I did not enjoy this. I'm looking through goodreads reviews from all my friends, of whom a good many have read this one, and they're all highly rated and full of praise. Can't remember the last time I've felt so alone with my thoughts on a book.

I was just bored through a lot of this. Like I tried to summon the interest in all of Cahalan's struggles, and it's definitely a horrific thing to go through, but I found myself disinterested and just waiting for the book to be over so I could get to something better. I am not the most interested in specifically medical information, so that bit dragged, and I was hoping there'd be more in this book for me. There was more, it just happened I didn't get along with the personal bits anymore than I did the medical aspects.

One thing I struggled with a lot was her storytelling. By her own admission, Cahalan doesn't remember most of this book. It's put together through interviews and medical reports and everything she could find because despite the fact that it happened to her, Cahalan is the one with the least firsthand knowledge. I think that could have been an interesting storytelling device had she leaned into it, but instead she wrote this book almost as though she did remember, and it always felt off to me. There was a disconnect I could never quite get through. It almost made me wish that this book had been written by someone else, literally anyone else. Either someone who was able to witness it or a true outside who didn't write this book from the first person perspective. I do want to clarify I'm not in any way suggesting it felt dishonest, because it definitely did not. My issue is just with the storytelling choice.

I also had the misfortune of picking this up right when the New York Post was in the news for doxxing a sex worker, so it was a little rough hearing her wax poetic about how great it was. It also didn't really endear me to her or any of her coworkers. Not a huge thing and it's not like that was what ruined the book, but it added a bit of unnecessary negativity and felt relevant enough to mention.

I dunno, I really don't get the love for this one. Like I didn't think it was horrible by any means, but I also can't think of much positive to say about it? It was one of those books I probably wouldn't think twice about except it's so well loved. I wouldn't recommend it, but I'm also in a pretty small minority there so perhaps my opinion doesn't count for a whole lot and you should still give this a go. If you didn't like this either, I suppose you can take heart in the fact that you're not alone.

This is exactly the kind of book I love reading. It's serious and sad without being overwhelmingly depressing, it handles a serious topic with sensitivity and care, it asks provoking questions and brings up thoughtful discussions. And it's a great story with well developed characters. Like everything I love is here, and I will probably reread this book in the future because I thought it was that great. This book will live on my shelf, and if it anything ever happens to my copy, I will for sure replace it.

I loved the representation in this. Obviously I can never know what it's like to be in the head of someone with Alzheimer's, but from the outside this whole book felt so real. The word for word repeated conversations, and forgetting simple tasks, and speech barrier where she obviously knows what she means but can't come up with half the words in the sentence. Asking to go to the place or needing a thing that does you know, what I need. Either Genova has personal experience or she has done a great deal of research because it was all so spot on.

She handled the decline so well. Watching Alice from the beginning of the book was she was very nearly her usual self slowly lose bits of and pieces of herself was heartbreaking. There were so many ways it was well done, but especially early on I loved her to do lists. Nearly every day, Alice wrote herself a to do list. At the beginning of the book it was simple and vague "Lydia, class, meeting." As the book went along, the list got more involved "cognitive psychology class at 1:15pm in room 243, your notes are in the green folder." It was such a great way to illustrate the various ways she was managing to cope with her worsening memory.

One thing I didn't necessarily love was the lack of "bad days" shown. Now, let me explain what I mean and why. My grandmother had Alzheimer's and I lived with/cared for her during the last years of her life, so I had a lot of first hand experience. And Genova does a great job of illustrating what Alzheimer's is like (at least, what it looks like to an outsider). But it felt like at times this book was almost too positive. Like she definitely shows the decline and the horrors of the disease and how bad it is, but it felt to me like she always stopped short of just how bad it can get.

It was the kind of thing where Alice would be in a room with her daughter and not know where she was or who her daughter was or what was going on, but she'd still feel a love and attachment. Which sure, fine, that happens quite a bit. But I feel like the book never showed the other side of that, not knowing who her daughter is or where she was and being wholly frightened, feeling no recognition or love, feeling kidnapped, lashing out in anger or violence because of that, trying to escape, accusing them of bad things. There's a lot of both once you get toward the end stages and I was disappointed that in the later part of the book, it never went there. For me, this book needed to go a little further in that regard. Good days and bad days are so common, even good mornings and bad nights. Or a bad moment of accusing your daughter of kidnapping you that's forgotten in ten minutes. This book was more about the early onset aspect and Alice's decline so it wouldn't have been relevant until much later in the book anyway, but I did expect it to come up at some point and it never did.

By the end, this book made me cry. I love crying over a book because I love caring that much. It's just heartbreaking to watch someone's health and mind decline and there's nothing anyone can do except hold her hand and remind her who they are. It's just sad. Not melodramatic, but sad in that small way where you see it and feel it and it's too close.

There was some question over her wishes in the end and what Alice would want to do, because even though she was still present she wasn't really capable of looking at whole situations and making decisions. Watching her family struggle with that and argue for her was hard, and I almost wish there had been a tiny bit more of it, but I don't think this book was trying to be very message driven. There was just enough of a hint to make you think. I don't think Genova and I are necessarily in agreement over a few things, but they were subtle enough that it didn't affect my enjoyment of the book. Had it been more preachy (it definitely wasn't), I would probably have a lot more things to say in that regard.

So yes, I do recommend this. Wholeheartedly. It touched my heart and I'm sure a great many people will love this as much as I did. It's just good. Like everything I said above stands, but at the end of the day this is a good book and we should all read good books. I've not read Genova before, but I'm already interested in picking up more of her books.

I picked this book up kind of on a whim. I happened across an episode of the show and it made me curious what the book would be like. I actually find childbirth and pregnancy kind of horrifying, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It was honestly a bit surprising.

More than anything, it was the medical discussions and social issues that drew me in. I don't know anything about London in the 50s, so hearing about consequences from work houses or the people in poverty or immigrants lifestyles was all so fascinating. And I know very little about medical standards today, so hearing discussions on midwifery vs doctors and the various practices they engaged in was also really informative. And I didn't cringe more than once or twice at the graphic descriptions, which I'll consider a win.

Honestly, the bit I struggled with most was Worth's personal stories. I liked the outside stories, but whenever she had a chapter that focused on her personal life, I found myself bored and wanting her to get back to her patients. I just didn't get anything out of hearing about her living her life. Usually those are my favorite parts of memoirs, but I couldn't get into Worth as a person. I was much more interested in what the book did outside of her.

There were also a few moments that seemed questionable to me in terms of Worth's condescension toward the working class she was helping, or thirteen year old pregnant brides who don't speak the language. It has been a minute since I read this book, so I'm struggling with coming up with specific examples, but there were moments that made me uncomfortable. It makes sense, though, since she did come of age in the 1950s.

Overall I did really enjoy this and would recommend it if you're interested in medical information or the time period. I found it fascinating. I was originally planning on continuing on with the series, but unfortunately my library doesn't carry the other two books as audiobooks and I don't care quite enough to make it a priority as a physical book. But it was a really worthwhile experience and I learned a lot from this one.

I loved this. This was such a fantastically written book that handles difficult issues so well. Perhaps it was because this was a memoir and not fiction, but often when there are so many different issues in a book (eating disorder, physical abuse, sexual abuse, racism, gambling addiction, etc), I feel like there aren't all handled with the same level of depth and sensitivity. But Laymon weaves them all together so effortlessly. Again, probably because that's how they exist in his life, rather than pulling them together out of thin air.

It was such a hard book to read, just in terms of the subject matter. So heartbreaking at times, but also with an almost perfunctory tone. This is just the way the world is. It hit me really hard emotionally.

Sometimes I struggled a bit with following Laymon's line of thinking or sequence of events or even just understanding exactly what had happened in the past. I'm not entirely certain how much of this was the actual writing vs my personal inability to follow audiobooks as well as physical books, but I don't usually struggle this much. I had to keep taking breaks from this one because I wasn't always able to focus as much as I wanted/needed.

I think my main critique was just that I wish it had been longer. Like everything was discussed well enough, but I feel like it all could have used a bit more time and space, and may have benefitted from that. Like I just wanted to hear more from him. He could have said more.

I highly recommend this book. It was wonderful and so well written. I'll definitely be picking up more from Laymon in the future, but will probably be reading the physical versions because I think he's just a bit dense for me to get through on audiobook. This probably would have been a better review had my reading comprehension been a bit higher.

I wish I'd written this review just after finishing the book rather than waiting so long because I want to truly be able to explain how much this book irritated me, and I just can't come up with many specific examples or reasoning anymore.

For starters, this book was so overwritten. Not everything needs to be described with so many adjectives and metaphors. Like sometimes the curtains can just be curtains. I don't need three paragraphs waxing poetic for me to understand that they're thick and dark. It felt like everything in this book was just so over described.

I also struggled a bit with the fact that she rarely talked about anything in the book that wasn't directly related to her light sensitivity. Normally with memoirs, even specific topic driven memoirs, you can get kind of a sense of the person's life and who they are. But I feel like Lyndsey didn't include much of anything outside of her illness. It was just that, and it made it hard for me to connect with her as a person. It didn't feel like a full story.

My last and biggest issue was that I had a hard time buying her story. Usually with memoirs I make an active choice to take everything at face value because they're personal stories. It doesn't do much good to question everything and it doesn't matter to me so much if it's one hundred percent accurate. But there were so many points in this book where I struggled with that. It's not that I thought she was lying, more like I had so many unanswered questions that it felt incomplete to me. Like I wasn't getting all the information available. For example, she doesn't really go to the doctor for most of the book. Like for years she doesn't make any effort to see a doctor. This is a woman who has to limit the time she spends in her kitchen because even the light from the timer on the oven affects her. And it felt off. Like again, not saying she's lying and maybe she did go to the doctor and just didn't write about it, but there were so many instances in the book where it felt like the choices made were too odd and didn't make sense for the situation. And again, just because she didn't offer answers doesn't mean there weren't answers. But it was a problem to me that I had so many unanswered questions that made the story unenjoyable.

She refuses to ever consider her condition might be psychological in nature, which it may or may not be, but then seems to be getting magically cured by the end of the book. Like nothing changed. No medication, no new doctors, she won't interact with anyone who even so much as suggests it might be psychological (which again, understandable if it isn't- having people suggest your illness is made up sucks, but also she wouldn't see any doctors or do anything medical to try to figure it out either). And then it sort of just starts getting better for no reason.

I struggled with this a lot. I couldn't recommend it to people and to be perfectly honestly, reading it felt like a waste of my time.

I did really enjoy this book, I want to say that off that bat. I think it offers a very interesting look on transracial adoption and loving parents who may not always get it right. I also think Nicole Chung is a great storyteller who had a lot of interesting insights, both on how race affected her life and her growing relationship with the family who gave her up for adoption.

However, the thing that kept me from truly loving this book was that it felt so bare bones. Like there were so many questions I had throughout that never got answered. I wanted to hear more about her relationship with her adoptive parents as an adult, and more about their feelings since they were family as well. It was almost like they got written out of the book a bit later on.

It felt like Chung was trying to keep parts of her life private, which I totally understand, but it doesn't always work as well when writing a memoir. I wanted more of the story than I think she was willing to share. I don't blame her for that, but it did make the book weaker for me.

It was still such a fantastic and beautifully written story, though. The racism she experienced as a child was heartbreaking and reaching out to her birth family made for an interesting story. She captured so many difficult feelings and I was fascinated in this book from start to finish.

I'd definitely recommend this book if you're interested in the subject. It was such a worthwhile read for me and I enjoyed it immensely.

Fascinating. I was so sucked into this book and Shin Dong-hyuk's story of the camps. I've not read much on North Korea yet and everything I've read has been centered on citizens. What made this interesting and so very different was the way Shin was treated because he was not a citizen. He was a slave, only good for labor until his death, so there was no point in wasting effort or time brainwashing. He never learned about their Dear Leader, or thinking only in the plural. It just wasn't part of his life the way it was for every other North Korean citizen. In many ways his experiences are similar, but it's such a wildly different perspective too.

I struggled with the ending a bit. I don't think that's entirely Harden's fault, it's just a thing that happens with nonfiction. There's not always closure. It's got to just stop without some satisfying wrap up because Shin's life is still going on. He hasn't healed completely or made great revelations. He's still struggling and living his life, and will probably continue doing just that for a great many years. I think Harden still could have done a better job with the book feeling like it just stopped with no ending at all, but it is just a drawback of nonfiction.

There were also some questions of Shin's truthfulness, but that didn't bother me too much. Any memoir you kind of have to take with a grain of salt because they're someone's personal stories and thoughts, and will always be subjective. And especially in a book like this where Shin's life is so full of trauma and horror. I doubt anyone could be completely straight forward. Lying or subverting the truth is a survival mechanism. And you can't verify anything Shin says since there are no documents or witnesses. It's literally all his word. I came away thinking that while some details may be off, the broad strokes all seemed generally true and that's good enough for me in this case.

I highly recommend picking this up if you're interested in North Korea. It wasn't the best I've read, but I think it's such an important perspective because we don't hear much about the inside of the camps, especially from someone who was raised there from birth. It's important and so very fascinating, and hopefully if more people read stories like this, more will be done in the world so we have fewer stories like this in the future.

I love Karin Slaughter, but I didn't quite love this book as much as I wanted. I don't know if the hype got to me and I was just expecting something more or if it was the book itself.

It fell into a trap I hate in thrillers where they get too big. Every thriller is over the top, but sometimes it feels like the conspiracy gets too big and stretches too far, just absurdly so, and I cannot even pretend to buy into it anymore. By the end, this book was definitely there. I want to pretend that it could be real. That's why thrillers are scary to me. The realer they are, the more fun they are. This completely went off the rails. That's definitely not something that would bother everyone, but it bothered me.

This also just felt like one of those books where everything bad that could happen, did happen. It took away a lot of the tension because I stopped worrying about the bad things. Why worry when it's guaranteed it'll be just as bad as you expect, which is as bad as possible? Karin Slaughter always gets truly horrific in her books and I definitely enjoy that, but literally every point can't be as horrific as possible just for the sake of being horrific. It turns the horror of the situation into something almost boring.

But Karin Slaughter is a good writer with good thriller stories. Even at her worst when I'm the most disappointed, I still like it better than most other thrillers I've read. So it's not like this is a terrible review. It's just skewed by my high expectations of one my favorite author's highest regarded books. I wanted to adore this, and it was just okay.

I would recommend this, I guess. If you like really grisly thrillers, I think Slaughter is a worthwhile author for you to try. This one wasn't a standout to me, but it still wasn't bad. So I guess I'd recommend her as an author more than this one book, but I don't think you should avoid this book if you happen across it either. I do think she tends to be stronger in her cop thrillers, but that just might be my personal preference for cop thrillers.

I'm mostly just sad because I so badly wanted to adore this.

I didn't dislike this book, but at the end of the day, it didn't do a whole lot for me and I can't imagine it would do a lot for most readers. It read more like a book that was helpful to the author's mental health than it was really intended for an outside audience.

Most of this book focuses on Beard uncovering what happened the day his brother died. But the thing is, it's not a mystery. His little brother drowned because the ocean is stronger than a lot of people expect. The end. Most of what he uncovered were kind of unimportant details, like who were the people on the rescue crew or who called for help or at what exact time Nicky died. Again, these are the kind of details that I understand mattering to him, but as an outsider, none of them meant a whole lot to me. It just wound up being kind of dull.

The part of the story that interested me most was how the family coped with it after the fact and mostly shut down the grieving process, but that seemed secondary to the almost mystery element of what happened. I just felt a bit bored throughout this book.

I wouldn't recommend this, but I don't think it was bad, either. If you're intensely curious about a man exploring his grief, they're might be enough here to hold your interest, but there wasn't much for me.

I really thought for basically this entire book that it was going to be a four star read. So keep in mind if I sound extra disappointed in this review, it's probably for that reason.

It's fascinating and I loved the historical elements. Like I get that's such an obvious thing when you're reading a book set in the early 1900s, but the details and lifestyles of the time were so visceral and present at every moment of the book. I really felt like not only did I learn about this case, but just the world as a whole (the world, in this case, being America at the turn of the 20th century). Worldbuilding is just as important in nonfiction as it is in fiction.

I thought all the research was really well done as well. There was just so much information. It reminded me a lot of Erik Larson in that way. There was so much of the story and so much Baatz was able to include that it almost read like fiction.

And beyond just the writing, the case itself was fascinating. It was essentially a rich boy gaming the system and a pretty actress being used as a pawn by everyone involved. I'm such a sucker for reading about that kind of thing and it's so funny- sad funny, I suppose- how little it's changed in a hundred years. I could see this same scenario being played out today with little difference.

My one major problem is the only reason I knocked this book down to three stars, but it's kind of a doozy. Right up through the whole book, I was ready to give it four. Read the final chapter, thought it deserved forward. Read the epilogue, same thoughts. Then I got to the afterword and the afterword in this book is kind of a lot. That was the point where Baatz decided to inform the reader that actually Evelyn Nesbit (the actress involved) later recanted her rape testimony and said her husband forced her to say that. He went on to say there's basically no proof the rape actually occurred. Which you know, is kind a big thing to learn when the whole book is predicated on the idea that Nesbit was raped.

I don't actually have a problem with him choosing to write the book with the assumption that the rape occurred. There's no actual proof either way and a whole lot of evidence could be used to support either theory. I think that's a very valid choice and made for an interesting book. My problem was that this was only brought up in the afterword, after I'd finished the book. That's something I want to know in an introduction or even just included in the book as a whole. But however it's included, I want to know that as I'm reading the book. When it's revealed at the very very end after I finished, it makes me feel like I've been lied to or misled. It makes me wonder if Baatz took other liberties with the story, which previously hadn't been something I'd considered. It makes me lose trust in him to tell me the real story. I think there was a way to include that information where this book would still have been four stars for me, but it wasn't a surprise in the afterword.

I'm struggling with my thoughts because I feel so negative and bitter towards this book now, but I enjoyed literally the whole main event. Just that afterword left such a bad taste in my mouth.

I'd still recommend picking up this book if it sounds interesting to you. It's fascinating and such a worthwhile read. But I think it's good to know going in that the rape may or may not have occurred. Baatz writes it with near absolute certainty and didn't waver on that until the end.

Overall, a fascinating bit of true crime, though. There was so much beyond that about the justice system and society at the time and Nesbit's life before and after the main events of the book. It's very well done. I just wish it hadn't left such a bitter taste in my mouth at the end.