September Reading Wrap Up | Giving up on TBRs

I read 17 books this month, which is half of what I read in June. I read 36 books in June, but I think this month, I had better quality in the books this month. My average rating this month was a 3.6! My highest rated book of the month was How to Walk Away by Katherine Center. All of the hype around this author is so worth it. The lowest rated book of the month for me was The Arrangement by Robyn Harding. There will be reviews posted on these later in the month.

If you look at the books that I say I am going to read on a monthly basis and what I actually read, they are not the same books. I’m a mood reader and so are thousands of readers. So why do I make a TBR and take a picture of the stack? It’s because the stacks are pretty, but let’s be honest, I do this all of the time. I’ll go to a library and I stay for too long then I will try to find a book that I heard about on Instagram. I will read the book, but you better believe it wasn’t on the long list that I made at the beginning of the month.

One of the things that I’m going to actively try to do is limit my visits to the library! I know! It’s basically a second home, but I have over 400 unread books in my possession and they are not going to read themselves. Last month I saw the #unreadshelfchallenge. And even though I miss writing in my books that I own (and reading them), I kept borrowing books. I mean, I have 15 library books on my table as I type this.

So the best thing to do is stop making a TBR! I obviously have a master list of everything that I would like to read before I die, but this monthly TBR list is not going to happen for me anymore. However, I’m going to be posting a “monthly interested” list. 

Is that the same thing? Kind of. But I don’t feel so much like a failure this way. 

Reading Challenge Updates: 

I’m almost done with the POPSUGAR Challenge! Two prompts left out of 50. 

ATY (Around the Year) Challenge – Three prompts out of 52. 

Are you participating in any reading challenges this year? Let me know in the comments!

Rave Review | Mr. Tender’s Girl by Carter Wilson

Well researched and formative, Mr. Tender’s Girl by Carter Wilson is about a woman whose father created a character and that character possessed her friends to stab her in a park as a sacrifice to this Demon. It’s been 14 years and The demon has come to haunt her again.

I picked this book up on a whim. I had heard about Wilson’s newest novel, The Dead girl in 2A and I wanted to read some of his earlier work before diving into his most recent. I loved this book so I will definitely be picking up his most recent work. One of the things that I most loved about this book is how visceral the feelings were. Alice is having a panic attack on her kitchen floor, one of many in her life and reading the experience put me in smack dab in that place. It felt so utterly real to me.

One of the things that I enjoy most in a novel is the world building, the backstory to the reason the characters are the way they are and this idea of Mister Tender, graphic novels, made me feel like I should google it and see if it really existed because it felt that real. Reading the author’s interview in the back of the book gave an insight as to where the crime against Alice came from. The Slenderman.

I tend to pick up books because of the synopsis and then so much time elapses between me picking up and actually reading it that I often forget what it is about. It’s like going in blind and with this book, that worked to my advantage. Everything that happened was a shock, everything that twisted jarred me in such a delightful way.

This is the perfect book to keep you up all night, switching on the lights, looking around to see if anyone is watching you. The paranoid is ripe. It’s the perfect book if you are looking for a right scare and I’ve never been into horror books, but this has made me a true fan. Or maybe just a fan of Carter Wilson.

Book Review | One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. MacManus

One of Us Is Lying // Karen M. MacManus

One of Us Is Lying is a crime mystery – one part breakfast club and one part clue. A YA whodunnit with a twist you won’t forget.

SPOILERS AHEAD

This book read like a Scooby Doo episode, but I say that with all the love. This was so nostalgic of the high school drama shows, like Degrassi but just longer.

The characters were supposed to be stereotypical and they were but the way the conflict was handled was really good. I felt like the book itself dragged on for a little bit and the romance between the nerd and the loner was a bit contrived. Especially when I could see it coming but I did appreciate then when it happened, it didn’t take over the whole book. 

Now for the parts that I did like, when everything was revealed. Everything clicked together so perfectly and the reasoning behind the whole thing was so petty and ridiculous, it didn’t really make sense and then it made me feel like it was trying to go in another direction but changed its mind. The concept itself was pretty genius. It was YA but didn’t feel like YA. I think that was because there was more at stake than in normal YA. 

I appreciated that the pretty girl didn’t actually end up with anyone. It made me feel a little bit better about the ending, especially because that’s what I’m always preaching. About how young girls in YA novels always find comfort in the arms of a guy instead of their own damn arms. I’m glad that she fought back and I love it when victims in books like this have a chance at redemption. 

The epilogue really just focused on that romance between the smart girl and the loner. That Nate just shuts down after he’s freed from jail. Also giving him a third shot to mess with your heart, bad call. For someone so smart, it’s really odd to see her just melting into this guy who pushed her away multiple times and shows up on the one night when she is finally not thinking about him. I think that the book would have been WAY better without that.

As much as I appreciated the multiple POVs in this book, each character didn’t have a distinct voice. They used a lot of the same diction to describe things. 

I would normally give this a 3 star but again for nostalgia’s sake, I will add a star. And for the fact that this book was marketed as exactly what it was. 

4 out of 5 stars

2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge – A book that makes you nostalgic
2019 ATY Challenge – A book by an author who has more than one book on your TBR 

1001 Books to Read Before You Die | Rave Review | The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

This book is about a detective on the streets of LA who takes a job from an old disabled military vet with two young daughters. The general is being blackmailed and this private detective is hired to figure out what is going on and make this all go away. Seems simple enough, right?

I picked up this book because it was on the list of 1001 books to read before you die. (I will save the trouble of going around looking for an accurate list. Click the link.) This was from the core list which hasn’t changed and the list itself has been changing about every four years. Does this book belong on the list? Absolutely.

First I want to talk about the ratings that it has been getting for the woman beating and misogyny in the text. There have been some bad ratings based on that and the fact that it’s really not as good as the ones that have followed in the noir genre. Lots of art and media has not really aged well. Lolita by Valdmir Nabokov is a great example of that. There are so many books that are a reflection of the reality of the times, especially because the book was written by an ex oil executive (older rich white dude). 

But the fact of the matter is…It is written really well. The way that that the scenes are described are incredibly visual. I could imagine, every bit of rain that feel and the glistening glare of guns. The one thing I couldn’t visualize was the main character and I think that is intentional. I rarely like the waxing and waning of certain characters in other books. I read one book where the protagonist did a page and a half of thinking and didn’t do anything. In my mind, I was imagining her standing frozen in place for several minutes…at which point someone should act like that’s weird, not like the world froze Saved by the bell style. 

This book did to crime fiction what Jane Austen did to romance, when you look back on the tropes that litter today’s romance (enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, matchmatching, etc.), we see them now as played out because people have done them before.

As for the plot, it is very convoluted and confusing but that is probably because I listened to it and didn’t read it from the page. There are so many other complicated twists that made it hard to follow the narrative. The one thing I did love was the reveals. And there were so many of them. I had no idea what was going to happen next. The indication of a good thriller to me is the twist. 

Our main detective is anything but a nice guy but he doesn’t try to be. The relatable factor goes up when you realize that there is nothing about him that you are supposed to like. He drinks too much, he hits women and he just generally sucks but he sticks by his word and gets the job done. Since this there have been thousands of iterations of the hardened detective trope (Luther, Broadchurch, Columbo, etc), even the show House takes that and moves it into the medical sphere.

So what are the takeaways from reading something this old and iconic? Take it for what it is. It was written in a different time of society and at the end of the day, it paved the road for a lot of the media that we (I) enjoy today.

Have you read anything from the 1001 books to read before you die list? 

Ranty Rave Review | The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman

The Real Lolita is the true crime non fiction book about the true origin of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I have tried on three separate occasions to read that book. I own it, but I’ve never finished it, in either it’s novel or movie form.

Sarah Weinman does a deep dive into the 1948 case of Sally Horner (Real name : Florence Horner) which she says is the basis for the Lolita narrative. Sally Horner was aged 11 when she was put on a bus to Atlantic CIty by her mother Ella by the behest of Frank LaSalle. Ella had never met the man, just speaking briefly on the phone with him, as he told her that he was taking a vacation with his wife and children and had room for Little Sally to come along. Upon dropping Sally off at the train station, she didn’t see any family around the middle aged man, nor did he come out to greet her. Ella would not see Sally until 21 months later.

The link between the work and the case has been talked about previously in a number of news articles and magazines, however this book seems to be the only real account of the life of Sally Horner told by documents and accounts told by friends and relatives. 

The chapters hop back and forth between the account of Sally’s abduction and abuse and the writing and subsequent publication of Lolita, as well as the adamant refusal to give credence to the claims of his pilfering of the true story for his novel.

This was extremely well written. Weinman told Sally’s story with reverence and tact. The issues with publication detailed in the book could have been left out. The reason being that it had nothing to do with the content of the book. 

Here is where I disagree and am confused by Weinman’s line of logic. By her own research and admission, Nabokov started writing about inappropriate relationships before he emigrated to America. In fact, he started writing Lolita before Sally Horner was even taken in 1948. It’s interesting to me that the question posed and the answers given both err on the side of conspiracy.

Is the point of the book to give Sally a voice because her life was cut so short after such a brutal and harrowing experience? Well, no because there isn’t much to garner from the media from that time and most of the people with first hand accounts are dead. 

Or is the point to demonize Nabokov for writing a book like Lolita? 

In the last few chapters, Weinman makes the point that without a book like Lolita, there wouldn’t have been the popular culture perversion of grown women dressing up in baby doll clothing. I would pose the question: without lolita, would we be as aware of sexual predators in our society? By talking about this, Nabokov gave a voice to something sick and perverse but also told the world that there are people like that in our world.

Is it Nabokov’s fault that pop culture took the book at face value and ascribed sexuality to children instead of seeing the issues with it?

I have heard that I should read Rust and Stardust for a more fleshed out account of Sally Horner’s life, fictitious as it is. 

What do you think about true crime books? What are some of your favorites? 

Rave Review | The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘Nothing in the world is hidden forever’

Wilkie Collins, No Name.

It has been a long time (read: 27 days) since I read something that made me jump out of my chair. This was a slow burn but a great payoff.

The Stranger Diaries is about a woman, Clare, who works at a school that used to be the estate of famed horror writer H.M Holland. Her friend and co-worker, Ella, dies and everyone is shocked by this murder in this small sleepy town.

I picked this up back in June and kept putting it off because there was always something newer and more pressing to read. But Tuesday, I finally picked it up and I mean, it was a wild ride. The writing style was interesting because Griffiths took us back through the narrative from three differing perspectives. It didn’t feel repetitive. It felt like The Perfect Liar by Thomas Christopher Greene. The only issue I had with it is that because it was “diaries” a lot of the story was told and not shown. Over explication for the sake of character development. I’m not mad at it; It’s just part of it.

There was a big mystery that needed to be solved and the urgency was there interwoven with the mundane. This book is not just a murder mystery, intermingling with the basic narrative are excerpts from The Stranger. This made it feel more real; I wanted to see if this short story author was a real person. It does a great job of including diversity, even including racial microaggressions made by the characters.

The only LGBT character was the detective and it’s not treated as a twist, which is nice, but it feels added to add nuance to an already complex character.

When I finished the book, I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to write a review about it. This book is so underhyped and it’s so incredibly good. I figured out the mystery pretty much right away but it was gratifying to see the detective figure it out and also for the suspense to build as you try to figure out where the motivation lies.

I think the reason why I liked this book so much was that there was no hype to live up to. It was just simply a book about a scary story and it pushed my boundaries a little bit. I think that’s the point of the books we read. We try to find something that makes us learn something or make us uncomfortable or take us to that part of ourselves that we revel in but never dare experience in the real world.

Maybe next time I won’t wait so long to open the next book on my TBR.

5 stars.

Rave Review | Watching You by Lisa Jewell

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Watching You by Lisa Jewell is a story about an exclusive neighborhood where a new neighbor develops a maddening crush on a charming and affable headmaster. When someone ends up dead in their kitchen, everyone in this neighborhood is a suspect.

One of the things that I love about this book is that it takes what you assume and uses it against you. As readers we are spectators, just like Freddie in his room, we see from the outside and assume we know what lies deep within but we don’t know anything and Jewell taught me that using this book.

It takes place in the upper crust countryside. There’s a whole cast of characters but we are only given four limited third person perspectives. The trouble with reviewing thrillers is that every plot development past page one feels like a spoiler because usually the blurbs are purposefully vague.

Now for the writing, which I can talk about. Jewell tried to do different writing styles for the different perspectives but it all ended sounding the same. Except for one chapter of Freddie’s sounding purposefully choppy. Because he’s on the spectrum. I especially had a problem with his depiction because he was watching people and the book made him seem really creepy and something he does at the end is kind of messed up.

As for Tom Fitzwilliam, I’m sorry but the attraction Joey feels for him is most likely just Daddy issues, but the book doesn’t just come out and say it. She has a really hot husband but she goes after an old man and it seems like she is using her mother’s death to mess up her life and make excuses for not growing up. Which makes me supremely annoyed with her, especially when she is going on and on about his body and it’s “softness” UGH. And it had no direct correlation to the plot. Joey is a foil and I have to hear about her weird crush for nothing. Not to mention the red suede shoes in every other chapter.

Another thing that stopped this being a five star book for me was the fact that there were a lot of interlocking pieces that seemed to go together but didn’t have any bearing on the story at all. Classic misdirection.

Again the depiction of women in this book was pretty bad, I didn’t see any redeeming qualities in most of them. The letter at the end of the book didn’t make a lot of sense and I felt like it was I saw the twist coming about half way through part two, but I think that it was handled pretty well. One of my gripes with thrillers is if I can guess the ending and I didn’t fully guess it so that’s enough to warrant 4 stars.

My First Read of Twilight

Girl, without your boyfriend, you are depressed? Oh my gosh.

Okay, this book is now a guilty pleasure. Will I watch that movie again? Yes.

Will I now like it a little less knowing that Bella is supposed to be more feisty? Yes.

Also why do they always do that in Hollywood? I heard Ginny was supposed to be a snarky bad ass too.

Do I like this book? Yes.

Will I admit that to anyone but you all? No.

Is this well written? Not really, but it’s meant for 15 year olds. Although my 15 year old self would be very upset by the simplistic sentence structure, it makes the 401 pages go pretty quickly.

Let’s talk about why we are really here.

The problematic points of this romance: Basically Edward is a stalker with superpowers who doesn’t really care what Bella wants because he “loves” her. Case in point, every time she says that she isn’t hungry, he makes her eat; whenever she wants to know something like where he is taking her, she doesn’t get to know. He’s more hot and cold anything else I could imagine and nothing is quite as frustrating as having your first love be super back and forth with you. She starts to be obsessed with him. I mean, Girl is telling this boy to END her life so they can be together. She keeps remarking about how good looking this guy is, I mean I get it, but we never really know whether or not she truly loves him or if she is just being manipulated by his glamour.

I don’t know if I’m in the one percent but I watched all the movies before picking up the first book. Even with that in mind, I like the book better than the movie. I understand that they had a time limit but they used the time they had to extract Bella’s personality from her character completely. As for all the boys fawning all over her, it’s just a matter of them not having fresh attainable meat. Living in a small town means you’ve known everyone basically their whole lives. I don’t think that needed to specifically be said but it should have been hinted at a little more. Maybe then the books that came after wouldn’t keep playing the plain jane card (the girl with nothing on substance to her is irresistible to the charming handsome rich guy.)

Anyway, here are the things that I liked better in the book than the movie.

1. Edward is supposed to be a ginger – I think the movie tried but Hollywood has never really typecast red heads as being hot. I guess now Riverdale has done something to change that.
2. Bella’s dad seems to like the Cullens a lot more than in the movie. – in the book, Charlie sticks up for Carlisle. I don’t remember him doing that in the movie.
3. Bella cooks, specifically for Charlie – In the book there is more backstory about how loose her mother is, basically hinting that Bella was doing a lot of mothering, something that she continued to do while living with Charlie.
4. She’s more feisty – She talks back a lot more. It’s snarky and logical and sometimes witty.
5. She also meets Jacob up later in the book on the beach trip – She meets Jacob at La Push and he tells her about the cold ones but he’s a year younger and he doesn’t seem all that jealous of her relationship with Edward.
6. Mike and Tyler are way more annoying in the books. – She likens him to a puppy dog and he doesn’t get the hint after like four times of him rejecting her. It’s a lot more brutal in the book.
7. The backstory for the other vampires are also in the book. – Carlisle’s backstory is so cool. Especially how Edward was his first companion and Rosalie was supposed to be a mate for Edward.
8. The almost dead thing is explained – the way that Edward was dying then Carlisle turned him in order for him to “save” him.
9. Jasper’s powers are explained as well – It doesn’t even seem like he has any powers, in fact the movie just has him being weird and hungry all the time.
10. Jasper actually talks – He seems less unnerving. (see. 9)

All in all, it was a solid read. A little annoying in the end, but that’s because she was just so over dramatic. “Don’t leave me!” It’s typical of this genre.

3 stars.

Rave Review | A Nearly Normal Family by M.T. Edvardsson

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Experience tells me that when you dislike someone on such vague grounds, the problem often rests with you.” Pg 36

This book answers the age-old question of what a father and mother will do for their child in the most horrific circumstances.

Newly minted 18-year-old Stella Sandell is accused of the crime of stabbing 33 year old Christopher Olsen to death with a large knife. Did she do it? What do her parents believe? What do you believe?

I picked up this book because it was all over bookstagram. There wasn’t a whole lot of hype but there was enough that I felt the need to pick it up.

When I finished the book, I was a little underwhelmed. I think that I miscategorized this book as a thriller when in fact, it is a Nordic noir, in the same vein as Dear Mother by Nova Lee Maier. I expected a lot from a book like this because of the differing perspectives and that was a way of telling the story that I had never experienced. In that regard, it did well, I think the way it was structured was masterful, however, the father’s portion was too long (150 pages of the total 389) and I almost DNF’d this title because I was getting increasingly frustrated with him. The mother’s perspective is stuck at the end of the book with just under over 90 pages, not including the epilogue. It didn’t feel very equal.

The book is unique in showing us the same scenes from differing perspectives. It does a lot to open your eyes to the possibilities of the children we raise and how much control we really have on how they turn out. It did so well to define the lines between right and wrong and then completely blur them. Even though I don’t have kids, I could relate to the feeling of failure. Have you ever put some much effort into something and then things not go the way you planned? Have you ever let the silence linger for so long that you don’t remember that there were ever words in the spaces? Thinking that if you don’t talk about it, it will just magically get better?

I loved the writing. Honestly, with the exception of the mentions of Swedish cities and handball, you wouldn’t even know it was a translation. The words flowed so well, written with such artistry. There wasn’t a lot of character development of the mother. I left the book wondering what her motivations were. A lot of the characters outside of the three perspectives were casualties of the narrative. However, that is part of the whole point, the thought that nothing else is more important than the problem that they are facing at that moment.

The last 90 pages felt rushed. The pacing of the story picked up so much that I completely skipped over the verdict because I didn’t know what was going on. It reverted back and forth from flashbacks to the present, while granted they were separated by chapters, it still didn’t feel like a cohesive story.

With all of that in mind, do I should you pick up this book?

Absolutely.

Even though this is M.T. Edvardsson’s first US release (not his first novel), he brings a new voice and challenges us to look inside ourselves with a universal question and real characters to relate to, not typically found in today’s fiction.

I will be picking up anything he decides to write in the future.

4.5 stars.

Rave Review | A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4) by Brittany Cavallaro

⭐⭐⭐⭐

“That was, of course, the last that anyone had seen of her. AS though she has cut a hole into the night and climbed through it. As though she had erased herself from the bottom up.” pg 52.

This is the final installment of the Charlotte Holmes series. This takes place when everything is just buttoned up. All the Moriatrys at bay and in some respects the smoke has cleared from the lives of Holmes and Watson. This is also the only book out of this series where Charlotte is the only narrator. A woman in charge of a summer program at Oxford is trying to stop another summer of “accidents” from befalling her students, so she asks Charlotte to investigate and in part to keep them all safe. It is certainly more complicated than that. Last year, a girl disappeared. 

I picked this book up, not knowing that it was the last book in the series and there I was met with the challenge of finishing all the previous books. Even though this was the finale, this was not my favorite. In fact, I think it was my least. After I finished, I was left thinking, “What was that?” In part because of the epilogue, not because of the story itself. 

The reason why this book/series is unique is that it doesn’t read like young adult fiction. It reads like a regular fiction novel. The only difference I could see was that the characters were school-aged. I loved the fact that it was not just about the mystery but about her growth as a person. 

I didn’t care for the way that Charlotte was constantly putting a timer on how much she could be #normal. It felt like she was so utterly damaged. 

I loved the writing. When the theatre was described, I could literally imagine myself there. 
The case itself felt fast and rudimentary. Not anywhere near personal so in that way, it was better to get it from Charlotte’s perspective. Her distant tone added the element of nonchalance. Solving it and moving on, detached. It was an evolution over these four books. 

The theme was clear. By making Holmes a girl, Cavallaro added strength to an icon. An icon who tried and failed many times to kick a nasty habit. She succeeded in making her the hero of her own story. Her past, though part of her, was not all of her and she was not doomed to repeat it and she was her own person. 

So I would recommend this series to anyone. Even though it is about a teenaged girl, it does what a lot of fiction does, presents a universal problem and aims to solve it. How do you unlearn what you were taught as a child to become your own person? How do you forgive yourself? How do you heal? 

4 stars.