This was one of my must reads for 2015. Willowdean Dickson (self-identifying fat girl) is a Texan teenager with a beauty queen for a mother. Over the summer she falls in love with a coworker named Bo aka Peachbutt. Events conspire and she decides to sign up for the Miss Teen Blue Bell pageant her mother runs, even though she’s not the typical beauty queen contestant. With her best friend, Ellen, by her side, she navigates the tricky terrain of adolescence. I had great expectations […]
If Anne Shirley was a Teenager in 2015
CANNONBALL! It’s always a bit scary reading an adaptation or re-imagining of source material that’s important to you. I loooooooove the Anne of Green Gables series and have loved it ever since my grandparents gave me a box set when I was a little girl. There is serious magic in those books and characters. AoGG is for me what the Harry Potter series is to teenagers and twentysomethings today. So when I saw that Andi Teran had written a modern-day take on Anne and company, […]
The story of the Coughlin family begun in The Given Day continues …
Live by Night is a crime saga focused on the characters, portraying them as more than one dimensional thugs. Most of them do what they do for a reason. Taking place in 1927, 8 years after the Boston Police strike, Live By Night shifts focus from Danny Coughlin to his youngest brother, Joe. Now 20 and an accomplished small time criminal, Joe falls for the wrong woman and it changes the trajectory of his life. Along the way he rubs elbows with real and fictional […]
Will Meh. Will Meh.
This book was fine. It was alright, mildly entertaining, but not a book I would actually own or buy for anyone else. The parts I like the best were also the least realistic and didn’t give cause for investment in the characters. The parts I hated were the parts that read absolutely true to what it’s like being a teenager; depression, self-doubt and awkward loves. I’m really struggling to say anything else about it. I will say that it’s a great vacation read in that […]
Sex and crime, described in sentences containing five words or less
LA Confidential was a present from my boyfriend, a James Ellroy junkie, so the pressure for liking this book was already high. And since I’m a bit of a contrarian (A bit?! my boyfriend would say), I’m predisposed to dislike things that others so vehemently love. I’ll find the holes to poke through, the flaws that are there — whether intentionally placed or not — and I’ll do my best to skewer the book/movie/show that others love so much. Because I’m a bitch. There’s a reason why […]
Beware the Sea Anemone
Pretty Baby is a dark, suspenseful drama featuring a do-gooder, her career-obsessed spouse and a runaway teen with a baby. Kubica keeps the reader guessing not only about her characters’ motives, but also about the crime that seems to have been committed, and whether or not any of our three narrators are telling the whole truth. The novel starts from Heidi’s point of view. It’s a rainy, dreary early spring day in Chicago and Heidi is on her way to work where she runs a […]
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