Questions

When do you find yourself reading?

Whenever I get the chance (when I'm not playing a game or working on a post.)

What is your best setting to read it?

My room, sprawled out on my bed.

What do you do first- read or watch?

Although there have been a couple of cases where I've watched the film before I've read the book (The Girl on the Train), any other times I've always made sure I've read the book before watching the film.

What form do you prefer? Audiobook, e-book, or physical book?

Although I delve into Audible every so often (I try to pick up one audiobook a month), physical books take the cake for me.

Do you have a unique habit when you read?

Other than miming the words on a page when reading, not really.

Do book series' have to match?

In a perfect world, all my book series' would match. It's not a perfect world, unfortunately. Sometimes publishers change book cover designs halfway through the series, and there's nothing that can be done about it. (I'm looking at you Fairytale Retellings series).

Okay! That's my book tag, and that's going to be it today. As always, anyone that wants to do this tag, is now tagged!

I hope you have a wonderful day, and continue to stay safe in these troubling times.
I'll be back next week, and I'll see you then.
Byeeee!

-Abi