Windfall

windfall

Windfall by Jennifer E. Smith

Windfall, by Jennifer E Smith is a story about luck. Who has the luck is up to the reader to decide. When Alice buys a winning lottery ticket for her best friend, Teddy, his luck appears to change, but will it change the two friends who share a rough childhood that was perhaps not as lucky as others?  

Although I enjoyed reading this book, I often felt I wanted it to be more, but more of what I was not really sure, it just seemed to be missing something. The relationship between Teddy and Alice is a bit frustrating as you never really understand what Teddy is thinking and why he is behaving the way he does, and the reactions of Alice do not always relate to her interactions with Teddy. 

Told from Alice's point of view, naturally we get a truer sense of what is going on in her mind, and have an advantage of seeing inside her heart and can understand how she views luck based on her life story. As she wrestles with her difficulty with Teddy and his new life and different behaviour, she is forced to come to terms with some of her own ghosts and to finally talk about her loss and to learn to make decisions for herself, rather than base her choices on what she thinks others want her to do. 

Having lived with her aunt, uncle, and cousin since losing her parents, Alice does not consider herself truly one of the family, nor does she consider herself lucky to have these people who love her in her life. Although it is Teddy who wins the lottery, a lot of the plot focuses on the growth and happenings of those around him, and particularly the development of Alice and how the win causes her to rethink her life and where she is headed. 

It is a fun read - who hasn't dreamed of winning the lottery. I recommend you to read this book and dream along with Teddy and Alice to what life can be like with a little windfall. 

Girl in the Blue Coat

Girl in the Blue Coat

By Monica Hesse

Hanneke, a teenage girl trying to make ends meet, delivers black market goods to paying customers in Nazi occupied Amsterdam.  Hanneke has a special knack for finding sought after items. Her boyfriend was killed on the Dutch front lines when the Germans invaded, so Hanneke likes to think of her illegal acts as a small rebellion against the Nazis. 

When delivering to a regular customer, Anneke is asked for help locating something special.  Mrs. Janssen is desperately looking for a highly dangerous person: a Jewish teenager Mrs. Janssen had been hiding in a secret room of her house. The girl had vanished without a trace in a city that was not kind to girls like her. The race against the clock for Hanneke to solve the mystery of the girl in the blue coat is one fraught with danger, intrigue, and grief. 

Along her search, she encounters members of the resistance and is forced to look outside her narrow, grief stricken views of what is happening to her country and accept that a much larger evil is at hand.  The dark secret that is Jewish treatment under Nazi occupation in World War 2 is revealed to her and she must decide whether to face this new truth, or pretend it does not exist.  Weaving into the historic tales of the onderduikers, the hidden Jews of Holland, this mystery novel has a great blend of history and intrigue laced throughout. 

Read with a box of tissues if you’re the type that cries over books, maybe even if you’re not! At times heart wrenching, this book is wonderfully written and insightful. I loved the characters’ growth throughout the novel, and appreciated the historical events recounted in this story.

A good read alike would be Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein.