I didn't originally intend to give Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine a standalone review. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed the book all along, I just wasn't blown away. And then I got to the final third of the book and what had been an enjoyable thriller turned into a fast-paced, can't-put-it-down pile of awesome.
Rachel Caine has a great series on her hands here, if she can sustain the pace. I'm not sure how I haven't heard of her before; it appears she's written a number of books, mostly series, so that bodes well for this one.
Gina Royal thought she had the perfect life. A fulfilled stay-at-home mom to 2 young children, she had no idea that her loving husband Mel was secretly a serial killer using the converted family garage to play out his grotesque fantasies. And that's where the story starts.
After Mel Royal's trial and incarceration Gina is trying to put the pieces back together living under an an assumed name with her children, constantly on the run from those who want to see her pay for ever having been foolish enough to be married to evil. She settles down as Gwen Proctor in a small community by Stillhouse Lake and slowly starts to trust those around her again. And then all hell breaks loose.
I can't wait for the next book in this series! Anyone who loves a good thriller will like this one a lot.
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Monday, July 3, 2017
July TBR
Posting this a teensy bit late. I'd blame my newborn, but seeing as she's 6 months old and therefore no longer a newborn... I don't think that excuse flies anymore.
My goal this month is to finish up Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine. I don't know if I'll be posting a standalone review of this book. It's good, but in that generic thriller kind of way, you know? I am a little over halfway through with it though, so I could change my mind. I will say that it's a solid read. Excellent for summer afternoons by the pool, even if it is a little intense.
I'd also like to finish up Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner. I'm not in love with this one yet, but I'm also not very far into it yet.
I've got a couple of ARCs on my TBR list that I can't talk about yet that I will also be attempting to get to this month.
Now that summer is fully upon us and my oldest is begging to go to the pool just about every day, I expect I will be getting more and more reading time. Sadly I will also probably have less and less writing time, so look for updates to continue to be sporadic until I get this whole stay-at-home-mom-with-a-side-business-and-a-blog-that-needs-to-be-updated-thing-down.
My goal this month is to finish up Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine. I don't know if I'll be posting a standalone review of this book. It's good, but in that generic thriller kind of way, you know? I am a little over halfway through with it though, so I could change my mind. I will say that it's a solid read. Excellent for summer afternoons by the pool, even if it is a little intense.
I'd also like to finish up Who Do You Love by Jennifer Weiner. I'm not in love with this one yet, but I'm also not very far into it yet.
I've got a couple of ARCs on my TBR list that I can't talk about yet that I will also be attempting to get to this month.
Now that summer is fully upon us and my oldest is begging to go to the pool just about every day, I expect I will be getting more and more reading time. Sadly I will also probably have less and less writing time, so look for updates to continue to be sporadic until I get this whole stay-at-home-mom-with-a-side-business-and-a-blog-that-needs-to-be-updated-thing-down.
Monday, June 26, 2017
My Not So Perfect Life
I know I said I'd be posting a lot more going forward only a few weeks ago, but you know how it goes nonexistent readers... if only intentions counted as actions. If only thinking was as good as doing. If that were the case, this blog would be updated daily and my to-be-read stack wouldn't be quite so towering. (Side note: my house would also be immaculate, I'd speak several languages fluently and, well, you get the idea)
At any rate, I have managed to collect my thoughts on a book I read recently. My Not So Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella is classic Kinsella at her best. It was with some trepidation that I grabbed this one off the shelf at my local library. I've been a fan of Kinsella for years and years (ever since the first Shopaholic novel) but her more recent books have been, well, meh. While the Shopaholic books seem to be getting worse with every installment, Kinsella's standalone novels are almost always good and this one was no exception.
My Not So Perfect life gives a great light and fluffy take on our society's current obsession with documenting our too too fabulous lives via social media and reminds us that things are not always what they seem.
Katie Brenner, our protagonist, is attempting to live out her dreams as Kate Brenner in the big city. She's ditched her accent, straightened her hair and landed a glam job. From the outside looking in via her perfectly curated Instagram account, she's got it made. Or does she?
Katie is a typical Kinsella heroine - smart and sassy with a few confidence and reliability issues. The book overall is a fast, fun read - it's basically the epitome of the perfect beach read. I highly, highly recommend this one. If you've written off Kinsella because of what has become of the Shopaholic mess, give her another chance with this one -you won't be disappointed!
At any rate, I have managed to collect my thoughts on a book I read recently. My Not So Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella is classic Kinsella at her best. It was with some trepidation that I grabbed this one off the shelf at my local library. I've been a fan of Kinsella for years and years (ever since the first Shopaholic novel) but her more recent books have been, well, meh. While the Shopaholic books seem to be getting worse with every installment, Kinsella's standalone novels are almost always good and this one was no exception.
My Not So Perfect life gives a great light and fluffy take on our society's current obsession with documenting our too too fabulous lives via social media and reminds us that things are not always what they seem.
Katie Brenner, our protagonist, is attempting to live out her dreams as Kate Brenner in the big city. She's ditched her accent, straightened her hair and landed a glam job. From the outside looking in via her perfectly curated Instagram account, she's got it made. Or does she?
Katie is a typical Kinsella heroine - smart and sassy with a few confidence and reliability issues. The book overall is a fast, fun read - it's basically the epitome of the perfect beach read. I highly, highly recommend this one. If you've written off Kinsella because of what has become of the Shopaholic mess, give her another chance with this one -you won't be disappointed!
Monday, May 8, 2017
The Knockoff
| The Knockoff, by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza, caught my eye at the library the other day and I plowed through it very quickly. I both loved and hated this book. Overall - it was a cute, fun read. I would highly recommend it as a quick beach read. It's classic chick lit fluff - totally along the same lines as Helen Fielding, Marian Keyes or Jane Green (before she tried to get serious). Imogen Tate is a super-successful editor in chief of a glossy women's fashion magazine named, appropriately (if unimaginatively) enough, Glossy. She takes a 6 month medical leave to deal with breast cancer and returns to find her former assistant Eve has been rehired and promoted to... something kind of like her boss? But not? It's fuzzy. Anyway, Eve's directing all the online content for Glossy, which has, in 6 months, decided to stop printing and go totally online/be app-based. Also, Eve's basically a psychopath. The whole book is like a fashion mag remake of the classic movie All About Eve but it still feels original. Now, for the part I HATED. We're supposed to somehow believe that during the 6 months Imogen was out on leave, the world became super high tech. And poor, poor Imogen just can't keep up with any of it. Seriously? This woman is supposed to be like 5 years older than me and she can barely figure out how to send a text. How does that work? I mean, I know us Gen X'rs can't really compete with Millenials when it comes to staying up-to-the-second on the absolute latest tech trends (I say that as someone who just refuses to sign up for Snapchat. I just can't you guys. It's just too much) but for goodness sake, we were the original online generation. How is Imogen supposed to be believable at all?! I feel like she should have either been made to be 20 years older (or even 30 - seriously, this chick is less tech-literate than my mom and believe me, that's saying something) or maybe spent a few years out of the office instead of a few months (iPhones, Twitter and Instagram didn't just spring up overnight y'all) or even just had her be a little less helpless in the face of change. Her inability to figure out simple things that the rest of us have adapted to as they came out is infuriating and one wonders how someone so out of the loop in all things tech can possibly be believable as someone who can keep up with the ever changing world of fashion. It doesn't make any sense. Still, if you can get past the whole "Imogen is super stunted when it comes to those newfangled computin' machines" thing, it really is a great read. I might even buy this one to re-read when I need a fluffy little palate cleanser. |
Holy Crap, It's Been A While!
Hello non-existent readers! It's been a while!
Life has been happening over the last year and change since my last post. I never talked about this when I first started this blog but I went through some stuff in 2015 that made 2016 really hard. What it boils down to is this: loss is difficult. And even when you think you are moving forward and getting better, life has a way of knocking you back down and making you afraid to get back up. But I did it anyway. I got up, I mean.
In mid 2015, I lost a very, very wanted pregnancy. I went to my 18-week OB appointment and found out that my son was at that very moment, dying inside me. His heart rate had slowed way down for reasons we have never really found out and a few days later, after a flurry of frantic kicking, he went still. A few days later, after ultrasound confirmation that he had died, labor was induced and I went through the worst 48 hours of my life.
You see (and this may get a little political - you've been warned), I live in the backwards state of Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, for various reasons explained to me by my OB, you can't get a D&E. Nobody's trained on it and it's illegal in most cases anyway, which means no one wants to deal with the paperwork involved in proving the product of the D&E was dead anyway. A friend of mine had a D&E a few months earlier for similar reasons and recovered relatively quickly. I, on the other had, had an incredibly painful induction that stalled out and seemed to take forever. Somehow the birth of my 1/2 pound son was exponentially more physically painful than the birth of my 7 pound 11 ounce son 10 years earlier. The pain was strong enough that whatever drugs they put in my epidurals just couldn't keep up. And yes, that was epidurals, plural. In an effort to give me some relief, the anesthesiologist redid my epidural on day 2. I got nauseous 75% of the way through though, and they had to start again - total number of needles that went into my spine? 3.
So, after nearly 48 hours of hard labor, I finally delivered my deceased son. I got to hold him and see that he would have looked just like his father and big brother and then I handed him back to the incredibly compassionate nurses for "disposal." In hindsight, I wish we had arranged to have the body cremated so that I could have kept the ashes, but at the time I was so overwhelmed with my grief that I couldn't fathom taking on the arrangements and my husband was in the same place. I do have pictures of him that the hospital photographer was kind enough to take and provide, free of charge.
I was released about 12 hours after giving birth and went home to begin my recovery. When you deliver a baby at 18 weeks, you don't just bounce back. You go through all the postpartum stuff that moms of live babies go through. Sometimes your milk comes in (fortunately mine did not). You bleed for 6 weeks. Your hormones are all over the place. Your doctor recommends you go ahead and take what would have been your maternity leave to rest and grieve.
I spent 8 weeks at home, recovering and being angry about what I'd been put through. And this is the part where I get political for a minute. Pro-lifers? Fuck you. Seriously. Fuck you. Fuck you and your short sighted policies that lead to situations like mine. Fuck you for making procedures illegal. Procedures that have uses outside of your personal abortion boogeyman. What you need to realize is that when you make a procedure illegal, medical schools stop teaching it. And hospitals put out blanket bans of the procedure in order to streamline processes and cover their asses. And that leads to needless suffering. Also, a special note for all "Personhood Bill" supporters - fuck you too. Because if you really want to pass legislation that requires an investigation for all miscarriages like mine? It undermines the nurses and the doctors who are trying to put women like me back together. I can't tell you how many people reaffirmed for me at the hospital that this was NOT MY FAULT. That nothing I had done led to this tragedy. How will those same people be able to do that for future suffering women if they are simultaneously contacting the police to start an investigation? Women don't need to be punished for losing their babies. Believe me, the loss is enough. I'm a strong ass woman and it nearly broke me.
When I did return to work, it was to a workplace full of 20 and 30-something women, all of whom seemed to be pregnant or to have new babies at home. It was basically hell. And then there were other medical issues that led to my doctor advising me to wait a few months and then a few months more, and then just a little bit longer to try again for another baby. I started this blog partly as a distraction during that time.
We finally got a tentative all-clear in April, at which point I was pretty sure I was already pregnant again. Spoiler alert: I was right. And on January 2, 2017, my daughter was born.
The pregnancy wasn't easy and that brings me to why I've been silent all these months. Between work and a stressful high risk pregnancy, I just didn't have it in me to really even read books, let alone review them. Weird little factoid about me: I have zero attention span when pregnant. It's hard for me to get through a Buzzfeed article when I'm knocked up, let alone a 400 page novel.
But baby girl is 4 months old now and I am READY! Let's do this! I've been reading and I've been reaching out to my old contacts to get some new galleys to review, so stay tuned, oh nonexistent reader. I've got shit to say.
Life has been happening over the last year and change since my last post. I never talked about this when I first started this blog but I went through some stuff in 2015 that made 2016 really hard. What it boils down to is this: loss is difficult. And even when you think you are moving forward and getting better, life has a way of knocking you back down and making you afraid to get back up. But I did it anyway. I got up, I mean.
In mid 2015, I lost a very, very wanted pregnancy. I went to my 18-week OB appointment and found out that my son was at that very moment, dying inside me. His heart rate had slowed way down for reasons we have never really found out and a few days later, after a flurry of frantic kicking, he went still. A few days later, after ultrasound confirmation that he had died, labor was induced and I went through the worst 48 hours of my life.
You see (and this may get a little political - you've been warned), I live in the backwards state of Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, for various reasons explained to me by my OB, you can't get a D&E. Nobody's trained on it and it's illegal in most cases anyway, which means no one wants to deal with the paperwork involved in proving the product of the D&E was dead anyway. A friend of mine had a D&E a few months earlier for similar reasons and recovered relatively quickly. I, on the other had, had an incredibly painful induction that stalled out and seemed to take forever. Somehow the birth of my 1/2 pound son was exponentially more physically painful than the birth of my 7 pound 11 ounce son 10 years earlier. The pain was strong enough that whatever drugs they put in my epidurals just couldn't keep up. And yes, that was epidurals, plural. In an effort to give me some relief, the anesthesiologist redid my epidural on day 2. I got nauseous 75% of the way through though, and they had to start again - total number of needles that went into my spine? 3.
So, after nearly 48 hours of hard labor, I finally delivered my deceased son. I got to hold him and see that he would have looked just like his father and big brother and then I handed him back to the incredibly compassionate nurses for "disposal." In hindsight, I wish we had arranged to have the body cremated so that I could have kept the ashes, but at the time I was so overwhelmed with my grief that I couldn't fathom taking on the arrangements and my husband was in the same place. I do have pictures of him that the hospital photographer was kind enough to take and provide, free of charge.
I was released about 12 hours after giving birth and went home to begin my recovery. When you deliver a baby at 18 weeks, you don't just bounce back. You go through all the postpartum stuff that moms of live babies go through. Sometimes your milk comes in (fortunately mine did not). You bleed for 6 weeks. Your hormones are all over the place. Your doctor recommends you go ahead and take what would have been your maternity leave to rest and grieve.
I spent 8 weeks at home, recovering and being angry about what I'd been put through. And this is the part where I get political for a minute. Pro-lifers? Fuck you. Seriously. Fuck you. Fuck you and your short sighted policies that lead to situations like mine. Fuck you for making procedures illegal. Procedures that have uses outside of your personal abortion boogeyman. What you need to realize is that when you make a procedure illegal, medical schools stop teaching it. And hospitals put out blanket bans of the procedure in order to streamline processes and cover their asses. And that leads to needless suffering. Also, a special note for all "Personhood Bill" supporters - fuck you too. Because if you really want to pass legislation that requires an investigation for all miscarriages like mine? It undermines the nurses and the doctors who are trying to put women like me back together. I can't tell you how many people reaffirmed for me at the hospital that this was NOT MY FAULT. That nothing I had done led to this tragedy. How will those same people be able to do that for future suffering women if they are simultaneously contacting the police to start an investigation? Women don't need to be punished for losing their babies. Believe me, the loss is enough. I'm a strong ass woman and it nearly broke me.
When I did return to work, it was to a workplace full of 20 and 30-something women, all of whom seemed to be pregnant or to have new babies at home. It was basically hell. And then there were other medical issues that led to my doctor advising me to wait a few months and then a few months more, and then just a little bit longer to try again for another baby. I started this blog partly as a distraction during that time.
We finally got a tentative all-clear in April, at which point I was pretty sure I was already pregnant again. Spoiler alert: I was right. And on January 2, 2017, my daughter was born.
The pregnancy wasn't easy and that brings me to why I've been silent all these months. Between work and a stressful high risk pregnancy, I just didn't have it in me to really even read books, let alone review them. Weird little factoid about me: I have zero attention span when pregnant. It's hard for me to get through a Buzzfeed article when I'm knocked up, let alone a 400 page novel.
But baby girl is 4 months old now and I am READY! Let's do this! I've been reading and I've been reaching out to my old contacts to get some new galleys to review, so stay tuned, oh nonexistent reader. I've got shit to say.
Monday, March 21, 2016
Dumplin'
Willowdean Dickson aka Dumplin’ is fat. She’s ok with that though - at least she would be if her pageant-obsessed mom would ease up about it, anyway. She’s got more confidence and swagger than most high school girls I’ve known who were half her size and isn’t afraid to love herself, no matter what the rest of the world might think.
Then she meets Bo, the hottie from work. Their secret-for-no-real-reason romance makes Will feel overwhelmingly self-conscious for the first time. In an effort to reclaim her self-love and get her mojo back, Will enters the Miss Teen Bluebonnet Pageant along with a few misfit friends.
I loved this book for its honest look at how overweight women are looked at in today’s society. Is Willowdean a flawless character? No. She’s sometimes petty, sometimes selfish and sometimes mean. But she’s also relatable, no matter what you weigh.
I absolutely and wholeheartedly recommend this one for anyone who’s ever had their confidence shaken or felt like an outsider. Julie Murphy is going on my list of authors to watch.
Then she meets Bo, the hottie from work. Their secret-for-no-real-reason romance makes Will feel overwhelmingly self-conscious for the first time. In an effort to reclaim her self-love and get her mojo back, Will enters the Miss Teen Bluebonnet Pageant along with a few misfit friends.
I loved this book for its honest look at how overweight women are looked at in today’s society. Is Willowdean a flawless character? No. She’s sometimes petty, sometimes selfish and sometimes mean. But she’s also relatable, no matter what you weigh.
I absolutely and wholeheartedly recommend this one for anyone who’s ever had their confidence shaken or felt like an outsider. Julie Murphy is going on my list of authors to watch.
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Did You Ever Have a Family
Early on in the story, a main character overhears a catty group of lunching ladies gossiping about her tragedy. "How do you recover from that? How would you even begin?" As it turns out, she tells us, you don't ever recover. You just learn to survive.
Did You Ever Have a Family is a story about tragedy. What would you do if your entire family was gone in an instant? How would you react?
The story follows June, Lydia and an assortment of others. Each chapter is told from a different character's perspective and by the end, you have the full story of what really happened the night June's house exploded, killing her daughter, her daughter's fiance, her ex-husband and her current boyfriend -- Lydia's son. It's hard to say much without giving everything away, just know that it's a really good book but a little bit of a slow read because it's so detail-rich.
I've been hearing bits and pieces about this one for a year now and am really glad I finally got the chance to read it. Bill Clegg is incredibly talented and I can't wait to read more by him.
Did You Ever Have a Family is a story about tragedy. What would you do if your entire family was gone in an instant? How would you react?
The story follows June, Lydia and an assortment of others. Each chapter is told from a different character's perspective and by the end, you have the full story of what really happened the night June's house exploded, killing her daughter, her daughter's fiance, her ex-husband and her current boyfriend -- Lydia's son. It's hard to say much without giving everything away, just know that it's a really good book but a little bit of a slow read because it's so detail-rich.
I've been hearing bits and pieces about this one for a year now and am really glad I finally got the chance to read it. Bill Clegg is incredibly talented and I can't wait to read more by him.
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