Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "romance"

Eleanor i Park by Rainbow Rowell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I thought I was not a big fan of romance novels, and maybe I am really not, but there is something about Eleanor & Park that makes me question that. I hate to be a spoiler, but I need to say I was almost ready to send a not-so-gentlemanly message to Rainbow Rowell, the author of this amazingly cool YA novel, for holding me in disbelief, expecting and hanging over the cliff for so long!

This heart-warming and heartbreaking story gives us memorable characters in painstakingly real situations, with sixteen-year-old Eleanor and Park in the lead. Eleanor, a red-haired social misfit in totally wrong clothes, and Park, the cutest Asian guy ever coming from a perfect family. They are so different and unlikely to function as a couple, as one, and yet they keep fighting and beating all odds, becoming a perfect match in all their imperfections! There is where lies the true charm of this novel!

I might not make much sense to you (blame it on the excitement which still lingers under my skin) but it will all make sense to you when you grab that book and start reading it. It's great stuff! Don't miss it!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



View all my reviews
Bernard Jan

Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have read many good books this year and even more in years before. But a book like Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman comes every five to ten years into your hands, if you are lucky to find it.

This book ravished my heart. It left me emotionally unstable. It's all I need to say. And then...








silence.

Not because it is appropriate, the silence, or because I don't have words in my fingers or little things, impressions and details in my mind I like, love and want to share with others, hoping someone appreciates them and approves of them worthy of the book I've read. The echoes of the summer still linger in my tissues, my bones, resounding with the thunder of the sea that spits its waves on the shores of one infatuated love when a teenage boy craves for a young man who willingly obliges.

They know they love on borrowed time and that the salty taste of summer won't last longer than the dried sweat on their skin. They know erotic moments of their feet touching in secrecy under the table won't have to be masked much longer by feigned ignorance in the presence of others. All these misunderstood and misinterpreted touches, expressions, actions and echoes of other's words will remain sealed between the walls of a bedroom as the countdown of the remaining days ticks away.

Yet, they embrace each other. With the force and the passion and the pleasure of a sunny moment in time, sufficient to create a new heaven and a new earth. In the blink of two hearts they are created when they call each other by their name; in the heat of a Roman night it will flutter away from existence as they enjoy each other and share a bed for the last time.

Elio and Oliver.

Transformed by a short romance which conceives their first glances with feigned indifference only to mature into a life-changing experience which will define them as a new person, as one, as they redefine one another. It is a new life, a new era, and everything else is measured and remembered as before and after Elio and Oliver time.

True happiness rarely comes without great sacrifices. Elio and Oliver know that while they gamble their love on the Italian Riviera with the high stake of spending their remaining lives with other people instead of being together. Rehearsing pain of departure and life of separation so it will hurt less later! is only effective until it threatens to disperse their love into tomorrow twenty years later devoid of romantic or any other memories.

With Call Me By Your Name André Aciman gave humankind a beautiful book of love that ought to be studied in schools. Yet who is competent enough to analyze the love that impregnates your veins with the boiling blood if they didn't scald their own insides with such tormenting heat first? Who is to judge the poetry and lyricism of painfully carved sentences which provoke us to admit that there is a perfection after all?

This brutally realistic love story is more convincing than some real-life true stories we may read, for it carries the weight of something magical, deep and personal, something buried, excavated and buried again under the layers of exquisite storytelling.

We all live on borrowed time and it would be such a shame to walk to the end of our lives without stopping for a few hours, or days, and dedicate them to this story. Even worse would it be not to learn something from it and fail to find someone willing, ready and glad to call us by their name. At least for one summer if not for the lifetime.

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!

Bernard Jan



View all my reviews

Magnetic Reverie by Nico J. Genes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


She is beautiful; she is young, and she is torn between two loves—a perfect husband who adores her and cannot live without her and a mysterious young and attractive woman in her dreams. As she travels on a super-fast reality-fantasy track from one continent to another and back, Lana discovers herself as a person, as a desirable woman and a lover, and as a mother.

Will one love die and discard its petals on the shores of unexpectedly discovered female attraction? Will the initial confusion give in to the emotional and physical yearnings and cravings that defy the set norms and rules of our society?

Magnetic Reverie by Nico J. Genes is a passionate and erotic novel, a cocktail of mixed emotions, things supposed to be logical and insatiable desires of the heart. Just as you think you've finished your drink and are ready to leave the bar and go, a hand appears in front of you and serves you another glass. Surprised, you realize the story is yet to unfold.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Join my mailing list, subscribe to blog Muse!

Bernard Jan



View all my reviews

Father Figure by James J. Cudney

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I can understand but cannot fully grasp the intensity of need, desire and obsession to find the identity of biological parents because I was lucky enough to have them both. I guess it is something primal, something that runs in our blood and doesn’t leave us at peace until we know.

That restless need, disturbance in our consciousness and ability to identify ourselves are beautifully described in the novel Father Figure by James J. Cudney. A story of two young women living twenty years apart, one desperately trying to hide and forget her past, the other one eager to find the answers to her origins and sexuality.

Father Figure is a modern story of love, hatred, romance, monstrosity, family issues, sexual challenges, doubts, failures, sadness, redemption, forgiveness, acceptance and coming to peace with ourselves. The story I thought would read in a straight line of logical events surprised me with an unexpected number of twists and turns and smartly delivered booby traps-cliffhangers. Marvelous is how the author made me loath one protagonist in the story!

I am always happy when I discover a new book or author worthy of my time, attention and love. James J. Cudney and his Father Figure are among them, the latest additions to my private hall of fame and darlings.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Bernard Jan



View all my reviews

Reverie Girl by Nico J. Genes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If you have read Magnetic Reverie, the first book from The Reverie series, Reverie Girl is a must read for you. Lana, Claire and Glenn face the new challenges of love lost and found, of bad decisions and wrong moves. Despair and regret mixed with misery and blissful happiness culminate in the explosion of emotions you won’t be able to resist or stay neutral. Nothing is certain and anything is possible in a thin space between dreams and reality. And no sacrifices are too big or small when you fight for the only thing that matters to you—your true love.

Powerful and emotional love story between a young woman and the girl of her dreams which Nico J. Genes delivers to us with grace and tender care.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



View all my reviews
Bernard Jan

What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


OMG

I need to pull myself together first. This book is a bomb, and it blasted me in all directions! Bursting with emotions, it kept me glued to its pages, feeding my new addiction.

Honestly, I don't remember when one book made me want to intervene and get actively involved in its story! Page after page it sucked me into the vortex of twists and turns, the irresistible lure of New York City, and two teenage boys who are too cute and too unfit to handle their affairs. And for that alone, for that crazy need to materialize myself in their imaginary and yet so realistic world and help them fix things, it deserves my respect and praise.

Arthur and Ben and Ben and Arthur are charming, but it would be unfair not to also give credit to their friends, parents and colleagues who made them as they are, and especially Dylan who almost stole the show!

This is a love story you must love! I can only thank the universe for this book and its authors Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera, in case you still don't know who they are.

On a side note, What If It's Us has a huge potential for a great movie with lots of smiles, grins and tears! I can't wait!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan



View all my reviews

Offstage by Jonathan Hill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A kiss and drunken lips. Is it a close friendship between Daniel and Nathan or the birth of the first love?

Who speaks the truth when youthful lust gets the cold shoulder?

Love cannot be killed. If it cannot be reciprocated it must be endured.

In Offstage Jonathan Hill gets more sexual, more erotic, more sensual, more emotional, more unforgiving, more everything.

More a writer.

I needed a break after reading this story. And a few moments of solitude. Jonathan Hill can do that to you. There lies his brilliancy.

Read him!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



View all my reviews
Bernard Jan

The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley by Shaun David Hutchinson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Words are like emotions and in The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley Shaun David Hutchinson portrays with great attention and knowledge every stage of heartbreak, guilt, recuperation, laughter, desperation, apathy, hope. And love.

Drew is a boy who doesn’t want to leave the hell of the hospital in which his family died. He hides, draws and works there in his self-induced punishment driven by a strong sense of guilt. He is also a boy whose heart is full of love for two other terminally ill children, his friends Lexi and Trevor, he is trying to save from the claws of death. But he also is a boy who is pulled to Rusty, another teenage boy who is wheeled into the ER in a loud agony with half his body burned.

Drew’s and Rusty’s worlds collide and shape into a new reality of hope and happiness that can happen outside the walls of the hospital, a reality which is not completely devoid of painful pasts and sadness which linger anchored to it.

The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley is a beautiful Young Adult dark book about finding the way out of dark with the comic book by Christine Larsen inside it and the ending which could last a few heartbeats (or heartbreaks) longer.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan



View all my reviews

History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have to read Adam Silvera’s books when I’m alone. No riding in a tram, no one beside me. Just me and the stillness of the night. When tears can run freely because it’s impossible to stop them. Another dagger through the heart. Theo, Griffin, Wade Jackson, Adam. Well done, all of you.

History remains with the people who will appreciate it most. You didn’t get your history wrong, Griff.

My last words? Reading this book is emotional suicide, but it’s a beautiful way to die.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Follow me on Twitter.



View all my reviews
Bernard Jan

Between sixty aftershocks that are shaking the ground after two strong earthquakes hit Zagreb on a Sunday morning and the threat of a deadly virus, my heart is filled with gratitude and excitement as I reveal the cover and the blurb for January River, my first novel in English. I’ve been working and waiting over a year for this moment to arrive, so I hope it finds its way to the hearts of many readers and fans.

Domi at Inspired Cover Designs did a stunning cover for my eBook and paperback editions, so if you ever need a skilled cover designer, give her a chance!

Indie authors, Jonathan Hill and Michael Evans, have big credits for the final look of my blurb, so please show them some love by reading and reviewing their books.


January River Blurb

Five friends. One dog. One river carrying a secret.

When one of their friends goes missing, everything comes crashing down for the small group of childhood friends in the small town of Greenfield. Ethan takes it hard. Then he loses his dog, his only consolation.

Hoping to start anew, Ethan leaves Greenfield and moves to New York City. Far from the ghosts of his childhood and the river that gives and takes life. There he finds his one true love and builds a career as a bestselling author.

But how long will Ethan’s happiness last as doubts creep back into him and shatter his reality? And will his reconciliation with the past come at too great a price?

All rivers carry their secrets, but not every river keeps its secret forever.

In this heartwarming coming-of-age literary fiction with episodes of mystery and romance cross-genre story, Bernard Jan, the author of Look for Me Under the Rainbow and A World Without Color, speaks of true friendship, first darlings, and real loves. With gentle words he describes our connection with nature and love for our four-legged friends who quickly become honorable members of our families, but also tells about the dark secrets we carry in our hearts.


Thank you all who brought me here. January River will be available for purchase on Amazon in April.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Follow me on Twitter.

Bernard Jan