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Category: book reviews

  • book review + giveaway : dark hope by monica mcgurk

    Yes this is a sponsored post and I was given the book as well as compensated for my review, but I promise I was only asked for my honest opinion! And I would never do otherwise. So feel free to skip this or check it out! You may like it.

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    dark-hope-coverI agreed to review Dark Hope by Monica McGurk for three reasons:

    1) I spent most of the summer reading Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry which is an epic western. It was awesome, but with something like that I always want to follow it with a completely different reading experience.

    2) I am no stranger to some YA fantasy. In fact it’s probably one of my most beloved genres.

    3) It was recommended for fans of Twilight and while that phenomenon certainly ran its course, I remember when I first read it (before the craze began) I was kind of obsessed with it for awhile, bad writing and all. Although I have changed a lot since then, I thought I’d give this one a try.

    So this is the first book in a trilogy they are calling the Archangel Prophecies. It centers around a girl named Hope who was abducted when she was 3, but was then mysteriously rescued and only left with a Mark that no one seems to understand. Her parents’ marriage fell apart and she grew up in the home of her overprotective dad. Fast forward and she is now sixteen and living with her mom for the first time with some new freedom. She befriends an emancipated teen named Michael who is unusually interested in her.

    The main plot, as I said, revolves around Hope and her involvement with a supernatural war for the keys to heaven. (Of course there is a dangerous romance as well.) But there is also a subplot regarding human trafficking of minors. It was a little strange and felt a bit cobbled in, but I do appreciate the awareness that it could bring to the subject.

    I liked that in general, Hope was a strong character who wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to her parents and her friends. She was able to be appropriately afraid of her situation but never strayed into victimhood. For the most part she didn’t do or say anything completely idiotic.

    But I know why it was said to be in the Twilight tradition. I could write an entire essay on all of the similarities between the two, but I’m not going to. Just know that this takes a lot of inspiration from the former, and it makes sense once you know that the author got her start in writing Twilight fan fiction. (Side note: I’ve never read any fan fiction, have you? I’m not against the idea of it. What kind would you read?)

    You also have to be willing to suspend belief as far as religion and angels go, no matter what your faith (or lack of). The world here is built around a combination of sacred texts from all traditions – not just the Bible – as well as myths. I can go with it, although I found the “guardian angel” aspect a bit silly.

     

    Overall I wouldn’t say that this was the right book for me at this point in my life, but it was a fast and easy read. The end of it left a lot to be resolved and I have found myself thinking about it a week later, wondering what will happen. If you are a YA fantasy fan, you might want to give it a try. Also check out the author, Monica McGurk, on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest – she is a big advocate for women and works actively against human trafficking.

    As you might have guessed, I have a copy to give away! If you’d like to enter, just leave a comment stating that you want to be entered in the giveaway and I will pick a winner on Monday, September 1.

    I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

  • book club : flight behavior by barbara kingsolver

    My monthly book club meetings are mostly just me and one of my friends, although occasionally attended by some other peeps, and we constantly reach out to other friends but no one else has seemed to stick. I do wish it were a little bigger and more formal, but I still like it as-is because I get to catch up with my friend who I otherwise probably wouldn’t see much, and we still choose books which gives us something to talk about and I usually end up reading something I otherwise wouldn’t have.

    I try really hard to finish the book on time because it’s a great incentive to finishing, and also in seven years I have never NOT finished a book so my streak is very built up in my mind. Anyway, I’m glad I had the incentive this time because otherwise I probably would have abandoned Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver.

    flight behavior

    First let’s talk about the good things. Barbara Kingsolver. I am a fan of hers. The Poisonwood Bible is still one of my faves and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was an inspiring and enlightening food memoir (mostly) about eating local. So I knew I loved her writing and it’s the reason I agreed to read this book even though it seemed kind of boring from the description. The plus is that the writing is still awesome. Character development, awesome. Sense of atmosphere, clear setting, movement of the story even though not a whole lot happened – all that is definitely there. And there’s a ton of symbolism and literary stuff going on if you like that kind of thing. I do like it, and appreciated it, even though I didn’t take the time to fully mull it over or analyze it.

    Now here’s the reason I only gave this book two out of five stars: it got preachy like whoa. I expect that (to an extent) in a memoir, but I do NOT like it in my fiction, no thank you. I am pro having a moral or a message in a story or in the background, but in this book there is a CLEAR agenda and at times I felt like I was in a classroom or in environmental church, if that was a thing.

    Okay, so I didn’t know the book was about climate change until I had it in my hands and read the inside flap, and I was kind of turned off from the beginning. Now let me say that I am aware of the big problem that is climate change even though I don’t keep up to date with the science, and I avoid politically charged stuff because I hate controversy, and although I guess I understand why it’s controversial (money, etc) I figure that not only is it common sense to take care of the earth, there are plenty of Biblical reasons to do so as well. It’s just the right thing to do, so I try to. I fail a lot, but baby steps, you know? All that to say I’m pretty on board with Kingsolver’s message and I was still turned off by the idea of a whole fiction book about climate change.

    This is what she does. There is a main character, Dellarobia, who is a poverty-stricken lady stuck in a marriage (and family, by extension, since she has no family of her own) and a life situation that she never intended to be in, even though she acknowledges that it is of her own making and good things have come of it. She is for the most part ignorant about the wider world apart from her small town in Appalachia. She discovers this phenomenon of an enormous colony of monarch butterflies that have changed their migration from Mexico to her family’s farmland, and at first she is just inspired and overwhelmed by its beauty and it causes her to want to be a better wife/mother/daughter-in-law/etc.

    So THEN a scientist shows up to study the butterflies by name of Ovid Byron, and he is extremely likable and caring and earnest and sympathetic to the reader. Dellarobia practically falls in love with him and we are meant to, also. So Ovid Byron becomes Barbara Kingsolver’s mouthpiece for her message, and Dellarobia is the willing audience, soaking it all up and learning and changing for the better. It was pretty obvious. There were huge chunks of conversations about ecology and why it was all such a big deal, and I just got tired of it. Plus there was a lot of descriptions of farming and maybe it’s just because I’ve been addicted to the Game of Thrones books lately which are the opposite of this, but I was so ready for it to be done.

    And then I was done, and because she’s such a good writer I still had an emotional response and felt sad and hopeful at the same time. And a lot of people really like it, so. Do with that what you will.

  • let’s pretend this never happened

    bookI listened to Jenny Lawson’s hilarious and crazy memoir a few months ago on audiobook that I borrowed from the library, and I immediately knew I would love to feature it for BlogHer book club.

    A little background – Jenny is the author of the popular blog The Bloggess, and honestly I had never followed it before she wrote this book. But I started seeing a lot of positive reviews across the interwebs, and since I’m always looking for light and funny audiobooks, I gave it a try. Oh man. It’s a trip. She says she’s saved the best stories of her life for this book, and many of them really are hard to believe. At times I was just open-mouthed in shock. (But in a good way.)

    I am not a big humor connoisseur, I mean I like it but I don’t seek out funny stuff and I’m one of those people who will just say, “that’s funny” instead of laughing. So with that in mind I’ll say that I found this as funny and interesting as anything I’ve ever read. And now that I think back over it I realize that it deals with heavy issues like poverty, infertility, and mental illness yet it’s not depressing in the least. Jenny just deals with them effectively and shows that she’s learned to cope with it and find the humor in everything.

    Of course I have to give warning about this book too. She herself says that she will probably offend you at some point when you read it, and for most people that’s probably true. Either with her language (yes there is way more profanity and discussion of…lady parts than I generally prefer in a book) and the subject matter can get touchy. Like I said, she uses humor in pretty much every situation, and that means she will probably make light of something that you don’t appreciate.

    Anyway, after I read the book I started following her blog and because of the book I feel like I know her, especially because she narrated the audiobook herself. When I read the book this time it was a paperback version and although the experience of reading it is different, her voice comes through just as clear. There was also a bonus chapter which holds a journal of her first book tour, and it’s a lot like her blog which contains short snippets and conversations.

    So basically, if you can stand some profanity and crazy subject matter, you definitely want to read this one. It’s just really, really funny.

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    This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.

  • a good american by alex george

    GoodAmerican.inddThis was on my to-read list ever since one of my favorite book bloggers said that it reminded her of East of Eden and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, both of which are my jam. Now that I’ve read it I can bestow my confirmation on such a high claim. It’s a multi-generational family saga of immigrants, starting around the 1870’s and following them over the next century. Those kind of books really work for me even though their format can be so different from one another.

    This one is a pretty straightforward history-telling. No jumping around in time or changing of narrators or any other tactics like that. The sentences are short and to the point. There are some heartbreaking parts and a lot of people die, but it does span a century so that’s probably going to happen. Big historical events take place in the background but the focus is always on the family. There is a huge theme of home and what that means, which hits my heart just right. Lots of happy things happen, too, and more than anything it left me with a sense of hope.

    I think the only drawback to the story might be that as time went on and more and more children were born and thus more and more characters introduced I started losing my connection to them. I was really tied up in the lives of the matriarch and patriarch along with their children & Lomax, the family friend. I became the most emotional over events happening to them, which was probably two-thirds of the book. After that it was harder to keep track and connect, so by the time we met our narrator (one of the grandchildren) I didn’t even care about his fate as much as I probably should have. Still, the last third of it was enjoyable and kept with the same themes so it did flow naturally.

    Also, I love it even more knowing that the author spent seven years writing it in the mornings at 5 a.m. before his day job as an attorney. I obviously relate to this method of squeezing in creative time, and for him to have produced something this lovely deserves high praise.

    More discussion over here!

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    I read this book as a part of BlogHer Book Club and while I was compensated for my review as well as provided a free copy of the book, all opinions expressed are my own.

  • what i learned from bringing up bebe

    I heard a lot about this book when it was released. It sounded interesting, and some people really raved about it, but I figured I wouldn’t like it much. Besides, I had never read a parenting book and didn’t know if I wanted to.

    Then one of my best friends (who does not have kids, but who loves all things French having studied there) read it and asked my opinion. She said it gave her a whole new perspective about stay-at-home-moms. Well, that made me want to read it enough to place a hold at the library. Because I may be a working mom, but I can tell you that if I had the chance to stay at home with Meredith, I would do it. If there is one thing I’ve learned as a parent, it’s that every family’s situation is personal and unique, and there isn’t one WAY that is right, or better (discounting abuse and neglect of course). So I wanted to read the book to be able to talk about it in an educated way.

    I read it and I liked it! Well, at least I liked the experience of reading it since it’s basically a memoir about parenting, not really a straight up advice book. I can’t say that I agreed with everything in it, and I don’t know how “French” some of the ideas were, but since it was my first parenting book I came away with a lot of ideas and things to try as Meredith grows older.

    I kept a list of these things as I read, and here is what’s on it. Some of these are broad concepts and some are specific ideas to try. I am not saying that these will work, or that this is what we are definitely going to do, but this is what struck me as interesting or sensible.

    • On weekends the kids aren’t allowed in the parents’ room until we open the door.
    • At bedtime the kids have to be quiet in their room but they can do whatever they want.
    • Figure out what your zero-tolerance areas are (for example: respect for others & physical aggression) and when those are breached say no with conviction and follow through on consequences.
    • Along with the magic words “please” and “thank you,” make kids say “hello” when they enter a house (or meet someone) and “goodbye” when they leave – this shows respect.
    • Bake something every weekend and have the kids help as soon as they are old enough.
    • At mealtime, the kids don’t have to eat everything but they must taste everything. Also, they don’t get to choose what is served and they don’t get a different meal.
    • Let kids entertain themselves.
    • Let kids “discover” things instead of pushing them to acquire skills.
    • Treat kids (and even babies) as full functional members of society. Talk to them as if they understand (because they do) and expect that they can learn to be civilized.
    • Make lunch the largest meal of the day with protein, have one snack in mid-afternoon, and have dinner be something lighter (soup, veggies, pasta, fruit).
    • Don’t over-praise so the child lives for the praise and not intrinsic enjoyment.
    • Be clear that there is a time for adults only (such as after bedtime).

    That’s my list! I’m interested in hearing your thoughts if you’ve read the book, or if you haven’t, what do you think about these ideas? Are there any other parenting books you recommend? I love the memoir style, but Meredith is no longer just a lump of a baby and actually has a will to defy me now, so I sense that I might be needing any kind of help I can get in the near-future. :)