I See You

 

I decided to switch it up for myself this time around and dive straight into a slow burn British thriller. I am equal parts happy and sad about this choice.

Ok, first let’s address the big fat elephant in the room that has you drinking all the haterade. Yes, I am occasionally one of those lucky book snobs that gets their hands on advance, pre-publication copies of books. (And now that I see you scrolling back up to take another look at my book picture, I realize that you didn’t catch the fact that this was an advance copy. And I have now outed myself. Dammit).

Moving along. I have had my sticky little fingers on this book for over a year now, and have just managed to have a craving for exactly what this book was offering. I told a friend that I refuse to make any sort of “Gone Girl” comparisons with this book because a.) I hate that everyone and their mother compares books to “Gone Girl” now, and b.) “Gone Girl does not have a monopoly on the use of grandiose twists in the storyline. It just doesn’t.

When I first finished this book, I was thoroughly shocked by the epilogue ending. Shocked to the point where I really began to wonder what kinds of disturbances Clare Mackintosh may suffer from that allowed her to dream up such a close for her book. And then I started thinking about how I could ever discuss this book without revealing the ending and therefore ruining the whole thing for you. But after taking a day to think things over, and after getting monumentally perturbed that there is no good way to say “here’s that thing that happened in the ending that was really surprising and left me somewhat completely horrified about every person I know and allow into my life”, without immediately having to follow it with “sorry I completely ruined every part of this book for you just so that I could talk about the thing”, I realized that that ending was the only thing that I really took away from the book.

After a day of sitting and pondering over the plot and the characters, nothing stayed fresh in my mind but that page and a half. And that left me very disappointed. I wanted to keep my book discussions just that…discussions, and not reviews of what I had read. But that’s what my feelings on this book have slowly devolved into; a very clinical breakdown of the things I did and did not like. A greater portion of this book fell into the category of things I did not like.

I said before that this was a slow burn British thriller. Sometimes I am a fan of this approach, and sometimes it literally makes me want to punch myself in the face. This is very much the latter. The premise is fantastic; a woman named Zoe sees a photo of herself in the classifieds of the newspaper and she learns that this has happened to other women…other women who have become the victims of increasingly violent crime. Yay! I want to read this thriller because I can already feel the onslaught of rampant paranoia. Where do I sign up?!

But then the story becomes an actual snoozefest. I don’t care about Zoe’s family. I could give two shits about her fairly whiny kids and her boring as hell male suitor. Please give me something to be scared about, that’s why I’m reading this!!! And then, I get dropped back in to a few more twists and turns in the investigation. Sweet. I like where this is going. Annnnnd we’re back to snoozefest.

I cannot handle these ups and downs. Please stop, I’m starting to get nauseous. Ok, so here’s where I am going to break my pact with you just a little bit. In a minor spoiler, I’m going to let you know that Clare tries to recover everything at the end by hitting you with a 1-2…..3 punch. You are red-herringed in a pretty obvious way. (I say that now as if I didn’t completely fall for it), and then she reveals the true mastermind. It’s a bit of…no it’s a lot of wayyyyy out of left field. Like really? That’s who you decided would be the person? I’m pretty sure NONE of your breadcrumbs pointed in that direction. But whatever, I’m willing to suspend disbelief and let the author take me where she feels this story is going.

And then she smashed me in the face with the gross feelies in that epilogue. Seriously Clare? I have to start being paranoid about everyone ever? SERIOUSLY??? Not the way that I like to feel at the end of a relatively boring journey. It’s like having “Murder, She Wrote” lead you straight to the killer from “Seven”. It just does not sit well. At all. But it ends up being all you can think about later.

Maybe “Gone Girl” really has ruined me for this genre. Or maybe publishers are just having their authors come up with the most off-the-wall scenarios their little brains can dream up as a way to stay in the thick of it all and keep audiences happy. There are millions of possible reasons why this story happened the way that it did…I just really wish someone had thought better of allowing it to remain that way.

Not one of my favorite reading moments, loves….but sometimes you have to take in a lot of bad stories to get to the golden ones. Luckily, it hasn’t made me shy away from the genre…oh no…I grabbed a couple more from the library in hopes that one of those will erase this experience and replace it with something much better.

 

Books currently waiting to scar me for life:

  • The Girl Before by JP Delaney
  • The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike
  • Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
  • A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Scare up a copy of any one of these and join me for the ride!

 

Wishing you beautiful TBR pile dreams my loves. xoxo

The Spectacular Now

Y’all.    Y’all.     Y’all.

Have you ever read a book that just felt like it so perfectly and exactly mirrored a situation that you were going through? So much so that it actually made you a bit paranoid? Not so much in the black helicopters kind of way, but in the “did someone follow me around and take notes on my life?” kind of way. Because that is exactly how I felt during parts of this book.

I have my own Sutter Keely. I will not bore you with the rehashed details of my life, nor will I presume that my side of that story is the only one that matters. I will simply say that this book helped me to gain a perspective that I didn’t have before, and one that made me question many of the things that I had taken for granted.

They say that books, like friends, show up exactly when you need them, and if I didn’t believe it before, I absolutely do now. I found so much of myself in main character, Aimee Finecky. Doormat? Check. Driving herself bonkers trying to live up to the expectations of everyone around her? Check. Dreaming of a world much bigger and much greater than the one she has available to her? Check. And bookworm? Double check. She is a well of creativity forever frozen in time by the fear of letting others down, of shirking responsibilities that were never really hers to begin with.

Enter her Sutter Keely. A wisecracking, charming, perpetual screw up. He is the life of every party he has ever been to. Everyone knows his name and everyone knows that he brings the best time. But he’s never serious, about anything. Recently split from his fellow party-goer girlfriend, Cassidy, and looking for a reunion, Sutter sets his sights on Aimee. He doesn’t want to date her, but he does want to help her gain the confidence to take control of her own life, all while proving to Cassidy that he is worthwhile.

I know, I know, it sounds like your usual coming-of-age dramedy…and on the surface, you would not be mistaken. But it goes so much deeper than that. Sutter is an alcoholic with an absentee father. Aimee has a less than desirable family dynamic, but boundless optimism about the future. And they find their way to each other during a time when what they each need most, is love. This would have been an easy, cut and dry narrative on teenage romance and the inevitable influence of growing up in a broken home, but Tim Tharp goes so much bigger. He saw an opportunity to serve a narrative not regularly explored: boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, boy realizes he’s no good for girl and breaks up with her, and SPOILER ALERT, that’s it. The boy very strongly considers how much he could grow and change in order to make himself worthy of the girl’s love…but he gets all the way real with himself and acknowledges that, even though he wants to change and be the bigger, better guy, he cannot sustain it. He will not maintain any of the required lifestyle changes, and he will ultimately fail her.

So often, the male character in these kinds of romances sees the light, changes, and then there is some form of happily ever after. Tim Tharp explores the question of “What if Prince Charming wants to change, but doesn’t”? What if the “hero” succumbs to his own self-fulfilling prophecy? But also, what if he is enough of a good guy to realize he shouldn’t get the girl?

“I do have a future to give her after all, just not one that includes me.”

It’s not a flowery, happy ending, but it is one that is so often ignored in favor of the more unrealistic growth and change “happily ever after”. Whether Sutter stays the same out of comfort, fear, or ease is never clear, but he makes the choice to not find out what he is ultimately capable of, and it’s absolutely heartbreaking. You root for the kid, and he just simply gives up. It becomes an extremely painful case of seeing the potential in someone else and being unable to make them see it, too.

And even though the final goodbye between Sutter and Aimee is actually not a part of the book, you just know that Aimee will be forever changed, and more than a little scarred, when it comes. She has built this entire life, a whole future, around someone who is preparing to simply bow out “for her own good”. I want to like Sutter. I do. He has good intentions, he was dealt a pretty heinous lot in life, and he is, at least, enough of a good guy to realize that he is not giving Aimee the kind of love she deserves….but he is an unbelievable little shit. That’s right, I said shit. I wanted to take him and shake him so hard at the end of the book. His whole future, everything he has been looking for in the world is available to him, in some way, through his relationship with Aimee, but he cannot even bring himself to try. Watching someone get that close to a life that they have wanted, a life that would greatly serve them in the ways that they have been denied, and then not achieve it is so utterly painful.

Take a leap and a bound from this and add to it that someone in Hollywood optioned this novel for a theatrical release. Enter Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller as Aimee and Sutter….then give me snacks and a blanket to snuggle up to during the rough parts. Source material aside, I found the movie to be fairly enjoyable, with one major issue. I found the ending of the novel heart-wrenching in its depressing honesty, but I found the film’s hopeful, “Good Will Hunting” style ending even more emotionally painful. What girl, myself included, hasn’t found herself just hoping that a former flame would finally get it, and then “go see about a girl”? Please stop doing this to us Hollywood! Stop letting us believe that the lovable slacker just had to get emotionally hit over the head with how much he misses the girl, annnnd cue big lifestyle changes! NO! We are onto you! It doesn’t happen that way. It doesn’t happen that way at all. Sure, there are women out there who will get that crazy film ending, and there are even more who will get the book ending….but most of us? We’ll fall into the murky waters of the in-between. And that can be a very painful place for hope.

Now that I have thoroughly depressed all of you with a little lowdown and commentary about Tim Tharp’s “The Spectacular Now” I will say that it helped a lot to see what might potentially be the other side of my own story. It helped me work through the kinks and all of the bumps along my road, but most importantly, It allowed me to come to terms with the fact that change is not for everyone. It’s a decison. A want that has to be stronger than any other feeling. It’s a job that will never truly be finished. Partners help. Hope is a lifeline. But the real change, well that has to come from inside.

I apologize for spoiling any part of the story for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of reading it yet, but like I said before, these posts are not going to be reviews so much as they are going to be discussions about how the books I read affect, and possibly even change my life. In my defense, this is one book that I feel should come with some form of friendly “here’s how to not be emotionally and/or psychologically damaged by this book” sort of semi-spoilery breakdown. So, you’re welcome.

I will try to have a new post up much more quickly the next time around. And as for me….here is a list of what’s currently taking up my time and my attention:

  • I See You by Clare Mackintosh
  • You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
  • How to Walk Away by Katherine Center
  • The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern
  • 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do by Amy Morin

As always, feel free to pick up any one of these and tell me what you think!

Library wishes and bookstore dreams my loves.

xo

 

 

Hey Y’all

Hello loves,

Yes, I tend to address everyone as “y’all” or “love”, so please do not be offended as I mean no harm. I just like to assume that since we have both found our way to this same moment in time, that we might actually be some form of friend…if only through a computer screen.

I made my first post on this website (don’t worry, you didn’t miss it, I actually deleted it) on Friday the 13th. That really should have been a tip off. Needless to say, life hit some big snags, and I was forced to focus everywhere but where I wanted to. Well, now I’m back. And during that off time, I got the chance to really think about what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to say.

When I first launched the site, I thought I needed a gimmick. Something to really draw in the crowds and keep me honed in on making posts and staying on a schedule…but the more you get to know me, the more you will realize that, although I love schedules and lists, I have a bit of trouble with authority, especially when that authority is me.

I still want to pick my way, slowly but surely, through the 1001 book challenge, but that’s not anywhere near all I want to do. And while I love giving my opinions about pretty much everything, I don’t just want to use this website to review the books that I have read; I want this site to be a journey. I want to discuss books. I want to fall in love with books. And I want to make my way through life incorporating everything that I take in from all the books that I read.

That’s what makes me different. That’s what will set me apart. Not my book challenges or my great quips or the truth bombs I drop about why I sometimes just really do not care for the mainstream book pick of the month. Nope. What I hope you will find yourself falling in love with is how much I love the books I read. How much of them I take with me. And how much they help me get one step closer to being the person I have always envisioned.

Now, don’t worry, I promise this won’t be scary. I do like to read “self-help” books (You should try them, they really are not as bad as you think), but I read everything else, too. It is just as easy to take a life lesson from contemporary literature as it is from non-fiction. It’s all in how you look at things.

If this sounds like something you would enjoy, never stop checking back for updates and stories…but if you don’t find this appealing, I completely understand. And I take no offense. I even promise to pretend like I don’t see you if we ever cross paths at Target. I’m cool like that.

I read multiple books at one time and am under no expectations that you do the same, but in the interests of allowing you to join me if you’d like, here is a list of what is currently waiting for my attention of the nightstand next to me:

  • The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp
  • by Evan Mandery
  • Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life by Cleo Wade
  • The Time of My Life by Cecelia Ahern
  • 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do by Amy Morin
  • The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
  • The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern

I know, it’s a bit crazy, but I assure you, it’s just how I do things. I cannot wait to dive into each and every one of them and to see what lessons they’ll teach me, what perspectives they’ll share, and most importantly, how much I will fall in love.

For now, I will leave you to it. If none of these books sound interesting to you, then grab one that does and be sure to tell me all about it! You might just introduce me to the next love of my life.

Goodnight y’all.