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shelfreflectionofficial's Reviews (844)
[Was gonna do 3 stars but the ending put it up one more]
“She has never felt more haunted— by what happened to April, and by what she, Hannah, may have done to an innocent man. And now haunted too by what she’s doing to her old friends.”
“There are messy, wriggling, unfinished ends putrefying beneath the surface of what happened that night— things that she has refused to think about and look at for a long time. And there should not be.”
Okay this is my second Ruth Ware book and I’m torn. Just like with The Turn of the Key, it was a really good thriller but it had so many f-words (69 f-words, 39 s-words).
If you don’t care about swearing or you feel like you can handle it, then I think you’ll like this one!
But I’m not a fan of a lot of swearing so I probably won’t read any more of hers. Except I probably will because I’ll probably get access to her next thriller on NetGalley like this one and I won’t be able to stop myself. So stay tuned to see how self-controlled I am.
Brief Synopsis
Hannah attends Oxford and has a roommate named April. She’s the ‘It Girl.’ Rich, good-looking, wild, confident. The opposite of Hannah. But somehow their friendship works.
Then one night Hannah finds April dead in their room.
Hannah provides the eye-witness testimony of the weird porter at the school who was leaving their staircase that night that puts him in jail. He maintains his innocence.
Years later, Hannah is married to Will, April’s boyfriend at the time of her murder. The man she put in prison has just died and a journalist contacts her with new information that makes Hannah unsure of what really happened that night.
Did she sentence an innocent man to die in prison?
Is there still a murderer somewhere out there?
Hannah can’t rest until she gets to the bottom of what happened.
Comments
This is a written in alternating chapters titled either ‘Before’ or ‘After’ April is found murdered. The ‘After’ timeline is Hannah desperately seeking answers to find out the truth of what really happened. The ‘Before’ takes us through Hannah and April’s first year at Oxford and the events leading up to her death.
Also like The Turn of the Key, Ware presents several suspects throughout the book that makes you second guess your theories.
I like this book better than The Turn of the Key because there is no supernatural element as a variable. It’s definitely more of a whodunnit thriller. Kind of a closed-room murder scene. I don’t like books if the explanation behind everything is some sort of evil spirit.
I ended up guessing the murderer pretty early on but my confidence waned as I kept reading because I couldn’t figure out how they had done it or what the actual motives were.
As other reviewers have noted, there are parts in the beginning and middle that drag a little bit. But as I looked back I think those parts have to be there to explain certain parts of the ending and to give the reader clues. Those pages just aren’t as exciting as the ending.
And we probably could have done with less stomach rubbing and baby moving information (Hannah is pregnant) and less internal struggle from Hannah about how worried she was that she was wrong.
I also think that part of why those parts dragged for me was because the first half of the book I was only able to read it in small chunks and kept getting interrupted while I read so things felt choppier and disconnected and that made it feel longer.
One tiny spoiler comment.
Conclusion
Well there’s not much more to say than I said at the beginning. The ending was the best part which made the rest of it better. There was too much swearing. (Not really any sexual content if you’re wondering about that)
If you like murder mysteries set at Oxford with a variety of suspects like this, you should also try Alex Michaelide’s book The Maidens. But it won’t make ‘how Oxford works’ any more clear. I’m still very confused about it.
Pretty much I think the only determining factor about if I recommend this book is the swearing. So judge for yourself.
And now enjoy these fun new phrases you can use to sound British.
Slang UK terminology
- dishy: very good-looking
- chuffed: very pleased with/about (like: I’m pretty chuffed with your book review!)
- ‘Sorry your Christmas was a bit pants’: Sorry your holiday sucked. (Or: ‘Your book review blog is NOT pants!’)
- nail varnish: nail polish (maybe US people call it varnish? Am I not sophisticated enough for that? Or actually does polish sound more sophisticated? Maybe I'll just avoid it altogether.)
- ‘You’ll do yourself a mischief!’: That’s a bad idea, bro.
- on the bog: poopin
- pleasure to be rogered by you any day of the week: um. let’s just call this one a booty call.
- dons: a teacher or staff member at Oxford
- checking his pigeonhole: his mailbox. Because it’s Harry Potter. Oh wait those are owls.
- She’s having kittens: to be very nervous or upset. (This makes sense that Americans would have a cow but the Brits just have kittens. We’re probably more moo-ers than mew-ers)
- chucking-out time: They literally throw you out of the pubs if you’re there when it closes. Wear a helmet.
- Jiffy bag: padded envelope they store their peanut butter in
- ‘It was nothing, just a goose on my grave’: this phrase used to be a ghost walked on my grave but some idiots got ‘gos’ (Old English for goose) mixed up with gast/gost (Old English for ghost) and now those scary geese are walking all over our graves that don’t exist. In short. she had goosebumps, she’s not actually dead okay. This isn’t The Sixth Sense. Oops. Spoiler alert.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
“She has never felt more haunted— by what happened to April, and by what she, Hannah, may have done to an innocent man. And now haunted too by what she’s doing to her old friends.”
“There are messy, wriggling, unfinished ends putrefying beneath the surface of what happened that night— things that she has refused to think about and look at for a long time. And there should not be.”
Okay this is my second Ruth Ware book and I’m torn. Just like with The Turn of the Key, it was a really good thriller but it had so many f-words (69 f-words, 39 s-words).
If you don’t care about swearing or you feel like you can handle it, then I think you’ll like this one!
But I’m not a fan of a lot of swearing so I probably won’t read any more of hers. Except I probably will because I’ll probably get access to her next thriller on NetGalley like this one and I won’t be able to stop myself. So stay tuned to see how self-controlled I am.
Brief Synopsis
Hannah attends Oxford and has a roommate named April. She’s the ‘It Girl.’ Rich, good-looking, wild, confident. The opposite of Hannah. But somehow their friendship works.
Then one night Hannah finds April dead in their room.
Hannah provides the eye-witness testimony of the weird porter at the school who was leaving their staircase that night that puts him in jail. He maintains his innocence.
Years later, Hannah is married to Will, April’s boyfriend at the time of her murder. The man she put in prison has just died and a journalist contacts her with new information that makes Hannah unsure of what really happened that night.
Did she sentence an innocent man to die in prison?
Is there still a murderer somewhere out there?
Hannah can’t rest until she gets to the bottom of what happened.
Comments
This is a written in alternating chapters titled either ‘Before’ or ‘After’ April is found murdered. The ‘After’ timeline is Hannah desperately seeking answers to find out the truth of what really happened. The ‘Before’ takes us through Hannah and April’s first year at Oxford and the events leading up to her death.
Also like The Turn of the Key, Ware presents several suspects throughout the book that makes you second guess your theories.
I like this book better than The Turn of the Key because there is no supernatural element as a variable. It’s definitely more of a whodunnit thriller. Kind of a closed-room murder scene. I don’t like books if the explanation behind everything is some sort of evil spirit.
I ended up guessing the murderer pretty early on but my confidence waned as I kept reading because I couldn’t figure out how they had done it or what the actual motives were.
As other reviewers have noted, there are parts in the beginning and middle that drag a little bit. But as I looked back I think those parts have to be there to explain certain parts of the ending and to give the reader clues. Those pages just aren’t as exciting as the ending.
And we probably could have done with less stomach rubbing and baby moving information (Hannah is pregnant) and less internal struggle from Hannah about how worried she was that she was wrong.
I also think that part of why those parts dragged for me was because the first half of the book I was only able to read it in small chunks and kept getting interrupted while I read so things felt choppier and disconnected and that made it feel longer.
One tiny spoiler comment.
Spoiler
If someone asks you ‘Who have you told this to?’ when you give them dangerous information…. don’t say ‘no one’ They obviously are trying to figure out how many loose ends there are and if they can just kill you right then.Conclusion
Well there’s not much more to say than I said at the beginning. The ending was the best part which made the rest of it better. There was too much swearing. (Not really any sexual content if you’re wondering about that)
If you like murder mysteries set at Oxford with a variety of suspects like this, you should also try Alex Michaelide’s book The Maidens. But it won’t make ‘how Oxford works’ any more clear. I’m still very confused about it.
Pretty much I think the only determining factor about if I recommend this book is the swearing. So judge for yourself.
And now enjoy these fun new phrases you can use to sound British.
Slang UK terminology
- dishy: very good-looking
- chuffed: very pleased with/about (like: I’m pretty chuffed with your book review!)
- ‘Sorry your Christmas was a bit pants’: Sorry your holiday sucked. (Or: ‘Your book review blog is NOT pants!’)
- nail varnish: nail polish (maybe US people call it varnish? Am I not sophisticated enough for that? Or actually does polish sound more sophisticated? Maybe I'll just avoid it altogether.)
- ‘You’ll do yourself a mischief!’: That’s a bad idea, bro.
- on the bog: poopin
- pleasure to be rogered by you any day of the week: um. let’s just call this one a booty call.
- dons: a teacher or staff member at Oxford
- checking his pigeonhole: his mailbox. Because it’s Harry Potter. Oh wait those are owls.
- She’s having kittens: to be very nervous or upset. (This makes sense that Americans would have a cow but the Brits just have kittens. We’re probably more moo-ers than mew-ers)
- chucking-out time: They literally throw you out of the pubs if you’re there when it closes. Wear a helmet.
- Jiffy bag: padded envelope they store their peanut butter in
- ‘It was nothing, just a goose on my grave’: this phrase used to be a ghost walked on my grave but some idiots got ‘gos’ (Old English for goose) mixed up with gast/gost (Old English for ghost) and now those scary geese are walking all over our graves that don’t exist. In short. she had goosebumps, she’s not actually dead okay. This isn’t The Sixth Sense. Oops. Spoiler alert.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
“You never know when a mountain will turn on you. It’s not just your own life you put at risk up there.”
“There were even more ways to die on the mountain than she had imagined.”
How would you like to be a vulnerable mountain climber on a precarious peak with not only natural dangers to worry about, but a murderer?!
That’s where Cecily finds herself in Breathless.
But who is it and why won’t anyone take her seriously? Is it just altitude sickness affecting her judgment?
Let’s just say… you’ll want to take a peak at this book…
The Plot
Cecily, a journalist and inexperienced climber, has joined Charles McVeigh’s climbing team. If she summits the mountain with McVeigh she earns herself an exclusive interview which will finally kickstart her career.
McVeigh is doing the impossible— “climbing the only fourteen mountains in the world that stood taller than eight thousand meters without using supplementary oxygen, alpine style— and all within a single year.”
Manaslu, in Nepal, is his final summit.
But both mysterious deaths and harrowing rescues follow in McVeigh’s wake and Cecily sniffs out a darker story at play.
Can she figure it out before she’s next?
Interesting Background
As I was reading this one I was struck by the mountaineering jargon and the detailed descriptions of what was happening. In these situations I like to figure out what credibility the author has to teach me things about the subject matter.
Author Amy McCulloch climbed Mt Manaslu (the 8th highest mountain in the world) in 2019 and became the youngest Canadian woman to do it.
This book relates closely to a lot of her experiences. You can read more about that in this article.
Reading this book made me really curious about mountaineering and what it’s like to climb these dangerous peaks. I started looking for a documentary that would give me some more visuals to what she describes in the book.
I came across a Netflix documentary called 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible. It’s the story of Nims Purja who decided to climb all 14 mountains over 8000 meters in 7 months.
Sound familiar?!
[Well actually he did it in 6 months, 6 days and broke 6 mountaineering world records! He even climbed a mountain hungover.]
And it turns out, McCulloch was climbing with Nims when she summited Manaslu (before he started his project).
14 Peaks is really interesting and does give a lot of good information and depiction of life on the mountain. And just like Charles McVeigh’s project, Nims did rescue a couple people on his expeditions!
I do wish the documentary would have showed more about how guides ‘fix ropes’ and what the food, equipment, and tents were like, how you actually climb, etc but it was a perfect pairing to watch after reading Breathless! Would recommend.
Comments/Recommendation
As for the actual book, I thought it was pretty good.
It was a little reminiscent of Vertical Limit or Cliffhanger, but it had its own flavor and mystery and I like that the author had firsthand experience to write from.
It gets a little technical and since it pretty much all takes place on the mountain there are parts that feel a little slow or repetitive.
But there was definitely suspense up until the very end.
I’m not sure if I really liked the main character or not, but I’m somewhat biased against journalists in real life so that could be it. Regardless, I was still invested in finding out if there was a killer and if there was, who it was!
And I always appreciate a book that inspires me to google things.
One thing I pondered as I tried to figure this one out was— Okay, yes, a dangerous mountain is the perfect place to kill people and get away with it because people would just assume the person fell and there would be no investigation… but seems like an expensive method of killing and why would you put yourself in danger to also kill?
But then I thought about it some more and for one- people who would kill like this probably don’t have much fear and would be drawn to thrill-seeking type endeavors like mountain climbing. And two- if a person already liked to mountain climb and then realized they also liked to kill people then I guess it is more of a happy (ha!) coincidence that they suddenly had a perfect killing ground and alibi. That makes more sense than someone being a killer and then trying to find the best place to do it and saying- Yeah, I’ll just go on up to Mount Manaslu quick and see who’s around.
So if there is a mountain climbing serial killer, I’ve decided I can accept these terms.
There were a few paragraphs that annoyed me a little bit. I’m guessing because I was just coming off of reading Two Nights in Lisbon that was chock full of these references.
And after reading the afore-linked article, it sounds like these were written from personal experiences:
“She’d seen the way that men on other teams looked at her. Like they were assessing which one of them was going to lay claim to her.”
“That wasn’t in any mountaineering manual. That’s because they’re written for men, by men.”
“‘I think he’s a typical privileged public-school boy and a bit of a creep.’”
“They always think they want an adventurous girl, and yet when it comes down to it they want someone to come home to who will be wowed by their adventures.”
I’m a little bit tired of the whole ‘toxic masculinity’ dialogue. I get that there are some real douchebags out there but I don’t really enjoy reading books where the female characters are preoccupied with looking for it and assessing it in every area of their life.
I will grant McCulloch that being a woman on a mountain largely full of men would be a particularly vulnerable position and women should not have to worry about their safety in that regard.
Anyway.
If you have no interest in a mountain climbing thriller, you won’t enjoy this. But if that doesn’t describe you, I would recommend giving this book a try! I thought it was both suspenseful and interesting!
Fun Facts
Here are some things I found out in my googling.
- In order to climb mountains you have to pay for a permit. A permit to climb Mt Everest costs $11,000.
- Permits plus other Nepalese fees can make climbing Mt Everest cost $40-50,000 on average and even up to $100,000+! In comparison, to climb Manalsu it runs around $8000-13,000.
- Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first recorded ascenders of Mount Everest in 1953.
- Manaslu is the fifth most dangerous mountain in the world.
- For every 3 people who make it to the top of Annapurna (one of the 14) 1 dies.
- Western guides make $50,000 each climbing season but Sherpas only make $4000. (Part of Nims Purja’s intent with his documentary was to use an all Nepalese team and shine light on the amazing Sherpas that so many climbers rely on and the lack of fair compensation)
- Hallucinations while climbing mountains are more common than you think. Here’s an interesting article talking about these episodes.
- Nims Purja’s climb to Everest on the documentary was crazy to see how many people try to climb Everest every year. After he made the summit he turned around and took the picture below that went viral. I can’t imagine having to wait in line like this while perched on a mountain in the Death Zone! (visit HERE to see it)
If you like reading books with journalists, try:
- What’s Left Unsaid by Emily Bleeker
- The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
- A Desperate Place by Jennifer Greer
[Profanity: 26 f-words, 14 s-words]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
“There were even more ways to die on the mountain than she had imagined.”
How would you like to be a vulnerable mountain climber on a precarious peak with not only natural dangers to worry about, but a murderer?!
That’s where Cecily finds herself in Breathless.
But who is it and why won’t anyone take her seriously? Is it just altitude sickness affecting her judgment?
Let’s just say… you’ll want to take a peak at this book…
The Plot
Cecily, a journalist and inexperienced climber, has joined Charles McVeigh’s climbing team. If she summits the mountain with McVeigh she earns herself an exclusive interview which will finally kickstart her career.
McVeigh is doing the impossible— “climbing the only fourteen mountains in the world that stood taller than eight thousand meters without using supplementary oxygen, alpine style— and all within a single year.”
Manaslu, in Nepal, is his final summit.
But both mysterious deaths and harrowing rescues follow in McVeigh’s wake and Cecily sniffs out a darker story at play.
Can she figure it out before she’s next?
Interesting Background
As I was reading this one I was struck by the mountaineering jargon and the detailed descriptions of what was happening. In these situations I like to figure out what credibility the author has to teach me things about the subject matter.
Author Amy McCulloch climbed Mt Manaslu (the 8th highest mountain in the world) in 2019 and became the youngest Canadian woman to do it.
This book relates closely to a lot of her experiences. You can read more about that in this article.
Reading this book made me really curious about mountaineering and what it’s like to climb these dangerous peaks. I started looking for a documentary that would give me some more visuals to what she describes in the book.
I came across a Netflix documentary called 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible. It’s the story of Nims Purja who decided to climb all 14 mountains over 8000 meters in 7 months.
Sound familiar?!
[Well actually he did it in 6 months, 6 days and broke 6 mountaineering world records! He even climbed a mountain hungover.]
And it turns out, McCulloch was climbing with Nims when she summited Manaslu (before he started his project).
14 Peaks is really interesting and does give a lot of good information and depiction of life on the mountain. And just like Charles McVeigh’s project, Nims did rescue a couple people on his expeditions!
I do wish the documentary would have showed more about how guides ‘fix ropes’ and what the food, equipment, and tents were like, how you actually climb, etc but it was a perfect pairing to watch after reading Breathless! Would recommend.
Comments/Recommendation
As for the actual book, I thought it was pretty good.
It was a little reminiscent of Vertical Limit or Cliffhanger, but it had its own flavor and mystery and I like that the author had firsthand experience to write from.
It gets a little technical and since it pretty much all takes place on the mountain there are parts that feel a little slow or repetitive.
But there was definitely suspense up until the very end.
I’m not sure if I really liked the main character or not, but I’m somewhat biased against journalists in real life so that could be it. Regardless, I was still invested in finding out if there was a killer and if there was, who it was!
And I always appreciate a book that inspires me to google things.
One thing I pondered as I tried to figure this one out was— Okay, yes, a dangerous mountain is the perfect place to kill people and get away with it because people would just assume the person fell and there would be no investigation… but seems like an expensive method of killing and why would you put yourself in danger to also kill?
But then I thought about it some more and for one- people who would kill like this probably don’t have much fear and would be drawn to thrill-seeking type endeavors like mountain climbing. And two- if a person already liked to mountain climb and then realized they also liked to kill people then I guess it is more of a happy (ha!) coincidence that they suddenly had a perfect killing ground and alibi. That makes more sense than someone being a killer and then trying to find the best place to do it and saying- Yeah, I’ll just go on up to Mount Manaslu quick and see who’s around.
So if there is a mountain climbing serial killer, I’ve decided I can accept these terms.
There were a few paragraphs that annoyed me a little bit. I’m guessing because I was just coming off of reading Two Nights in Lisbon that was chock full of these references.
And after reading the afore-linked article, it sounds like these were written from personal experiences:
“She’d seen the way that men on other teams looked at her. Like they were assessing which one of them was going to lay claim to her.”
“That wasn’t in any mountaineering manual. That’s because they’re written for men, by men.”
“‘I think he’s a typical privileged public-school boy and a bit of a creep.’”
“They always think they want an adventurous girl, and yet when it comes down to it they want someone to come home to who will be wowed by their adventures.”
I’m a little bit tired of the whole ‘toxic masculinity’ dialogue. I get that there are some real douchebags out there but I don’t really enjoy reading books where the female characters are preoccupied with looking for it and assessing it in every area of their life.
I will grant McCulloch that being a woman on a mountain largely full of men would be a particularly vulnerable position and women should not have to worry about their safety in that regard.
Anyway.
If you have no interest in a mountain climbing thriller, you won’t enjoy this. But if that doesn’t describe you, I would recommend giving this book a try! I thought it was both suspenseful and interesting!
Fun Facts
Here are some things I found out in my googling.
- In order to climb mountains you have to pay for a permit. A permit to climb Mt Everest costs $11,000.
- Permits plus other Nepalese fees can make climbing Mt Everest cost $40-50,000 on average and even up to $100,000+! In comparison, to climb Manalsu it runs around $8000-13,000.
- Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first recorded ascenders of Mount Everest in 1953.
- Manaslu is the fifth most dangerous mountain in the world.
- For every 3 people who make it to the top of Annapurna (one of the 14) 1 dies.
- Western guides make $50,000 each climbing season but Sherpas only make $4000. (Part of Nims Purja’s intent with his documentary was to use an all Nepalese team and shine light on the amazing Sherpas that so many climbers rely on and the lack of fair compensation)
- Hallucinations while climbing mountains are more common than you think. Here’s an interesting article talking about these episodes.
- Nims Purja’s climb to Everest on the documentary was crazy to see how many people try to climb Everest every year. After he made the summit he turned around and took the picture below that went viral. I can’t imagine having to wait in line like this while perched on a mountain in the Death Zone! (visit HERE to see it)
If you like reading books with journalists, try:
- What’s Left Unsaid by Emily Bleeker
- The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
- A Desperate Place by Jennifer Greer
[Profanity: 26 f-words, 14 s-words]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
I don’t think you want to read this.
This one was marketed as a “sophisticated international thriller” about an American woman, Ariel, whose husband is kidnapped in Lisbon while on a business trip. Ariel realizes she knows so little about her husband’s life and past and now has to seek help from the person she hates the most.
It sounded interesting.
But wow. Ariel is the worst.
“Ariel has a hard time overlooking the dislikable parts of people…”
This is the understatement of the year.
She is cynical about everyone and everything.
It was hard to tell what was inserted as an aspect of Ariel’s character or the author’s own beliefs on the state and functioning of the world, but either way, it was over-the-top.
Just Wow.
I know this section is long but I have included this large body of evidence in this review to prove to you how vast and deep these themes go in this book.
But first, keep it all in light of this ironic and comical statement as you go:
“One of the ways that Ariel has been extra-cautious in her life has been talking to her son about men. She never wanted to sound too negative, too hostile. She doesn’t want George to grow up thinking that his mother hates all men…”
Here we go, everyone. Buckle up.
Here you will find the “sparkling prose and razor-sharp insights” that Goodreads proclaims:
“Chivalry can be just another form of hostility. Chivalry can be the weapon itself.”
“As if the mere fact that something is traditional makes it admirable, or defensible. The same exact justification has been used for pretty much all the injustice in the history of the world.”
“She has plenty of firsthand experience with the insidious, corrosive effects of fetishizing tradition.”
“She returns her gaze to Moniz, who’s also what she’d expect to find in a police station, the standard off-the-rack model of cop— mid-forties, thinning hair compensated for with bushy mustache, a bulky frame with twenty extra pounds that sit in the front of his belly, distended in a bulge at the beltline, the way some men carry their middle age and their beer, as if six months pregnant.”
“Ariel doesn’t like this, appealing to the woman, it feels so feeble, so reductionist.”
“American culture, American commerce, American lies, everywhere.”
“Persephone was behind the register, engrossed in a postapocalyptic fantasy novel, a genre that was somehow related to her oft-mentioned studies in grad school, that golden moment when everything was still possible, when her future looked so bright. But Persephone was beginning to suspect that it had been a false glow on the horizon, not the rising sun of a bright new day, just the remnants of a dying bonfire of oversold, overpriced, undervalued educational achievements that turn out to be almost meaningless on the job market, after twenty straight years of full-time schooling interspersed with hourly jobs in retail, folding shirts, punching buttons on cash registers.”
“…a square-jawed man wearing a golf shirt under a fleece vest breast-emblazoned with Excalibur Capital, a crimson HBS baseball cap, and a big gleaming wristwatch, making sure everyone could see in one glance who he was— mega-successful finance bro.”
“drenching everything in his toxic masculinity.”
“In the past few years, this steroidal type of truck had become the most popular vehicle in town. It seems like every aggressive tailgater, every obnoxious cut-offer, every impatient red-light jumper is now behind the wheel of one of these monsters, looming up behind her, headlights in her eyes, menacing everyone on the road with their suspension lifts and oversize wheels and aftermarket mufflers, their Power Stroke stenciling on the side.”
“Everything about this vehicle looked like a schoolyard bully, even the bumper stickers— the glowering visage of the New England Patriots, the implicit challenge of BLUE LIVES MATTER, the bizarre armed eagle of the NRA.”
“He was a so-called patriot, you knew it because he said so, it was even his favorite football team.”
“Ariel has been surprised by the broad prevalence of Brazilian people, and the influence of Brazilian culture, here in Lisbon, exhibiting a sort of reverse colonialism that she found heartwarming, and hopeful.”
“Men often try to reframe temper as hysteria, to recast righteousness as overreaction, as hypersensitivity, as irrationality.”
“It’s the tone that a man uses when he thinks he’s being the reasonable one. A tone that transcends generations, cultures, languages. The universal tone of condescension.”
“At least one in ten married women have been raped by their husbands.”
“Of everything that Ariel resented about her mom— there was plenty— this was perhaps the ultimate: that Ariel might have internalized something malignant from her mother’s spinelessness, her unwillingness to tell men anything that they did not want to hear.”
“Jerry embraced all the clichés of the struggling small-town single-shingle barrister, complete with failed marriage, irresponsible nutrition, and functional alcoholism.”
“One of the many manipulations available to men like him, created by men like him for the benefit of men like him, the tax structure and capital gains and mortgage-interest deductions, marriage and religion and capitalism and so-called representative democracy, all constructed so men like him could be not only the players but the house as well, everything about the game fixed in their favor, with not only backup schemes but also backups to the backups, and no way for them to lose, not at this game they invented called America.”
“Detective Carolina Santos looks around the wood-paneled walls hung with gilt-framed oil paintings: a hunting scene, a whaling boat in action, farmers tending an orchard. All pictures of men in the process of exploiting the earth. She sighs at the obviousness of it.”
“Shawn Jefferson put no trust whatsoever in any organization that gave white men guns and permission to use them.”
“… there’s a large segment of the male population whose first instinct, always, is to assign blame to someone else— whoever happens to be nearest, or femalest.”
“Ariel had assumed that Santos would be a natural ally, despite plenty of evidence that not all women believed in female solidarity, or agreed on what it might mean. Ariel was reminded of this every Election Day.”
Are you tired of it yet?
Exactly.
So why would you read this book?
Other Comments/Questions
- Trigger warning: This book is significantly based around sexual assault that Ariel experienced, including rape.
- I couldn’t decide if the Lisbon police were good at their jobs or if they were the police version of the bandits on Home Alone.
- I learned that a ‘kleptocrat’ is a ruler who uses political power to steal his or her country's resources and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I’m pretty sure Ariel views every single political leader this way.
- After 40% of the book I still had no concept of what her husband was like so at that point I wasn’t really sure if I cared that he was kidnapped.
- She calls her employee, who is named Persephone, by the nickname ‘P.’ Seems less than ideal.
- Ariel says that ‘a large part of being an actor was being hyperobservant.’ Is this true? It doesn’t seem true.
- They have no qualms with throwing their phones in the trash. It gives me anxiety just thinking about that.
- The author has them text in this format- “WHERE R U?’- which is a pet peeve of mine. It’s harder to type in all caps and use one letter abbreviations than just typing out the word.
- I had most of the things figured out early on.
- There was a lot of swearing. (66 f-words, 27 s-words)
Conclusion
If you could stomach the laundry list of eye-rolling quotes above, then sure, maybe you should try this one.
But if you find the constant negativity and cynicism annoying like I did, pass on this one. The plot was interesting but had terrible execution.
I’ve never read this author before so I have no idea if this type of commentary within his books is common or not, but I probably won’t be reading any more of his books.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
This one was marketed as a “sophisticated international thriller” about an American woman, Ariel, whose husband is kidnapped in Lisbon while on a business trip. Ariel realizes she knows so little about her husband’s life and past and now has to seek help from the person she hates the most.
It sounded interesting.
But wow. Ariel is the worst.
“Ariel has a hard time overlooking the dislikable parts of people…”
This is the understatement of the year.
She is cynical about everyone and everything.
It was hard to tell what was inserted as an aspect of Ariel’s character or the author’s own beliefs on the state and functioning of the world, but either way, it was over-the-top.
Just Wow.
I know this section is long but I have included this large body of evidence in this review to prove to you how vast and deep these themes go in this book.
But first, keep it all in light of this ironic and comical statement as you go:
“One of the ways that Ariel has been extra-cautious in her life has been talking to her son about men. She never wanted to sound too negative, too hostile. She doesn’t want George to grow up thinking that his mother hates all men…”
Here we go, everyone. Buckle up.
Here you will find the “sparkling prose and razor-sharp insights” that Goodreads proclaims:
“Chivalry can be just another form of hostility. Chivalry can be the weapon itself.”
“As if the mere fact that something is traditional makes it admirable, or defensible. The same exact justification has been used for pretty much all the injustice in the history of the world.”
“She has plenty of firsthand experience with the insidious, corrosive effects of fetishizing tradition.”
“She returns her gaze to Moniz, who’s also what she’d expect to find in a police station, the standard off-the-rack model of cop— mid-forties, thinning hair compensated for with bushy mustache, a bulky frame with twenty extra pounds that sit in the front of his belly, distended in a bulge at the beltline, the way some men carry their middle age and their beer, as if six months pregnant.”
“Ariel doesn’t like this, appealing to the woman, it feels so feeble, so reductionist.”
“American culture, American commerce, American lies, everywhere.”
“Persephone was behind the register, engrossed in a postapocalyptic fantasy novel, a genre that was somehow related to her oft-mentioned studies in grad school, that golden moment when everything was still possible, when her future looked so bright. But Persephone was beginning to suspect that it had been a false glow on the horizon, not the rising sun of a bright new day, just the remnants of a dying bonfire of oversold, overpriced, undervalued educational achievements that turn out to be almost meaningless on the job market, after twenty straight years of full-time schooling interspersed with hourly jobs in retail, folding shirts, punching buttons on cash registers.”
“…a square-jawed man wearing a golf shirt under a fleece vest breast-emblazoned with Excalibur Capital, a crimson HBS baseball cap, and a big gleaming wristwatch, making sure everyone could see in one glance who he was— mega-successful finance bro.”
“drenching everything in his toxic masculinity.”
“In the past few years, this steroidal type of truck had become the most popular vehicle in town. It seems like every aggressive tailgater, every obnoxious cut-offer, every impatient red-light jumper is now behind the wheel of one of these monsters, looming up behind her, headlights in her eyes, menacing everyone on the road with their suspension lifts and oversize wheels and aftermarket mufflers, their Power Stroke stenciling on the side.”
“Everything about this vehicle looked like a schoolyard bully, even the bumper stickers— the glowering visage of the New England Patriots, the implicit challenge of BLUE LIVES MATTER, the bizarre armed eagle of the NRA.”
“He was a so-called patriot, you knew it because he said so, it was even his favorite football team.”
“Ariel has been surprised by the broad prevalence of Brazilian people, and the influence of Brazilian culture, here in Lisbon, exhibiting a sort of reverse colonialism that she found heartwarming, and hopeful.”
“Men often try to reframe temper as hysteria, to recast righteousness as overreaction, as hypersensitivity, as irrationality.”
“It’s the tone that a man uses when he thinks he’s being the reasonable one. A tone that transcends generations, cultures, languages. The universal tone of condescension.”
“At least one in ten married women have been raped by their husbands.”
“Of everything that Ariel resented about her mom— there was plenty— this was perhaps the ultimate: that Ariel might have internalized something malignant from her mother’s spinelessness, her unwillingness to tell men anything that they did not want to hear.”
“Jerry embraced all the clichés of the struggling small-town single-shingle barrister, complete with failed marriage, irresponsible nutrition, and functional alcoholism.”
“One of the many manipulations available to men like him, created by men like him for the benefit of men like him, the tax structure and capital gains and mortgage-interest deductions, marriage and religion and capitalism and so-called representative democracy, all constructed so men like him could be not only the players but the house as well, everything about the game fixed in their favor, with not only backup schemes but also backups to the backups, and no way for them to lose, not at this game they invented called America.”
“Detective Carolina Santos looks around the wood-paneled walls hung with gilt-framed oil paintings: a hunting scene, a whaling boat in action, farmers tending an orchard. All pictures of men in the process of exploiting the earth. She sighs at the obviousness of it.”
“Shawn Jefferson put no trust whatsoever in any organization that gave white men guns and permission to use them.”
“… there’s a large segment of the male population whose first instinct, always, is to assign blame to someone else— whoever happens to be nearest, or femalest.”
“Ariel had assumed that Santos would be a natural ally, despite plenty of evidence that not all women believed in female solidarity, or agreed on what it might mean. Ariel was reminded of this every Election Day.”
Are you tired of it yet?
Exactly.
So why would you read this book?
Other Comments/Questions
- Trigger warning: This book is significantly based around sexual assault that Ariel experienced, including rape.
- I couldn’t decide if the Lisbon police were good at their jobs or if they were the police version of the bandits on Home Alone.
- I learned that a ‘kleptocrat’ is a ruler who uses political power to steal his or her country's resources and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I’m pretty sure Ariel views every single political leader this way.
- After 40% of the book I still had no concept of what her husband was like so at that point I wasn’t really sure if I cared that he was kidnapped.
- She calls her employee, who is named Persephone, by the nickname ‘P.’ Seems less than ideal.
- Ariel says that ‘a large part of being an actor was being hyperobservant.’ Is this true? It doesn’t seem true.
- They have no qualms with throwing their phones in the trash. It gives me anxiety just thinking about that.
- The author has them text in this format- “WHERE R U?’- which is a pet peeve of mine. It’s harder to type in all caps and use one letter abbreviations than just typing out the word.
- I had most of the things figured out early on.
- There was a lot of swearing. (66 f-words, 27 s-words)
Conclusion
If you could stomach the laundry list of eye-rolling quotes above, then sure, maybe you should try this one.
But if you find the constant negativity and cynicism annoying like I did, pass on this one. The plot was interesting but had terrible execution.
I’ve never read this author before so I have no idea if this type of commentary within his books is common or not, but I probably won’t be reading any more of his books.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
Book Review Blog | Facebook | Pinterest
Which is more dangerous— the influence of a cult or being a social media influencer?
A Deadly Influence weaves these two powers together in a chilling thriller about a kidnapping and what it takes to get him back.
This was a well-written and suspenseful story. I thought I had the abductor figured out, but I was wrong. BUT based on the last few sentences of the book, I was actually right just in a different way. It ends on a cliffhanger setting up book two. So I’ll have to read that one now.
It includes quite a bit of negotiating strategy. You will probably finish the book feeling like you could most certainly negotiate yourself out of a hostage situation! (But let’s not do anything stupid.)
I also want to commend the author for good, creative, realistic, and at times (properly) funny writing and dialogue.
“He was actually a softhearted kitten trapped in a the body of a nineties-movie action hero.”
“They should insist all prospective negotiators have kids. Nothing prepared you better for crisis management.”
Very relatable, Mike Omer. Well. Mostly relatable. The characters eat Chick-Fil-A and one eats her sandwich with ranch dressing. This is a trajesty. I mean ranch is one of the main food groups, but must we write a character who hates Chick-Fil-A sauce??
The main character, Abby Mullen, is a hostage negotiator for the NYPD. Her life has been shaped by the traumatic experience she had growing up in a cult… I mean… “Christian community”. It’s stupid they call it that. (Why do all the cults always choose the Bible to pretend to care about. Choose a different religion psychos.)
Anyway. At the age of 7 Abby was caught up in a standoff between her cult and the police. It ended in a blazing fire with only 3 survivors- her and 2 other kids.
Her past comes back to haunt her years later as she is contacted by Eden, one of the other survivors, whose son, Nathan, was just kidnapped and ransomed for 5 million dollars.
This book is written in several third-person POVs. From the abductor’s chapters we gather that he has an obsession with Nathan’s older sister, Gabrielle, who is a popular social media influencer. (Sidenote: spellcheck says influencer isn’t a word— how has this not been added to the dictionary yet?) Several years prior Eden had joined and then later left a different cult. There are too many connections with the said cult to be a coincidence.
How is it all connected? Or is it? And how can Abby even access the answers she needs from a controlled community with a lot of secrets to keep? Time is running out.
I would recommend this book. It does have some swearing (1 f-word, 35 s-words) but it was moderate enough that I could read around it. It shapes up to be an interesting series with some good character dynamics and mysteries yet to reveal!
Books with cults are simultaneously infuriating and fascinating. I’m blown away by the ability for these insane places to exist and for people to get sucked in and stay in. It’s also very heartbreaking because you know these cults are out there and are ruining people’s lives. Having watched a good chunk of Leah Remini’s Scientology documentary, the many facets of cults displayed there show up here too. Which leads me to this quote:
“Because there was only one vaccination against cult recruitment—being on guard. And if you assumed you were already immune, if you underestimated cults, then you were at risk.”
Basically the bi-fold message of this book is: Don’t get recruited to a cult. And being popular on social media can be dangerous. So far I’ve managed to avoid both!
Stay safe out there!
If you like books with cults in them here are a few others I’ve read:
- The Girl Behind the Red Rope by Ted & Rachelle Dekker
- The Program (Tim Rackley #2) by Gregg Hurwitz
- You Can’t Catch Me by Catherine MacKenzie
- The Line Between by Tosca Lee
Mostly unrelated question: Does anyone else think this book cover image would have been a better option for The Forest of Vanishing Stars than the girl with the red coat?!
**Received a copy via Amazon First Reads**
Book Review Blog: www.shelfreflection.com
Pinterest: @shelfreflectionblog
A Deadly Influence weaves these two powers together in a chilling thriller about a kidnapping and what it takes to get him back.
This was a well-written and suspenseful story. I thought I had the abductor figured out, but I was wrong. BUT based on the last few sentences of the book, I was actually right just in a different way. It ends on a cliffhanger setting up book two. So I’ll have to read that one now.
It includes quite a bit of negotiating strategy. You will probably finish the book feeling like you could most certainly negotiate yourself out of a hostage situation! (But let’s not do anything stupid.)
I also want to commend the author for good, creative, realistic, and at times (properly) funny writing and dialogue.
“He was actually a softhearted kitten trapped in a the body of a nineties-movie action hero.”
“They should insist all prospective negotiators have kids. Nothing prepared you better for crisis management.”
Very relatable, Mike Omer. Well. Mostly relatable. The characters eat Chick-Fil-A and one eats her sandwich with ranch dressing. This is a trajesty. I mean ranch is one of the main food groups, but must we write a character who hates Chick-Fil-A sauce??
The main character, Abby Mullen, is a hostage negotiator for the NYPD. Her life has been shaped by the traumatic experience she had growing up in a cult… I mean… “Christian community”. It’s stupid they call it that. (Why do all the cults always choose the Bible to pretend to care about. Choose a different religion psychos.)
Anyway. At the age of 7 Abby was caught up in a standoff between her cult and the police. It ended in a blazing fire with only 3 survivors- her and 2 other kids.
Her past comes back to haunt her years later as she is contacted by Eden, one of the other survivors, whose son, Nathan, was just kidnapped and ransomed for 5 million dollars.
This book is written in several third-person POVs. From the abductor’s chapters we gather that he has an obsession with Nathan’s older sister, Gabrielle, who is a popular social media influencer. (Sidenote: spellcheck says influencer isn’t a word— how has this not been added to the dictionary yet?) Several years prior Eden had joined and then later left a different cult. There are too many connections with the said cult to be a coincidence.
How is it all connected? Or is it? And how can Abby even access the answers she needs from a controlled community with a lot of secrets to keep? Time is running out.
I would recommend this book. It does have some swearing (1 f-word, 35 s-words) but it was moderate enough that I could read around it. It shapes up to be an interesting series with some good character dynamics and mysteries yet to reveal!
Books with cults are simultaneously infuriating and fascinating. I’m blown away by the ability for these insane places to exist and for people to get sucked in and stay in. It’s also very heartbreaking because you know these cults are out there and are ruining people’s lives. Having watched a good chunk of Leah Remini’s Scientology documentary, the many facets of cults displayed there show up here too. Which leads me to this quote:
“Because there was only one vaccination against cult recruitment—being on guard. And if you assumed you were already immune, if you underestimated cults, then you were at risk.”
Basically the bi-fold message of this book is: Don’t get recruited to a cult. And being popular on social media can be dangerous. So far I’ve managed to avoid both!
Stay safe out there!
If you like books with cults in them here are a few others I’ve read:
- The Girl Behind the Red Rope by Ted & Rachelle Dekker
- The Program (Tim Rackley #2) by Gregg Hurwitz
- You Can’t Catch Me by Catherine MacKenzie
- The Line Between by Tosca Lee
Mostly unrelated question: Does anyone else think this book cover image would have been a better option for The Forest of Vanishing Stars than the girl with the red coat?!
**Received a copy via Amazon First Reads**
Book Review Blog: www.shelfreflection.com
Pinterest: @shelfreflectionblog
(3.6 stars)
If I had just one word to describe this book it would be ‘dubious.’
There is much doubt and suspicion throughout the whole book. We must decide what and who is trustworthy and what/who is unreliable and misleading. Who has the secrets and who is connected to who?
The concept of a spacey pregnant woman with questionable or unreliable memory is nothing new— reminiscent of Woman on the Edge (which I liked better) and The Breakdown (which I liked about the same)—but Faulkner still crafts a gripping mystery.
[I’ll insert a warning here that this book discusses infant loss (handled pretty well in my opinion) and rape if those are triggers for you.]
It begins with a glimpse into the future with a letter from someone in prison addressed to our main character, Helen. “What did you do that day, after I was convicted?…I think of you often… You need to know the truth, even if after all this time your hands are still clamped over your ears.”
Then we are taken back in time to discover who is in prison and why. We must discover the truth Helen never knew.
Jumping into the present we read of Helen meeting Rachel at a pregnancy class. This first half of the book was a little distressing for me to read because of how reckless and erratic Rachel’s character is. We know something is off and we are forced to suffer through Rachel’s highly dysfunctional behavior while Helen gets herself wrapped all up in it.
I mean, I wasn’t a Helen-stickler on pregnancy do’s and don’ts, but Rachel wasn’t just sporadically ‘cheating’ and eating deli meat and drinking caffeine every day— she was smoking and a borderline alcoholic and no one felt like they could question that. Her general recklessness and forceful, overbearing demeanor just stressed me out!
Rachel’s friendship quickly transforms into a problem. Helen starts to realize Rachel might not be who she says she is and is somehow connected to one or more of her family members. She must confront them and things of their past to find out the truth. Yet, she is in more danger than she realizes. Can she get to the bottom of it without putting herself or her baby at risk?
Told through several different POVs we are gradually given more clues and information. The chapters from Serena, Helen’s sister-in-law, give us insight to Helen and her brother, Rory. The chapters from Katie give us insight into Charlie, her boyfriend (Helen’s other brother), and the unraveling of a historic and geographically significant rape case. The other POVs are anonymous and mysterious.
Two things annoyed me with this book. First, the f-words (54 f-words, 3 s-words). Second, the chapter cliffhangers. I understand that a chapter cliffhanger adds to the suspense, but it was very overdone with this book. We would be left with the phrase- “I need to tell you something” or “I need to know the truth about you and ___.” Then boom, chapter ends. And the next one would begin a day or more in the future, sometimes with completely different characters and you’re like ‘what the heck?’
It’s like when you call someone on the phone to ask for directions and they say, ‘Turn at the-’ and then the line cuts out. And they keep repeating themself but it keeps cutting out at the most important moments. You need the information but you kinda want to hang up because why does this keep happening???
That’s how I felt reading this book. It was, at times, too much of a tease. We were saddled with a lot of disjointed clues and suggestions. They come together in the end, but there is no real flow from clue to clue or information to suspect, etc. I found that to be a downside, but maybe that is the kind of suspense and confusion you like.
Another downside was Helen. She’s our main character but I didn’t find her very likeable. She seemed so needy and childish. I mean she is a grown woman and still refers to her parents as Mummy and Daddy. This type of character was similar to the aforementioned books. I get she has had a lot of grief and instability wrapped around all of the babies she and her husband, Daniel, lost, but it would have been nice to see her with more strength and resolve, more of a backbone who can be smart and bold, who can speak hard truths and say no. But she’s very wispy and insecure.
This was a debut novel for Katherine Faulkner so I think it was a decent first book. Because of the language, I’m not sure if I’ll read another of hers. Some of it was bizarre and frustrating but the mystery and suspense is there so I give her props for that. Depending what you like, it might be enough to overshadow the downsides.
Sidenote 1: Having stayed in London near Hyde Park it was interesting to see a different part of London through this book and made me want to visit and do a little more research on this real place of Greenwich Park. I wasn’t sure if some of the history talked about in the book was real or not.
Sidenote 2: This might be the first British book I read that used the word ‘takeout’ instead of ‘takeaway’ and ‘line’ instead of ‘queue.’ I looked her up to make sure Faulkner was actually British- she is a London native with a background in investigative reporting. This makes sense, then, that the character Katie, the reporter, was probably the strongest character.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley **
Read more of my book reviews at my website: www.shelfreflection.com!
If I had just one word to describe this book it would be ‘dubious.’
There is much doubt and suspicion throughout the whole book. We must decide what and who is trustworthy and what/who is unreliable and misleading. Who has the secrets and who is connected to who?
The concept of a spacey pregnant woman with questionable or unreliable memory is nothing new— reminiscent of Woman on the Edge (which I liked better) and The Breakdown (which I liked about the same)—but Faulkner still crafts a gripping mystery.
[I’ll insert a warning here that this book discusses infant loss (handled pretty well in my opinion) and rape if those are triggers for you.]
It begins with a glimpse into the future with a letter from someone in prison addressed to our main character, Helen. “What did you do that day, after I was convicted?…I think of you often… You need to know the truth, even if after all this time your hands are still clamped over your ears.”
Then we are taken back in time to discover who is in prison and why. We must discover the truth Helen never knew.
Jumping into the present we read of Helen meeting Rachel at a pregnancy class. This first half of the book was a little distressing for me to read because of how reckless and erratic Rachel’s character is. We know something is off and we are forced to suffer through Rachel’s highly dysfunctional behavior while Helen gets herself wrapped all up in it.
I mean, I wasn’t a Helen-stickler on pregnancy do’s and don’ts, but Rachel wasn’t just sporadically ‘cheating’ and eating deli meat and drinking caffeine every day— she was smoking and a borderline alcoholic and no one felt like they could question that. Her general recklessness and forceful, overbearing demeanor just stressed me out!
Rachel’s friendship quickly transforms into a problem. Helen starts to realize Rachel might not be who she says she is and is somehow connected to one or more of her family members. She must confront them and things of their past to find out the truth. Yet, she is in more danger than she realizes. Can she get to the bottom of it without putting herself or her baby at risk?
Told through several different POVs we are gradually given more clues and information. The chapters from Serena, Helen’s sister-in-law, give us insight to Helen and her brother, Rory. The chapters from Katie give us insight into Charlie, her boyfriend (Helen’s other brother), and the unraveling of a historic and geographically significant rape case. The other POVs are anonymous and mysterious.
Two things annoyed me with this book. First, the f-words (54 f-words, 3 s-words). Second, the chapter cliffhangers. I understand that a chapter cliffhanger adds to the suspense, but it was very overdone with this book. We would be left with the phrase- “I need to tell you something” or “I need to know the truth about you and ___.” Then boom, chapter ends. And the next one would begin a day or more in the future, sometimes with completely different characters and you’re like ‘what the heck?’
It’s like when you call someone on the phone to ask for directions and they say, ‘Turn at the-’ and then the line cuts out. And they keep repeating themself but it keeps cutting out at the most important moments. You need the information but you kinda want to hang up because why does this keep happening???
That’s how I felt reading this book. It was, at times, too much of a tease. We were saddled with a lot of disjointed clues and suggestions. They come together in the end, but there is no real flow from clue to clue or information to suspect, etc. I found that to be a downside, but maybe that is the kind of suspense and confusion you like.
Another downside was Helen. She’s our main character but I didn’t find her very likeable. She seemed so needy and childish. I mean she is a grown woman and still refers to her parents as Mummy and Daddy. This type of character was similar to the aforementioned books. I get she has had a lot of grief and instability wrapped around all of the babies she and her husband, Daniel, lost, but it would have been nice to see her with more strength and resolve, more of a backbone who can be smart and bold, who can speak hard truths and say no. But she’s very wispy and insecure.
This was a debut novel for Katherine Faulkner so I think it was a decent first book. Because of the language, I’m not sure if I’ll read another of hers. Some of it was bizarre and frustrating but the mystery and suspense is there so I give her props for that. Depending what you like, it might be enough to overshadow the downsides.
Sidenote 1: Having stayed in London near Hyde Park it was interesting to see a different part of London through this book and made me want to visit and do a little more research on this real place of Greenwich Park. I wasn’t sure if some of the history talked about in the book was real or not.
Sidenote 2: This might be the first British book I read that used the word ‘takeout’ instead of ‘takeaway’ and ‘line’ instead of ‘queue.’ I looked her up to make sure Faulkner was actually British- she is a London native with a background in investigative reporting. This makes sense, then, that the character Katie, the reporter, was probably the strongest character.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley **
Read more of my book reviews at my website: www.shelfreflection.com!
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“Do you want to hear a story about how I almost went blind because of diarrhea rats? Of course you do.”
If that piqued your interest, you’re on the right track with checking out this book.
I’m curious what parts are verbatim from her life and what have been adjusted for humor, but either way, this lady lives a pretty crazy and hilarious existence that she has documented, unfiltered, in these pages.
Let’s just get this out of the way first: It’s increasingly hard to find clean comedy these days. So I’m going to assume that if you are considering this book then you're okay with a lot of swearing (79 f-words, 64 s-words) and inappropriate humor. Because that’s somewhat of a standard for a lot of humor, though I don’t like it, I will not critique that; but just be aware of what you’re getting into.
So that aside, I did think this book was pretty funny and laughed out loud several times which says a lot.
I actually have no idea who Jenny Lawson is. In fact, as I read this book my brain kept reading it to me in Amy Schumer’s voice…
If you are already a fan of Jenny, I’m assuming you will find this book to enjoyable. If you, like me, are a Jenny-Lawson-newbie, here’s a brief summary of her niche: She deals with mental and physical illnesses of many forms including severe anxiety, agoraphobia, rheumatoid arthritis, pre-diabetes, and some memory loss (among others—don’t worry, she’ll tell ya about it; she says she “collects diseases like other people collect Beanie Babies”). She writes to find the humor in her ailments. Considering all that she has gone through, it’s an amazing feat! She is very transparent and honest and throughout the book she even intersperses more meaningful and sober meditations on life, health, pain, and identity.
“Human foibles are what makes us us, and the art of mortification is what brings us all together.”
Thus, we have a hodge-podge of embarrassing, surprising life experiences and musings from Jenny Lawson (who is not Amy Schumer).
One of my life goals is to write a memoir someday and I feel like a lot of the structure of her book is similar to what I would aspire to write like. I love that her chapters are random and don’t flow together and are often just lists of things— I think that’s also representative of her state of mind and adds to this book’s honesty and authenticity. I also love her super long sentences, use of caps and punctuation, footnotes, sidenotes to the footnotes, and parenthetical disclaimers and clarifiers— the humor and voice is spot on. The way she relates her conversations with her husband, Victor, is also hilarious. I can easily picture her writing this book and asking him questions as she’s typing and arguing about pointless things and then writing about it.
And I love her relationship with spellcheck:
“Spellcheck keeps underlining ‘kegels’ and saying that it doesn’t understand what they are. JOIN THE CLUB, SPELLCHECK.”
“Spellcheck keeps telling me that ‘buttworms’ isn’t a real word and I understand your disbelief, spellcheck, but just because we want them to not be real doesn’t mean that they aren’t. Ugh. I totally got distracted by my buttworms. Sorry. This chapter is not about buttworms.It’s about tuberculosis. Which the doctor also said I didn’t get from cat buttholes. In fact, she said it mostly comes from prisons and schools, which are pretty much the same thing if I’m being honest.”
“‘Because she’s a good person and that’s what normal people do,’ Victor interrupted interruptingly. (Spellcheck is saying ‘interruptingly’ isn’t a word because I guess it’s never spent time with Victor before. Also, it stopped me in the middle of writing this in a totally interruptingly way. Way to disprove your point, spellcheck.)"
Also there’s a whole chapter about the editing process of her book and some back and forths she had with her editors:
“Editor: You switched from present tense to past tense here so we need to change so that the tenses match. I suggest you change ‘I was crazy’ to ‘I am crazy.’
Me: Harsh. And accurate.”
And her chapter where she changes truisms to make them ‘better’:
“THE BEST THING TO HOLD ON TO IN LIFE IS EACH OTHER… Or the remote. Or the phone. I’m always losing those. But I almost never lose people, because I can just call them and be like, ‘Where are you? Also, have you seen the remote?’ Unless I lose my phone. Then I have to scream until someone comes and calls me with their phone so I can find my phone. So I guess holding on to each other is good too in case you need your phone.”
“IT’S ALWAYS TOO SOON TO QUIT… Unless we’re talking about smoking. Or spending all your money on lottery tickets. Or being a serial killer. Actually, skip this truism. I need more information.”
It’s the type of book that you read and then will come to mind in later conversations where you want to share one of her stories or comments and think “Oh, this one time, my friend Jenny…” and realize, oh yeah. I just read her book. She’s not actually my friend. But her simple and conversational writing will leave the impression that you know her intimately.
Here are some more quotes to illustrate her humor and diverse subject matter. (And then I conclude with a little look at her more serious observations.)
“And while I do prefer to be barefoot, I do not like to be wearing just one shoe, because then you’re lopsided and it feels like you have accidental temporary polio. (No one gives themselves polio on purpose, Victor.)”
“Apparently someone had called security to report the wayward shoe. I guess they’d kept the elevator stopped while they made sure it wasn’t a bomb or a maybe investigated how some trashy Cinderella had made it as far as the elevator. Then the security guard brought my shoe down to me and I gave him two dollars because I don’t know how much you’re supposed to tip for your own shoe, and I vowed to never walk out of my shoes in an elevator ever again, and I never did until I totally did it again one week later.”
“(Note: Fight or flight syndrome is what a lot of people with anxiety deal with during stress. My choices seem to be either shank the person who is making me scared or get rid of all my fluids so I can run faster. I choose peeing over stabbing. You’re welcome.)”
“Someone gave me a poster that says, ‘Let her sleep for when she wakes she will move mountains,’ and I think it’s a nice sentiment because it encourages people to not wake me up, but I already can’t sleep because tomorrow I have to go to the bank and I can’t turn off my brain and now I’m finding out that I HAVE TO MOVE MOUNTAINS? I’m probably only sleeping late because I was up all night worrying about mountain relocation. Maybe the mountains need to stay where they are. Why is this my problem? Screw this. I just scratched out the part about moving landmasses and left ‘Let her sleep’ standing. Because I don’t throw babies out with the bathwater. In fact, I don’t throw babies at all. Or move mountains.”
“Victor tried to make me feel bad because I never got Hailey a birth certificate, but in my defense I didn’t get one because they’re like baby receipts and I’m not gonna get a refund. Then Victor said that they’re not for returning babies, they’re to prove that you have a baby, but I already have proof that I have a baby and her name is Hailey and she lives here.”
“And that’s sort of what depression is like…like when your mom turns into Kathie Lee Gifford’s face on giant, murderous swamp puppies. If you don’t have depression this analogy might seem baffling, but if you have it, you’re probably pointing at this page and saying, ‘BINGO, LADY. YOU NAILED IT.’”
“It’s like global warming for elderly people. They probably think it’s likely but they know they won’t live to see us invaded by polar bears and volcanoes (I don’t know how global warming works) so they keep committing arson with aerosol bottles or whatever dangerous things elderly people do for fun (I don’t know how elderly people work). Basically, I’m global warming. But faster. And with fewer polar bears. (I don’t know how good analogies work.)”
“Victor was like, ‘Why is there a disco ball on the credit card?’ and I said, ‘It’s not for me. It's for some famous retired monkeys who aren’t allowed to roller skate anymore.’ And that’s when Victor threatened to turn off my credit cards.”
“But I explained that if I were a dentist I’d bury all the extra teeth I pulled in a pit in the backyard and then maybe a hundred years from now someone would dig them up and be like, ‘Holy crap! A serial killer must’ve been here!’ And that would be nice because it’s fun to add a little mystery to strangers’ lives. I’m a giver.”
“Luckily, my TB was inactive, so it was as lazy as I am. Apparently I’d been exposed to someone with active TB at some point and now I carry it around, along with all my deep-seated resentment of girls who were mean to me in junior high.”
“On the other hand, I don’t think I’m allowed to vacuum anymore, so I guess it all works out in the end. It still sucks though. Or blows. Maybe both.”
Yep. She has a gift for comedic writing.
But then she would also throw in some introspection.
I found it moving when she opens up about her memory loss and forgetting people or things that have happened. I am a very nostalgic person; memories are so important to me. I fear what it would be like to lose them. But I thought she said it well here:
“If one day I look at you and don’t remember who you are or how much you mean to me, know that your importance is still as real then as it is now. Know that you are locked away someplace safe. Know that the me who loved you is still sitting on that beach, forever feeling the sunlight. And know that I’m okay with not having that memory right now, because the me that holds it tight is keeping it safe and uncorrupted and glorious. And she loves you. And I do too. Remember that.”
She titled this book ‘Broken (in the best possible way)’ because she knows she faces a lot of obstacles in her life, but she has also seen the good from a new perspective and has insights on life that many would never understand. I love her honesty and transparency. I’ve not dealt with severe anxiety or depression so this was an illuminating read for me. Here is her world:
“The problem is that depression is my forever side dish to any period of convalescence and illness, and depression lies. It tells you that you are worthless. That life was never good. That you are a drain on the world and that it will only get worse.”
“I always told Hailey that being afraid of the dark was silly because the thing about darkness is that it’s not just a place for things to hide. It’s a cloak that hides you as well. The night can be a friend. And that’s a good thing to know, but only when your head is working properly and you can assure yourself that once you step back into the house you’ll cast a shadow again instead of being one. That promise doesn’t exist tonight and I hurry back inside, feeling claustrophobic in the darkness that seems as if it will consume or wash away what little bit of me I have left.”
“If I look closer at these stories that make up my life, a strange theme emerges. It’s the idea that something is only real if it’s damaged. I suppose it makes sense in a terrible sort of way. After all, we are changed by life… it puts its teeth in us, it leaves its handprints and marks and scars on us. And as much as we try to ignore those things, in the end they make us who we are. For good or for bad, we are changed and touched and broken and mended and scarred. And those marks (inside and out) tell a story. They tell our story.”
And then this concept she spends time on in her last chapter. It struck me and I can’t read these words and abandon them:
“I’m not much for organized religion, but I think we all have souls. Glowing half orbs… And as we live, our spheres crack. They splinter with sadness or loss or doubt or pain…Then we walk around with these slivers missing… these holes… Sometimes we try to fill these holes with things that seem to fill the gap but aren’t right. We wedge a square bit in a round hole, but it’s a large hole, so it fits, although inexactly…It’s like when people say their God hole is empty. We’re all built differently, and maybe for you the missing piece is religion, or trust or love or acceptance, but we’re all shattered in our own way… We are broken. We are healing. It never ends. And, if you look at it in just the right light, it is beautiful.”
First, this is her heart so I don’t want to take away from her sharing these pieces of her. I can’t fully understand everything about her that has shaped her viewpoint. But I can’t read this and leave it at that. What she finds beautiful is healing, however imperfect, seeing something good come from something bad. She sees a glimmer of something much brighter. She misses out on the real healing and redemption that can only be found in God.
I can’t help but be reminded of Lysa Terkeurst’s awesome book ‘It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way’. She says, "What if shattering is the only way to get dust back to its basic form so that something new can be made?" Throughout her book she uses analogies of dust, of pottery. Of the biblical truths that we were made from dust. God makes beautiful things out of dust. God uses the things that break us to make something new in us.
Jenny is right that we are that we are all, indeed, broken. But she is wrong to say that it never ends. There is a hope that awaits us. It promises we will one day be whole and perfect. Jenny’s broken body, riddled with diseases, is a work in progress that God desires to redeem if she puts her trust in him.
“Some things won’t be fixed on this side of eternity; they just have to be walked through. But when my brain begs me to doubt God... I find relief for my unbelief by laying down my human assessments and assumptions. I turn from the tree of knowledge and fix my gaze on the tree of life. I let my soul be cradled by God’s divine assurance. His Son. Who completely understands. And who will walk me through every step of this if I keep my focus on Him. That’s how I survive the 86,400 seconds called today.” (Terkeurst)
Lawson’s book, Broken, is simultaneously light-hearted and deep, both humorous and sobering. It’s a finding of brightness in the darkness and of a real acknowledgment that there is something broken in us that we are all searching to heal.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
P.S. I was today years old when Jenny’s epiphany became my epiphany that the chicken crossing the road to get to the other side was because: “OMG, THE OTHER SIDE= DEATH. THE CHICKEN IS SUICIDAL,’ and suddenly I understood the joke for the first time ever and now I’m wondering what other basic things I think I understand but really don’t at all, and Victor says there are probably too many.”
See more at www.shelfreflection.com!
If that piqued your interest, you’re on the right track with checking out this book.
I’m curious what parts are verbatim from her life and what have been adjusted for humor, but either way, this lady lives a pretty crazy and hilarious existence that she has documented, unfiltered, in these pages.
Let’s just get this out of the way first: It’s increasingly hard to find clean comedy these days. So I’m going to assume that if you are considering this book then you're okay with a lot of swearing (79 f-words, 64 s-words) and inappropriate humor. Because that’s somewhat of a standard for a lot of humor, though I don’t like it, I will not critique that; but just be aware of what you’re getting into.
So that aside, I did think this book was pretty funny and laughed out loud several times which says a lot.
I actually have no idea who Jenny Lawson is. In fact, as I read this book my brain kept reading it to me in Amy Schumer’s voice…
If you are already a fan of Jenny, I’m assuming you will find this book to enjoyable. If you, like me, are a Jenny-Lawson-newbie, here’s a brief summary of her niche: She deals with mental and physical illnesses of many forms including severe anxiety, agoraphobia, rheumatoid arthritis, pre-diabetes, and some memory loss (among others—don’t worry, she’ll tell ya about it; she says she “collects diseases like other people collect Beanie Babies”). She writes to find the humor in her ailments. Considering all that she has gone through, it’s an amazing feat! She is very transparent and honest and throughout the book she even intersperses more meaningful and sober meditations on life, health, pain, and identity.
“Human foibles are what makes us us, and the art of mortification is what brings us all together.”
Thus, we have a hodge-podge of embarrassing, surprising life experiences and musings from Jenny Lawson (who is not Amy Schumer).
One of my life goals is to write a memoir someday and I feel like a lot of the structure of her book is similar to what I would aspire to write like. I love that her chapters are random and don’t flow together and are often just lists of things— I think that’s also representative of her state of mind and adds to this book’s honesty and authenticity. I also love her super long sentences, use of caps and punctuation, footnotes, sidenotes to the footnotes, and parenthetical disclaimers and clarifiers— the humor and voice is spot on. The way she relates her conversations with her husband, Victor, is also hilarious. I can easily picture her writing this book and asking him questions as she’s typing and arguing about pointless things and then writing about it.
And I love her relationship with spellcheck:
“Spellcheck keeps underlining ‘kegels’ and saying that it doesn’t understand what they are. JOIN THE CLUB, SPELLCHECK.”
“Spellcheck keeps telling me that ‘buttworms’ isn’t a real word and I understand your disbelief, spellcheck, but just because we want them to not be real doesn’t mean that they aren’t. Ugh. I totally got distracted by my buttworms. Sorry. This chapter is not about buttworms.It’s about tuberculosis. Which the doctor also said I didn’t get from cat buttholes. In fact, she said it mostly comes from prisons and schools, which are pretty much the same thing if I’m being honest.”
“‘Because she’s a good person and that’s what normal people do,’ Victor interrupted interruptingly. (Spellcheck is saying ‘interruptingly’ isn’t a word because I guess it’s never spent time with Victor before. Also, it stopped me in the middle of writing this in a totally interruptingly way. Way to disprove your point, spellcheck.)"
Also there’s a whole chapter about the editing process of her book and some back and forths she had with her editors:
“Editor: You switched from present tense to past tense here so we need to change so that the tenses match. I suggest you change ‘I was crazy’ to ‘I am crazy.’
Me: Harsh. And accurate.”
And her chapter where she changes truisms to make them ‘better’:
“THE BEST THING TO HOLD ON TO IN LIFE IS EACH OTHER… Or the remote. Or the phone. I’m always losing those. But I almost never lose people, because I can just call them and be like, ‘Where are you? Also, have you seen the remote?’ Unless I lose my phone. Then I have to scream until someone comes and calls me with their phone so I can find my phone. So I guess holding on to each other is good too in case you need your phone.”
“IT’S ALWAYS TOO SOON TO QUIT… Unless we’re talking about smoking. Or spending all your money on lottery tickets. Or being a serial killer. Actually, skip this truism. I need more information.”
It’s the type of book that you read and then will come to mind in later conversations where you want to share one of her stories or comments and think “Oh, this one time, my friend Jenny…” and realize, oh yeah. I just read her book. She’s not actually my friend. But her simple and conversational writing will leave the impression that you know her intimately.
Here are some more quotes to illustrate her humor and diverse subject matter. (And then I conclude with a little look at her more serious observations.)
“And while I do prefer to be barefoot, I do not like to be wearing just one shoe, because then you’re lopsided and it feels like you have accidental temporary polio. (No one gives themselves polio on purpose, Victor.)”
“Apparently someone had called security to report the wayward shoe. I guess they’d kept the elevator stopped while they made sure it wasn’t a bomb or a maybe investigated how some trashy Cinderella had made it as far as the elevator. Then the security guard brought my shoe down to me and I gave him two dollars because I don’t know how much you’re supposed to tip for your own shoe, and I vowed to never walk out of my shoes in an elevator ever again, and I never did until I totally did it again one week later.”
“(Note: Fight or flight syndrome is what a lot of people with anxiety deal with during stress. My choices seem to be either shank the person who is making me scared or get rid of all my fluids so I can run faster. I choose peeing over stabbing. You’re welcome.)”
“Someone gave me a poster that says, ‘Let her sleep for when she wakes she will move mountains,’ and I think it’s a nice sentiment because it encourages people to not wake me up, but I already can’t sleep because tomorrow I have to go to the bank and I can’t turn off my brain and now I’m finding out that I HAVE TO MOVE MOUNTAINS? I’m probably only sleeping late because I was up all night worrying about mountain relocation. Maybe the mountains need to stay where they are. Why is this my problem? Screw this. I just scratched out the part about moving landmasses and left ‘Let her sleep’ standing. Because I don’t throw babies out with the bathwater. In fact, I don’t throw babies at all. Or move mountains.”
“Victor tried to make me feel bad because I never got Hailey a birth certificate, but in my defense I didn’t get one because they’re like baby receipts and I’m not gonna get a refund. Then Victor said that they’re not for returning babies, they’re to prove that you have a baby, but I already have proof that I have a baby and her name is Hailey and she lives here.”
“And that’s sort of what depression is like…like when your mom turns into Kathie Lee Gifford’s face on giant, murderous swamp puppies. If you don’t have depression this analogy might seem baffling, but if you have it, you’re probably pointing at this page and saying, ‘BINGO, LADY. YOU NAILED IT.’”
“It’s like global warming for elderly people. They probably think it’s likely but they know they won’t live to see us invaded by polar bears and volcanoes (I don’t know how global warming works) so they keep committing arson with aerosol bottles or whatever dangerous things elderly people do for fun (I don’t know how elderly people work). Basically, I’m global warming. But faster. And with fewer polar bears. (I don’t know how good analogies work.)”
“Victor was like, ‘Why is there a disco ball on the credit card?’ and I said, ‘It’s not for me. It's for some famous retired monkeys who aren’t allowed to roller skate anymore.’ And that’s when Victor threatened to turn off my credit cards.”
“But I explained that if I were a dentist I’d bury all the extra teeth I pulled in a pit in the backyard and then maybe a hundred years from now someone would dig them up and be like, ‘Holy crap! A serial killer must’ve been here!’ And that would be nice because it’s fun to add a little mystery to strangers’ lives. I’m a giver.”
“Luckily, my TB was inactive, so it was as lazy as I am. Apparently I’d been exposed to someone with active TB at some point and now I carry it around, along with all my deep-seated resentment of girls who were mean to me in junior high.”
“On the other hand, I don’t think I’m allowed to vacuum anymore, so I guess it all works out in the end. It still sucks though. Or blows. Maybe both.”
Yep. She has a gift for comedic writing.
But then she would also throw in some introspection.
I found it moving when she opens up about her memory loss and forgetting people or things that have happened. I am a very nostalgic person; memories are so important to me. I fear what it would be like to lose them. But I thought she said it well here:
“If one day I look at you and don’t remember who you are or how much you mean to me, know that your importance is still as real then as it is now. Know that you are locked away someplace safe. Know that the me who loved you is still sitting on that beach, forever feeling the sunlight. And know that I’m okay with not having that memory right now, because the me that holds it tight is keeping it safe and uncorrupted and glorious. And she loves you. And I do too. Remember that.”
She titled this book ‘Broken (in the best possible way)’ because she knows she faces a lot of obstacles in her life, but she has also seen the good from a new perspective and has insights on life that many would never understand. I love her honesty and transparency. I’ve not dealt with severe anxiety or depression so this was an illuminating read for me. Here is her world:
“The problem is that depression is my forever side dish to any period of convalescence and illness, and depression lies. It tells you that you are worthless. That life was never good. That you are a drain on the world and that it will only get worse.”
“I always told Hailey that being afraid of the dark was silly because the thing about darkness is that it’s not just a place for things to hide. It’s a cloak that hides you as well. The night can be a friend. And that’s a good thing to know, but only when your head is working properly and you can assure yourself that once you step back into the house you’ll cast a shadow again instead of being one. That promise doesn’t exist tonight and I hurry back inside, feeling claustrophobic in the darkness that seems as if it will consume or wash away what little bit of me I have left.”
“If I look closer at these stories that make up my life, a strange theme emerges. It’s the idea that something is only real if it’s damaged. I suppose it makes sense in a terrible sort of way. After all, we are changed by life… it puts its teeth in us, it leaves its handprints and marks and scars on us. And as much as we try to ignore those things, in the end they make us who we are. For good or for bad, we are changed and touched and broken and mended and scarred. And those marks (inside and out) tell a story. They tell our story.”
And then this concept she spends time on in her last chapter. It struck me and I can’t read these words and abandon them:
“I’m not much for organized religion, but I think we all have souls. Glowing half orbs… And as we live, our spheres crack. They splinter with sadness or loss or doubt or pain…Then we walk around with these slivers missing… these holes… Sometimes we try to fill these holes with things that seem to fill the gap but aren’t right. We wedge a square bit in a round hole, but it’s a large hole, so it fits, although inexactly…It’s like when people say their God hole is empty. We’re all built differently, and maybe for you the missing piece is religion, or trust or love or acceptance, but we’re all shattered in our own way… We are broken. We are healing. It never ends. And, if you look at it in just the right light, it is beautiful.”
First, this is her heart so I don’t want to take away from her sharing these pieces of her. I can’t fully understand everything about her that has shaped her viewpoint. But I can’t read this and leave it at that. What she finds beautiful is healing, however imperfect, seeing something good come from something bad. She sees a glimmer of something much brighter. She misses out on the real healing and redemption that can only be found in God.
I can’t help but be reminded of Lysa Terkeurst’s awesome book ‘It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way’. She says, "What if shattering is the only way to get dust back to its basic form so that something new can be made?" Throughout her book she uses analogies of dust, of pottery. Of the biblical truths that we were made from dust. God makes beautiful things out of dust. God uses the things that break us to make something new in us.
Jenny is right that we are that we are all, indeed, broken. But she is wrong to say that it never ends. There is a hope that awaits us. It promises we will one day be whole and perfect. Jenny’s broken body, riddled with diseases, is a work in progress that God desires to redeem if she puts her trust in him.
“Some things won’t be fixed on this side of eternity; they just have to be walked through. But when my brain begs me to doubt God... I find relief for my unbelief by laying down my human assessments and assumptions. I turn from the tree of knowledge and fix my gaze on the tree of life. I let my soul be cradled by God’s divine assurance. His Son. Who completely understands. And who will walk me through every step of this if I keep my focus on Him. That’s how I survive the 86,400 seconds called today.” (Terkeurst)
Lawson’s book, Broken, is simultaneously light-hearted and deep, both humorous and sobering. It’s a finding of brightness in the darkness and of a real acknowledgment that there is something broken in us that we are all searching to heal.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
P.S. I was today years old when Jenny’s epiphany became my epiphany that the chicken crossing the road to get to the other side was because: “OMG, THE OTHER SIDE= DEATH. THE CHICKEN IS SUICIDAL,’ and suddenly I understood the joke for the first time ever and now I’m wondering what other basic things I think I understand but really don’t at all, and Victor says there are probably too many.”
See more at www.shelfreflection.com!
"Everyone was guilty of something. It didn't take a detective to figure that out."
3.5 stars
A story with several POVs where everyone has their own secret they're dealing with. There is some mystery as you wonder what will happen with each storyline but I would say this is more of a character development/drama type of story. Or possibly a showcase of how everyone's life isn't what they wished it would be and they're all plagued by the what ifs. Quote, "She wondered if this was what adult life was going to be: a string of moments that leave you wondering what might've been." or "She often wondered if she should've been more selfish." It probably resonates with a lot of people because we all have felt like we're missing out on something or sacrificing too much of ourselves for the sake of others. And man, what my life could have been! But I'm not really a fan of glorifying the self. This isn't going to be popular to say, but self-actualization isn't the pinnacle of human life. Entertaining and goading thoughts of "Do whatever it takes to achieve all your dreams because you deserve it" and living in might-have-been la la land isn't going to do anything but make you bitter or cause you to make impulsive poor choices that affect more than yourself.
Hold on. I'm not ready to get off my soap-box yet. Because I would also like to address good ole Norah. Um. Yeah. I'm just not going to be rooting for the women who ran a prostitution ring. Yes, they FELT it was their only option to create a living for their family or to get enough money to leave a bad marriage, but sorry, that doesn't make it noble and it doesn't make it okay. And it doesn't make up for all the other families and marriages that were most likely ruined by it. And whether or not it's between two consenting adults is irrelevant to the fact that it ABSOLUTELY creates/increases a market for and is intertwined with sex trafficking. I think the business of sex is disturbing and harmful, and its effects are deeply dysfunctional and large-reaching.
At this point you might say, "But Brittany, that wasn't the point of the book. Of course we all think sex trafficking is bad!" And to that I would ask- what WAS the point of the book? That we're all messed up and we all have secrets and if we just opened up about them to each other we could form a close bond and it would mean our secrets aren't so bad now because we SHARED them and we all agree our motives were pure and/or justified? Or maybe, like a character says in the book, "Maybe we're all just supposed to save each other." And the point of the book is that we need to be in community with each other and help each other and be vulnerable with each other.
Okay. I agree: having secrets is no good for anyone and we SHOULD be in community where we are vulnerable and share our secrets to share our burdens, to get help and encourage. But frankly, the author does a wonderful job of sugar-coating Norah's decision of and operation of running a prostitution ring. That's not the main focus of the plot- it's being investigated of course, but we are not given much detail about it. It's just this pesky thing that has triggered these neighbors to all be involved with each other's lives at the moment. I don't know, man. I just really don't like the author's take on the whole thing. The culture's flippant attitude toward sex and its refusal to own the detrimental affects of sexual "freedom" is directly correlated to the supply and demand of pornography and sex trafficking and I don't believe the author made any headway in this book of opposing the culture's sexual mindset. And yeah, that works me up a bit. So sue me.
But you're right that making any sort of statement for or against running a prostitution ring wasn't the author's point of writing this book. It is a mystery/drama novel, not literary non-fiction. So I didn't give it 1 star. It got 3.5.
I did not like any of the characters. I did not like the constant references to the huge pumpkin. I did not like all the times the author used the word "albeit." I did not like that everyone believed a girl's last text before her mysterious death saying "Micah did this." Because someone who was just murdered by being served too much alcohol would definitely rather spite the murderer and type up a message then call 3 numbers to get help. I did not like how many of the characters handled their relationships. I did not like the beaucatcher thing.
I did like the poppy seed chicken recipe (making it this week). I did like the choice Violet made in the end. I did like the suspense of finding out how everything would resolve. I did like that even though there was some stupid stuff that there was still some reconciliation and some acknowledgement of some of the stupid stuff.
At this point, this may come as a surprise to you, but I did not hate reading this book. I did my fair-share of eye-rolling and talking to the characters in my head, but it wasn't a terrible read. I just couldn't write a review about it without judging the perceived 'pass' given to running prostitution ring. Oh and I just really wanted the pumpkin to be a thing.
[Profanity: 3 f-words, 7 s-words]
See more of my reviews at www.shelfreflection.com!
3.5 stars
A story with several POVs where everyone has their own secret they're dealing with. There is some mystery as you wonder what will happen with each storyline but I would say this is more of a character development/drama type of story. Or possibly a showcase of how everyone's life isn't what they wished it would be and they're all plagued by the what ifs. Quote, "She wondered if this was what adult life was going to be: a string of moments that leave you wondering what might've been." or "She often wondered if she should've been more selfish." It probably resonates with a lot of people because we all have felt like we're missing out on something or sacrificing too much of ourselves for the sake of others. And man, what my life could have been! But I'm not really a fan of glorifying the self. This isn't going to be popular to say, but self-actualization isn't the pinnacle of human life. Entertaining and goading thoughts of "Do whatever it takes to achieve all your dreams because you deserve it" and living in might-have-been la la land isn't going to do anything but make you bitter or cause you to make impulsive poor choices that affect more than yourself.
Hold on. I'm not ready to get off my soap-box yet. Because I would also like to address good ole Norah. Um. Yeah. I'm just not going to be rooting for the women who ran a prostitution ring. Yes, they FELT it was their only option to create a living for their family or to get enough money to leave a bad marriage, but sorry, that doesn't make it noble and it doesn't make it okay. And it doesn't make up for all the other families and marriages that were most likely ruined by it. And whether or not it's between two consenting adults is irrelevant to the fact that it ABSOLUTELY creates/increases a market for and is intertwined with sex trafficking. I think the business of sex is disturbing and harmful, and its effects are deeply dysfunctional and large-reaching.
At this point you might say, "But Brittany, that wasn't the point of the book. Of course we all think sex trafficking is bad!" And to that I would ask- what WAS the point of the book? That we're all messed up and we all have secrets and if we just opened up about them to each other we could form a close bond and it would mean our secrets aren't so bad now because we SHARED them and we all agree our motives were pure and/or justified? Or maybe, like a character says in the book, "Maybe we're all just supposed to save each other." And the point of the book is that we need to be in community with each other and help each other and be vulnerable with each other.
Okay. I agree: having secrets is no good for anyone and we SHOULD be in community where we are vulnerable and share our secrets to share our burdens, to get help and encourage. But frankly, the author does a wonderful job of sugar-coating Norah's decision of and operation of running a prostitution ring. That's not the main focus of the plot- it's being investigated of course, but we are not given much detail about it. It's just this pesky thing that has triggered these neighbors to all be involved with each other's lives at the moment. I don't know, man. I just really don't like the author's take on the whole thing. The culture's flippant attitude toward sex and its refusal to own the detrimental affects of sexual "freedom" is directly correlated to the supply and demand of pornography and sex trafficking and I don't believe the author made any headway in this book of opposing the culture's sexual mindset. And yeah, that works me up a bit. So sue me.
But you're right that making any sort of statement for or against running a prostitution ring wasn't the author's point of writing this book. It is a mystery/drama novel, not literary non-fiction. So I didn't give it 1 star. It got 3.5.
I did not like any of the characters. I did not like the constant references to the huge pumpkin.
Spoiler
I kept thinking Norah hid the client list in the pumpkin and that that would justify all the references to this thing. But nope. Just some sort of symbolism I supposeI did like the poppy seed chicken recipe (making it this week). I did like the choice Violet made in the end. I did like the suspense of finding out how everything would resolve. I did like that even though there was some stupid stuff that there was still some reconciliation and some acknowledgement of some of the stupid stuff.
At this point, this may come as a surprise to you, but I did not hate reading this book. I did my fair-share of eye-rolling and talking to the characters in my head, but it wasn't a terrible read. I just couldn't write a review about it without judging the perceived 'pass' given to running prostitution ring. Oh and I just really wanted the pumpkin to be a thing.
[Profanity: 3 f-words, 7 s-words]
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Deducted a star for language. Enjoyed the unpredictability of this one. Who are the real victims and villains, or are they both? This is one that makes you want to go back and read it again to see what you missed.
The inscription at the very beginning of the book says 'for the women who have borne the physical, psychological, and mental heartbreak of a miscarriage.' Having experienced a miscarriage myself, I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book. There were some things that brought up memories, but in my own personal opinion, I felt like this book was a psychological thriller driven plot that I didn't find myself dealing with heavy emotions or sadness. I suppose my experience was fairly different than what was portrayed in the book and maybe that was part of it. Either way, I guess I'm trying to assure you that it was done pretty respectfully and is not written in a way to get you to cry.
So definitely give this book a try if you can handle some language--20 f-words, 76 s-words (unnecessary per ushe.)
**Oh also, sidenote: Several times she mentioned a character hitting someone with an "open fist." This makes no sense. A fist by definition is when you close your hand/fingers. What does an open fist even LOOK LIKE???**
See more of my reviews at www.shelfreflection.com!
The inscription at the very beginning of the book says 'for the women who have borne the physical, psychological, and mental heartbreak of a miscarriage.' Having experienced a miscarriage myself, I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book. There were some things that brought up memories, but in my own personal opinion, I felt like this book was a psychological thriller driven plot that I didn't find myself dealing with heavy emotions or sadness. I suppose my experience was fairly different than what was portrayed in the book and maybe that was part of it. Either way, I guess I'm trying to assure you that it was done pretty respectfully and is not written in a way to get you to cry.
So definitely give this book a try if you can handle some language--20 f-words, 76 s-words (unnecessary per ushe.)
**Oh also, sidenote: Several times she mentioned a character hitting someone with an "open fist." This makes no sense. A fist by definition is when you close your hand/fingers. What does an open fist even LOOK LIKE???**
See more of my reviews at www.shelfreflection.com!
Dangit McKenzie! Why can’t you write a book without all the f-words?? (52 f-words, 32 s-words) If not for them, this would be a five star book, but now I must reevaluate if I can continue your books knowing the language will always be a factor.
As for this story, I thought it was fantastically done. Similar tones (and title) to the movie Catch Me If You Can, it’s Jessica Williams seeking revenge on a con artist who took her money. The thief targets people named Jessica Williams, but the author does a good job of helping you keep all the Jessica’s straight as each one comes into the picture.
There is a second story thread recounting her childhood in a cult, her escape, and the aftermath, as well as learning what happened to dear Kiki.
McKenzie has woven a complex and twisted story that surprisingly had me say ‘Didn’t see that coming!’ which I find to be a feat these days.
I admit, I did question the OG Jessica’s character at times- growing up in a sheltered cult but still having developing the humor, social skills, personality, or other cultural knowledge she was portrayed with. Granted it had been over 10 years and I don’t know what it takes to become deprogrammed, but considering how much she still thought about the cult leader and his sayings, it didn’t *quite* mesh with her knowledge progression and online abilities. And especially humor. I liked the humor but I’m pretty sure you can’t develop that kind of humor that late in life after growing up in a cult. But alas, I don’t really care that much. I let it play.
It was a really intriguing premise, with how prevalent identity theft is, it’s a bit of a warning as well with what information we share with others. I’d like to think I wouldn’t fall for inadvertently giving away my security question answers, but it helps you see how easy it could be for someone to fool you. Stay alert, people- no one needs to know your mother’s maiden name or the street you used to live on. Fly the red flag!
So yeah, if you can get past the language, you’re going to enjoy this book.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**
See more of my reviews at www.shelfreflection.com!
As for this story, I thought it was fantastically done. Similar tones (and title) to the movie Catch Me If You Can, it’s Jessica Williams seeking revenge on a con artist who took her money. The thief targets people named Jessica Williams, but the author does a good job of helping you keep all the Jessica’s straight as each one comes into the picture.
There is a second story thread recounting her childhood in a cult, her escape, and the aftermath, as well as learning what happened to dear Kiki.
McKenzie has woven a complex and twisted story that surprisingly had me say ‘Didn’t see that coming!’ which I find to be a feat these days.
I admit, I did question the OG Jessica’s character at times- growing up in a sheltered cult but still having developing the humor, social skills, personality, or other cultural knowledge she was portrayed with. Granted it had been over 10 years and I don’t know what it takes to become deprogrammed, but considering how much she still thought about the cult leader and his sayings, it didn’t *quite* mesh with her knowledge progression and online abilities. And especially humor. I liked the humor but I’m pretty sure you can’t develop that kind of humor that late in life after growing up in a cult. But alas, I don’t really care that much. I let it play.
It was a really intriguing premise, with how prevalent identity theft is, it’s a bit of a warning as well with what information we share with others. I’d like to think I wouldn’t fall for inadvertently giving away my security question answers, but it helps you see how easy it could be for someone to fool you. Stay alert, people- no one needs to know your mother’s maiden name or the street you used to live on. Fly the red flag!
So yeah, if you can get past the language, you’re going to enjoy this book.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**
See more of my reviews at www.shelfreflection.com!
Apparently I’m on a #metoo kick right now (unintentionally) having just read The Night Swim right before this. I would say this book is a lot more subtle in that respect though and touches on physical abuse instead of rape.
I was really intrigued by the premise of two women wanting to escape their lives and deciding to switch tickets, then finding out one of the planes crash leaving one woman to figure out the secrets of the other potentially dead woman. Very mysterious. The flipping POVs in this book was very clear to follow- Claire was always in the present and Eva was all in the past. I felt like the pace was good and kept me engaged.
The author made a good point in the back of the book that a lot of female-driven suspense novels popular these days portray an unreliable narrator or kind of a crazy woman type of thing and so she wanted to write something with a strong, smart, kind, rational, normal-I guess, female characters. I noticed that and appreciate it. She proved that you can still write a decent book without dysfunctional main characters! I also appreciated the theme of female friendship. It’s refreshing when a female character who is struggling through something has a reliable and genuine female friend- not a romantic interest (male or female)- to help her on her journey. True friendships are really downplayed in suspense novels, obviously sometimes for good reason, but I think in this book it added a lot to the likability of the story and characters to not fall back on romantic feelings to get them through the day.
One thing I was a bit disappointed by was what I felt was a missed opportunity to add more action towards the end as Claire’s ‘disappearance’ starts to unravel. I thought the author was gonna go there but then within a paragraph the danger immediately dissipated and it wrapped up fairly quickly. Overall I liked how it ended, but wish she would have added an extra few scenes of dangerous peril with Claire’s story before it came to a close. Because of that and the few to frequent F-words (27 f-words, 14 s-words), gave this a 4 star rating.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**
See more of my reviews at www.shelfreflection.com!
I was really intrigued by the premise of two women wanting to escape their lives and deciding to switch tickets, then finding out one of the planes crash leaving one woman to figure out the secrets of the other potentially dead woman. Very mysterious. The flipping POVs in this book was very clear to follow- Claire was always in the present and Eva was all in the past. I felt like the pace was good and kept me engaged.
The author made a good point in the back of the book that a lot of female-driven suspense novels popular these days portray an unreliable narrator or kind of a crazy woman type of thing and so she wanted to write something with a strong, smart, kind, rational, normal-I guess, female characters. I noticed that and appreciate it. She proved that you can still write a decent book without dysfunctional main characters! I also appreciated the theme of female friendship. It’s refreshing when a female character who is struggling through something has a reliable and genuine female friend- not a romantic interest (male or female)- to help her on her journey. True friendships are really downplayed in suspense novels, obviously sometimes for good reason, but I think in this book it added a lot to the likability of the story and characters to not fall back on romantic feelings to get them through the day.
One thing I was a bit disappointed by was what I felt was a missed opportunity to add more action towards the end as Claire’s ‘disappearance’ starts to unravel. I thought the author was gonna go there but then within a paragraph the danger immediately dissipated and it wrapped up fairly quickly. Overall I liked how it ended, but wish she would have added an extra few scenes of dangerous peril with Claire’s story before it came to a close. Because of that and the few to frequent F-words (27 f-words, 14 s-words), gave this a 4 star rating.
**Received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**
See more of my reviews at www.shelfreflection.com!