Ordeal by Innocence - Agatha Christie

'"The finest system in the world can make a mistake...
Justice is, after all, in the hands of men, and men are fallible."'

Rating: ✫✫✫✫✫

I've had Ordeal by Innocence sat on the shelf for a long time, and, with the television adaptation now being shown, it seemed the perfect time to read it. I'm glad I actually read the book before watching the adaptation, because there were a lot of changes that I wasn't too pleased by. Although I appreciate that they want to play on the drama of crime fiction, I just find that they're often over-dramatized, which takes away from the charm and overall feel of Christie's novels. And that's precisely why I always choose to read the book first. But I digress. This review will be looking only at Christie's novel.

Arthur Calgary is on his way to Sunny Point, a house known as Viper's Point to the locals. Calgary has discovered that he could have provided an alibi to a man two years before, which could have saved him from being sent to prison for the murder of his mother. The accused, Jack Argyle, died in prison during his sentence, but Calgary feels that he must contact the family, who he imagines will be pleased to know that Jack did not commit the crime. But when he gets there, he finds that the family are less than receptive to his news. Confused as to why, Calgary struggles to remove himself from the case. He soon realises that what he has done does not just put the real culprit back in danger, but it also puts the innocent through another, more dangerous ordeal.

I often find that without one central character to hold a mystery together, it sometimes doesn't feel like one coherent plot. I imagine that's why so many authors choose to create detectives, who can interact with the suspects and pull the reader in the desired direction. Although Arthur Calgary kind of picks up this central role, he is absent for most of the action, but I don't think the plot suffers at all because of this. There are so many characters and so many plot details to remember that the overall novel could easily fall into too many different pieces. But Christie intertwines all the clues together so that, if anything, everything comes together perfectly, and makes for a really intriguing and dynamic ending.

*spoiler alert*

My Top 10: Young Adult Reads

You just have to look at my bookshelves to see that I am a huge fan of YA fiction. It's just so easy to read, and it comes in all shapes and sizes. You have coming of age books based in the real world of high school or University, and you have dystopian and fantasy novels which push the boundaries of your imagination. I have so many YA books that I absolutely loved reading, so I thought I'd share my top ten picks with you.

It was so difficult to narrow it down to just ten, and I changed my mind so often on which order they should be in. I also know that there are lots of YA books that I'm yet to read, and if I were to redo this list in the future it could potentially be very different. That being said, I've tried to include a variety of different genres, and pick some that maybe aren't so well known, but there are definitely some recognisable titles in there! Here we go...

Winnie the Pooh; Silly Old Bear

“At first, Winnie-the-Pooh wasn’t called Winnie-the-Pooh. He had several names: Big Bear, Mr Edward, and Teddy Bear. Even A.A. Milne was not sure where his unusual name came from! The story goes that in 1921, the one-year-old Christopher Robin went on holiday with his parents to a cottage in the Sussex village of Poling. There was a lake nearby, where Christopher Robin would feed a swan. He called the swan ‘Pooh’, and somehow this name became attached to his teddy bear, too.”

Anybody who knows me will know that I adore Winnie the Pooh. I've had the books since I was young, and I've always loved them. With the release of the new teaser trailer for Christopher Robin, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to dig the books back out and have another look through them. It seemed silly to try and do a review, because I just wouldn't be able to write anything to do justice to what the stories and characters mean to me. So instead, I decided to pick out a few of my favourite quotes, and share them in this post.

The characters of Pooh Bear and his friends are all so endearing, I find it hard to imagine anybody not liking them, and I think A.A. Milne created such a perfect world for a child to escape to. There's such an innocence to the stories, and especially to the character of Pooh himself, that make them a really wonderful read, and I couldn't help but smile as I read the stories again. I hope you enjoy reading through these quotes as much as I enjoyed reading back through my own books.