Phantom Limb by Lucinda Berry is a heartbreaking tale about twin sisters who survive a horrible childhood just to experience a major loss in their teenage years.

This book was so difficult to read because of the content. So major trigger warnings for child abuse, self harm, and suicide.

I’m glad I read this. Lucinda did an amazing job writing it. It’s certainly very powerful!

From the psychological thriller standpoint, the ending was quite intense! I had guessed at a few things throughout the book, but didn’t see the ending coming.

If you enjoy psychological thrillers, then I would recommend this to you! Just be warned that it’s difficult and very dark.

Where Are You Now? by Mary Higgins Clark is a thrilling tale about a sister that is determined to prove that her brother, who disappeared ten years ago, is innocent when he suddenly becomes the center of a murder investigation.

I just love Mary Higgins Clark’s work! Every tale that I have read from her has totally captivated me. Sure, some of her books are a little predictable, but they’re roller-coaster rides nonetheless! Her writing style is just so wonderful!

Where Are You Now? is a book that I had read before I began reviewing books online. When Alex’s coworker gifted me a box of her late husbands novels, I saw this one and couldn’t wait to reread it!

On my second read, I was both excited and a little bummed that I couldn’t remember how the case turned out. It certainly made the re-read more exciting, but I was also sad that I had forgotten the ending!

Right from page one, this story pulls you in. As a reader, we jump between various characters to slowly learn more and more about the overall situation. There are so many chapters that make readers lean toward one specific person as the bad one, but then soon after, you’re leaning another way!

The suspense builds and builds over the course of the book, then like all great mysteries, the ending is explosive! One of my favorite things about Mary’s work is how neatly everything gets tied up at the very last minute.

My Favorite Passages:
The day had fulfilled its promise- warm with a light breeze. The current of the East River, often so strong, seemed as mellow as the sunshine.

Listening to all the messages, the concern in both their voices, felt like stumbling into a warm room after an ice storm.

My Final Thoughts:
If you enjoy mysteries that have a focus on family… Mysteries with suspense that builds and builds as each chapter gives you a little more information and hints at the conclusion… Then I highly recommend this one to you!

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum is a very powerful tale about family and tradition, with a quick dash of mystery. This tale is heart-breaking and infuriating, but it is also uplifting and hopeful.

I was kicking myself for passing this one up in a previous BOTM because I saw so many of my blogging friends absolutely raving about this one. When I had skipped multiple months in a row, BOTM gave me the option to pick from a previous option and this one was one of the books available! I’m so happy that I was able to get a copy.

This tale centers around three women of different generations; a grandmother, a mother, and a teenager. We spend most of the book bouncing between the mother and the teenager’s story lines, but the grandmother gets her fair share of the spotlight in order to tell her perspective as well.

The chapters with varying perspectives were woven together so wonderfully. This was the set up where one story line lead perfectly into the next, but all the while, I couldn’t wait to just cruise through the book to see what was going to happen next from each perspective!

This book also had a wonderful balance. One storyline was more conservative and traditional, while the other was about empowerment and change. This helped to keep the flow going for me as a reader. Especially where one storyline was much more difficult to read than the other simply because of the way one character was treated.

Going into this book, I didn’t know very much about the traditions and customs of Arab cultures. Of course, with any religion, there is the good and the… extreme.

I really enjoyed learning about a number of things that this book presented! But the more extreme items, I have to admit, made my blood boil quite a bit… There were just so many elements of the traditional way of life that I struggled to read about because of how upsetting it was for me to learn about. I’m such an empathetic person that I really struggle seeing people treated poorly. So to see the hopelessness of being stuck in a forced marriage, the domestic abuse, and the terror of everyday life was horribly difficult for me.

One of the worst and most upsetting things was how many of the male characters of the book choose to not only abuse their wives, but that they didn’t take any responsibility for their actions. What’s worse was that the males and some of the females used the excuse of their traditions in that toxic “this is just how it is” way of life to justify the horrible actions.

My Favorite Passages:
In the glassy tint of his gaze, she could see the days of the rest of her life stacked together like pages. If only she could flip through them, so she knew what was to come.

Every time Deya replayed this conversation in her head, she imagines her life was just another story, with plot and rising tension and conflict, all building up to a happy resolution, one she just couldn’t yet see. She did this often. It was much more bearable to pretend her life was fiction than to accept her reality for what it was: limited. In fiction, the possibilities of her life were endless. In fiction, she was in control.

Perhaps that was why she had spent her childhood with a book in front of her face, trying to make sense of her life through stories. Books were her only reliable source of comfort, her only hope. They told the truth in a way the world never seemed to, guided her the way she imagined Isra would’ve had she still been alive.

Back then, in the refugee camp, her body carried her worry like an extra limb.

The books kept Isra company. All it took to soothe her worries was to slip inside their pages. In an instant, her world would cease to exist, and another would rush to life.

Words could do extraordinary things, but sometimes they were not enough.

My Final Thoughts:
This was one of the most powerful books I have ever read. This book made me incredibly angry, it made me want to cry, and it made me smile. I hated some of the characters, felt sorry for the others that were experiencing unfairness, inequality, and abuse, but also rooted for others. But through all of this darkness, the strength and resilience of the women in this tale was just astonishing.

I highly recommend this book to everyone.

In this issue, we see a special meeting being held with a few super heroes. Tony is telling them about the Act which some don't like the sound of- but even so, Tony says that they all need to cooperate now before the situation gets ugly. Next, the Fantastic Four head to Oklahoma to help with a difficult situation where Victor Von Doom is trying to access and pick up Thor's hammer, which fell from the sky 6 months prior.

Favorite lines:
"Do you really think you and your outgunned comrades are going to stop me when I'm this close to my goal?"-Doom
"Okay, hold on... Lemme think... Uhmmmmmmmmm.... You betcha, sunshine."-Benjamin Grimm

I seem to be in the minority with the reviews that I just saw on GR's first page... but to me, Breathless by Dean Koontz is a suspenseful tale of mystery, enchantment, and the wonders of the unknown.

This is book that you may want to save until a day off that you can dedicate just to reading this cover to cover. With the way that this one it written, you won’t want to put it down!

Breathless was such an interesting tale! The overall plot itself was so wonderfully executed! I won’t dive in too much there, as this is definitely one that you will enjoy learning more about on your own when you read it!

At first, it seemed like there was a lot going on and I got a little nervous.

This was mainly because of the format- there were a few different story lines that we jumped between with each chapter. We had a retired military man and his greyhound, a veterinarian with a painful past, a homeless man who is on a quest, and a brother going to visit his twin.

I was so thrilled to see that each story line really stood up on their own. It was almost like they were all their own novellas that were merged into one. And then, when you learn how some things are tied together… Mind. Blown.

This is such a rare find for me as there is usually at least one story line that I don’t care about. But I was so invested in each of these characters and their stories!

The writing was so easy to read and it was quite beautiful as well! (Check out My Favorite Passages section below to see what I mean!) It all flowed really well and everything was explained or described perfectly. I especially loved the chapters where one character started to fall apart; those were so powerful.

Like some of my all time favorite mysteries, this story left the reader to wonder! Not everything was tied up in a neat little bow at the end.

However, the things that were left unexplained just added to my overall love of this tale! I think it would have cheapened the enchantment if everything had been fully explained.

My Favorite Passages:
Standing beside the immense hound, seeking what his companion saw, Grady studied the field, which gently descended southward to another vastness of forest. Nothing moved . . . until something did.

Not long ago, he had decided to unchain himself and to be what he truly was. A monster. Not yet a monster fully realized, but certainly now a monster in the making.

What you know with your heart is the only thing you really ever know.

Henry Rouvroy picked up shotgun shattered fragments of his face from the bathroom floor and dropped the pieces of broken mirror into a heavy-duty plastic trash bag.

Neither words nor time healed anyone. Only living healed, if it healed at all, living as you were meant to live, as best you could with your learned habits and confused intentions, living through time and finally beyond time, where neither therapist nor surgeons were any longer needed to smooth away the pain or cut it out.

Each man or woman was a mansion in a condition between grandness and disrepair, and even in a grand place, sometimes a room existed in which no one but the resident would ever be welcome. Cammy’s heart contained more than one forbidden room, contained an entire wing of doors locked with bolts of guilt or grief, or both. Grady sensed that she denied even herself the power to open them, to let in the light.

“People think power makes them big, but it brings out their inner bratty child and makes them small.”

“If we aren’t here for one another, why are we here?”

My Final Thoughts:
This book was just so much fun to read. It had a great plot, wonderfully suspenseful pacing that kept me totally hooked, and such interesting characters. There were fantastical elements and mysterious elements that popped up throughout the tale.

I loved every second of it and I will definitely be rereading this one at some point!

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick is a lovely tale about love, loss, and overcoming things from the past to enjoy the present.

When the story begins, we meet a charming older gentleman named Arthur Pepper. Arthur is trying to deal with the first anniversary of his wife’s death. In an attempt to begin moving forward, Arthur begins going through his late wife’s things in order to donate them to a local organization. While doing this, he found a heart shaped box that held a mysterious charm bracelet.

While Arthur inspects the bracelet, he discovers that there is a phone number engraved on the golden elephant. When he rings the number, he learns that his wife used to live in India where she was an ayah for a family.

This discovery sets Arthur on a journey to learn more about the life that his wife lead before they had met and married. Over the course of this journey, Arthur learns about his wife, but he learns even more about himself.

This tale was so wonderful. Arthur met a number of really interesting and unique characters that helped him along the way in way both large and small. My favorite of the bunch was a man named Mike who lived in an apartment with his dog and played music on the street.

Of course, it wasn’t all sunshine and sweetness; Arthur also had run ins with some rather nasty folk… And it broke my heart to see Arthur going through such a hard time and second guessing his life. But, much to my relief, everything ends up working out.

I also really loved the focus on family. Learning more about the life that Arthur and his wife, Miriam, shared was so heartwarming. I loved that we got to see things through the stories of their children here and there as well.

My Favorite Passages:
But the newly discovered charm bracelet was an obstacle to his intentions. It raised questions where once there were none. It had opened a door and he had stepped through it.

Dan and Dad’s relationship always had an edge on it, as if the two men couldn’t quite embrace each other’s ways and personalities. They were like two jigsaw pieces with the same bit of sky on, but which didn’t fit together.

She sometimes felt like the spider in the middle of the family web, trying to hold all the threads together.

When he was finished he held four completed pages in his hands. His wrist ached and he was teary from emotion and as empty as an egg with no yolk.

My Final Thoughts:
his is a book that you will want to pick up on a day off. It was simple and honest, but it will totally captivate you.

I absolutely adored Arthur and I was so curious about his quest to learn more about each of the charms on the bracelet. I found myself smiling a lot while reading this one!

If you enjoy stories with a little sadness, but a whole lot of heart and growth, then I highly recommend this one to you! The main premise behind the movie UP came to mind while I was reading this.

Deadpool (2018-) #11 is a very strange tale told by Batman, who thinks he has Deadpool right where he wants him…

But poor Batman is forgetting one very important detail about Deadpool.

At the very beginning of this comic, we get a great recap of what has been going on. As this comic was a gift (Thanks, Ross!), and I haven’t read the issues leading up to this, I was very grateful for that!

We open with Deadpool in a bit of a pickle. Somehow, his bones are all missing and Batman has a hold of him. Batman wants Deadpool to remember him, so he brings Deadpool to the scene that ruined his life; in the alley near a theater where Deadpool killed Batmans parents.

We’re then sent off on a tale of how Batman was forced to learn many lessons from various points in time thanks to help from a guy in a hooded trench-coat… all in preparation to kill Deadpool later on.

I have to admit, I was a bit confused by the tale Batman was telling… but then then ending happened and I started laughing.

What a perfect Deadpool comic! The artwork was wonderful, the humor was great, the violence was intense, and all of the 4th wall breaks were awesome.

I highly recommend this issue to all Deadpool fans!

I need more ASAP! I would love to get this collection in a full volume!

I am having such a difficult time reviewing this one, so I’m going to keep it very light.

The short story: this book wasn’t my cup of tea…

First of all, to be totally fair for this review, I had extremely high hopes for it based on all of the positive reviews I was seeing. I tried to go in with an open mind, but I think I was expecting something more folklore-based, and something much darker.

Second, I had read and adored Certain Dark Things by this author, so I was looking for something similar to that. Totally unfair, I know!

And third, I will remind anyone reading this that YA just isn’t always my favorite genre. So where I was expecting this to be more “mature” if you will (I know that sounds rough), it fell quite flat for me as it seemed more middle-grade than YA. And before anyone gets annoyed, I’m NOT knocking this book for being YA. I totally should have been more aware going in so my expectations were more fitting!

What I enjoyed:
- The overall atmosphere
- The descriptive writing
- The Mexican folklore elements
- In the beginning, how strong and curious the main character was

What I didn’t enjoy:
- The repetition, which really bogged down the reading experience for me
- The overlapping timelines when they added more repetition than I felt was necessary
- The overall plot and how everything turned out
- The lack of more in-depth information about the folklore
- How immature the main character seemed at times
- The pacing
- The romance

My Favorite Passages:
Casiopiea Tun was off into the world, not in the way she had imagined, but off nevertheless.

Not that she had pictured ghosts as people wearing sheets, with two holes cut out for their eyes, or as wispy, floating apparitions. She hadn’t thought they’d be as frightening as they’d been. Nor that they might try to eat her.

Ah, there is none more fearful of thieves than the one who has stolen something, and a kingdom is no small something.

She felt boneless, a flower with a broken stem, and if he had not held her she would have fallen to her knees.

The things you name do grow in power, but others that are not ever whispered claw at one’s heart anyway, rip it to shreds even if a syllable does not escape the lips.

My Final Thoughts:
For me, this was a solid two star read… I just didn’t enjoy it. If about 100 pages had been cut from this, I may have enjoyed it more.

Just a few days after finishing the read, I’ve already forgotten a lot about what I had read… So clearly this one won’t be sticking with me.

Of course, that all being said, I would still highly recommend this book to fans of YA tales that center around romance and growing up.