Cecelia Ahern, A Place Called Here Review

Overall Rating

When I saw this book in WHSmith in the top twenty and in a deal where I could get three books for the price of two, I thought it would be a good buy, especially as I have heard lots of good reports by the author Cecelia Ahern. To say I was disappointed in this book would be an understatement. I'll admit to knowing this book could potentially have been strange as I read the blurb which described a woman fascinated about where all lost things go; people and places; but I thought it would be strange in a good way. It was not.

As I was holiday and I had read two other books in a matter of days, I decided to persevere but I wish I hadn't. When I look back there are so many other things I could have been doing, but I thought it could get better, after all the first chapter of the fourth Harry Potter book (The Goblet of Fire) bored me but once I had carried on I thoroughly enjoyed it and it made the other books become clear so I thought "A Place Called Here" could have been the same. Again, it was not.

I didn't necessarily have any expectations about the book itself, after reading the blurb it was hard to know where the author was going to go with this book, but I did have expectations of the author, as this was going to be the first book I had read by her and they were shattered.

The book starts describing the childhood of a girl fascinated about where her lost items have gone and whereas everyone else would have just forgot about these items, she can't. I know what you are thinking about this girl freak. Yes she is but wait, it gets worse. When the popular, pretty girl in her street goes missing she can't forget her, even for a good ten years of her life, even after the girl was horrible to her. So when she grows up, she tries to set up an agency to find these people but in her desire to find them, she gets lost. With no real explanation of how she gets lost, she ends up in a strange place with items you typically lose you guessed it, she is in the place where they all are and she finds out they have their own community. After staying there a while, making friends, finding the girl (who is now married with children) she wants to get home. Well obviously if it was that easy everyone would have gone home. Again, with no real explanation she back and it is made out that she was in an accident so we have the cliche dream ending how exciting! Not that I'm saying dream endings can't work but this well doesn't. In fact the only good thing this author was able to do in this story was construct a sentence!