Alice Kelly has a gift (or curse, depending on your perspective). She sees an aura around people, sensing their emotions and moods, owing to a condition called synaesthesia. She grows up in an unhappy home with a bipolar mother who neglects Alice and her brothers. This is the story of Alice’s life and ultimately, it’s a rather odd, humdrum and depressing one. This is my first book of Cecelia Ahern. An unusual story, very well written, and I look forward to reading more of her books. I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this novel. It's written in first person, present tense, something I often find off putting.. Except when the prose is so well written that I forget about the tense. It only took a paragraph or so for me to know that this was one of those books. Speaking of light, she sees colorful lights around people (auras) which overwhelm her when she is a child and help her know who to trust when she is older. This is a truly beautiful book and one that will stay with me for a long time. I don’t think I’ll quite be able to put into words how much I loved this and was touched by the story.

In a Thousand Different Ways: the Gripping 9780008194987 - In a Thousand Different Ways: the Gripping

A stunning, wonderful, powerful tale: Alice lives with her mother and two brothers, one older and one younger. Alice has synaesthesia (to see or feel in colours)only this isn't recognised until she is older and sadly she is seen as being different and a trouble maker. She sees the anger in her mother and the calm in her older brother. Imagine being able to see and hence make a judgement of someone by the colour surrounding them. When there is a crowd you are overwhelmed, when seeing strangers you can make a call. When Hugo, her older brother, goes to university and her younger brother is on the wrong side of the law it is left to Alice to look after her mother as she is now in a wheelchair. Alice does not have an easy life, and her gift (or curse depending on how you look at it) make everyday activities like walking down a street overwhelming. Absorbing everyone else’s feelings sounds exhausting. This is a story of a woman finding herself and how to deal with other people's anger, darkness. A disabled mother, a brother recently out of jail and her brother and family living in Doha. Wow what a fantastic book. The concept of seeing a persons emoticons as an aura and how it affects the life of the person seeing the aura.

Featured Reviews

Thanks so much for reading my review, I look forward to reading any comments. Feel free to browse my books read for your next great read. However, this is a really good book. It's very easy reading. Good story, some lovely touches, very human. I thoroughly enjoyed it even though I wept quite a lot on and off all the way through and it observes human nature very well. There's some really funny bits in it too. The one thing I'm delighted by (and I have not read a Cecilia Ahern for many years) is that her writing has really matured and I don't get the sense she's trying to be Marian Keyes any longer. (I love Marian but there really is only one of her).

In a Thousand Different Ways | Cecelia Ahern

Iceland. It’s one of my favourite countries to visit. When I was there for the first time I felt the landscape was so different to anything I’d ever experienced before that I had the feeling this is what it must be like to be on another planet. If you asked me to describe this book in a colour, I would call it the blue of a mist - pretty to look at but not very discernable. If you asked me how I felt reading it, I'd say it tugged at my heartstrings but it also left me a bit confused - what was the point? Is it a sort of bildungsroman? Just a story of a woman with Synesthesia? If you asked me whether I would recommend the book to others, I'd say it depends on whether you would like to spend an evening reading about a woman, her struggles with her undiagnosed condition, beautiful relationship with her older brother, complicated relationship with her mother and a romance that just didn't seem right. In all honesty, I had fallen out of love a little with Cecelia Ahern’s books which was really disappointing as some of her early books are my favourite reads. Like Eleanor Oliphant and Sally Diamond our protagonist Alice Kelly is different. Im discovering I have a love for damaged female protagonists, whether it's down to nature or nurture I love these girls.... Or maybe it's because I have raised a daughter on the spectrum and I see a little bit of her in all these special protagonists...it makes me want to fight the world for them and champion them! She and her books have won numerous awards, including the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction for The Year I Met You.

Customer reviews

I have to admit this is the first book I have read by Cecelia Ahern, and I could not put it down. A Thousand Different Ways tells the story of Alice who has synaesthesia and is seen as been different and difficult as she tries to navigate her way through her life with her mother and brothers. I have had a life-long relationship with colours. Enduring them, accepting them, surrendering to them.” The book is a laudable effort and appeals to you if you are patient and want to understand a unique life. If you don’t feel your own pain, you cannot recognise it in others. Our own suffering can cultivate the ability to help others.