THE CRY OF THE OWL by Patricia Highsmith

PUBLISHER: Harper and Row, 1962
GENRE: Fiction/Contemporary Suspense
SETTING: Pennsylvania, USA
WIKI: link
MY GRADE: C

SYNOPSIS: This "extraordinary story" (Julian Symons) begins with an act of naive voy­eurism. Robert Forester, a depressed but fundamentally decent man, liked to watch Jenny through her kitchen window, a harmless palliative, as he saw it, to his lonely life and failed marriage. As he is drawn into her life, however, the recriminations of his simple pleasure shatter the deceptive calm of this small Pennsylvania town. With striking clarity and horrible inevitability, Forester is caught up in a series of deaths in which he is the innocent bystander, presumed guilty.

MY THOUGHTS/SPOILERS: It's a good thing things picked up almost 100 pages in else this would have gotten just two stars. I think most of the main characters are poorly written and just awful because of it. The time span may be five or six months.

Robert is almost thirty. He's passive and pretty bland. He's depressed with a past suicide attempt, from New York but moved to Pennsylvania the year before to work as an industrial engineer. He's separated from his wife, Nickie, but they divorce about a month after the story starts. She's incredibly immature, unstable, and out to make his life miserable for absolutely no reason. She teams up with another bad character later on. She's a character who needed backstory.

Jenny is twenty-three and works as a bank teller. She's got serious mental issues. She breaks up with her boyfriend, Greg, who's five years older, and he turns into a stalker who's out for blood. The story begins to revolve around him for over half the book. It's somewhat interesting finding out what happened to him after getting into a fist fight with Robert but was sort of predictable.

There are too many stupid and unbelievable things happening in this book that cause it to get a C rating from me: Jenny befriends Robert after catching him spying on her in her yard one night. She tells her parents she's seeing a married man. He's not interested in dating her but later does. For no reason that I can see Jenny breaks up with him though she's become obsessed with him. She does something bad after that and again, I don't know why. An idiot neighbor makes someone, at gunpoint, give a gun back to a bad guy. What?!

The ending was very abrupt right after awful things happened and you're left puzzled and to draw your own conclusions.

THE BUTCHER'S HOOK by Janet Ellis

PUBLISHER: Two Roads, 2/2016
GENRE: Historical Fiction
SETTING: England, 1763
MY GRADE: B

SYNOPSIS: London, summer 1763. At nineteen, Anne Jaccob is awakened to the possibility of joy when she meets Fub, the butcher's apprentice, and begins to imagine a life of passion with him.

The only daughter of well-to-do parents, Anne lives a sheltered life. Her home is a miserable place. Though her family want for nothing, her father is uncaring, her mother is ailing, and the baby brother who taught her to love is dead. Unfortunately her parents have already chosen a more suitable husband for her than Fub. But Anne is a determined young woman, with an idiosyncratic moral compass. In the matter of pursuing her own happiness, she shows no fear or hesitation. Even if it means getting a little blood on her hands.

MY THOUGHTS: This story took just over 200 pages to get going but boy did it get going. The author took her time, too much so, detailing the boring, mundane life of Anne, starting when she was twelve. The synopsis says she's nineteen but I don't think that was mentioned in the book. Her father doesn't seem to like her much and I don't know why. Her mother is always in bed recovering from some miscarriage or such, and she seems like a decent parent, though absent.

The synopsis says Anne is from a well-to-do family but I never sensed that she was. I don't know why but I imagined her in a typical house that lower middle class people lived in that as isolated from neighbors. The only staff was one cook, Jane, and one housekeeper, Grace, though they are only a family of three so maybe two employees was normal for only three well-off people back then. Nothing in the house was ever described, nor was the outside of the house, so I never felt any opulence. The author was very descriptive about most things, especially gross things, which I appreciated. The atmosphere felt gloomy but not quite Gothic to me, but maybe it was. Like a lot of books, all the action took place right at the end.

Anne meets Fub (Frederick) Warner, who works for the butcher, Titus Levener. He's beneath her station in life and he thinks they can't be together because of it so they have to be secretive in their affair. She's taken with him and will do what she can to have him. We don't know how old he is. I like his character. I like too when he told her twice to bring money with her when they meet to go to the fair. He wanted her to pay for it all.

Every bad thing that happened in the last 70 pages or so involving Anne, and that's how long it took for anything to really happen, I really liked, especially the bell tower incident. That'll teach ya to try blackmailing someone. I didn't realize what was about to happen until right before it did. And the fire scene? Great and dramatic, just like out of a horror movie. I have mixed feelings about the ending, as in the very last page. Where on earth was Anne going? It seems like a possible set-up for a sequel, but I just don't think that was the plan. It just shouldn't have taken over 200 pages of a 340 page book to see Anne's bad deeds in action and I wish incidents had been peppered throughout the story.

LEMONADE by Nina Pennacchi, Translated by Scott P. Sheridan

PUBLISHER: AmazonCrossing, 7/2015
ORIGINAL PUB: 2011 in Italian
GENRE: Fiction/Historical Romance
SETTING: England, 1826
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: B

SYNOPSIS: As a young woman in Victorian England, Anna Champion knows all too well the social mores that value prettiness over sense, and etiquette over honesty. But when she stands up to the boorishness of dashing Christopher Davenport at a summertime ball, Anna unwittingly attracts his wrath—and becomes entangled in his malicious scheming.

After a lifetime of harboring shame and resentment, Christopher, a ruthless con artist, wants revenge, and unfortunately for Anna, he’s decided that she will be the perfect pawn in his terrible plot. With a fierceness of spirit uncommon in well-bred young ladies in the nineteenth century, Anna will have to use her intelligence and courage to protect her loved ones. But can she also save herself?

MY THOUGHTS/SPOILERS: I've finally read the worst anti-hero ever. I think this is the only romance novel where I wished the main couple didn't have a happily ever after. It should have been titled, "How to Survive a Madman" instead. Spoiler about the book's title; it comes from someone spilling lemonade on someone and someone else getting lemonade dumped on them.

Christopher is twenty-five and out for blood. He's tall, has dark hair and blue eyes. He's a wealthy financier and land owner. He grew up in a brothel for his first five years of life, then he hit the streets for awhile until a family that knew his mother took him in. The subplot is about him seeking revenge on his biological father, with help from his cousin Matthew, for causing his young prostitute mother's suicide twenty years previous. His plan is twisted and plays out at the very end. That part was my favorite of the whole story.

Christopher is a very violent, ugly person, and rotten to the core, like his father. To call him damaged would be an understatement. He rapes Anna multiple times and hits her repeatedly in the face for about nine pages (p. 133-142) during the same incident. He shoves her into a bookcase on page 65 and on page 68 he grabs her by the wrists and shoves her back into the same bookcase. Later on in a carriage he sits next to her and grabs her by the back of her hair to make her look up at him. Another time he grabs her by the nape of the neck and pulls her hair. She smacked him twice too at other times, one of which is before the rape. He practically forces her to marry him and threatens her throughout the marriage with various things, using her family has leverage. She's truly trapped.

Anna is maybe twenty, I'm not exactly sure, has brown hair and amber eyes. She's very strong in this situation and is really stuck with Christopher, who's terrorizing her. She lives with her father and is the oldest of four siblings. Her father is practically dying and thinks the world of Christopher, not knowing he's abusive. We don't know anything about Anna's background or where her mother is. I supposed she died.

The only reason this book didn't get an A from me is because it's a bit slow-moving and Christopher needed to do more groveling throughout the book, not just at the very end. That could have made him an even better character, and I feel he was a great anti-hero. The story, both with Anna and the subplot, is very interesting to me but it fails miserably as a romance, but that's alright with me. Christopher and Anna are just the type of characters I love to read about. He's a disaster and she's got a very strong constitution. I like that the prologue starts out with a gruesome scene. That scene is what sets five-year-old Christopher off on a deadly mission twenty years later.

There are a couple mistakes in the print book, like a couple of sentences are missing a word, a word is misspelled, and once instead of calling Daniel Chris' half-brother, he's called his step-brother. This isn't self-published. It's professionally published/edited through Amazon imprint AmazonCrossing so mistakes like that shouldn't happen.

MY STORYBOOK OF FAIRIES & ELVES: A Collection of 20 Magical Stories by Nicola Baxter

PUBLISHER: Armadillo, 11/2018
GENRE: Children's Fiction
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: A

SYNOPSIS: This captivating collection presents a score of stories from a mysterious kingdom of fantastical creatures in an anthology of 20 tales about fairies, princesses, dragons, mermaids, unicorns and wizards. Explore the mysterious world of the fairies and elves; follow the adventures of the dreamland fairies, whose task it is to choose the right dream for everyone; then discover the secrets of the princess fairies have palaces and pretty dresses, but they can also do magic! Find out more about these fascinating creatures and how they use their special powers to help make the world a wonderful and beautiful place.

Enjoy irresistible stories such as the Blossom Ball, Princess Rose's Secret and The Butterfly Babies. This enchanting illustrated storybook is sure to engage all young readers, being perfect for reading aloud to small children, or for more confident readers to enjoy by themselves. The cover of the book is decorated with shiny silver foil and glittery stars.

SUMMARY: This book was previously published by the same publisher in 2012 under the title My Treasury of Fairies & Elves and it has a different cover. I think all of these stories have been published previously in either their own books or in compilations. Her book The Magical World of Fairies has some of these stories in it. There's a section of stories in here called "The Dreamland Fairies" and those appear to be from her book "Dreamland Fairies." There's a section of stories in here called "The Fairy Princesses" and those six stories are from "Storybook of Fairy Princesses", also known as "Fairy Princesses." The first section of stories are called "The Magical World of Fairies & Elves" and contains eight stories, some of which I know are in other compilations. I haven't seen a fairies compilation of hers that has more stories in it than this one.

MY THOUGHTS: This is a large and heavy 240 page hardcover without a dust jacket. It has a built-in ribbon bookmark, but I didn't use that. The page edges are silver. It's fully illustrated in full-color. The illustrations are beautiful and very colorful. Most characters have the same face and they're ugly so that's really the only negative in this whole book. Images from the title pages of all twenty stories are here. Random images from the book that I like are here. Click on all images to enlarge them.

All but a couple of the stories are cute and/or interesting and are appropriate for small children. There are only a couple stories where everyone in it isn't blonde. There aren't many elves in this either.

I'm going to summarize the twenty stories below.

THE TIME OF BEGINNINGS- It's almost spring and Queen of the Fairies visits the realm to check on everyone. They fill her in on what's going on. Vernal is a female fairy and she's in charge of making sure things get done. The other fairies tell her about problems involving all the creatures in the woods and streams, such as a baby duck getting stuck in the mud and eggs in a nest that are unattended. Since the sun shone on Vernal's face and warmed it, she announced to the fairies that it was time for everyone to fly for the first time since winter (fairies can't fly in the winter.) The story ends with a baby fairy being born. This is a really cute story about helping others out.

THE ROYAL FLYING RACE- A group of fairies, Leafe, Bramble, Azure, Swift, Barley, live in Fairyland. Someone gets the idea to have a race, young fairies versus older. The Queen is to attend, making it a royal race, and she gives out prizes at the end.

THE BUTTERFLY BABIES- This story is really cute. It's about two young fairies, Catkin and Rosebud. They find butterfly eggs, keep it a secret so only they can tend to them themselves. They don't understand that butterflies come from caterpillars, so when they see black things wiggling around in the web, they're very scared and think they're black monsters. Another fairy, Silverbark, explains what they're seeing. Here's my favorite image from it.

THE BLOSSOM BALL- It's a midsummer party where the youngest fairies decide what their final names will be, if they decide to change it. They serve drinks made from honey, buttercup bread, cowslip cake, pollen pudding. Their dresses are made from flower petals, feathers, berries, seeds, and cobwebs.

THE FRUITS OF THE FOREST- Fairies meet at the Gathering to discuss what they're going to do during harvest time. The Fairy Queen overseas everything. She sends everyone out to gather grains, berries, nuts, to name just a few things. An unnamed fairy who shows up late to help ends up helping the Fairy Queen make things for the upcoming party.

THE UNINVITED GUEST- The image on the book's cover is from this story. This is basically part two of the previous story, The Fruits of the Forest, where they were about to begin a party to celebrate the end of harvest. Musicians are playing instruments made of acorn drums, snail-shell horns, and seed-pod shakers. Strix, an owl, is the uninvited guest. The Queen of the Fairies invites him to the party since he's already there. He tells them a storm is coming and invites them to have the party inside the hollow base of an oak tree.

A WINTER'S JOURNEY- This is about how all the fairies have to find places to live for the upcoming winter season. They don't like to be outside in the winter and are unable to fly because their wings are too stiff from the cold. The Queen gets sick. A fairy named Merrydown takes a sunbeam they'd caught over the summer and on foot goes looking for the Queen. She finds her, releases the sunbeam into the room and the Queen gets better. Merrydown is invited to stay there for the winter.

THE SECRETS OF THE SNOW- This is an imaginative story. The fairies can't go out in the snow because they could get buried in, since they're so small. Shimmer, Shine, and Glitter live in a tree trunk. They get the idea to dig connecting tunnels in the snow so they can go outside. One tunnel leads to another tree trunk with another family living in it. They all play together until the snow begins to melt, then they have to go back to their own trees to wait out the winter.

A DREAM FOR EVERYONE- Some fairies from Dreamland help animals have happy dreams. The dream requests come to the fairies in the sky via a bubble that bursts. We meet Mrs. Matilda Rabbit and her five babies, Great Aunt Phoebe Frog and her great-nephew, Glurgle, Mr. Benjamin Bird, and a fish named Sammy. Fairies visit each one and help them dream. A fairy named Bluebell helps a rabbit dream of a pirate rabbit named Captain Thunderthump and he's got a peg leg!

A DREAM FOR DRAGONS- A fairy named Snowflake has to consult with the Dreamland Fairy to help her give good dreams to three dragons who live in a cave under a volcano. A wizard named Longbeard shows up out of nowhere to help Snowflake. They travel together on his magic carpet. They travel to a castle where a small green dragon named Ashe lives. He agrees to help them come up with dreams for the three dragons, then flies them both home on himself!

A DREAM FOR MERMAIDS- Marina is a water fairy and has no wings because she doesn't fly. She sees a mermaid crying tears of pearls and asks her what's wrong. She's crying because she misses her family. Marina travels up to the clouds to talk to the Dream Counsil. She tells them she wants to send the mermaids family a dream so they'll dream of her but that's not allowed. You can only send someone a dream if they've asked for it. Marina travels on a dolphin until she finds the mermaid's family. She overhears them talking of their sister so she asks them about it. Since their sister is on their minds, they send dream requests which are granted. Though they can't see their sister, they can at least dream about her.

A DREAM FOR UNICORNS- A fairy named Serena got a dream request from a unicorn, which is odd since unicorns never sleep. Children have stopped believing in unicorns, which is causing them to get sleepy. Serena and another fairy, Starlight, send unicorn dreams to children who've not asked for any specific dream.

A DREAM FOR A WIZARD- This story was very boring. It's about a male wizard named Moonbeam. He's an inspector and he wants to watch Marigold and Emmelina as they help others with their dreams requests.

A DREAM FOR YOU- A very boring story. We're told that we can do anything and be anything we want in a dream.

PRINCESS ROSE'S SECRET- Princess Rose has three sisters. She prefers to be outside as much as possible. She walks through a portal which is a floral archway, to follow a singing bird. She's shrunk in size and is sitting on a branch with the bird and she's now a fairy. She has the ability to hear all the animals and insects in the woods. Her sisters come to find her and the bird tells her she has to leave but can come back through the portal whenever she wants, so she reluctantly goes home. Her mother, the Queen, is sick. Only the juice from the petals of the Evening Star flower can cure her but the flower is nowhere to be found. A white dove, though it's yellow in the illustration, brings the flower to Rose's window, so she's able to cure her mother.

PRINCESS MAGNOLIA'S MAGIC- She's a little girl and she learns that like her mother could do at her age, she can do magic. The birds and flowers on her wallpaper come alive. A bird tells her he can lead her into a magic world whenever she wants, just come and find him. She was able to do good with her magic by turning a town that had been ruined by volcanic ash back to normal.

PRINCESS DAISY'S DARKNESS- Daisy and her dog Thor were out walking and heard a bird singing. The dog ran off and suddenly Daisy could fly. She had shrunk in size. She wished the approaching winter would skip them this year, so it did. Animals became sick and confused and plants died. Daisy and to find the singing bird to help her turn it back to winter.

THE PRINCESSES PRESENTS- Each of seven sisters thinks of which country they want to send their father, the King, to for his birthday. He apparently dreamed he'd traveled them all, which caused him to lose sleep. He told him what he really wanted for his birthday was to have a portrait painted of all of them together.

PRINCESS NERINA'S PROBLEM- She's a fairy princess, which means she can do magic. One day she's out riding her horse and decides to change her hair to black and her horse to black. Prince Aveme sees her and wants to marry her. He goes to her home one day and tells her parents he wants to marry her. Nerina comes out but she's not black-haired and her horse is back to white. She tells him about her magic and he's put off by it. He tells his mother. He then accepts Nerina's magic and they plan to get married.

MANY KINDS OF MAGIC- This is about the wedding of Nerina and Aveme, from the previous story. On the day of the wedding, it snows, causing guests, food, and musicians to not be able to get there. The princesses from The Princesses Presents are invited. They all worked their magic to clear the snow so the guests could arrive.

THE DOLL GRAVEYARD by Lois Ruby

PUBLISHER: Scholastic, 6/2014
GENRE: Children's Paranormal Fiction
SETTING: Connecticut, USA
MY GRADE: B

SYNOPSIS: The house at Cinder Creek hides many secrets. Shelby and Brian Tate have heard heated voices crying out in the night. They've noticed the unsettling way things move around on their own. But the most chilling thing about their new home is the cemetery someone's built out back. The graves are tiny, only big enough for dolls.

Soon Shelby's learning all about them. Betsy Anne's angelic appearance hides a raging fire behind her eyes, while Baby Daisy changes faces as quickly as she changes moods. And Miss Amelia's cracked porcelain skin and twisted lips only hint at the pain she once endured at the hands of a very angry girl. If Shelby can help the dolls find peace, she and her family might actually be happy at Cinder Creek. But if she can't--the dolls will have their revenge...

MY THOUGHTS: This story is told through almost twelve-year-old precocious Shelby. She lives with her nine-year-old brother, Brian. They move into an old manor with their divorced mother, Serena. It was left to them at the beginning of the story by Serena's aunt Amelia, who's dying. She leaves Shelby to figure out a mystery that she knows nothing about by giving her a doll named Isabella's hat.

Dolls are buried in graves outside and they're in a horseshoe shaped pattern. They end up back inside the house in their dollhouse multiple times even after being reburied. Shelby has to figure out where a doll named Lady is and why she wasn't in the graveyard with the other dolls, and to figure out what really happened to Sadie, a little girl who owned the dolls and lived in that house decades before. Was it murder or natural causes?

The target audience for this book is grades 4-6 but I think that's too young an age group for the subject matter, as it involves the supernatural and talk of the possible murder of a child who lived there years before. The main character sounds more like a teenager or adult, so it didn't seem like a sixth grader was talking, and she's very witty. There's also writings in a journal from an eleven-year-old girl named Emily and she too sounded too mature. Her grammar is perfect, as is her punctuation and spelling. That's not likely accurate for someone so young to be 100% perfect in their writing.

There were quite a lot of characters in this 246-page book, at least fifteen, unless I miscounted, and if an adult can have trouble keeping up with who's who, and they will, an elementary school child certainly will. The dark subject matter combined with Shelby's upbeat personality didn't really mesh well for me. This would have worked better if it had been a young adult book. And I don't think the plot fully made since. I'm a little confused by it but I did enjoy it more than not.

THEY ALL FALL DOWN by Rachel Howzell Hall

PUBLISHER: Forge, 7/2020
GENRE: Fiction/Thriller
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: F

SYNOPSIS: Delighted by a surprise invitation, Miriam Macy sails off to a luxurious private island off the coast of Mexico with six other strangers. Surrounded by miles of open water in the gloriously green Sea of Cortez, Miriam is soon shocked to discover that she and the rest of her companions have been brought to the remote island under false pretenses—and all seven strangers harbor a secret.

Danger lurks in the lush forest and in the halls and bedrooms of the lonely mansion. Sporadic cell-phone coverage and miles of ocean keeps the group trapped in paradise. And strange accidents stir suspicions, as one by one . . .

MY THOUGHTS: This story is a retelling of the 1939 Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None. The plot of this book is this: someone has invited seven strangers in the USA, black, white, Hispanic, to live in a mansion called Artemis, on an island off the coast of Mexico, for three days. Each person was given a different reason for being invited there and they don't know it but they're there under false pretenses. They don't know either that the person who invited them has set out to punish each and every one of them for past sins. Each person represents one of the seven deadly sins and they're being taken out one by one.

Mimi is just an awful character. Every thought she has about the other six people is critical and superficial. She's a mess mentally based on things we learn about her towards the end and she certainly deserved to be on that island. The stuff going on with her before she leaves for her trip that involves her daughter is ridiculous and is another example of her issue with race, which I talk more about below. I just don't see any point in all that backstory. We're told by her ex-husband that she makes things up but aren't given any examples so we don't know if it's true or not.

I really like unlikable characters sometimes, and villains, but I didn't care for any in here, and all but one, Wallace, was unlikable to me. The dialogue was awful, the characters, uninteresting, there was no suspense, nothing.

The black author clearly has an issue with race. She mentioned about four or five times within the first thirty pages that the main character Miriam, aka Mimi, is black. The plot of the story has nothing to do with ethnicity. Nothing. Mimi has made some stupid comments like this, about educated black character Frank, from page 197, "But there he was, stuttering and sweating like a guilty son of a bitch from the ghetto, caught red-handed and flecked with the blood of a white woman, a Richard Wright character come to life." Another comment that bothered me was this, on page 221 of the paperback, about Frank and a white character named Eddie, "He was a big man, an angry man, who now stood over a naked , unmoving black man. 1717, 1817, 1917, today...This was a timeless American image." WTF is she talking about? The character was helping him out of the hot tub and the character's making a slavery comment/comparison? Get the fuck out of here with that, Rachel. While trying to figure out which of the seven deadly sins she represents, she says this, page 239, "Pride? Okay. A little. But that wasn't a problem-I needed a very healthy amount of self-esteem to be black and female in America." There's a few more comments at the beginning about her being a black woman, but I don't remember what they are. The author also made a white police officer the murderer of an innocent black man. Overkill, overkill, overkill. I'm surprised but at the same time not, that no one in any of the reviews I read, mentioned any of that.

The ending of this is different than And Then There Were None, so I give the author credit for that since I liked it. I liked Wallace too. But Agatha's laughing at you from her grave for your poor attempt at a remake of her classic. No way, no how would I ever read this author again.

I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

BUT WHO WILL BELL THE CATS? and THE CAT WHO WOULDN'T COME INSIDE by Cynthia von Buhler

TITLE: But Who Will Bell the Cats?
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin, 9/2009
GENRE: Children's Fiction
READ FREE: link
MY GRADE: B

SYNOPSIS: Finally, the solution to Aesop’s age-old question: But who will bell the cats?

Mouse and his friend Brown Bat are tired of watching the princess’s cats enjoy the life of luxury in the banquet hall of the castle, while they languish on crumbs and sleep in smelly socks.

They are determined to get out of the basement and join the fun and frolicking. But how to get past those spoiled cats who block their every effort?

It will take ingenuity, teamwork, and quite a bit of cunning for Mouse and Bat to succeed. If they can only figure out how to bell the cats . . .

MY THOUGHTS: I'm a little disappointed in this. I don't like how the cat's came to be belled. The mouse and bat could have just asked that person to do it in the first place. The mouse and bat weren't cunning either like the synopsis said. I do like the illustrations because they're very gothic.

TITLE: The Cat Who Wouldn't Come Inside
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin, 9/2006
GENRE: Children's Fiction
READ FREE: link
MY GRADE: A+

SYNOPSIS: All tigers and tabbies, calicos and strays, kittens and cats, need love. And trust. They want things just so. And, sometimes, they do not want to come inside. But a little patience and a little attention can make all the difference.

MY THOUGHTS: This is a very sweet story with a very happy ending. A cat shows up at a woman's house often. The woman offers it something new in addition to the old stuff each time, be it food or a comfort item, then invites the cat in, but it runs away each and every time until one day it decides to stick around in the winter. The book's cover is beautiful. I really like the claymation images. I've never seen it in a children's book before. I do not like the cat's face, as it looks like that of a mouse.

BEING LOLITA by Alisson Wood

PUBLISHER: Flatiron, 8/2020
GENRE: Nonfiction/Memoir
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: B

SYNOPSIS: A dark romance evolves between a high schooler and her English teacher in this breathtakingly powerful memoir about a young woman who must learn to rewrite her own story.

“Have you ever read Lolita?” So begins seventeen-year-old Alisson’s metamorphosis from student to lover and then victim. A lonely and vulnerable high school senior, Alisson finds solace only in her writing—and in a young, charismatic English teacher, Mr. North.

Mr. North gives Alisson a copy of Lolita to read, telling her it is a beautiful story about love. The book soon becomes the backdrop to a connection that blooms from a simple crush into a forbidden romance. But as Mr. North’s hold on her tightens, Alisson is forced to evaluate how much of their narrative is actually a disturbing fiction.

In the wake of what becomes a deeply abusive relationship, Alisson is faced again and again with the story of her past, from rereading Lolita in college to working with teenage girls to becoming a professor of creative writing. It is only with that distance and perspective that she understands the ultimate power language has had on her—and how to harness that power to tell her own true story.

Being Lolita is a stunning coming-of-age memoir that shines a bright light on our shifting perceptions of consent, vulnerability, and power. This is the story of what happens when a young woman realizes her entire narrative must be rewritten—and then takes back the pen to rewrite it.

MY THOUGHTS: The twenty-six-year-old dark-haired and green-eyed English teacher, Nick North, was emotionally abusive and childish, throwing tantrums during arguments. Nothing sexual happened between them, not even kissing, until after she turned 18 and graduated high school, except one conversation about bra and penis size while she was seventeen. I don't feel like she took any responsibility for her part in their inappropriate two-year relationship that started in 2001, when she was less than four months away from her eighteenth birthday, and continued while she was away at college five hours away.

I'd have liked to have known more about her teenage depression, suicide and cutting but she basically just glossed over it as well as glossed over a later rape. How did you make your parents aware of your depression in middle school? When did the cutting start? We weren't made aware of any childhood abuse so I'd like to know what she thought brought on the cutting. I don't recall her mentioning depression while Nick was in her life so I'm assuming it didn't get worse.

She made a couple of comments that really bother me. She said, on page 143, that "for all intents and purposes" she was still "pubescent" and was a "child" when she was eighteen. No, ma'am, you're a legal adult at eighteen years of age. Seems like she's calling him a pedophile, which he wasn't, at least not in her situation. Who knows what he was doing with other underage girls. On page 147 she said that once during sex with Nick it was painful but she didn't tell him to stop and that she later told herself his not stopping was her fault. She's right; it is her fault he didn't stop because he didn't know she wanted him to, so why even make that comment? On page 190, she said that at a party her first weekend at college she was drunk and had sex with a guy. She said she "didn't understand" what she'd done. How could you not?

I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

THE DEVIL'S WEB by Mary Balogh

PUBLISHER: Signet, 8/1990
REISSUED: 2008
GENRE: Fiction/Historical Romance
SETTING: England, early 1800s
SERIES: Web, #3
MY GRADE: D

SYNOPSIS: The last time Madeline Raine had seen James Purnell, she had been but a chit of a girl, and at his mercy. Purnell had held her helpless in his arms, but protectively, above the abyss of her own dangerous hunger for him. He had left her then, not taking her innocence but taking her heart, as he vanished from England. Since then Madeline had reigned as society's most dazzling and heartless beauty, making all men pay for one man's rebuff of her.

Now James was back, more handsome and arrogant than ever. And Madeline steeled herself not to fall under his spell again. But she soon discovered that the melting power of passion ignited by love would not easily die...

MY THOUGHTS: After owning this book for twelve years, I finally got around to reading it. The first half of this book was extremely boring. It involved so many characters, mostly relatives, parties, and conversations that had nothing to do with anything. That carried on throughout the book. It's truly at least 100 pages longer than it should have been and it was a real struggle to get though the first half. All the interesting things involving Madeline and James took place in the second half, so that made the story so much more tolerable.

James is thirty. He left England for Canada (where the author lives) four years previous. He works with fur traders. He sales home to England and brings along the daughter, Jean Cameron, of the man he works with. She ends up getting married to someone she meets there then disappears from the story. He's reacquainted with our heroine, twenty-five-year-old Madeline, which he met, to my understanding, in both previous book in this series. They have history together but we don't know about any of it.

James and his younger sister Alex grew up with very religious parents and weren't allowed to socialize much with other children. Alex is married to Madeline's twin brother, Dominic. Both of his parents are horrible and look down at James both for his career choice and for his past, which involved a girl they didn't approve of, Dora. That relationship has haunted him for ten years but he gets resolution after meeting up with her. Her brother, Carl Beasley, was a bad character who would have made one helluva villain.

He and Madeline are in love with each other but they don't know it. In love but can't stand one another. We aren't told why that is so it's very confusing. He's possessive and jealous because he knows how flirtatious she is. She's got a very smart mouth and is very immature and slightly antagonistic, even when he's being nice and trying hard to get along. Her attitude is common for heroines written at that time (1990) and before. We didn't get any background information on her at all or any about their history with each other from four years before.

Now about the "rape." There's a sex scene that happens after she tells him that if they have sex it will be rape, since she can't stand him. I've read that scene five times and don't see rape in it even though the hero admits to himself that it was rape. The heroine even thinks it was rape. Here are the pages for you to read that scene for yourself. In the last chapter, James realizes it wasn't rape and later in said chapter asks Madeline about it and she agrees that it wasn't. So why did they both say it was rape if an actual rape didn't happen? How could they have seen it that way? More importantly, why did the author write it that way?

This could have been a really good story if not for most of the first half and the excessive amount of characters in here, and the two weddings of secondary characters. No story needs three weddings in it. I love reading about tragic couples, which this one was, and I did enjoy most the second half. I probably only liked a total of 1/3 of the story. It's a shame it was bogged down with so much unnecessary dialogue.

The heroine's name, Madeline Raine, sounds like the 1986 Bruce Hornsby single Mandoline Rain. I wonder if that's a coincidence.

TWO CHILDREN'S BOOKS, FAIRIES and MONSTERS by John Malam

PUBLISHER: QED Publishing 1/2009
GENRE: Fiction/Children's Fantasy
READ FREE: link
MY GRADE: A+

SYNOPSIS: Learn about the legends and mysteries that surround mythical creatures with these enthralling guides. Hunt down the most fearsome dragons, explore the fairy world, follow the history of giants and discover the most famous monsters in the world. Prepare to enter a realm of amazing artwork, incredible tales and legendary encounters.












MY THOUGHTS: I love this. It's a British publication. Every one of the 32 pages is filled with full-color illustrations and text. It's about fairies, goblins, dwarfs, pixies, and elves. Where they come from and all that good stuff, and most are shape-shifters, didn't you know? This is done pretty much in the same style as the 1976 book Gnomes by Rien Poortvliet and Wil Huygen. I like this image and my favorite image is below and is of a hobgoblin causing mischief at night.

PUBLISHER: QED Publishing, 9/2009
GENRE: Fiction/Children's Fantasy
READ FREE: link
MY GRADE: A

SYNOPSIS: Learn about the legends and mysteries that surround mythical creatures with these enthralling guides. Hunt down the most fearsome dragons, explore the fairy world, follow the history of giants and discover the most famous monsters in the world. Prepare to enter a realm of amazing artwork, incredible tales and legendary encounters.












MY THOUGHTS: This 32 page book is part of the same 'Mythologies' series as 'Fairies'. What's talked about are the kraken, cerberus, harpy, hydra, great serpent, griffin, flying head, and vampires, among others, and include what I assume are well known stories about some of those creatures.

I like the 'monsters with wings' aka 'monsters of the sky' chapter best. I dislike the illustration of the Harpy because it looks very modern, unlike all the rest, which have a very old feel and look to me. There are quite a lot of stories packed into this one. Perhaps the freakiest chapter is 'humanoid monsters' and I'd be lying if I said this Minotaur didn't creep me out, or the flying head. My favorite image is from The Great Serpent and the Flood story, below.