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 | THE ROSIE PROJECT by Graeme Simsion

Note: I listened to the audiobook for this title. This is a good idea, as the narrator is Australian and the accent is just beautiful.

The Rosie Project is quite incredible for two reasons, one – Bill Gates loves it (check out his blog for his book recommendations) and two – It shows a severely high functioning intelligent man with autism and it is realistic in its portrayal, as far as the time for adjustment and awkward social interactions. The book follows this man while he embarks on “The Wife Project” aptly named as he is trying to find a life companion in a very clinical way. All jokes aside, he is logical in his assessment that data (which he understands) and women (which he does not) can come together to have a good result. But not everything, in theory, can work in practice. Simison takes us on a journey with him, from solely his perspective and slowly we as readers can understand why he is the way he is.

My favorite scene is near the beginning of the book. He is speaking at an event about autism. There are some children in the audience and they understand him completely. He poses a question, highly inappropriate to those of us without those logistical abilities, but the children answer with no hinderances built up from societal norms. He believes he has done a good job by helping the children there gain confidence in themselves by telling them that they are special, not impaired. The sentiment is well-meaning, however by the reaction of the parents, the reader can tell that’s not what they wanted (well at least in that way).

Simison does an incredible job of showing the progression and acceptance of change by someone like Don. In other books that I’ve read about people with autism in romantic settings, the changes are immediate. All of a sudden, the protagonist figures out that he or she likes to be touched. All of a sudden, there is an understanding between the two characters without anything explicitly being said. There is something really lovely about how the romance emerges because it starts as practice and friendship.

The writing is very informative, a graceful mix of showing and telling. Don’s perspective is riddled with information, perhaps too much information but it is not unlike the conversations we have in our heads, perhaps less intelligently but still the same processing.

This book is the first part of a trilogy (I’m bingeing all of them). I recommend reading it, hell even Bill Gates recommended it. I personally didn’t love Helen Hoang’s books so this is a great alternative if you don’t really care for the sex in her books.

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

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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

Rant Review | All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

This is so melodramatic.

This would have been so great for me to read when I was in high school. This is a book about a boy with mental illness. And how he helps a girl heal.

I don’t think I would have understood it though. It seems like something that I would have cried over and fallen in love with Theodore Finch and how damaged he is. But this book does a great job of handling the topic of manic depression. Especially that feeling of being “other”, and being out of control and wanting control and collecting information like it is the only thing worth having.

At first I was confused, Theodore was this larger than life kid, too big for the constraints of regular life. He is just SO quirky and everything that he does is just dishonest and weird. The relationship that Violet and Theo has is just so instant. Violet is just romanticizing Theo after his death. There was nothing categorically special about him. The scavenger hunt hat Violet goes on after his death, just has her blaming herself for what happened / or rather what he did.

Even though I knew that this was going to be romantic, I didn’t realize how much focus was going to be on the emotion of it all. The words just felt so adult and sweeping and poetic and even though normally I’m fine with that, these are 17 year olds and they don’t talk like that. It felt unreal or like it was trying to be something grandiose when it wasn’t.

I saw this book all over the place but I never looked up what it was about so I was going in blind and I’m glad that I did. I doubt very much that I would have picked it up. Partly because I’ve outgrown most of the YA fiction out there and this kind of book is so dramatic that I can’t get myself to feel anything. The lack of communication is just staggering. There are points where if one person would have just talked to the other entire plot points wouldn’t have happened.

I suppose that after a few years outside of that adolescent bubble, the things that were life staggering don’t seem so. I know it’s cliche more than anything but it does get better.

Rave Review | What Doesn’t Kill Her (Cape Charade #2) by Christina Dodd

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What doesn’t kill her by Christina Dodd is the second novel in the Cape Charade series. Here we find Kellen Adams at the Di Luca family orchard turned vineyard. She is having to adjust to motherhood. She is detached and we find her hiding from her daughter when the book begins.

Kellen Adams is a born again badass. After being shot in the head, she fell into a coma and then gave birth without knowing it. She woke up and got the hell out of dodge because she had no memory (the bullet in her skull). She joins up in the military and serves overseas and before long the military gives her a medical honorable discharge because she has a bullet in her brain!

The first book dealt with her doing private security for the Di Luca family on a seaside resort. Well, that’s what it turned into. She was hired to be the resort manager. In that book, we see a lot of what she is made of. Perseverance, steel, and heart. This sequel is no different. 

Kellen needs a mission. She feels useless at the Di Luca Vineyards. Max is running the place and there is that odd situation where he knows what they used to have and she can’t remember. Not to mention the small child from her womb to whom she doesn’t have a connection and is pushed into getting to know. 

First for what I loved: 

Dodd has a way of mixing action and romance and thriller and making genius work. All of the relationships she describes in the book felt real. It wasn’t like instantaneously Kellen was going to intuitively know how to take care of her daughter. It wasn’t like she was going to all of a sudden recover her memory and just fall head over heels with Max. Those things had to be learned and earned. I appreciated the fallibility of Kellen (I still don’t like the name). She made mistakes, she made adjustments, she smiled through her discomfort but also fought until she physically couldn’t. She stands for something and on her word, which means so much and is an inspiration to young girls everywhere.

What I didn’t love: 

Rae. I mean I am all for a precocious kid but this one was just so much over what I was expecting. There were also certain points in the book during their interactions that I felt she didn’t act seven. Maybe it’s just me, I’m a long way from 7 and I haven’t had children, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about but the blankie thing…I just couldn’t. 

The Writing: 

I normally am a huge fan of the writing but the structure took me off guard. In the first book, we mostly got Kellen’s perspective and a little bit of Max’s once he was introduced, but in this story, we also get the perspective of the perpetrator. Which while interesting, was not framed in a way that I could figure out until Kellen was viewed as a third person and not lovingly (not Max). 

Everything was really fast-paced in the beginning so I didn’t know if this was going to be a very short book or just like at some point it was going to slow down. It felt like the Wonder Woman movie, which if you’ve talked to a movie geek, then you will hear all day that it was way too long and could easily have been two movies. This book felt like it could have been two books. It jumps around locales so much I was feeling a bit dizzy.  

In any case, it was a great sequel. It did a great job at the beginning of catching the reader up on the first book and then launching straight into the action! 

I will always commend Christina Dodd for her ability to create a really astounding all-compassing action novel. There are complex relationships, sex, murder, and cute kid moments that will keep you laughing, gasping, and rooting for Kellen and her crew! 

Book Review | The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory

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The Wedding Date is a book about a professional black woman who gets stuck in an elevator with a hot white guy who needs a date to a wedding. Sparks will fly. (I bring up their races because it’s important) 

I’m going to keep the summary that simple and this review without spoilers because I really want you all to read it. 

I’m serious. This book meant so much to me.

I say that because I’m in an interracial relationship myself and this is the first book that I read that didn’t treat that as a plot point or the central point of the book. Two professionals finding their way through life and hopefully to each other. And that’s it. There were parts where race was discussed as something to be understood (Am I going to be the only black person at this party? Not a problem. Just wanted to know.) but it was not a rallying cry for black women to lower their standards (ahem Tyler Perry) or that white men are the enemy. It simply wasn’t brought up. 

It was cute and had me squealing for joy in certain parts. I was taken by how quickly I sped through the book and how much I didn’t want it to end.

They faced realistic challenges, and they weren’t outlandish. It was like I was reading about a couple of friends of mine. It was like I was reading about me. 

Alexa is a complex woman, who has doubts and insecurities, deep beliefs and a job she loves. At no point was Drew the savior of her or the story. Because she didn’t need saving. I feel like that’s why these books are so popular. In real relationships, stable ones anyway, two people come together and find common ground, make each other’s lives easier, happier, better. 

This book had me crying tears of joy. I am not a crier. 

I will be picking up anything Jasmine Guillory decides to pen in the future. 

Am I about to give a contemporary romance five stars? 

You betcha! 

Book Review | The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

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The Kiss Quotient is a smutty classic wrapped up in Asian culture aesthetic. Stella is an autistic woman who has tried to get into a relationship in the past but dislikes sex and everything to do with it. She has a great job and all this money but no one who really understands her. Enter Michael, an escort hired by Stella to teach her how to sex properly. There’s a checklist for this as is in every other avenue of her life. Will her teach her how to love? 

The short answer: yes. 

The long answer: It’s lust because two months have passed in this book and this is insta-love. 

A big part of this book is the fact that Stella is autistic. It is important for her to hide that fact from everyone around her, even though it is very apparent. In the beginning of the book, we are treated to a scene that spurs all this on, this mission to be #normal and be in a normal relationship. It’s a pretty standard conversation. “I want grandkids. You work too much. Why can’t you date that rich good looking creepy guy at your office (there is so much wrong with this)? 

She has all this money, surely this skill can be acquired like anything else. Take a class. So she does and instantly she is comfortable with this complete STRANGER. I get it, he’s hot. Like super K drama hot, but after talking to my friend, who teaches autistic kids. She told me that even high functioning people with autism have difficulty adapting to change and a huge change is having a half naked guy kissing you. 

One of the things that I find misleading and possibly problematic with book covers like these and even books like these is how graphic the sex scenes are. I mean, you knew what you were getting into with those Fifty Shades books. Handcuffs on the cover, dark gray covers. But this is cover is pastel and cute. It was very jarring. I mean, sure, I can take on the train but there is no kind of warning. 

Ultimately the kiss quotient was just a reverse pretty woman, which is cute but it left me wanting something different to happen at the end, which I will not spoil for you. My inability to give it a higher rating comes from the fact that this book was hyped. Everyone on bookstagram was talk about reading it and The Bride Test and while the asian culture aspect was fun (especially the food), the book didn’t meet the high expectations of a hyped book and for one that attempts to represent autism in literature.

3 stars.