Book Review – ‘The Book of Tomorrow’ Cecelia Ahern

Title – The Book of Tomorrow

Genre – Novel, Fiction, Mystery, Young Adult, Modern Fable

Series – Standalone

Publisher – Harper Collins

Length – 432 Pages

 

“Tamara Goodwin has always lived in the here and now, never giving a second thought to tomorrow. Until a traveling library arrives in her tiny village, bringing with it a mysterious, large leather-bound book locked with a gold clasp and padlock.

What she discovers within the pages takes her breath away and shakes her world to its core.

A mesmerizing story about how tomorrow can change what happens today…”

A girl, Tamara Goodwin found earth slipping under her feet when everything changed the day his father committed suicide. While she is trying to barely survive this phase of life, her mother has fallen under a deep spell of grief. Since all their posessions, including their luxurious home have been snatched from them, Tamara had to shift to his mother’s brother house in the middle of an ‘isolated area’ barely connected with the outer world. With a strong urge to go and hand out with her friends, Tamara starts counting days when she will be out of this lifeless place. But little did she know that her world will change when the destiny will reveal the secrets to her life that were hidden in this place!

Tamara is an outgoing teenager, and she wants to break this cage and be free of this place. But the only problem is her mother’s health. Her mother lay lifeless on the bed all the day, or else she keep staring out of the window. To help her mother get back to normal, Tamara asks for Rosaleen’s help, her aunt in whose house she is living, but the only reply she’d get from her, “It’s Grief, leave her alone for some time.” Getting irritated from the same reply over and over again, she decides to get the things in her command.

Even though the place is lifeless, but the people living here aren’t. Tamara finally meets some locals and have some ‘real’ conversation with them. One of whom is Marcus, a boy who runs a travelling library and doesn’t even know what his favorite book is. Tamara finds a large leather bound book, but strangely it’s locked with a small gold padlock.

When she manages to get the book open, she discover it’s a journal, for it is blank. The moment the ink from her pen touches the diary, the diary gets filled in her own handwriting revealing the diary entry that she wrote ‘tomorrow’

 

The book touches some concepts that are really beautiful, like true friendship. The conversations that take place in this book are either funny enough to make you laugh out loud, or deep enough to make you think about it twice.

The plot is gripping, even though it’s stretched, but you won’t find it hard to complete this book in one-sitting, because I did. The theme of this book makes it feel like a ‘modern-fairy-tale’ but there’s not too much magic, just a sprinkle of it so that it doesn’t spoil the plot.

Above all, the writing style is mesmerizing. The proses that are sprinkled between different events are just beautiful. Tamara’s thoughts are so perfectly shown that you won’t fail in connecting with her.

The pacing of this book is slow, because all the events at the start are deeply described so that you can connect to them later in the story. But one might also feel that the story could have been shorter by shrinking the ‘filler’ plot, and I might agree with it. So yes, the plot pacing is slow, but it’s worth a read.

Some characters didn’t feel real to me. But the story is told from Tamara’s first person point of view, so that may not be a problem. You can still enjoy the confusing thoughts of a teenager that are extremely well described in the book.

The characters in this book are really good. After Tamara’s father death, later in the book, I felt so bad for him and so connected to the character because the author has described the relation between a troubled teenager and her father really well.

I didn’t like the character of Rosaleen, maybe because she was made to be that way. But the sudden change in her behaviour made it look like ‘unstable-character-development’ Though I neither felt bad for her, after reading her back story, nor I felt good about what happened to her. It was just “Okay”

Irish novelist Cecelia Ahern, has written many books that are infused with folklore, fairy tales, and that’s what makes her books special and different from others. The majestic feel in her writing might come from her belief and respect for the magic and books “sometimes they choose you rather than the other way round.” she says. In writing The Book of Tomorrow, she said “Books can come into your life at a time when you’re going through a rough patch, with the power to rescue you, and this is what happens in this one.”

You may buy this book from the local bookstores near you, or you may order it online through Amazon or Flipkart (I prefer Amazon)

Buy from Amazon

I bought it from the Sunday Book Market that is held at Daryaganj every sunday morning. You can buy some really good books here for very cheap!

Happy Reading! 🙂