Sound Alike – 4 – Bound

Posted by kay on January 14, 2010 2:02 pm in Features | 4 comments

Have you ever asked for a book with a specific title and ended up with something completely different?

In a similar fashion to “The Artsy Shelf” and other covers’ look-alike features across the blogosphere, “Sound alike” will present books with similarities… but in their titles. Some books share incredibly similar names, and sometimes – gasp! – they’re exactly the same!

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Looking at my books this week, I realized I have two books with the same title – which led to a second realization, that I haven’t done a “Sound Alike” feature in forever! So here it is, I present you Bound and Bound 🙂

Bound by Sally Gunning

Alice Cole spent her first seven years living in two smoky, crowded rooms in London with her family. But a new home and a better life waited in the colonies, or so her father promised—a bright dream that turned to ashes when her brothers and mother took ill and died during the arduous voyage. Arriving in New England unable to meet the added expenses incurred by their misfortunes at sea, her father bound Alice into servitude to pay his debts.

By the age of fifteen, Alice can barely remember the time when she was not a servant to John Morton and his daughter, Nabby. Though work fills her days, life with the Mortons is pleasant; Mr. Morton calls Alice his “sweet, good girl,” and Nabby, only three years older, is her friend, companion, and now newly married, her mistress.

But Nabby’s marriage is not happy, and soon Alice is caught up in its storm; seeing nothing ahead but her own destruction, she defies her new master and the law and runs away to Boston. There she meets a sympathetic widow named Lyddie Berry and her lawyer companion, Eben Freeman. Frightened and alone, Alice impulsively stows away on their ship to Satucket on Cape Cod, where the Widow Berry offers Alice a bed and a job making cloth in support of the new boycott of British wool and linen.

At Widow Berry’s, Alice believes her old secret is safe, until it becomes threatened by a new one. As the days pass, the political and the personal stakes rise and intertwine, ultimately setting off a chain of events that will force Alice to question all she thought she knew. Bound by law, society, and her own heart, Alice soon discovers that freedom—as well as gratitude, friendship, trust, and love—has a price far higher than any she ever imagined.

Bound by Donna Jo Napoli

Young Xing Xing is bound.

Bound to her father’s second wife and daughter after Xing Xing’s father has passed away. Bound to a life of servitude as a young girl in ancient China, where the life of a woman is valued less than that of livestock. Bound to be alone and unmarried, with no parents to arrange for a suitable husband. Dubbed “Lazy One” by her stepmother, Xing Xing spends her days taking care of her half sister, Wei Ping, who cannot walk because of her foot bindings, the painful but compulsory tradition for girls who are fit to be married. Even so, Xing Xing is content, for now, to practice her gift for poetry and calligraphy, to tend to the mysterious but beautiful carp in her garden, and to dream of a life unbound by the laws of family and society.

But all of this is about to change as the time for the village’s annual festival draws near, and Stepmother, who has spent nearly all of the family’s money, grows desperate to find a husband for Wei Ping. Xing Xing soon realizes that this greed and desperation may threaten not only her memories of the past, but also her dreams for the future.

I have Gunning’s Bound on my shelves and Napoli’s Bound in my ereader, and I cannot wait to read them both! I’m especially interested in Napoli’s one since I have always been interested in Chinese culture.

Would any of these two books tempt you?

If you come across books with similar titles you’d like me to feature, don’t hesitate to tell me or e-mail me, and I’ll add your suggestion to the list! 😉