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Book Related Topics, Fiction, Mystery, thriller

Book Review : A Good Marriage by Kimberly McCreight

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“And in the end, wasn’t that the key to marriage? Learning to pretend that a few unspoiled things could make up for all the broken ones.”

Lizzie Kitsakis just started working at the prestigious Young and Crane law firm when she gets a call from an old friend, Zach Grayson, from Rikers prison desperately asking for her help. His wife, Amanda, has just been found dead on the floor of their Brooklyn brownstone and he’s the primary suspect. Until recently Lizzie had been a happily underpaid prosecutor with a devoted husband but everything has come crashing down around her. She delves into investigating who could have murdered Amanda, the close knit group that surrounds the couple in Brooklyn who all seem to be hiding secrets of their own and she has to figure out which of these secrets is worth committing murder for.

“Forgiveness is a side effect of love,” he said finally. And sadly, almost. “If you are going to be married, share the ups and downs of life. What other choice is there?”

This is an impressive slow burn of a book. The author starts off building her characters’ backstories and letting us into their lives. We get two different points of view – one from Lizzie as she gets Zach’s call and starts investigating the murder and secondly, from Amanda as we get a countdown of the events that lead up to the murder. The chapters alternate between these two characters so if you don’t like that plot narrative device in a book, this one might not be for you. Even though the book started out slow and built to a crescendo, I never thought for a second it was boring. It was intriguing from the very first page.

“That’s the hardest part about marriage, isn’t it?” Zach went on. “Somebody else’s problems become your own. It doesn’t always feel fair.”

This book was full of twists and turns and none of it was silly but none of it was mind blowing either. It is sprinkled with a lot of deceit, false starts and dead ends but you never feel like the author is toying with your sense of believe. Even though I didn’t see a lot of the twists coming, they just made me go – “oh, ok, I can see that being true”, there wasn’t a huge Gone Girl twist which I loved. I’m tired of every thriller on earth trying to have a huge twist at the end just to cash in on that Gone Girl popularity. Also, I could not guess the killer which is very important to me and this is the fact that kept me reading, I just needed to know who killed Amanda. I read this book all in one day and didn’t go to bed till I was finished.

“I’d been so foolish to think love could change the essential nature of anything.”

After every few chapters, the book presents you with a transcript of a grand jury testimony containing several interviews between witnesses and the prosecutor building the case against Zach. I found these transcripts to be unnecessary and stopped reading them after the first couple installments, just started skipping them. They added nothing to the plot. Also, honestly, the ending was lackluster. Even though I didn’t guess the killer, I still felt oddly unsatisfied. I wanted someone more instrumental to the plot. Anyway, this book is very readable and even though it starts off slow, it still managed to be a big page turner. Gave this 4 stars on Goodreads.

 

Leggy

Fiction, Nigerian Author

Book Review – Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham

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Review: 'Black Sunday,' By Tola Rotimi Abraham : NPR

“I like the idea of a god who knows what it’s like to be a twin. To have no memory of ever being alone.”

The year is 1996 and we are introduced to twins, Bibike and Ariyike, who live with their mother and father and two younger brothers, Andrew and Peter in Lagos, Nigeria. Their house is not exactly a happy home as their parents are constantly at odds. Their mother is the sole bread winner as their dad continuously loses money in hare brained schemes and investments. The girls have different personalities – Ariyike is the friendlier one while Bibike is the more cynical one.

After their mom loses her job, the family joins a Pentecostal church where their dad meets men like him who are “loud, noisy dreamers”. He takes a huge gamble with the money they have that eventually breaks the family apart. The kids are shuttled off to their grandmother’s house and are forced to grow up and face their pain individually. The girls are forced to lean into their individuality and begin their separate and different paths to life for the next two decades.

“I did not believe in love, in marital love, in righteous men or justice”

The quote above captures the tone of this book which I would say was cynical. Black Sunday is the complete opposite of a fairy tale and can be described as gritty but don’t let that scare you because I still enjoyed this book. While the focus was on the twins, we do get the perspectives of the younger brothers at some point. I think Abraham’s goal was to have a jarring, true to life description of how it goes when lives get disrupted and the sole goal is to survive.

“Every girl who hears it is shamed for all the things she otherwise feels no shame for. Shame is female just as merit is male”

When speaking about survival from a female perspective in a patriarchal society, it is inevitable that the difficult topic of sexual assault and also using sex as a weapon to get ahead, will come up. This is woven into the story but not as a lesson or as a sad story but was written rather matter-of-factedly. My guess is so the reader digests it like the girls did – things happen, you get hardened and just do what you have to do without much emotion tied to it. While both sisters chose different paths, Ariyike early on had a clear resolve what she wanted her life to be and made it that way regardless of the cost.

“I learned when I was a little girl that people always lie. I am not sure that everyone means to lie. It is just that they have in their hearts ideas of who they should be, and they are trying to convince themselves that they are who they insist on being. It is tiring”

There were several different thought provoking story lines in this book that could easily have been confusing but Abraham did a good job of weaving all the stories together and you were captivated by each character’s narration of their story. I wish we had more insight into their mother’s side of the story and there was a part of Bibike’s story that had me confused a little bit, because till now I don’t know if it was real or not.

“There were many easy ways to be a stupid girl in Lagos. We were not stupid girls. We were bright with borrowed wisdom”

As mentioned earlier, this isn’t a book with a neatly tied bow on it. What it is, is a well written thought provoking book that wasn’t afraid to be messy and complex and all the while you know that this is a cumulative representation of many a Nigerian girl’s story. I highly recommend this one.

Taynement

Fantasy, Fiction, Young Adult

Book Review – Arc of a Scythe by Neal Shusterman

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Arc of a Scythe is a young adult dystopian trilogy – Scythe, Thunderhead and The Toll. I read the final book last week and decided to review all three books on the blog this week.

Scythe:

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“My greatest wish for humanity is not for peace or comfort or joy. It is that we all still die a little inside every time we witness the death of another. For only the pain of empathy will keep us human. There’s no version of God that can help us if we ever lose that.”

Humanity has finally conquered death, nobody can die completely except by fire. Humans are living for hundreds of years while still having the ability to remain as young as they please. There are no governments, the entire world is controlled and catered to by an AI called The Thunderhead. To curtail the world’s population, a group of people called the Scythes are appointed. These are people who are legally mandated to permanently end life. Citra and Rowan are chosen by Scythe Faraday to apprentice under him, an opportunity neither of them wants but must learn to take life efficiently or risk losing theirs. I gave this 3 stars on good reads.

 

Thunderhead:

Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe, #2)

“How ironic, then, and how poetic, that humankind may have created the Creator out of want for one. Man creates God, who then creates man. Is that not the perfect circle of life? But then, if that turns out to be the case, who is created in whose image?”

The Scythedom has finally made a decision between Rowan and Citra and one of them has gone rogue, determined to put the scythedom through a trial of fire. The old guards -who see being a scythe as a great calling, to be treated with respect and dignity and the new guards – who actually enjoy killing and see being scythes as being above the entire human population are at an impasse. The thunderhead is forced to watch as things come to a head in the scythedom while being banned from interfering with scythe business. I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads.

 

The Toll:

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“We never know what choices will lead to defining moments in our lives. A glance to the left instead of right could define who we meet and who passes us by. Our life path can be determined by a single phone call we make, or neglect to make.”

Rowan and Citra have disappeared for three years, the new guard is completely in charge and rules against bias killings and killing quotas have been abolished. The scythes are now legally allowed to kill as many people as they please. An old guard scythe searches the world for the plan B option to the scythedom that the original scythes made just in case their scythedom experience failed. The World is at a loss and in fear, the thunderhead races against time to save humanity from itself. I gave this 2 stars on good reads.

 

I think this series has a brilliant concept but very poor execution. I also think it was dragged out too long to be completely enjoyable. The romance between the main characters was completely forced as there was literally no atom of chemistry between them. I do appreciate that a lot of the romance was kept to a minimum so we didn’t have to suffer through a significant amount of it.

I found the world building to be very fascinating but full of holes. There are so many things the author just neglected because it wasn’t convenient for him. For example – people can still die, it’s just that people aren’t allowed to permanently die. If you’re not killed by a scythe or by fire, you are immediately rushed to a center to be revived. If this is the case why are scythes even needed? Why not just let people die?!

Also, the morality in this book is very black and white. I really would have loved to see some moral grays because I think that’s exactly what most of life is made up of. The main villain in this book Scythe Goddard is so one dimensionally evil, he’s almost a caricature. I think this book brings up some very interesting philosophical questions but then fails to explore them.

I still finished this series so obviously there was always something that kept me wanting to find out more (plus my library just kept pushing out books so I had to!). I do recommend these books if you’re looking for something more young adult and easy to get through. Overall, I give this series 3 stars!

Have you read these books? Did you enjoy them? Let us know in the comments!

 

Leggy

 

Fiction

Book Review: The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo

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Claire Lombardo's The Most Fun We Ever Had is your future TV fix

“Everyone thinks I know what I’m doing but I actually have no idea what I’m doing and that’s the cruelest trick the universe plays on people who have their shit together, little one; the people who seem like they have it together are the most overlooked, because everyone thinks those people never need anything, but everyone needs things; I need things; thanks for listening;”

40 years of being a couple, Marily and David are still a couple madly in love. The annoying kind of in love where they are still touchy feely and still like each other. They have 4 daughters.

“But that was the thing: sometimes being a sister meant knowing the right thing to do and still not doing it because winning was more important.”

Wendy – their oldest child who is a widow and drinks a tad bit too much with a mean streak in her, reserved more for her younger sister, Violet

Violet – lawyer turned stay at home mom who would go to great lengths to have the perfect family image even though things aren’t all that they seem

Liza – the nerdy, rule follower who is stuck in a dead end relationship and finds herself pregnant

Grace – the surprise baby who was born much later than her sisters and struggles with finding her place.

“The thing that nobody warned you about adulthood was the number of decisions you’d have to make, the number of times you’d have to depend on an unreliable gut to point you in the right direction, the number of times you’d still feel like an eight-year-old, waiting for your parents to step in and save you from peril.”

It’s 2016 and each of the kids are in a not so good places in their lives and do not want to share this state with their parents. The book goes back and forth telling us the foundation, early beginnings and everything in between in David and Marilyn’s relationship. The anchor that births all the story lines is the reemergence of a child Violet gave up as a teenager. It affects each and every single one of them in a different way and brings back old and not so buried resentments.

So, I nearly dropped this book in the beginning because I was so confused with the back and forth and the many characters. But I am glad I stuck with it. I eased into it and finally got a grasp of the people and the stories. I enjoyed this one. I am a sucker for family and generational stories and that is what drew me to the book. Lombardo did a great job in developing the characters in the book so every action they took was realistic because it was true to form to how Lombardo had written them from childhood to adulthood.

It was so fascinating to me that this loving couple raised 4 assholes. Honestly guys, that is the only way to describe it. These kids were just horrible people. There is not one of them I would want to be friends with and it affected a bit of my enjoyment of the book because I spent a lot of it being frustrated and angry at their decisions. The even more fascinating thing about it is their whole spiral stemmed from feeling that they could not live up to finding and maintaining a love like their parents.

“She’d fallen into motherhood without intent, producing a series of daughters with varying shades of hair and varying degrees of unease.”

I want to talk more about the characters being unlikable. Each of the daughters were so unbelievably selfish. Liza was so indecisive it hurt my soul. Marilyn’s obliviousness drove me mad and it’s crazy how the most mature character was 16 year old, Jonah. While I found them unlikable, the flip side to it is that it could be seen as realistic and a portrayal of how complex it is to be human (and on some level to be a spouse and a parent)

“It’s funny,” her mom continued. “I think so much of making a relationship work has to do with choosing to be kind even when you may not feel like it. It sounds like the most obvious thing in the world but it’s much easier said than done, don’t you think?”

I do think the book ran a little longer than it should have. Every time I’d think the book was winding down, it’d just be ramping up another angle with another revelation about someone. I enjoyed the perspective of how everyone thought Marilyn and David were perfect but they really had so many trials that they worked through. Overall, this is a book about the trials that come with parenting, being a sibling, feeling lost, second guessing your life decisions. If you like long books and have the time to get into a well thought out story, I recommend this.

Taynement

Book Related Topics, Fiction, literary fiction

Book Review: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

 

“There is exquisite lightness in waking each morning with the knowledge that the worst has already happened.”

The publisher’s blurb tells you virtually nothing about what this book is about. In fact, the first 50 pages leave you wondering where Mandel is going with this one. Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass hotel on an island in British Columbia. Jonathan Alkaitis works in finance and owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it’s the beginning of their life together. Jonathan sweeps Vincent up into a world of wealth and greed. At the heart of this book is a Ponzi scheme and the financial collapse of 2009 which makes this even more of a sobering read, now that the stock market is crashing and recession looms.

If you intend to pick up this book because you loved Station Eleven, bear in mind that the subject matters are nothing alike. But the way the books are written is actually quite similar. Mandel has a way with words, every single sentence matters and is important. This book is a real puzzle with pieces scattered all over the different chapters and they all come together at some point to make a full picture.

“Leon hadn’t understood, and he’d given Alkaitis his retirement savings anyway. He didn’t insist on a detailed explanation. One of our signature flaws as a species: we will risk almost anything to avoid looking stupid. The strategy had seemed to adhere to a certain logic, even if the precise mechanics–puts, calls, options, holds, conversions–swam just outside of his grasp. ‘Look,’ Alkaitis had said, at his warmest and most accommodating, ‘I could break it all down for you, but I think you understand the gist of it, and at the end of the day the returns speak for themselves”

The characters in this book are genuinely unlikeable characters. They are opportunists, grabbing whatever life offers them at the expense of so many people while convincing themselves that they are not monsters. The way Mandel writes about the people who are affected when the ponzi scheme finally collapses is heart wrenching. People losing their homes, their retirements, pensions, working well into their 70’s just to survive, losing houses, etc. It’s also fascinating how people never question things that are too good to be true, there was always a feeling that something wasn’t right but those feelings were brushed aside.

This is an effortless read. I adored the writing. Mandel makes sure all her characters have layers, you start to feel like you know these people, you imagine what you would do if you were in their shoes and your heart breaks when theirs does too. This book is weirdly beautiful for a finance book and even if you’re not at all interested in finance (which i’m not), it still captures you from beginning to end. I gave this book 4 stars because even though I loved it the last 50 pages just dragged on for me, I didn’t need everything wrapped up that much. Still a very compelling novel. I definitely recommend.

 

Have you read this one? Will it be making it on your TBR?

 

Leggy

Book Related Topics

Is It The Book I Hate…Or The Character(s)?

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Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Think of a book you really don’t like. Now think of a book that you don’t like that EVERYBODY seems to love. Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine is that book for me. I read this book a few years ago and absolutely hated it. It was recommended to me by a friend and it was back in the day when I had not learned the art of dropping a book if I did not like it.

If you didn’t know,  I found out early on that I seem to have a problem with books with British protagonists. They are just never likable and I don’t know why. So from jump I was struggling with the book but powered through as mentioned above. By the end of the book I was annoyed, irritated and very relieved that I was done with the book.

To my chagrin, this book is a beloved one. I kept reading rave reviews about it, it was on every list imaginable. In fact, much to my chagrin before Covid19 struck, this book could almost always be found in every airport bookstore bestseller bookshelf – regardless of country.

Every time I see this book or someone tells me how they just “read this book that I really loved”, I’d roll my eyes and want to understand exactly what it is they loved. At some point, I took the time out to wonder what I was missing and what it is exactly I don’t like about the book.

One day, after giving my response for the 100th time as to why I didn’t like the book – I just couldn’t stand Eleanor. I took a step back and wondered if you don’t like a character in a book does that automatically make it a bad book or is it the reverse where it has been written so well that you have intense feelings of dislike for a fictional character? Do your characters have to be likeable to qualify a book as good?

While it definitely affects your enjoyment of the book, I want to say no. I’d like to think that you can separate the meat of a book and its writing from the likeability level of a main character. Book that comes to mind is A Little Lie. I found the main character very frustrating but I wouldn’t say I hated the book (although Leggy did so hmm) I think it was written well enough and the characters were fully fleshed out. On the flip side, I also don’t think I have ever described any of the aforementioned British chick lit books with annoying protagonists as “a good book”

So I pose the question to you, can you hate the main character or characters in a book and still think of it as a good book or does the intense dislike color your feelings towards the book?

Taynement

 

Fiction, We Chit Chat

We Chit Chat: The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Dare

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The Girl with the Louding Voice

 

Plot: Adunni is a 14 year old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants out of life – an education – but instead, her father sells her off to an old local taxi man as a third wife in exchange for money for his drunken escapades. A sequence of events leads Adunni to escape to the city, where she is forced to live a life of servitude to a wealthy family. This is a story about lack of choices but having a will to survive and come out of the other side with a loud, confident voice and sense of self.

“I want to tell her that God is not a cement building of stones and sand. That God is not for all that putting inside a house and locking Him there. I want her to know that the only way to know if a person find God and keep Him in their heart is to check how the person is treating other people, if he treats people like Jesus says–with love, patience, kindness, and forgiveness.”

 

Taynement: So I don’t remember how I saw this book but I remember texting you immediately that we have to read it.

Leggy: The first time I saw this book was on Book of the Month. I didn’t even read the description. I just saw the Nigerian name and picked it as my book of the month.

Taynement: How did you feel about the book?

Leggy: It took me a while to get into this book because of the way it was written. It was written in the first person narrative form of a semi illiterate girl and it took me a while to find a rhythm.

Taynement: I completely know what you mean. It was definitely a con for me and I think it validates reading vs. audio-ing it. I can’t imagine it on audio. A friend told me she tried the audio but she couldn’t do it.

Leggy: It was very distracting. I dropped this book many times and finished so many books before finally getting through this one. I can’t imagine it on audio either, must be painful to the ears.

Taynement: I really liked this book. I liked it because of the message and because it could have easily been basic but I think Dare wrote it well. She steered away from that.

Leggy: I liked it too but not as much as you did. I gave it 3 stars.

1- Because of the author’s choice to write in the first person narrative voice of the main character, Adunni. Which as I mentioned, she was a semi-illiterate so, it was all in broken English with wrong tenses and words.

2- Because I never fully got into this book. I liked the message, but was never pulled in all the way through. I think I only pulled through because of this chitchat. But when I finished, I messaged a friend of mine to read it because I think it was totally in her wheel house. It just wasn’t in mine.

Taynement: I was pulled into it all the way through. Any book that has me turning the page and I don’t feel it’s a chore, is a win. I honestly think you had a right book, wrong time moment. Okay, let’s talk about the characters.

Leggy: I thought Madam Florence was a caricature. I didn’t find her character real at all. It’s not that I thought she couldn’t exist. What I had a problem with is that, I wish Dare could have made her more complex because at some point, the author wanted us to sympathize with her but I just couldn’t. After all the wickedness, who the hell cares about her feelings. They were beating her and I kept turning the page, with no regard to her feelings. When she went through a whole period of pain and reflection after catching her husband in Adunni’s room, I rolled my eyes so much. I just hated her.

Taynement: Really? I found her very real. In fact she reminds me of someone I know. I never felt like the author wanted us to sympathize with her at any point. She was a horrid person, through and through. Yes, her husband Chief was terrible but she was a monster herself. The forefront emotion I felt reading this book was foreboding. From the minute I started, I just kept waiting for the bad thing to happen. I kept saying: “Nothing good can come out of this”. I hated Adunni’s dad too.

Leggy: Girl especially when Adunni was in that marriage, I had such foreboding. I kept waiting for the ball to drop. I’ve watched enough Nollywood movies to know you don’t just get away unscathed. What did you think of Ms. Tia?

Taynement: I liked her and what she represented,  but I also thought if this was a Hollywood movie she would be the white savior.

Leggy: Yup, I found it weird how after the conversation with Adunni she suddenly wanted children after years of not wanting them. Her whole story line seemed to be rushed.

Taynement: The way I saw it, when her and her husband met, they both didn’t want children but along the way, she changed her mind but didn’t know how to say so. Adunni just somehow bubbled it up to the surface but it was something she’d been thinking about. I guess it would have helped if Dare had fleshed it out more.

Leggy: That makes more sense, I can see that being the case. She was so oyinbo pepper. Anyway, I was super happy with the end. I can’t stand authors who suddenly decide to pull the rug from under your feet after you’ve invested so much time in their story.

Taynement: I agree. One more thing, thoughts on Kofi?

Leggy: I really liked him. He was one of my favorite characters in the book. He was super upstanding and helped Adunni through out her stay in Madam Florence’s house. Also, he was the main person responsible for her happy ending. He’s the one who found the scholarship and encouraged her to apply.

Taynement: I do think the book was a good balance of evil and hope and I do like the idea of the book being a voice for the unheard in Nigeria. The domestic helps who seem invisible but probably have all these hopes and dreams that they aren’t even allowed to have. I can’t imagine being shackled with no choice and having to deal with whatever else comes with that. No food, high chance of sexual abuse, physical abuse and just being treated like crap. Nigerians have this evil and nonchalant behavior towards domestic helps who are mostly young girls brought to serve in households against their will.

Leggy: I agree with you. I do think this book was hopeful and would definitely recommend it.

Taynement: Oooh and I’m here for unapologetic Nigerian authors. I’m seeing way less explanations in books. They’re using words and languages and scenarios without explanations and I find myself wondering less about how western counterparts will interpret thinks. I think it’s great!

“You must do good for other peoples, even if you are not well, even if the whole world around you is not well.”

Taynement & Leggy

 

Book Related Topics, Fiction

Book Review : Writers and Lovers by Lily King

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Writers & Lovers

“I squat there and think about how you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them. Sometimes you mix the two up in a terrible tangle that’s hard to unravel.”

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, Casey is devastated. She’s 31, broke, riddled with anxiety and trying to finish writing a book she started 6 years ago. This is in fact a coming of age story except our protagonist is 31 and has had a long wild youth immersed in creative pursuits and spontaneous love affairs that leave her mostly broken. She’s now at the cusp of selling her novel and finds herself in the middle of a love triangle trying to decide between her love interests.

I think as more people read this book, the reviews are going to be a mixed bag. I really wanted to love this one, I chose it as my Book of the Month pick and even the title called to me. I think the author is good at slice of life novels but a lot of this book still completely underwhelmed me. I never connected with Casey, I didn’t like or dislike her but I found some of her decision making process to be extremely lacking. Some of the decisions she made that got her to the point of being a 31 year old server riddled in debt was atrocious to say the least. The way she let emotions and men drive so much of her life was quite appalling.

“I can tell he lost someone close somehow. You can feel that in people, an openness, or maybe it’s an opening that you’re talking into. With other people, people who haven’t been through something like that, you feel the solid wall. Your words go scattershot off of it.”

There was so much about her family that could have been explored that King just flies pass through. Her father was a pervert who lost his job for spying on young girls in their locker rooms and that was never deeply explored. Her mother left her father for a younger dying man and that also just didn’t get as much light in the story.

I would have preferred a slightly different book as Casey’s current life really didn’t have that much of an appeal to me and her love interests were a bit lack luster for that to really draw me into the story. This book is completely internal and largely takes place in Casey’s head, we see everything through her eyes, it’s really hard to write a compelling and readable story that has this format. This is a character driven book so if you need a strong plot to enjoy a book, this will not be the one for you.

“It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”

That being said, I enjoyed King’s writing style. She has a lot of great lines about being a woman and struggling with achieving within the creative space. I think she succinctly captures that stage in our lives where we’re feeling unmoored with deep anxiety about getting our lives together, torn between achieving stability especially financially and pursuing our passion.

A lot of Casey’s friends gave up pursuit of the literary life and just went to grad school or law school to be able to make an actual living. This book picked up half way and ended on a happy note which made me happy and excited for Casey. I really enjoyed a lot of the witty conversations between the characters especially with one of her love interests’ children. King gives us a glimpse of the end of a long youth and I left the book feeling satisfied with the state of the characters’ lives when the book ends.

If you enjoy character driven books, you should definitely pick this one up. I’m also going to pick up her previous novel, Euphoria because I’ve heard a lot of good things about that one as well. Have you read this one? Are you going to? I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

Memoirs

Book Review: Open Book by Jessica Simpson

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Cover art

When I heard Jessica Simpson was coming out with a memoir, I rolled my eyes and was like “yet another celeb with a memoir, what do we possibly want to know about her?” Then snippets started to dribble in the media about her sexual abuse and how it led to sleeping aids, then her alcohol addiction. I read a snippet of her book combined with my love for memoirs and reality shows (I watched Newlyweds when it was on), I promptly put myself on my library wait list.

“Sometimes we are all so afraid to be honest with ourselves because we know that honesty will lead to somewhere.” I wrote this ten years ago. “Can fear walk us to something better?”

Let’s just say that Open Book is the memoir I did not know I needed in my life. It was amazing. The back story is that 5 years ago, Jessica was approached to write some sort of motivational and inspirational book but she backed away from it because she didn’t want to lie and say everything was okay when it wasn’t.

She took a step back and went through her journals that she had been keeping and mined them for content to become the book we have today. Jessica came prepared for a memoir and bared her soul to us. She shared her fears, anxieties and learnings and I really enjoyed how she balanced them all. It was not just a tale of tragedies but she was sure to share what she learned from experiences in her life and drop a kind and encouraging word.

“Did he repeatedly stab me in the heart, or did I just keep running into the knife he aimed at me?”

Jessica is famously known for wanting to wait till marriage back in the day and her love life was something else she was open about. She shares with us how her marriage to Nick Lachey was doomed from start, her emotional cheating with **** (you’ll find out who when you read the book). Her most prominent relationship in the book was with John Mayer and whew, he was terrible, terrible to her (see quote above) I applaud her for being bold and stating all the things he did to mess with her mind and heart. It was heart warming to see how she ended up with her now husband who treated her like a queen in comparison.

I think she was respectful of her family and she didn’t say much to disparage them but my opinion is that her parents were quite toxic and given her need to please personality, it was not a good mix. It was a bit sad to see all the weight of insecurity she carried around from when she was young and I am sure playing third fiddle to Britney and Christina did not help.

Even though she did touch on it, I wish she spoke more about how she got her fashion industry to be a billion dollar company. The way it’s written it seems like it was an easy thing to accomplish but on the flip she does acknowledge that she is one of those blessed people who have things go her way. The other thing I wish she explained was given her stance on no sex before marriage and her still current faith, I wonder why it didn’t apply after her divorce. In her book, she tells us how she went on a dating/sexual spree and I wondered why she didn’t stay celibate per her beliefs or what changed.

As mentioned before, I really liked this book and gave it 5 stars. Normally, I would audio a memoir but if you have ever heard Jessica Simpson talk, I wasn’t going to risk it (especially after suffering through Busy Phillips) BUT I shouldn’t be so harsh as the early pages of the book she mentions a car accident she was in that had her thrown through the windshield and affected her brain somehow and me thinks it is why her speech is slurred sometimes. Also, I heard the audio came with 6 new songs done to accompany the book so you can make your choice.

I can’t tell you how many times I stopped to google something mentioned and look for the picture or what the headlines said. I even went to look for old Newlywed episodes. I was also reminded that we are not kind to celebrities. Do yourself a favor and read this one.

Taynement

Book Related Topics, Fiction, We Chit Chat, Young Adult

We Chit Chat -Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

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Trust Exercise

“Thoughts are often false. A feeling’s always real. Not true, just real”

Plot: In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes while dealing with teenage issues and predatory teachers. 12 years later, they look back on their lives in this performing arts high school and try to dissect what actually happened to them there.

Taynement: It’s been a while since we had a chitchat. We ended up with Trust Exercise because I was seeing it win so many awards

Leggy: You know, I went into this book without reading any description whatsoever because you picked it. I was like Taynement likes plot driven books so this will be good.

Taynement: Ah, is that a first for you? Going in blind, I mean.

Leggy: It’s not a first but I usually read plot blurbs before I pick a book to read, just to see if it’s my cup of tea.

Taynement: Ah okay. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I went in completely blind

Leggy: I kept reading it and when I got to the 20% mark on my kindle, I had to go see what the book was supposed to be about. I just wasn’t getting any consistent plot.

Taynement: I think this was my thought for the entire book. I see what the main theme was but man, it did NOT work for me.

Leggy: I truly thought I was going to give this book 1 star. The beginning just didn’t work for me at all. The middle I liked more when the voice switched to Karen’s. I thought Karen had a stronger voice and point of view than Sarah.

Taynement: So I did this on audio and with each switch I wondered what I missed. It took me a minute to get back into the groove and realize the story switched and it honestly confused me.

Leggy: Karen is the only voice that worked for me and the reason for my one additional star. I thought this book could have been so much more but it’s very obvious it was written for awards. This book was a freaking Pulitzer finalist.

Taynement: The thing is if this book had the main goal of highlighting sexual assault or predators I think it did a piss poor job. I think my issue with this book was it tried to be smarter than itself and ended up all over the place.

Leggy: That’s exactly what I mean by it was written for the awards.

Taynement: I was so confused by their teacher’s story line. I thought it was borderline abuse and predatory but it was so vague I couldn’t tell if it actually was or if it was normal in the theater world. I’m referring to when he made Sarah and David reenact their breakup.

Leggy: I guess the theme seems to be that no one knows what exactly “truth” is. We’re all locked into our own points of view. Everybody has a spin. Sarah and Karen and David all lived the same things but came out of it with completely different views. David became friends with his abuser. Sarah is mad when she sees Mr. Kingsley at David’s show and wonders how David can be friends with him. Sarah portrays Mr. Kingsley as gay but Claire portrays him as extremely straight and masculine.

Taynement: Oooh, that’s an angle I can see. I really do not think this book should be done on audio. I was so disinterested by the characters, I just went through the motions of finishing the book.

Leggy: I think it shows the effects of grooming. They were all being groomed by Mr. Kingsley. In her retelling, Sarah makes Kingsley gay and invents Manuel as a character he was molesting. But then in the second part, Karen tells us it was actually Sarah Mr. Kingsley was having a “special” relationship with. And then Martin grooming Sarah and getting her pregnant. It’s all rife with abuse, different points of view and the subjectivity of truth. But my thing with this book is okay, so what’s the point?

Taynement: Yeah it never really wrapped things up in a clear manner. So you feel like you’re taking this journey and taking in the scenery but you never get to any destination.

Leggy: For such a popular book it barely has 3 stars on good reads. Ordinarily, I enjoy unreliable narrators and narratives and I do think this will make a good book club pick to discuss the subjectivity of truth and what actually happened to those kids in high school but I don’t think it was executed well.

If I wasn’t reading this for a chitchat, I would have dropped it after the first 50 pages. I found the first part of this book overwritten with these huge emotions and I understand that those emotions seemed so huge because they were teenagers. But if you’re going to write from an omniscient point of view and not a first person, then it’s just over written.

Anyway, this book is more fun to discuss with your book people than it is to actually read. My advice? Skip this one. I gave this 2 stars on good reads.

Taynement: The execution was shoddy. I agree, skip it!

 

Leggy & Taynement