Review | Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon // Daniel Keyes

“Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love.”
“Your genius has destroyed your faith in the world and in your fellow men.” 

Wow, that was a sad book. You know what, sad isn’t the right word. It opened me up and bled me dry. I didn’t cry but my throat burned a little bit and my eyes got a little wet…

I was emotional, the whole way through. 

No spoilers but seriously, read this book. 

I went in blind. No synopsis, no summary, nothing.

At first, I was like what is this? 

And then it got so good that I started it at 10 pm and thought I would be able to go to bed and then I wasn’t able to.

It was enrapturing. There were a couple of scenes that made me uncomfortable, but I think that was the point. As Charlie gets more intelligent, the people around him get more uncomfortable. They are used to him being a certain way and then he is suddenly changed. They can no longer make fun of him because he understands what they are saying and why they laugh. 

There is something fundamentally universal about his rise and inevitable fall. Something irrevocably human. 

Intelligence does not make the man, but emotional intelligence does. 

Every human interaction was a surprise. I didn’t know how they would react to him because that is very similar to the way that Charlie felt. 

The journal entries/progress reports do an amazing job of setting the pace of the book. There is never a slow moment. Every word has meaning and depth and there is something beautiful in the chaos of his words. 

We are all human, regardless of intelligence. I think this book can simply be a lesson in humility or it can take you on a ride to make you question how you treat people and how you would like to be treated. 

So like I said, read the book. I highly recommend it. 4.5 stars out of 5. Not a full 5 because I don’t know if I could do a reread of this. 

2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge – A book set on college or university campus
2019 ATY Challenge – A book set in a school or university 

Review | Before The Devil Breaks You

Before The Devil Breaks You // Libba Bray

“The moment your country first sinned, I emerged, slick and formless. Born of your restless ambition. Your greed, and hunger. You, who tell yourselves a story of yourselves. Do you imagine you can rid yourselves of me? You have created me! I am you, incarnate—a new god for a brave new world. I am written into your history now. I am written into you. And oh! What a nation of glorious dreamers and devourers!”

The hardest thing about reviewing a book in an ongoing series, is everything that I talk about is a spoiler. 

EVERYTHING. 

There are so many things that I want to say. I had a lot of emotions about this book. All the characters have me enraptured. I genuinely care about them and I’m rooting for their success! 

I was disappointed in a couple of scenes, which is why it won’t get 5/5 stars, but it’s still a solid read and well worth the 6 hours. 

This is the first book that I have finished the author’s notes. Usually, I’m done when the end of the novel is, but I have carried on being hungry for more information. The amount of research and care that has been put into this book series is something to be admired. It took me an entire weekend to finish this book and I found myself wanting to steal away from friends to dive back into this world. 

Also, there are a couple of historical figures that make appearances in this book. 

There is love, death, fear, desire, sex, and tests of loyalty. Nothing is what you think it will be.

NOTHING.

I am patiently waiting for the next book. 

….Now I remember why I don’t like book series. 

I’ve never been very patient. 

2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge – A book you think should be turned into a movie
2019 ATY Reading Challenge – A book featuring a historical figure

Review | Lair of Dreams

Lair of Dreams // Libba Bray

Sometimes the people dispensed with what was difficult or inconvenient to acknowledge. So the good people maintained the illusion of democracy and wrote another hymn to America. They sang loud enough to drown out dissent. They sang loud enough to overpower their own doubts. There were no plaques to commemorate mistakes. But the past didn’t forget. History was haunted by the ghosts of buried crimes, which required periodic exorcisms of truth. Actions had consequences.

This story is a continuation of the diviners series. We are introduced to a new character called Ling Chan. She’s great. LOVE HER. We learn about this “sleeping sickness” where people go to sleep and they just don’t wake up. 

I loved it. 

The only thing that annoyed me was the fact that Evie was too self-centered. I feel like that was played up way too much and at all the wrong times, especially when she was so active in the last book on wanting to save everyone. 

My favorite part of the book has to be the witty banter between Henry and Ling because it’s so heartwarming to see two people who are out of the realm of society and yet can find comfort in each and IT’S NOT SEXUAL! 

I was not a fan of the love triangle angle explored in this installment. It made me actually dislike Mabel because she seemed like she didn’t understand her worth, just because she didn’t have powers. I can see her potentially betraying Evie in a later book because of her built up resentment. 

Bray is very brave in her attempt to capture the Chinese immigrant experience, but I don’t think she ratcheted up the fear enough. Quarantine camps are mentioned but it doesn’t feel like there is enough emotion around the reaction. 

I loved the book for a plethora of reasons but one that stands out is that it’s an ensemble piece that has developed from a single POV. 

I think that Libby Bray does a great job of folding stories together and in so doing, created a world I can really sink myself into. The imagery, the poetic prose lulls me to a place where I can forget where I am and what time it is and completely give myself over. 

Kind of like those dreams.

2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge – a book about ghosts 
2019 ATY Challenge – A book with more than 500 pages

Rave Review | 13 Minutes by Sarah Pinborough

I am a cliché, was his next coherent thought. I am the early-morning dog-walker who finds a body.

Wow, just wow. 

Although the content was very explicit, it was overall a good book. There was a twist of the ending that I did not see coming. at all. Now this is not going to be a spoiler review so I won’t tell you what that is but…Holy crap.

For once, I only have a couple of qualms. My qualms are as follows: there was a lot of teenage angst in this book and as much as I understand it, the role that the parents play in this is so minuscule that you wonder whether or not these parents actually care about the children at all. It didn’t feel like a normal high school to me. It felt like an over dramatization of what a TV high school would be, which would just be a bunch of 25 year olds younger doing the adult things. Like Riverdale. I suppose that was the necessary evil but when you really look at what people are really like at 16. This is extraordinary. 

I didn’t like the way that they added another person into the mix and then did not give any back story about that. I guess it’s supposed to be commentary about how we just throw away people. Maybe about how tragedy is really only a tragedy for the amount of time it takes to get likes on your Instagram or Facebook. Also I can tell that the person who wrote this is older because young people don’t use Facebook anymore like at all. 

Now for the things I did like: everything else.

I feel like the drama was very real. It was very heightened because when you’re that age everything is a big deal and everything is the end of the world and I think Sarah did a really good job of putting that together. There wasn’t a lot of descriptive language about the character’s appearances but I think that was on purpose because wanting the characters to feel Universal is part of it. like Natasha and Becca and Hayley and Jen and Hannah could be anyone. 

I was completely riveted. I didn’t want to put it down which is the sign that it’s a good book but even though it’s about teenagers it didn’t feel like YA fiction to me. It was a lot of complaining by Becca in the beginning and she was just an annoying character but I think that was kind of the point. You want to be able to have characters in your story that your audience will love to hate. I was annoyed by her. The only thing that would have been a little bit better would be if I knew when they were switching off perspectives because it took me a couple of seconds to get that and their voices were very very similar and it was kind of jarring because I didn’t know if this was supposed to be third person or first person or whatever was. 

But all in all pretty solid work of fiction I give it a ⅘ stars. 

2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge – A book revolving around a puzzle or game
2019 ATY Challenge – A book related to something cold 

RAVE REVIEW | Recursion by Blake Crouch

Am I mad about the fact that it took me three months to read this book? Nope.

Was it because I was genuinely confused? Yes.

Recursion is part sci-fi, part romance, and all parts insane. I’m not usually a fan of science fiction but the way Blake Crouch writes transcends the genre. I fully believe that’s why the book got the hype that it did. This is a love story through and through. It’s a love story for us to understand and feel the gravity of our realities. The main plot is about a New York Police detective named Barry who is called to intervene when a woman has false memory syndrome and is about to commit suicide, she can remember a whole life with her husband that didn’t really happen. That disparity causes her to jump. And Barry to act. We follow him into his story and background and learn about one fateful night that changed his life forever. We also get another perspective but I’m not going to say anything about that and give anything away.

This book is beyond a wild ride, it’s jarring, it’s gripping, it’s gross (I.e. skin melting) but each page you flip gives you another reason to gasp and smile. I couldn’t find anything wrong with the book. It took me a long time to get through because I was convinced that I wasn’t in the right space for it but once I started it back up, I couldn’t put it back down.

Reading the acknowledgments highlighted that the names of the characters in the book were inspired by people in Crouch’s life. That’s why this book felt more realistic, no fabrications, just real people in impossible situations fighting to make a difference.

So suspend belief, find a quiet place, and read this.

Rave Review | Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton

So I’m buggin’. 

Like very surprised. 

I did not think I was going to like this book, simply because the very first page has a typo on it. Without getting too much into the plot, it’s basically the story of a woman, Grace, who goes back into a burning building to save her child, Jenny, and the whole book is about what happens afterwards and how the fire started. 

The first thing that I need to mention is the way that it is written is very odd. It almost feels like it’s a letter to someone for 432 pages. That threw me off a little bit. especially because I didn’t know who was talking to whom at the beginning of the book. but once I figured that out, this book gets very good. It delves into the complexities of motherhood and appearances and fatherhood in a very nuanced way. 

At first, I was very annoyed with the mother because she kept going on these random asides to talk about fashion and superficial presumptions and it didn’t really seem relevant to the plot so it kind of felt like padding. Some of the interactions between the mother and daughter were really confusing just because of the way that they were laid out in the book but if it was an audiobook, I really don’t think that would be an issue.

This book threw me for a loop like I didn’t know who set the fire or what happened with the fire, or the teacher. I thought it was one thing and then it was another thing and it was just very back and forth but in an elegant way. I felt myself starting to get frustrated because certain characters didn’t know certain things that we, the audience, knew. And that’s when I knew I found a great book because it’s supposed to invoke my anger, my tears, all of my emotions. 

And it did. 

I’ve literally never done this much annotation in a book before. I had over 65 notes and 73 highlights. 

Before the last 15 chapters, I was fully ready to have this be a rant review about how much this book made me angry. And then out of nowhere, I was like what??? Like over and over again. 

So with that in mind, I need to give this a solid 4 stars. The concept and plot were spot on, the writing style was very weird and confusing so it’s not a 5 star for me, but if you can get over that, I highly recommend it. 

2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge – A book with a plant in the title or on the cover 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN| The Whisper Man by Alex North

The Whisper Man by Alex North is a suspense thriller about a man and his son who recently lost their wife and mother. They move to a new town into a spooky house and just when they feel like their lives are settling down, their lives are thrown into chaos. The winter before a boy was taken from his room by a man whispering by his window. Is Jake next? 

Divided into six parts and four perspectives, The Whisper Man weaves a story not just about murder and kidnapping but about familial relationships. Tom is having a hard time raising Jake when Rebecca dies because his temper rises up and he doesn’t know how to handle Jake talking to an imaginary friend. His loneliness and anger make it difficult for him to really see what is going on. 

The other two perspectives are of the detectives working on the case. Amanda who is a rookie detective on her first big case, and Pete who caught The Whisper Man twenty years earlier and is still grappling with the guilt of not finding the body of the last boy who was taken. 

The father and son theme is throughout the book, the idea of second chances, the idea of really listening to the people around you. Besides the fact that I guess who was taking this new batch of boys right away, it was a scary read. Whenever children are involved and they are talking to people who aren’t there and saying things that don’t make sense, that scares me more than anything. Count me out for those Annabelle movies.

It was overall well written, I didn’t skip any pages. I did feel like Amanda’s character wasn’t fleshed out at all. It felt like the beginning of a series for her because I wanted more. I wanted more backstory for Rebecca. None of the women are really given any attention. As great as the other characters are, it doesn’t make up for that lack. 

I enjoyed the story, but it was hard to keep picking up because of the subject matter but as soon as I did pick it up, it was hard to put it down. I appreciate the intricacy of the plot but due to my overindulgence in thrillers, I guess what was going to happen and who was doing it and the big twist as well. 

Does that mean that it wasn’t well done? No. 

Is it a good book? Yes.

Rave Review | The Last Letter From Your Lover by Jojo Moyes

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Last Letter from Your Lover is a multigenerational love story where Jennifer has fallen for a man while married to another, facing the decision of whether to stay in her marriage or to follow her heart. Almost 50 years later, unlucky-in-live Ellie finds the letters Jennifer wrote back and forth with her lover and goes on a quest to find out who wrote the letters.

I have so much to say about this book. Most of it good. I want to preface this by saying that after reading the second book in the Me Before You series, After You, I was going to give up on JoJo Moyes.

But this book seemed like it had a good premise, and I was right, Jojo came through.

Let’s start with my dislikes because it’s a shorter list: 

Dislikes: 
– Ellie’s character was weak and pitiful. I understand that she is supposed to be under the spell of love but having her be older (early 30s) and still mistaking lust for love, doesn’t just seem like a flaw in her actions, but an inherent flaw that she needs therapy for. 

– It reminded me a lot of The Notebook, which i didn’t care for. 

Likes: 
+ Literally everything else. This was the one time that I didn’t already guess what was going to happen before it did. I mean, it was almost like I was being taken on this ride and it was dark and my body was just being jostled around from the spins and turns. Anthony’s character was well rounded and lovable; it was so nice to see a man portrayed to have emotions and not be regarded as weak. 

+Jennifer’s character was so interesting because she had this internal struggle that I think women still face, no matter how much time has passed and how modern we are, there will always be a question lingering about whether or not we are to do the “right thing” or the thing that makes us happy. 

+I loved the fact that I couldn’t figure out what was happening next. The formatting was magnificent. I think it did a very good job of pulling me back and forth and making me gasp and shriek in delight and horror. 

Overall/ Final thoughts: 
I’m glad that I gave her another chance because I was not disappointed. However, I’m not going to give it five stars because of the Ellie story line. Her weakness took me out of the action and had me feeling like I needed to skip pages.

2019 PopSugar Reading Challenge – A book with “love” in the title
2019 ATY Challenge – A book that includes a journey

Rave Review | So Sad Today : Personal Essays by Melissa Broder

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This collection of essays is quite possibly the most honest and non-aggrandizing depiction of sex, drug, alcohol, and love addiction I have ever read. In this book, Melissa Broder bares it all. There is a raw nerve that is hit with every statement she tries to use to explain her insides that seem all torn up. 

Dislikes: 
-The order of the essays was linear until the end until she went back and forth through her adolescence. Through her bat mitzvah, and back again to present time. 
-The first essay had me putting the audiobook down for a week and picking it back up. the main issue I had with it was that she traced her pattern of behavior to her birth, which she could not have possibly remembered and took me out of the story.

Likes: 
+Basically everything else. 
+It feels like she did a fourth step inventory for her rehab and published it, which takes a lot of guts. It also seems like she wanted to make the book funny and it wasn’t, which was actually quite redeeming because it fits into the misnomer that everything in life is hunky-dory. Not quite sure if that’s what she wanted, but that’s what came up for me. 
+Talking about her husband with a chronic illness was really jarring but in a good way. It wasn’t a plot point, it was real and brought up the questions that a lot of people who choose to spend their life with a chronic illness sufferer have. The resentment, the fear, the feeling that maybe they weren’t good enough because “that” was all they could get. 

Overall/ Final Thoughts: 
Some of the things she said were a little jarring but I think that’s the point. This book took me out of my comfort zone and asked me to look inside myself. And for that I am thankful.

2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge – Your favorite prompt from a past POPSUGAR Reading challenge : 2018 : a book about mental illness 
2019 ATY Challenge – A book with a (mostly) black cover 

What are your favorite nonfiction essay collections? Let me know in the comments!

Rave Review | The Outsider by Stephen King|Adaptation Coming Soon to HBO

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

So I listened to this on Libby and wasn’t able to take a lot of notes but it is a very long run and I didn’t listen to it at night. Trigger warning on this – which is in the blurb so pay attention to that because it’s very gore.

So we begin the story and it feels very much like a crime procedural because the police find this missing boy and it’s shocking what happened to him. I’m not going to type it out. So they find the DNA of a upstanding guy and he defintiely didn’t do it, but the police arrested him in the middle of a baseball game where everyone in the town is in attendance. This is a BAD idea. The first reason is because they don’t actually know if this guy Terry is guilty or not, and hauling him out in front of everyone and accusing him loudly of a murder of a child basically just signed his death warrant.

Needless to say, everything goes downhill FAST.

Things I liked:
I appreciated the character of Terry Maitland; he was a good upstanding man and it was shown instead of talked about which is always better.
I liked the redemption theme that played throughout the book.
I also enjoyed the writing; as much as I like to space out, it wouldn’t let me.

Things I didn’t like:
Holly’s short stunted voice – this is specific to the audiobook, but it was like she was supposed to be like a robot. We find out that she has a mental illness, but I didn’t like that as her quirk.
I didn’t like the Ralph and Holly love story; especially because Ralph was married.
I didn’t think that it needed to be as long as it was. It was 18 hours long and I was listening to it at 1.5x. It took me three days to get through it.

Overall / Final thoughts:
I get it 4 stars because I probably wouldn’t re-read it but I do appreciate it for what it was. It was interesting but it felt a little like it didn’t need the last chapter. It felt like an epilogue. I recommend it if you like getting grossed out because I definitely dry heaved a couple of times.

2019 ATY Challenge – A book with a monster or “monstrous” character