I flew through this book so quickly, it was highly triggering for me to read at some points as i have myself recently left an abusive marriage, and although it was never physical, the psychological scars are still there, and that is the thing, you cannot see these bruises on your heart, but you can feel them, they are always there!

I highlighted so many passages in this book, that i had to come up with my own colour coding, Yellow for abuse (Physical/Mental) Blue for Izzy the MC Gaslighting herself, and Red for her mother Gaslighting herself, and Orange for anyone else!!

This is just horrific, the poor girl is just being abused everywhere by everyone, her step father is not only abusing her, but also her mother, and she is too controlled by him to speak out about it.
And now she is getting abused and raped by the local scumbag school kid.

This was a really good read, but please be aware that this could be extremely triggering for some people to read about the abuse, and although it isn't graphic, there are clear cases of Gaslighting and Manipulation that scream RED FLAGS even when other people are saying "Aww isn't that nice how much he cares for you"

Let me tell you a little story
Are you sitting comfortably?

Then let me begin!

Once upon a time there lived a woman called Maggie, she lives with her daughter Nina.

Maggie loves her daughter very very much, she loves her maybe a little too much, and this makes her very interfering in Nina's life.

Nina doesn't appreciate this and holds a lot of resentment toward Maggie, yet she still lives with her mother, even at nearly 40 years old.

Nina has become a bit of a bitter woman, holding grudges, and even though she projects these onto Nina, she has her own secrets that she is hiding, but Maggie has hers too!

They are civil with each other, and eat dinner with each other every other night, and because Maggie is older and now quite frail, Nina helps her up the stairs to her room, well she need the help really because of the chains she is attached to!

Oh yes, I forgot to mention the fact that Nina has her mother chained up in the attic, sorry about that....My bad!!

You have to read this one to believe it.

Narrated by Elizabeth Knowelden who is a fantastic narrator and made my goosebumps get goosebumps


Coming to a TV screen soon (The rights have been picked up by Rene Zellweger) I can't wait to see what they do with this

I received this gorgeous covered book by Harper 360 and I was super excited to read it, I also wanted to start reading more books by Black authors and Own Voices, and helping out more, so I also purchased the Audio version, so this will be a review for both!

Set in Brooklyn 1998 we follow 3 friends, Quadir, Jarrell and Jasmine.

The book starts at the funeral of Quadir and Jarrell's best friend Steph, Jasmine is Steph's little sister, who was murdered.

Jasmine takes herself off into Steph's bedroom for a moment to herself, and is soon followed by the 2 boys, they then find Steph's stash of tapes of his own music under his bed, and notebooks of lyrics.

The 3 kids are so in awe of how brilliant Steph's music is, that they decide that the whole world needs to hear it, but how do they get it heard, especially when the artist himself is dead and they themselves are only teenagers?

Well being in Brooklyn, the Rap scene was the place to be, and while managing to get CD's printed and a few well connected people to listen, they manage to get Steph's music noticed, and by changing his name to "The Architect" they didn't have to mention that Steph isn't around anymore.

But what happens when a big time record producer want to meet the Artist? And how were the kids to know that some of the lyrics could cause a lot of trouble for everyone?


The narration for this book was by a full cast and it was fabulous, the lyrics are Rapped and very poignant for the late 90's and also today.

I enjoyed this book from beginning to end, grab it if you can

WOW!!! Well, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into when I grabbed this audiobook!!

After 32hrs of listening to this, I was an exhausted, pool of emotions.

This story is HARD GOING, it has ALLL the trigger warnings, so please be careful if you decide to read this, it could be very triggering for some.

The story is about 4 friends from college who decide to all move to NYC One is an architect, one is a painter, one is an actor, and one is a lawyer.

This is their story, each of the characters has their own demons to fight, but none as much as Jude.

Jude has his own story to tell, and it is told in heartbreakingly graphic detail, he is not only brilliant, but he is also a broken child-like gay man, who doesn't really know who he is, and has to rely on Willem to be his emotional crutch and partner.

This is not a fast paced book don't go in expecting the smash-and-grab experience, you won't get that here, but what you will get is connection, a connection with every character, but mostly with Willem and Jude.

This is a highly emotional book, and I can tell you that I SOBBED reading this, I cannot warn you enough about the emotion in this book.

There was great representation in here, there are multiple POC, LGBTQ relationships, Disabled representation in an MC, and a really great friendship base between them all.

It also shows mental health issues and how they are perceived.

This book is LONG, 700+ pages, so don't go into it lightly thinking that it is going to be all hearts and flowers, IT. MOST. DEFINITELY. IS. NOT.

But if you want to read a beautiful story, about friendships, love, loss and horror this is the book for you.

If you were a fly on the wall and lived in a house for years and years, and got to watch every single persons life unfold in front of your eyes, this is what would have been written about it.

TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR EVERYTHING, I AM NOT JOKING HERE!!!!!!

Narrated by Oliver Wyman who was just amazing, it took me a while to get used to his voice, but he made every character come alive, and I was invested in them all.

Another step into this rewritten series and I can't wait to see what is going to happen next.

I love the fact that Lauren Blakely has rewritten and recast this series, and the narration as always is off the charts.

A chance meeting not once but twice is always something that will get me listening, even if it is in the most unlikely of places!

I'm loving this series, it is so well narrated and the story is throwing me for a loop!!

Relationship troubles, secrets and lies, it's all jam packed in this book, I'm excited to see where it goes next.

What a perfect ending to a great series, I love to watched how the characters have grown.

I just love the fact that Lauren Blakely continues to tweak her previous stories to make them better.

This was a perfect conclusion to Trey and Harley's story

A second chance romance, sign me up!!

Joe Arden and Andi Arndt pull it out of the bag again with their excellent narration, and they brought the characters to life.

This is another revamped story by the author, and she is certainly doing the 'vamping' for this one.

Do you ever wonder "what if" with any of your previous relationships? Here's what happens, if "what if" comes true

Wow this one got me flipping pages so fast!!

Lorna had a bucket list when she was 16, she'd made this because she had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer which she managed to beat, so she was living her life to the fullest.

As is a lot of young teenage girls dreams, one of the items on her bucket list, was to meet & marry a rock star, not just any rock star though, it had to be Michael Reyji Ray.

So to be able to go to one of his concerts and to actually meet him, and to actually have him *choose* her and fall in love with her, well it was like a dream come true, except, it really wasn't.

Fast forward 16 years and Lorna is a scared mother of Liberty, she doesn't allow her to go out at night, or go out with friends, and she is fiercely protective over her, to the utter disgust of her daughter, who thinks she is just an ridiculously over protective mother.

But Lorna has high fences and is over protective for a reason, a reason Liberty is not aware of, and thank goodness Liberty doesn't know who her father is, otherwise everything she knows could change.

Except Liberty does find out, and she wants to meet her famous father and find out what he is really like, as her crazy mother has only told her bad things about what a monster he is, and she wants to find out for herself!

Told from the POV of Lorna and Liberty and with a sprinkling of the past from Lorna's POV, Suzy K Quinn takes you on a heart stopping journey.

Please be warned that this book deals with Domestic Abuse and has instances of sexual abuse, a LOT of Gaslighting and Manipulation.

It was very interesting to see how differently Michael acted in front of his friends and family, and then with Lorna and some others, the Red Flags were definitely waving, but unfortunately it is not always possible to see them while you think you are in love!