Left Drowning by Jessica Park

From Goodreads.com:
What does it take to rise from life's depths, swim against the current, and breathe?
Weighted down by the loss of her parents, Blythe McGuire struggles to keep her head above the water as she trudges through her last year at Matthews College. Then a chance meeting sends Blythe crashing into something she doesn't expect - an undeniable attraction to a dark-haired senior names Chris Shepherd, whose past may be even more complicated than her own. As their relationship deepens, Chris pulls Blythe out of the stupor she's been in since the night a fire took half her family. She begins to heal, and even, haltingly, to love this guy who helps her find new paths to pleasure and self-discovery. But as Blythe moves into calmer waters, she realizes Chris is the one still strangled by his family's traumatic history. As dark currents threaten to pull him under, Blythe may be the only person who can keep him from drowning.

   Blythe starts out in her own world of grief still dealing with the death of her parents. She has alienated herself from her brother and is drowning herself in alcohol. When Sabin sits down with her in the student union one morning acting like he's known her forever, he's the first person who makes her feel something since. That same morning she walks down to the lake and runs into Chris. She inexplicably feels drawn to these two boys, comfortable with them, like she hasn't felt in years. I liked Blythe, I liked Chris, but I loved the Shepherd siblings, Sabin, Estelle, and Eric. They accept Blythe without question and treat her like she's been a sibling their whole lives. 

   Left Drowning is a little saucier than my normal read. It is ONLY recommended for readers over the age of 17. That being said, read this book. I couldn't care less about the sex in this book. I liked that it has a solid plot. There's actual meat to this story, unlike a few of the other books I've attempted. Overall this is a book about grief, strength, healing, and the people who are family even if they aren't blood. If you are one of the many who enjoyed the Fifty Shades trilogy, I recommend giving this book a try. 

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

From the Hardcover:
   The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, fraternal twins Esthappen and Rahel fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family. Their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu, (who loves by night the man her children love by day), fled an abusive marriage to live with their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), and their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt).
  When Chacko's English ex-wife brings their daughter for a Christmas visit, the twins learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river...

"The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again."

   The God of Small Things made its way around numerous book lists a few years ago and it sounded interesting. I got more than I thought I would from it. It is beautifully written, I fell in love with the sentences. The story took a little getting into, it jumps seamlessly in time. After I became used to the style I was able to concentrate on Rahel and the memories she was sharing. This book has politics, forbidden love, and family drama.
   I also learned a little about the caste system in India that I was somehow ignorant of before reading this book. I love a book that introduces me to new things.
   I'd recommend this book to someone who loves the feel of words, much like Winter's Tale, but this book is less of a time commitment at 321 pages compared to Winter's Tale's 768.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

From the paperback:
   A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse where she once lived, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
   A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.

   Neil Gaiman has done it again! Captured my attention with a book I didn't want to put down. He writes so beautifully. He weaves a world where names hold power (we never learn the narrator's name) and some things just can't be explained or understood.
   The narrator is a child who has no friends. He escapes in books and stories as much has he can. He meets the Hempstock women after a startling discovery and his world continues to be rocked for the next few days. The Hempstocks aren't witches per-say, they're something else, something more. Something (Old Mrs. Hempstock calls it a "flea") hitches a ride back inside our hero and after he tries to remove it without knowing the full extent of what he does, a new nanny comes to care for him and his sister. Ursula Monkton, who everyone, but our hero, loves. He knows that the Hempstock women can help him get rid of her, if only he can get away.
   If it sounds like a lot of "somethings" are in my description of this book, it's because most of it can only be understood by reading the book. The beings described in The Ocean at the End of the Lane could be monsters but it depends on your definition of the word.
    This is a fantastic book for readers of all ages. I'd recommend it to anyone who has a love of fantasy. Or anyone who just loves to read. The narrator is easy to care for and identify with for lovers of the written word,