FLAWED; faulty, defective,imperfect, blemished,damaged, distorted, unsound, weak, deficient, incomplete, invalid. (Of a person) having a weakness in character.

Flawed by Cecelia Ahern is one of the most compelling books I’ve ever read.
The novel is set in a dystopian, messed up world, where your whole life is spent worrying about slipping up, making a mistake, becoming flawed. When you become flawed you are branded on the temple, the tongue, right hand, chest or foot. Once flawed you are put on a strict diet, have a curfew to follow and a blood red arm band on your upper arm showing everyone that you are flawed is to be worn everyday. 

The flawed live a different life to everyone else in their town. They can’t gather in groups of more than two, sit on just any seat on the bus and they aren’t allowed to move up in power at any of their jobs, that is if they get to keep their job after becoming flawed. The novel surrounds the life of Celestine North, a seventeen year old girl who, as she says herself, sees everything in black and white. She thinks if you’re flawed that is it. No question. She supports the flawed system.
Her boyfriend, Art just so happens to be the son of Bosco Crevan the head judge at highland castle where anyone who has been taken by whistleblowers awaits their flawed verdict in a cell and if they are deemed flawed get branded. Soon you see that Celestine no longer sees black and white when she herself is deemed flawed.

I really like this novel because I feel that it is the kind of novel that anyone can enjoy. There are so many big twists and turns throughout the novel that you can’t stop reading and it’s hard to put down. I think this is an amazing novel to show women empowerment because of how much Celestine does in such a short amount of time with virtually no help at all. She is making her voice heard and her opinion matter.

This book truly is a page turner and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in any sort of other dystopian novels or movies such as divergent, the maze runner or the hunger games. All of them have the same underlying themes. I recently read the sequel to Flawed which was released in 2016 called Perfect. Flawed ends on a cliffhanger where you're left feeling like you either want to flip the book over and read the whole thing again or go out and immediately buy the sequel. The ending of Flawed leads straight into Perfect, both taking place over the same 5 weeks or so. Overall I couldn’t recommend this book enough; it talks about important matters and things in life that everyday we’d take for granted. The book truly is not flawed.

​By Rosemary M

What is Irish literature? That is a question that has no definite answer. Why should you read Irish fiction? Well, that one's easy to answer.
Let me take you back to a time when Ireland was on the cusp of Independence, and the Irish identity was in flux. The Irish Literary Revival (1890-1922 approx.) produced some of our most well-known writers and brought Irish literature to the front of the world stage. W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Sean O'Casey, J.M. Synge... the list is endless. They wrote of the Ireland that they saw (whether it was true is another question) and for the first time the Irish people saw themselves represented in literature; not as clowns, but as complex people. It was a powerful moment. Adding weight to it was the emergence of controversial writers like Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett. Irish writing became as varied as the country it represented - from the idealized West of Yeats to Joyce's more realistic portrayal of Dublin to Beckett's experimental nowhere. This was an era where the voiceless learned to speak, and Irish writers have continued that tradition ever since.
Contemporary Irish writers are no less dark than their predecessors. Irish fiction, in particular, tends toward the dark, the macabre. And it does so with humour and self-deprecation. You are as likely to find yourself laughing as crying. For example, Ann Griffin's When All is Said tells the story of a man who contemplates his life the night before he commits suicide. William Trevor's The Story of Lucy Gault follows the fate of a family torn apart during the early 20th century. Colm Toibin writes of the emmigrant experience in Brooklyn. Worldwide phenomenon Sally Rooney touches on the struggles of growing up in modern Ireland in Normal People. Irish fiction delves into the pysche and does not shy away from the pain found there. 
That is not to say that all is doom and gloom. Charlie Savage, the brainchild of Roddy Doyle, follows an older man in Ireland as he tries to keep up with the kids and to navigate the ever changing world. Ronan Hession's Leonard and Hungry Paul is a cup of tea in a book - warm and comforting. 
This is a genre full of writers who write beautifully about life in all its disappointments. They reach out to tell you that you are not alone in your despair. They revel in the richness of history, the art of language, and the joy of telling a really, really good story. 

​By Rebekah Wade