The Drowning Girl

Kirsty and I went out shopping the other day for minor prizes for the Pursue 100 reading competition so I thought I'd take a few pictures to let [people know the sort of things they can win. As well as the 3 major prizes (The iPad, The Ipod touch and the Ipod Nano) we've got a whole heap of books, CDs, DVDs, and Itunes vouchers.

Just for a bit of fun we've got a few things like these little flash drives (I like the fish).

Remember you need to give us at least 1 review to win some of these things so if you haven't yet send one in. Something like the one below would be perfect.

The Drowning Girl

Margaret Leroy

This book is about a single mother’s struggle to understand what is wrong with her young daughter. Young Sylvie has violent tantrums, doesn’t relate well to others at all and it deathly afraid of water. Her mother Grace takes her to children psychiatrists but when money is tight she begins to feel like there is nothing she can do. It isn’t until Adam Winters begins to take interest that everything begins to become clearer in a journey that takes the three of them to Ireland in the hopes they can work out what is wrong with Sylvie.

This book started off really good. It begins with the most interesting prologue I have read, confusing but interesting, really making me want to read more. It then goes in to Grace and Sylvie’s lives; with Sylvie’s tantrums and issues quickly coming to play. As soon as it showed Sylvie’s fear of water I knew it had something to do with drowning, or near drowning. When Grace says about how she feels like her daughter isn’t really her daughter sometimes I was massively confused. All until the characters start to suspect Sylvie isn’t Sylvie, but another girl. This is when I predicted that she was another girl, one who had drowned years before and was now recalling her past life. Ordinarily I would think it a bit weird, but I was right on the dot. The annoying thing was the characters, Grace and Adam, didn’t seem to think as fast as I did and I then had to keep reading as they slowly...very slowly...worked it out. The time-line was a little slow, but then, the characters didn’t read the prologue like I did. The prologue where Grace was wondering what it felt like to drown. Good prologue, my favourite bit because it was so mysterious. This book definitely had the mystery element down, which definitely made me read right to the end and have the whole mystery solved. I so wanted to know if Sylvie ever came right (and she did).

(Reviewed by Toni)