Stories From A Place To Call Home

Happy Birthday, Nana!
Here's your birthday review.

Based on the musical A Place To Call Home, Anna Tan (Nana) has launched an ebook, giving us 10 short stories for the characters in the musical. 

Being Nana's first book, I'm super happy for her.
She has so totally worked hard for this and its beautiful how her passion for writing is being realized. 

Some of the stories in the ebook gives us an in depth look on how the characters felt about the central character Daniel being adopted into the Lee family. 
Since I actually watched the musical, I was delighted that I get to read more then there was about each character than what was portrayed in the musical. 

'Cock of the Walk' gives us a sense of background to the musical story. 
Like a prologue to what Daniel the main character gets himself into.
'So Surreal' dabbles into how Daniel is torn between seeing his prayer answered yet dreading what his new life would be like from the first impressions he had at the welcoming party. 
'Picking Fights' is one of those stories from the other characters. 
'Letting Go' sees things from Emily, sort of like the mother's POV. 
I felt for her during the musical. 
'Falling For Him' is like a scene from a girly sleepover.
I really liked this as it gives us a little more about the female characters in the musical. 
'He is Not My Son' is like the father's unmasking his disappointment with Daniel. 
'Leaving' gives us a little more background on Diane. 
'Closure' story is part of the thoughtful ending scene in the musical. 
'The Bench' is a sweet story from the future. 
'Dreams' is the ending that could have been. I would have loved to see the romantic scene, but at the same time reading the story lets me imagine it myself. 

Overall, I think I enjoyed it more after watching the musical. I'm not sure if I would be lost without having watched the musical. But then I have to be honest that I could be biased since its Nana's book. =) 

These stories were either in a POV style or third-party view. I like the third-party view ones better as I think the POV ones all have the same level of thoughtfulness for each character which lets you see how much thought Nana puts into each one of them but yet makes them somehow slightly the same. 
Having said that, I liked that there was both an Emily and an Edmund's POVs as it shows that a couple can see the whole adoption thing differently.

My favorite story of all has to be 'The Bench' as it gives us a happy ending of sort that can belong to both endings ('Closure' and 'Dreams'). Happy ending that equate couple did get together (oops spoiler!) isn't exactly the point of the whole musical, but that's my cup of tea. Which makes 'Falling For Him' kinda my second favorite story. =) 

Go have a read here. =)