The Gambler had great advice...that I wouldn't listen to

I think this is it for me here. At least for now. I am going to try and keep this short, for once in my life, and avoid going on a ranty complainy tangent. It's highly unlikely anybody's reading this regardless of length, which is in essence why I'm finally calling time of death on this here corner of the web. Family emergencies kept me from coming back this summer and I had a whole slew of stuff planned for September and October but something's just....missing now. It doesn't help that I already know the work I'm going to put in for any posts is going to be for naught. It has been for naught for 9 years now, dating all the way back to when there was no Instagram or Snapchat and this was a soap opera blog. It's never taken off and it's taken me 9 very long years to make peace with that. This was my job, a full-time thing for me, and even though the published posts would suggest otherwise, you should see the amount of content sitting in my Drafts section. I'm sitting on literal years of posts. Good posts. I actually have two in draft right now that I've been working on for the better part of a month that were three years in the making. But there's no point in continuing to do this work and get nowhere, and so I've left them in the Drafts folder. As much as I love blogging and I love the fulfillment a successful post brings me, what I consider successful is technically still a failure. Here's the real real: as an influencer, I failed. I did not grow my audience, did not increase my engagement, and no changes I made were reflected in the end result of either blog. I'm tired. The great Kenny Rogers penned one of my favorite songs of life, The Gambler. The chorus very wisely instructs you to know when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, when to walk away and when to run. I spent a long time not knowing when to fold and walk. I spent a longer time at that table refusing to fold, knowing that I should. I felt that if I had the idea, I should also have the momentum, the motivation, to gas myself up enough to finish the post. Truth is, there's no satisfaction in putting in the work knowing nobody will ever see it. It makes me incredibly pessimistic, fucks with my view of my self-worth as it pertains to the work I do, and makes me question the feasibility of my other professional pursuits. If I can't make this work, how can I move on to something else and do the social media shuck and jive all over again, knowing it can end up as negatively as this did? I already function by fear, and having to admit a failure halts my steps. Continuing to walk in that failure--i.e. posting here pretending I don't already know the results--seems to make it worse, compounds my fear that I'll never succeed. I need to do something new for a little while.

Cheese-laden comparisons aside, I'm done here for now. I'm sorry I could never give my all to make this blog everything I wanted it to be. It has truly been my pleasure to create posts and call myself a blogger, a digital influencer. I have influenced exactly 0 people, however, showing me that I have failed at my job, I am going to continue to fail at this job if I continue the way I am now, and it is time to move on for a little while. Finally admitting that publicly has finally given me the push I need to try something else. I would love at some point to come back, but there are a lot of things I have been neglecting or pushing back, trying to make this work. It's not working and has not been working for quite some time now and I just needed to stop being in denial about it and accept it. Hopefully by February I'll have enough juice to go back to ATV for Black History Spotlight, because it is by far the most important to me and the thing I am proudest of, but I don't know anymore. This will be the second time I've shelved All Things Vintage in what should be the middle of a series but it's time. It's been time, actually. I'm more upset about the idea of leaving than I am by actually leaving. More upset that I'll have left something unfinished, even though nobody read the entry that was already posted. Of course I wish the timing could have been better, but I just didn't have the energy to push through it this time. Something stops me every time I try. Which means it's time to go.

So what happens now? I'm going to lick my wounds for awhile, cry it out (I have PMS, gimme a break lol) and plot my next real life moves. If for some reason you still want to keep up with me, I'll still be doing book reviews on Goodreads, Amazon and LibraryThing and I'm still going to be reviewing products on Influenster. I'll still post occasional pics on Instagram, might do the occasional Insta Inspo for any vintage shop aficionados, and ideally, I'll be back here before long. I love my blogs and this isn't a decision I made because I didn't think I had anymore to give--the opposite, actually--, I made the decision because it had already been made for me and I just refused to accept it. Anywho, if you've read even one post here in this ghost town, thank you so much. I mean it. I appreciate it, and you, so much for spending a little of your time with me when there are certainly better blogs to be reading, better videos to be watching. I believe very strongly in my blog, and I believe in the vision I initially had when I redesigned this site--a one-stop review shop and a smattering of randomness. It's different, it's me, and the enjoyment I got out of finally figuring out my voice and using it is incomparable. Hopefully I can take that energy and pour it into new pursuits. If and when (preferably when) I come back, I hope you'll give me a click and let me show you what I've been up to. Have a wonderful holiday season (can you believe it's almost holiday season already? WTF) and I'll see you soon. 

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What I've Been Reading: June/July

Hi! So we're already halfway through 2018 and it's time for our mid-year progress report. How are you doing on your reading challenge so far? As I mentioned, my goal was 50 books and if I'd kept reading at the rate I was back during the winter, I'd have already hit my mark by now. Spring and summer haven't been kind to me, and I've fallen off a lot. I didn't even read anything last month. I'm trying to get back into it, in fact my 'To Read' list has probably never been longer than it is right now because there are so many I'm excited to get to, but to be honest my attention is more than a little scattered right now. There's been so much going on in my life and the majority of it isn't good at all, so I haven't had the time, attention span or energy to read a book.

I have some book review assignments that I applied for recently and I've started to hear back from some of the authors who accepted my requests, so thankfully I have some motivation to start reading again. Sometimes having an assignment helps me get out of a rut; I know if left on my own I probably wouldn't read. But when I am expected to produce a review of a specific book--bonus points if its out of my comfort zone or the review has a post deadline--it forces me to read (not skim, which I'm really good for when I'm not in a good headspace to actually read), and that usually gets me back in the groove again. What do you do to get out of reading slumps? Anyway, let's get to the few books I was able to get to this month.

Wrath: A Lieutenant Harrington Thriller--E. H. Reinhard

I remember this was a book I started reading in May but rolled over to June, but I read it so early in the month--and so much has gone on within the month--that I'm having a little trouble remembering smaller details I wanted to include about the book. Basically, a ticking time bomb discovers that his wife is cheating on him, the last in a line that includes all of his previous girlfriends, and decides to get his revenge. He goes on a killing spree, deciding to wipe out every woman that had ever cheated on him. Lieutenant Harrington is assigned to the case, but he finds himself much more attached to it than he ever expected.

I thought this was a solid read. I like crime novels that include both viewpoints; I see it as a very obvious form of foreshadowing. If you know the killer is planning to off a particular character but in the last scene you read with said character, they're having lunch and making plans with no cares in the world, it gives the reader this sense of dread at knowing what's to come. I enjoy that feeling. lol I'm also that idiot that yells at the book, "No, don't open that door! Don't roll down your window!" like that's going to change anything so what do I know, right? Anyway, the point is, I love that feeling. To be able to feel like you as the reader know everything but the author is still somehow able to reveal secrets you didn't see coming, to keep you reading, that's even better and this book did all of that for me. The character development, save for probably the killer, was a little lacking and as a result, dialogue came up a bit short as well but other than that this was a good read.





Indelible--Inger Iversen

Trent is an ex-Marine in an interracial relationship with a Black woman and having to face multiple challenges, the primary one being getting Teal to move to his hometown, which is in the Deep South. It wouldn't be so bad, if his past didn't keep coming back to haunt him in the form of former girlfriends and racist acquaintances, reminding him of his own checkered past with racism.

I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. I think with times being as they are today, books like these hit home more than maybe they should. I'm not opposed at all to interracial relationships; my first love was of another race and while I personally did not have any issues with it, we faced a lot of issues being together, primarily his mother trying to force him to break up with me because I was Black. The ultimatum didn't work in her favor, because he moved in with my family for the rest of our relationship. When he dumped me a year later it was because he was a dog, not because I was Black. LOL Anyway, interracial relationships have never bothered me but I've been on the receiving end of the looks, stares and whispers more times than I can count. And I live in Texas. Far West Texas to be exact, so technically I'm considered more Southwest than South. Despite that, the Southern mentality is alive and well, even here. With that being said, can you imagine how much worse it is in the Deep South--this book is set in Kentucky of all places!--for a Black woman to carry on with a White man? It's not unheard of nor is it uncommon, but the Deep South isn't exactly known for its tolerance and diversity. As I was reading, the question that began to overwhelm my experience with the book was why Trent was so dead set on getting Teal to move there at her own expense, knowing his own past wasn't fully behind him--not because he was still racist, but because he still lived in the town he used to be racist in. That question kind of ruined how I felt about Trent and the book overall, actually. It started to color--no pun intended--my opinion and how I felt about the events taking place in the book, especially after the trouble started. As a Black woman who is no stranger to prejudiced behaviors and racially motivated maliciousness, it would be a dealbreaker for me to have my boyfriend--who already has a racist past--try to pressure me to leave my life and move somewhere I may have to deal with racism at a higher level than I had for the rest of my life. Teal's a better woman than I am, lemme tell you. lol I wasn't that crazy about this book and I'm okay ending my road with them here.





Deathly Reminders--T. Patrick Phelps

I want to say I got this book from one of BookBub's daily deals, I can't remember, but I enjoyed it and not just because it was probably free. lol This book is about a trophy wife arrested for murdering her husband, but protests her innocence to anyone willing to listen. Against the advice of her attorney, the woman calls in PI Derek and his assistant Nikkie to get to the bottom of events. Derek has nagging doubts about the woman's innocence but is able to maintain his composure through the 'good ol' boy' network functioning in the local social circle, but a loss very close to home causes the case to take on new significance to him.

First things first, I like how we got the last couple of scenes in the book in the prologue, then the first chapter rolled things back to where they began. It satisfies the spoiler hound in me to know how things end up but makes me more intrigued to read the book so I can find out the whys. In order to pull that off, the prologue has to be descriptive enough to pull the reader in and paint a full picture but vague enough to leave more questions than answers so that the reader will continue to read along. I don't think that's easy to pull off, but the author proved me wrong. lol Once I got a fuller picture of the characters mentioned in the prologue, this bittersweet feeling permeated the entire book in an excellent--and lasting--bit of foreshadowing that upped the emotional ante of the story. It was also quite risky to kill off a major character at the beginning of the story but the author did it, which was a wicked thing to do knowing full well that the reader is going to get emotionally connected to this character's storyline even more. It was well done. Anyway, once you start a story like that it's important to make the lead up just as good and the author did that for me here as well. The story itself was a good one--a whodunnit that blew the lid off of corrupt businessmen, affairs, a secret circle of millionaires and a death that looked like it was supposed to hide all the truths but left them all to be exposed instead. It lagged quite a bit in spaces and started to lose its footing a bit between the halfway and two-thirds mark of the book, but pulled everything together in the end. I enjoyed the individual arcs of the main characters, thought they created a fuller story, and even though it tugs at my loyalties to the deceased character, I'd like to see a follow-up with the two that looked like they were going to be drawn together next.





Bitten--Noelle Marie

I've nicknamed this book Twilight: The Werewolf Side because of the level of teen melodrama it has in it. lol In Bitten, Katherine gets bitten by a werewolf who seemed more intrigued than hungry, and predictably, begins to see drastic changes in her behaviors and likes. After a tragic attack leaves both of her parents and one of her classmates fatally attacked, she wakes up to find herself abducted by the pack of wolves in their human forms, manned by the werewolf who bit her. When in his human form, Bastian prefers to ignore her presence completely despite his insistence that she remain with the pack, who don't want her there as much as she doesn't want to be there. But in his wolf form, he seems strangely protective of her, only being nice to her when he's covered in fur. As Katherine struggles to find her place in the pack and start over in a place almost nobody seems to want her, she also struggles to find out the mystery behind her new pack leader and her feelings towards him.

Even though I shaded the book earlier for its teen melodrama, I can see this being a good read for those who read a lot of supernatural YA books. For all the shit people give The Twilight Saga, it single-handedly inspired an entirely new generation of supernaturally based books and caused the resurgence of vampires in pop culture, followed closely by werewolves and opening the door for zombies and the like after that. It's mentioned in passing by most vampire or werewolf-based books these days, even if the majority of the time it's mentioned as a punchline or the negative side of a comparison, but that should show that its impact on the supernatural genre has been lasting. Yes, I'm still a Twilight stan. Don't @ me. Anyway, I probably would have enjoyed the book more if I was a bit younger and could still relate to the teen mood swings, but being an old fogey now it got a little tiring. lol This, coming from a Twilight stan. Yes, I see the contradiction. Again, don't @ me. Anyway, I did like that Katherine had to go through some shit in order to grow comfortable with herself the way she became. She didn't just wake up okay with everything. I liked that this was still a relatively young pack, trying to figure their way and make a stand for themselves amongst the other packs in the area. I enjoyed that there was some overall pack drama with Bastian trying to take over his rightful position--even though I didn't much care for him as a character for most of the book, it helped to explain a little of why he was the way he was. It seemed like there was so much more to him than the book showed. The setting of where the pack was really did remind me a bit of the gloomy, woodsy Washington setting of Twilight so I couldn't help but play on that a bit to help me picture scenes as I went along. lol By the time I finished with the book I had more questions than answers and I wish more had been resolved or at least addressed in Bitten. Despite that, I loved the ending; these honest interactions between Katherine and Bastian seemed far and few in between with all of the mood swings and Katherine's apparent inability to make safe or good decisions. That, probably more than anything else, made me less intrigued to continue the book. I don't care much for the constant drama throughout a book as an effort to throw the hero and heroine together; it begins to feel tedious and unnecessary to me. Katherine was in dramatic situations back-to-back-to-back with seemingly no pause between them, and seemed to learn little to nothing each time despite the increasing amount of danger she found herself in with each situation. It annoyed me a lot. lol I also had some lingering questions because of the cliffhangers with different angles of the plot that I'm guessing will be answered in the next installment of the series. I don't know that I'm interested enough to keep reading, but if I treat it as a standalone it was alright. It kind of bugs me that I don't have those answers though. lol

I was only able to read one book during July because I was trying to catch up on everything I wasn't able to do during June, so I figured I'd just combine my one little entry with June's list.

Transmigrations is, so far, that book for me this year. Disclaimer time--I applied for this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, which I've been a part of for awhile now, and was able to get a copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. I've been part of the program for about 6 years now but went inactive a few months ago so I could catch up with books I was asked to review and hadn't gotten around to yet. I started applying again during last month's batch and Transmigrations was one of the books I got accepted for. Over the years, I've gotten some really good books for review--also gotten some pretty bad ones, if I'm being honest lol--and this one is definitely part of the former category. This book made me skip ahead, not quite to the end but just before so I could get a peek at where things were going, and I really wanted to review it before I'd even finished it. It's very rare when a book excites me that way so I was all over it. I love historical sci-fi books, love dystopian/futuristic sci-fi, but never got to experience them within the same book. Transmigrations found a way to combine them and keep the experience a firsthand, immersive experience for the reader. It was almost like creating small snippets of other books and combining them within the larger picture of the book, and I loved that entire experience.

But on to the book itself, we're--I'm guessing--a millennia or two in the future, where Justin is hired by a mysterious, prestigious company and given the task of digitally going back in time to 1898, where the creator of the transmigration movement was creating the rudimentary forms of what Justin himself now uses. Through her eyes, he experiences everything Dr. Petronella Sage was experiencing in Victorian London as a female in a sea of male colleagues, as a woman in Victorian society, and as a scientist on the brink of changing the world. Transmigration is basically the ability to travel to any point in time, past, present or future, in an effort to prove that consciousness can exist outside of the person's body and can even jump from host to host in different time periods. Time travel, for short. LOL As he watches Petronella and her faithful (lovesick) friend Professor Savant establish the basis for transmigration through trial and error, he gets to experience time travel in its infancy with them, until it comes crashing forward...too far forward...in time.

I loved this book. Loved it. Like I said above, the combination of historical and futuristic sci-fi is something I've never read before and they were combined so well, in a way that made sense for this book but were still true to their individual niches. You got the feeling of being on the brink of a new era back in Victorian London, then you got the jump ahead to the very futuristic, technologically dominated present day in the book. The experience as a whole was flawlessly executed, down to the feeling of being in both time periods--and the others Sage and Savant bounced around to--and it felt very authentic. I loved that there was so much more to the concept of time travel than just jumping somewhere. It presented moral, ethical and scientific dilemmas and lines of inquiry for everyone--Justin, Sage and Savant, Sage's assistant Abigail, the world, were anyone else to find out--and that was interesting to explore. Historically speaking, the different time periods had something distinctive about all of them that made the time jump more believable, as did their manner of speaking and thinking. It left them looking and sounding like fish out of water and I loved that. I'm a stan for time travel books in general, but I've never read a book that explored it from a scientific angle before. It made the concept of time travel sound almost....feasible, in a not-so-distant future. I also enjoyed the mystery of the employer and trying to figure out, along with Justin, what exactly they were trying to do with sending Justin to look back over Dr. Sage's work. It didn't miss my notice that Justin as a main character was rather bland, almost a blank canvas other than a few distinctive details so that we'd know we were reading along with him. In a way, it was an inception transmigration--while Justin was peeking in on the journeys of Sage and Savant, we the readers were peeking in on Justin experiencing those things. Justin served as the eyes and ears for both us reading along and his employers recording his findings and I liked that. I'm excited for the next installment of this series and can't wait until I can read it.

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What I've Been Watching: May

Hi! This month I didn't watch too many things so thankfully, this list and my WIBR lists will be blissfully short. A little too short if you ask me, but I digress. This was not one of my better months; whereas March and April were consumed with health issues, May was consumed with personal and family issues. I wasn't in the headspace to do much of anything except put in work and find things that made me laugh. I was also handed a devastating blow when my DVR crapped out, I had to get a new one and lost 5 years of recordings in the process. When I tell you I felt the loss in my soul. I had entire series on that DVR, man. I also had the only TV airing of Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie on there, which has not re-aired--AT ALL--since last November. So in many ways, this has been a trying and spiritually challenging time for me. LOL Anyway, first world problems aside, let's get to what I was able to watch this month. 

The Royal Wedding: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

Waco: Madman or Messiah?

Matlock

8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown

Crime Watch Daily

Table for 3

Per usual, we're getting traditional tv out of the way first, which brings me to the royal event of the year. Now up until Friday evening, I had -3 fucks to give about the royal wedding. There was a list of reasons I wasn't on the train like everyone else was, but in short the way I looked at it, this woman found love, was living her best life, and as people in love living their best lives together tend to do, they wanted to get married. I didn't like the fickleness of the media coverage, mainly of Meghan's family, and I just didn't want any part of it. I felt the same when Prince William was getting married a few years ago; the media coverage has never been all that favorable to Duchess Kate and watching the flip-flopping and constant shade throwing at her was annoying. This changed the day of the wedding, when I stayed up to watch it. LOL So I was like, aight I'll stay up. Fell asleep at 2am, wedding coverage started at 3am. I woke up at 9, about 30 minutes after the wedding was over. So that's how that went. LOL I watched the replay Saturday night and it was absolutely beautiful. There are so many little Black girls who, if only for a day, got to see an African-American become royalty (in a way) and it probably inspired a lot of dreams. It was a beautiful ceremony and as a fellow Black girl, it was nice to see all of the beautiful Black references integrated somewhere into the ceremony.  I hope these two blaze a trail together. Okay, cheesy rant over.


Waco: Madman or Messiah? recently aired on A&E and I haven't gotten through it yet, but I've been wanting to see it since the first time I'd seen an advertisement for it. I was only about 6 when the events in Waco took place and I don't remember hearing about it around that time, so it drew me in immediately once I learned a bit of what it was about. I think I have two episodes saved on the DVR and I'm not sure if its ongoing or was only a two part series, but so far it's been quite interesting.


Don't clown me for watching Matlock. LOL I grew up watching the show and now reruns air on like 3 channels where before it was only 1, so it's fabulous. Both because I can catch it multiple times throughout the day and also because I can get all the episodes back on the DVR that much faster. lol 

Moving on to the 'nets, one of the shows I really got into at the beginning of the month was 8 Out of 10 Cats, which is a British game show about numbers and letters and it's hilarious. British comics and celebrities form two teams and do different games and challenges, and Jimmy Carr (whose standup special I saw last year--it was hilarious) hosts the show with a healthy amount of shade. It's so different from the saccharine sweet, more boring American game shows and I think that's what I like about it. American humor, especially with the FCC in full effect, is more toned down, more PC and to be honest, kinda boring. British humor is drier, more biting and self-deprecating, which is right up my alley. You can find a bunch of the episodes on YouTube (not including the links, don't wanna alert the networks and dry up a good thing lol) so I'd recommend giving it a go.


Crime Watch Daily is an episode that looks like it airs on tv first, then is broken up into 6-10min mini-episodes for the YouTube channel. Different murder/attempted murder cases are covered by Crime Watch Daily, and since the episodes are uploaded to the channel by the network itself, I don't have to worry about not including the link. lol It gives me my true crime fix without my getting sucked back into the vacuum that is Investigation Discovery.


The final thing I watched a lot of is the WWE Network Original series Table for 3. My favorite show on the Network is Ride Along, but Table for 3 is a very close second. One of my favorite things about wrestling is the stories, both on and off the air. In this show, each episode has a theme and three wrestlers come together over a meal to share experiences, stories and bond with each other. I love hearing the road stories, and with the death of kayfabe I love seeing who's actually friends behind the scenes.

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What I've Been Reading: April

Hi! As I warned earlier today, I've changed the name of this series and unfortunately, there's not too much on it this month. I started out well enough, but when I started on the last book in the list, I just lost interest in reading anything else. lol I'll get to that later. Next month may not be too much better; I'm about to get pretty busy with a new series you should be seeing this weekend and probably won't have much time again until June, but that'll be when my SUTS prep will officially begin so who knows, really. lol Anyway, let's get to this month's books. 

Epiphany by Gemma James

I downloaded this book I think in February, couldn't wait to get around to it in March, read it the first week in April and then promptly forgot I read it. lol Not because it was forgettable, but it wasn't unforgettable for me either, if that makes any sense. In this book, our heroine is a psychic of sorts, able to see the actions of a serial killer and the horrors he visits upon his victims, including their deaths, in her dreams shortly before they happen. A mysterious man she'd been dreaming about suddenly pops up in real life and unbeknownst to her, is more connected to the serial killer and his victims than she knew. The two of them reluctantly join forces and fight off their attraction to the other as they get to the bottom of the murders afflicting a small town. I liked the book, so I don't really have an explanation for why I forgot about it so quickly. The mystery in the book was explored from a psychic angle but not in the typical fashion; our heroine was unaware of the meaning of her dreams nor how they connected with anything until a character close to her ends up dead and she bumps into the figure from her dreams. I also liked that minor characters weren't safe in this book; it added an unpredictable facet to the plot that was fun to read. The author can spin a good tale and I liked both the hero and heroine of the book. She did a great job at creating this web of sexual tension that wasn't acted on right away but was worth it once they finally gave in. I love my smut but I also love a good build-up. There was meat in the plot with different angles and characters to consider as possibilities for the killer and I liked that I didn't immediately figure out who the killer was. It wasn't terrible by any means; the more I write about it the more I remember how much I liked it so even though I forgot I read it, I'd still recommend it. LOL

Triple Beat by Mari Carr

Triple Beat is my 'tame' book of the month despite being a menage romance. In it, a trio of friends make up a band on the cusp of hitting it big, when the lead singer mysteriously runs off to places unknown without telling her bandmates. When they figure out where she is and come to the conclusion that she's going through something intense, they fly to her, resolving not to let her go through it alone. While she battles whether or not to tell them the real reason for her going MIA, they discover that they have feelings for each other and tentatively test out a menage. I'm paraphrasing and glossing over a bunch of stuff, but that's the gist. I consider it a tame book despite its contents because while I enjoyed it, it wasn't a super heavy read. The heroine of the book is an abuse survivor, something she neglected to tell her friends/bandmates, and her reason for going home was to confront her past, namely her father, who is stalking her after his release from prison. Her bandmates fell a little flat for me in terms of personality; while I understood a bit about the heroine and why she was the way she was, I didn't feel like her friends/lovers were quite as fleshed out. Other than that, I don't have any real complaints with the book. It was a good read, explored the menage angle in a way that I enjoyed, and if there was another chapter about the trio I'm open to reading it. 

17 Deadly Women Through the Ages by True Crime Bus Stop Reads

17 Deadly Women is a book I found late last year and wanted to learn more about, mainly because I was looking for Octoberfest material again. lol Through the years I've been doing the series, I've found more female killers than male, even though statistics show that most serial killers are male. I wanted to see if there were any I could use for this year's series so I checked out this book. I'm not finished with it yet; actually haven't gotten too far into it but so far I'm enjoying it. The stories aren't super long or detailed, but they give a pretty good rundown of events and a general listing of the womens' crimes so it'll help you with your research if you decide to find more information on your own.

Wrath: The Lieutenant Harrington Series 1 by E.H. Reinhard

This is actually the book I was reading when 12 Rules was suggested to me, which I'm going to talk about in a minute, so I haven't gotten to finish Wrath yet. From what I've read so far though, it's going to be a good read. A detective has to piece together the separate murders of a man and woman who, at first glance, have no enemies. Upon finding out that the woman is married, however, the hunt for the killer is on. The detective investigating the murders is a bit closer to the killer than he thinks; someone in his close circle has ties with the man that he was not aware of before. I was a little more than a quarter through the book when I stopped and so far it's been a page turner. The reader knows who the killer is right off, but the other characters in the book don't and I kinda like that. I'll update in next month's WIBR once I've finished it. 

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson

I was bullied into reading this book a few weeks ago and like I said earlier, it is the main reason why there aren't too many other books on the list this month. It's not a super long book, but because its a non-fiction, there's no dialogue to skip through and I want to absorb as much of what I read as I can. I don't normally read or recommend self-help books, I honestly try to stay away from the majority of books in that genre lol, but there are some that cut through the bullshit and 12 Rules is one of those books. It's blunt, so much so that you come away from multiple chapters with hurt feelings, but you can't help but come back and finish it out. Jordan Peterson encourages you to take a hard, honest look at your life, the people in it, how you respond to situations--both good and bad but mainly bad because duh, it's a self-help manual lol--and how to break free of the chaos cycle in order to have more day-to-day peace. It's not full of the fluff or typical vague statements you find in these books; it cuts through all of that and tells you where you're going wrong, what you can do about it, and how in the long run it'll help. I want to say I'm about halfway through the book but there are a lot of statements and sometimes entire pages that have resonated with me so deeply that I already feel a shift in how I look at or respond to certain situations. I'm withholding the rest of my judgment until I'm finished reading, but so far I've enjoyed the hell out of it.


What am I currently reading? 12 Rules for Life, Wrath

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What I've Been Watching: April

Hi! This month I have a pretty full list of things to show ya; I was on the mend with my tooth/facial nerve problems for a little while, but mid-month it struck again and I was down for the count, so I had a little time to watch some programs. I also have a couple of shows that are actually rollovers from last month but didn't make the deadline for when I finish these posts, so I just stuck them in here. This post is longer than the WIBR (that was originally a typo but that's it, I'm changing the name of that series to What I've Been Reading LOL) you're going to see this evening so go on and get your snack now; you won't be needing it later. lol

Marcia Clark Investigates the First 48

Grace vs Abrams

Love After Lockup

NXT TakeOver: New Orleans

Wrestlemania XXXIV

Trump: An American Dream

Unveiled

Beauty and the Beach

Sofia Nino de Rivera: Seleccion Natural

Cody Ko

Noel Miller

Let's start with regular tv. The standout show by far for me this month is the new true crime drama Marcia Clark Investigates the First 48. It's based off of the A&E investigative homicide drama The First 48, which follows detectives of various precincts in the first 48 hours of their homicide investigations. The Marcia Clark version of this series revisits infamous homicide cases which captivated the country, with the goal of trying to see if the police missed any crucial steps in the first 2 days of their investigation into a case. So far, the show has revisited the Caylee Anthony, Stacy Peterson and Chandra Levy cases and while new information has been uncovered or revealed in each case, I don't think it does much really to change the outcome other than make us even angrier that these crimes could have been prevented, that these victims somehow could have been helped.


Grace v Abrams is the follow-up show to Marcia Clark Investigates, and this is much more of a debate show than anything else. Nancy Grace and Dan Abrams, while being friends, have hardly agreed on anything over the years they've butted heads on tv during her show, so they've made a show of it. They discuss the case Marcia Clark has just finished investigating, reviewing the evidence, bringing on witnesses connected to the case, and making their own inferences and conclusions as to what actually happened. It's not a show I could watch all the time, but when I want to hear other ideas about the case we all just finished watching, it's a good follow-up. 

Even though Love After Lockup isn't a new show, it's new to me. I found it on We last month after an episode of Bridezillas, and thought it was great. It follows the lives of various couples, one of whom has just gotten released from prison, and watches the former inmate acclimate, with varying results, back to life on the outside. I went through this myself back when I was 17 and 18, so there's a part of me that relates to the unique struggle these couples are experiencing. I find the females to be a bit naggy and that can get annoying, like when they refuse to understand that their spouses need time to readjust, but I can also understand their desire to just forget it happened and try to move on as quickly as possible. Maturity is why I now understand the need and time required to adjust back to life on the outside, but honestly when I was going through this I was much more of a 'forget it and move on' person myself so I can understand both sides. It's a fine line to navigate and it requires communication on both ends, which I can see is a point of failure with the majority of the couples on the show. Each of the couples have a major point of contention between them, and it's been kinda cool getting to see it played out. It's an un-glamorous but painfully real scenario for many couples and I like that it's being included on tv. 

NXT TakeOver: New Orleans came on the night before Wrestlemania and it was truly an amazing show. NXT has always impressed me; while there isn't a ton of focus on dialogue, shenanigans and ridiculous storylines, all the entertainment is saved for the ring. And these wrestlers (I will not call them sports entertainers--sorry, Vince LOL) bring it every time. The difference between the NXT roster and the main rosters is very obvious, and the word on the street about that is that the main rosters are still firmly in Vinny Mac's control, while this current iteration of NXT is Triple H's brainchild. Whether this is true or not, the difference in management and direction between the sets of rosters is obvious, as is the entertainment they provide. The main roster is about a story, whereas the NXT roster is about putting on a solid show.

Wrestlemania 34 was a couple of weeks ago, and even though it's supposed to be the show of the year, it didn't live up to the hype for me. Honestly, the show hasn't lived up to its hype for me personally for a few years now but it's trying. lol It wasn't terrible by any means and I can tell everyone involved busted their asses to put on a performance--and they did--but ultimately, it is individual matches that stood out to me rather than the show as a whole. I think the real culprit here is that it didn't meet my expectations, which were probably unrealistically high, but many of the actual matches were amazing.


Trump: An American Dream is a mini-series chronicling your president's rise to fame and fortune back during the '70s and '80s. It's a more personal look into the things that shaped him, his professional successes and failures, and for me, it was an eye-opening experience. I haven't admitted this to anyone other than my mom, but from a professional standpoint, I used Donald Trump as the blueprint of what I wanted to be when I was older. I even considered writing him a letter to ask how he did it. I didn't do much research on him or anything, I just looked at the image he represented, how many times he was name-dropped on tv shows, in movies, and in general. He was obviously someone important, someone people wanted to be around and associate with. Everyone mentioned his overwhelming success in business and since celebrities mentioned him all the time, I knew he'd done something to bridge the gap between the professional and celebrity worlds. I didn't want the latter world, but I wanted to be someone important, someone whose name preceded them and he represented that mentality. He seemed to epitomize wealth, success and business for me and this made complete sense when someone in the mini-doc said, "Donald Trump is a poor person's idea of what a rich person looks like." I grew up--and still am--extremely poor. For me, the image he represented was one as far away from my humble beginnings as you could get and it was everything I wanted. But then he opened his mouth. LOL To watch someone I'd admired as a youth turn out to be such a monster was an exercise in supreme disillusionment. The mini-doc showed me everything I didn't get to see about him before I was born, everything I was too young to understand, everything that wasn't portrayed on the multiple tv shows and movies that dropped his name between other important figures. And even though those days of using him as the prototype for my professional ambitions are looooooong gone, a little part of me was still....disappointed, I guess? to see what the situation really was. It also explained a hell of a lot.


Unveiled is a show based out of Australia, I believe, and follows several brides who are seeking cosmetic procedures ahead of their weddings. Nothing super notable about it, I enjoyed it, wouldn't mind watching another season, and that's about it. lol Beauty and the Beach is a show in a similar vein; women from New Zealand and Australia book trips to a cosmetic retreat in Thailand, with the best cosmetic surgeons, to have long-awaited procedures. I think I like this one a bit more.


Seleccion Natural (Natural Selection) is the newest stand-up special by Sofia Nino de Rivera and it, much like her first special, was a riot. This special had her explaining why during arguments are the best time for men to propose, her trip to an African country, and her case for good vs bad first and last names. Per usual, she includes herself in her shtick and it's both dry and self-deprecating. She continues to give her audience shit during the show lol, and she hasn't changed her delivery from the last special to this one, which is partly why she's so funny to me. I'm glad she didn't tweak that. I think this show may be better than the first one but I'd watch both of them again. In case it wasn't already apparent, this special is in Spanish so put your subtitles on.


Moving on to YouTube, I'm rolling the last two together again since they're friends, frequently collaborate with each other and I found one from watching the other. Cody Ko and Noel Miller are former Viners who jumped to YouTube but I much prefer their videos over other former Viners who adapted their content for the 'Tube. Cody's more of a commentary roast channel; he's all about killing the obvious, 'relatable' brand of jokes through his explanations and sarcastic quips and a lot of times, that's funnier than the video he's roasting. Sometimes he's a bit of a wet blanket about things but when your sense of humor is different, I can understand that the rise of obvious 'relatable' comedy can be extremely annoying to have to see all the time. Noel's humor seems to be darker and more politically incorrect than Cody's; he does more satirical spoofs and sketches of things going on. They have a podcast together called Tiny Meat Gang, and while it doesn't seem to have much substance it is pretty funny. lol If you're sensitive to certain lines of jokes, however, then stay away. 

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Broken Glass and Spilled Glitter

Say you knock over a bottle of glitter. It's finely milled, so it catches to the air and spreads over a large area in such a short amount of time you don't even realize it at first. The bulk of the glitter is in one concentrated area, so you get that up first and try to put it back in the container. But if you aren't smart with how you do it, you'll end up spilling it again. So you get the majority of the glitter back in the container. But without realizing, you've gotten glitter on your feet, in your hair, on your face, on your clothes, on random surfaces, maybe even on the wall. For years, you spot random tiny glimmering pieces of glitter in places you didn't think the spill had reached. You can never clean it all up. You can mop the floor several times and still find glitter in places you know you'd cleaned meticulously. You'll take a shower and wash your face but still find a random speck of glitter in your eyebrow. lol It is impossible to not only count individual specks of glitter, but to ensure that you put the same number of specks back in the container after it's been spilled. I feel like that spill is my recovery process with anxiety. It's everywhere. It bleeds into places I didn't think it could reach. And of course, I could always spill the container again. I have to be careful with where I place it, what I place it around, and make sure the cap is on tightly or I could knock it over. Anxiety feels a lot like that. I have most of the glitter back in the container, but I always find specks of it where and when I least expect to. It's with me for life and I'll probably never be completely rid of it.

With glass, say you break a knick-knack. You can't just toss the figurine; say it's a one of a kind piece and was made just for you. You can't have the piece recommissioned. And even if you did, it wouldn't be the same. You can't recall from memory exactly what it looked like before the break because you never paid any attention to it, but you hope that its a clean break so you can put the pieces back together and for the most part, it is. You've got some loose shards and tiny fragments but you'll be able to put the figurine back together. But when you do that, you notice tiny pieces are missing that are so small you'll never be able to glue them back to the figurine, but they don't cause the piece to lose its shape. Those missing pieces, however tiny, are obvious though, and the figurine no longer fits on the shelf with the other pieces in the same way it once did. Once you've done all you can do with it, it has new value because you don't want it to break again. You know the figurine won't survive another break. It's still beautiful, but you kick yourself for not taking the time to really look at it before it broke. You know and get used to it for the imperfect piece it is now, not for the whole piece it was before the break. Now it's more fragile and demands you handle it with more care. You have to find beauty in its new shape, with all of the cracks and splits and missing pieces. Some people will pass it up, deeming it damaged and beyond repair. Others will feel you should have thrown the whole thing away when it broke and bought something different. It feels like a lot of the time, the only one who sees the true beauty in this broken piece is you. So you keep it close to you, to make sure nobody else breaks it but keep it just far enough out of your reach so you don't break it either. Time passes and you nearly forget about your figurine again, until you step on a piece of glass you didn't see before and it reminds you, painfully, that you missed a piece in your cleanup efforts. And that's how I've felt trying to rebuild myself after that breakdown. Pieces of myself that I didn't realize were missing at first aren't there now. Sometimes I can see flashes of old Mandy in different scenarios, but most of the time I just feel incomplete. I feel whole, but somehow still incomplete. I'm always afraid I'll break again, always afraid that I won't be able to put the pieces back together in a way that allows me to function. 

Ten years ago today, my anxiety relapsed and when that happened, the 'normal' chapter of my life came to an end. I can no longer be that person and can no longer see where her road was supposed to lead. I had to put as much of myself back together as I could and make sure I didn't spill anything else, and find a way to create something worthwhile from that. Who I am now is not at all who I expected to be, and days like today are always rough for me to get through. Despite the amount of time that has gone by since then, it still feels a bit like a death to me and today, I'm struggling. I can't say I'm entirely ungrateful for what my relapse gave me; in retrospect I was seeing things in black and white before and I feel like I see things in color now. I feel like I have more depth as a person, as a woman, than I would have had if I hadn't made it to the other side of my relapse. The way that things happened following my relapse make sense so I can't say there are any decisions in there that I flat out regret. Each of those decisions, each of those events, did a lot to shape me into the person I am now. I love the person I am now, however damaged and fragile I may feel. I didn't love me at 20. Was trying to, probably even thought I did, but I didn't. Ten years after that relapse, my life looks similar and I've been struggling with a lot of anger. The overwhelming lesson I continue to face now that I've hit my 30s is acceptance. I have to accept both what is and what isn't, and I don't know how. Both my 30th birthday and today have made me confront some painful realities of my life, both as they were a decade ago and as they are now. I wish I could say I'm in a much better place, but I'm not. I guess in a sentence that's what I'm having trouble accepting today: the truth of my life, the broken glass and spilled glitter of it all. 

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What I Read This Month: March

Hi! So I'm back with our third installment of What I Read This Month. I'm tempted to change the name to WIBR as an add-on to the WIBW series, especially since both posts go up on the same day, but I haven't made up my mind yet. I keep slipping and calling it WIBR so that's probably an indication that I need to change the name. Anyway, since I wasn't much good to anyone for most of the month, I had a little more time to read. I think there's a little more variety in this month's list as well so I hope you enjoy. I cut out summaries this month in favor of just sharing my thoughts about the book. I'm still tweaking how I want to do these posts so bear with me for a little while. Let's get to the books!

Cruel Justice: Lorne Simpkins #1 by M.A. Comley

I wasn't sure how I felt about this book immediately after I finished reading it. My immediate reaction to it was 'eh,' but I've noticed I feel like that about a lot of books and just need some time to process how I felt about it. As for this one, I enjoyed the plot. I enjoyed the different perspectives, from the victim, killer, and police sides of the story. Knowing the bits about the victims that hadn't yet been revealed to the main characters helped me as the reader approach things from a more thorough standpoint, to see what details they missed, what details were important, etc. and reading how the investigation was going helped me to see just how close...or far...they were to closing in on the killer with the details I'd picked up from their side of things. I liked that there was conflict on Lorne's team that was resolved honestly and without the person being involved in the murders. I also really liked the backstory of how the killer came to be, why they chose the people they chose, for their crimes. You can see, maybe not understand because we're not killers, but put the pieces together as to why the person snapped and I think stories like that are always better than those with serial killers who have no method to their madness. It was nicely done. I'm getting ready to complain about something related to this subject, but I appreciate the attention to Lorne's marital issues and a reaction that feels realistic. I felt bad that nobody in Lorne's life seemed to understand or have any desire to be there for her but I've noticed this to be the case in many police thrillers.

There were a couple of plotholes in the book that I didn't have cleared up by the end, but the main sore thumb of this book was Lorne's husband's behavior throughout. The guy starts the book having a drunken meltdown and taking swipes at her, then Lorne understands how he became so resentful, then she complains about the various mood swings, then she just wants her husband back, then he finally up and leaves her but by the end of the book, all is well again. How? Plot summaries from future books tell me that the two eventually get divorced, but I didn't understand why the book ended on such an unrealistically happy note when the two had been fighting from damn near the first page. Another plot point I didn't understand was the whole angle with the doc. The 180 he did towards Lorne was so abrupt it almost looked suspicious lol, I was convinced for most of the book following the shift that he was attempting to get close to her because he had something to do with the murders. I was wrong, but I just didn't get it. My next point is minor, but I didn't understand the need for all the fat references and derogatory observations surrounding overweight people. They didn't seem necessary and the book would have been fine without them. Other than these things, I didn't have too many issues with the book. I thought it was a solid thriller and the cliffhanger at the end had me quite intrigued as to how this saga continues.

My rating: 

Marking Time by Marie Force

I didn't read the first book in this series, but this follow-up is after Claire comes out of the coma and begins to rebuild her life. I liked her but I felt like her emotions were a bit too muted, a bit too passive, for everything she had to face in such a short period of time and I wish there'd been more emotional impact. That's probably just me because I'm a hothead, but to me it looked like she lacked depth. I appreciated the array of emotions she experienced, but they didn't seem to have that real oomph and impact I was looking for. Most of Claire's emotions revolved around her heartbreak and eventual acceptance and I liked the different scenarios throughout the book that brought these feelings into the light. I also liked how it became a point for her to regain her independence and find out who she was again; I desperately wanted her to end the book happy without her now-ex husband and she did. I wish there'd been a bit more perspective on how her ex and kids feel about her being around again because to be honest she seemed to be more of a footnote in their lives. I expected for there to be a little more determination and effort as she attempted to reintegrate herself, but there really wasn't. I understood that everyone had since formed new lives, partially to accommodate the reality that she may never awaken, but it also seemed like they didn't much need her anymore. I felt she became a bit of a footnote in her own story, especially in comparison to the development of Kate's story with Reid. I enjoyed the two of them together regardless of the age difference and I wish Claire hadn't been so judgmental about it. This seems to be a recurring topic for me lately; if you read today's WIBW post you'll know what I mean.

I liked the book and am glad almost everyone ended this one happy, but for me I never quite got that emotional kick I was expecting to receive while I was reading. I would still recommend this, though, despite the more critical tone you've probably gotten from the rest of this paragraph. It was a wonderful example of how shitty things sometimes happen to good people and that sometimes, you have to wade through a long tunnel of it in order to get to the sunshine on the other end. There were no villains in this book, nobody that you could blame the bad events on. Well, other than the primary villain but I believe that was covered in the previous book. As for this book, everything that happened, good or bad, was just the natural progression of life and that made certain events painfully realistic. I kept wanting the ex-husband to do something that made him fall from Claire's pedestal, do something irredeemable to help her move on. When he didn't and continued to be the person she was in love with but couldn't have, it killed me because it was so much more realistic. Claire rebuilding her life didn't take the usual book skeleton by being jilted by a douchebag ex-lover, she went through a traumatic situation she wasn't expected to heal from and woke up to a world drastically different from the one she fell asleep in. It hurts but makes the healing process much more intense to read. I liked that and overall, I enjoyed the book.

My rating: 

Missing People

Even though October isn't for another 7 months, to the day, actually, I try to find inspiration and potential post topics for my ATV series Octoberfest throughout the rest of the year. It helps a lot come September--when I usually prep the series--if I already have topics on the list to research and try to build posts around. If you've never been a part of ATV Octoberfest, it's my monthly tribute to the creepy and gory, but keeping in tune with the vintage theme of the blog I make the '70s my cut off date. Anyway, when I saw that this book's timespan was 100 years I immediately thought of Octoberfest and if there was anything I could use as a base for research. I did find a couple of names that could bear more research and could potentially be used for the series, but I was annoyed that there were as many grammatical errors as there were. I don't normally go on about a book with errors, especially if I can still understand the point being conveyed, but there were a few too many for me to overlook it. It would have been beneficial for the author to give the book to a set of fresh eyes before publication to catch the various mistakes. Other than that, I liked the cases discussed in the book. Many of the cases probably weren't mysterious enough to be covered by national news when they happened, so I do like that there seems to be an effort to include stories that weren't as widely circulated as others. I also appreciate that different perspectives and reports related to the cases were discussed rather than it just being a full opinion piece as to what happened to the people involved. My primary complaint with Missing People all comes down to the various errors; they take away from the rest of the book.

My rating: 

Promises of Mercy by Vella Day

This was an inoffensive menage romance and I enjoyed it, even if I found it maybe the slightest bit stale. I liked Amber, but she was a little too flighty for the wrong reasons. Busy schedules equate to her as not being able to find love with them, which makes no sense whatsoever. Being frustrated about the lack of time with both makes sense, but she takes it to a level that doesn't add up, especially considering one of the men's schedules is busy partially because he's attempting to keep her safe. Overall though, I did like her--she'd been through a lot, wanted to finally have some lasting happiness in her life, and having her closest brother murdered in her hospital right under her nose must have been traumatizing. Having frayed nerves and developing a fear of abandonment kind of made sense but sometimes it was a little irritating to keep seeing her think about pulling back simply because the men get busy with work. Cade and Stone were great, if not a bit bland, but I liked that the author made a point to show us the differences between each man. I felt like there wasn't enough attention to the story between the mens' friendship with each other; even though we saw how much they loved Amber and their genuine appreciation for each other as best friends, there wasn't a lot of attention paid to building dialogue between them apart from the case that drew them to Amber. It wasn't very in-depth and I would have been more invested in them had there been a little more detail. I don't have too much to add about the book; it was okay but wasn't the most memorable menage I've read.

My rating: 

Embracing My Submission #1 by Jenna Jacob

I thought this book was a good look into the BDSM lifestyle, both the good and bad. I appreciated that there was attention paid to the 'wrong' type of person looking to gain something from being a Dom, as I feel its an oft-overlooked part of the lifestyle. The 'wrong' Dom boyfriend in these books is always a previous boyfriend, set before the events in the book, who is the oft-mentioned, never seen villain our hero has to contend with when trying to win over his heroine. This book explored that by making the heroine, and by default the reader, attracted to him, only for all of us to be wrong about him. A very realistic mistake was made in the book with the heroine misjudging someone she was drawn to, a common mistake many of us, whether we partake in the lifestyle or not, tend to make with potential partners. Some of those mistakes get past our internal alarms, some of them get through the vetting process of friends and family, and then they reveal their true selves. BDSM-related activities aside, I thought the experience I'm referencing played out rather realistically, if not a bit abrupt but sometimes it's like that. Putting the BDSM activities back into the situation, to try and force someone to submit to them by assaulting them with the attempt of raping them at ANY time but especially when they're still in subspace is a really shitty thing to do. I could rant about that for a minute but the point I'm making is that I liked that common stereotypes and cliches often associated with the BDSM community were addressed in a way that felt natural to the book. It was a good look into a submissive's mind and how one can be broken of their inner brat without exclusively employing violence, something that series like 50 Shades of Grey could stand to learn. lol It was a learning experience, both for our heroine and for those looking to learn more about BDSM and different types of relationships that exist within the lifestyle. I loved that there was a gay D/s relationship in there, front and center, because not only is that another oft-overlooked angle not typically explored in hetero-geared books, but the manner in which it existed was not to employ derogatory or stereotypical cliches. The added bonus of said D/s relationship is how it relates to our heroine, which I don't want to spoil but I think made the book overall, especially the D/s dynamic, more unique. I also really enjoyed that the hero of the book was a man of color. He was an ideal Master for a ton of people, in terms of character traits. The 'supernatural' bit of the book, if you can call it that, was a nice addition to further the point that the hero and heroine should be together. I too have crazy ass dreams, so I liked that her dreams had a focal point in dictating her future. It wasn't employed in the usual way you read about someone's dreams playing a role in their future, with some bigger picture to worry about or some ghost/zombie/spirit to fight, but just a friendly dream nudge in the right direction. This book had a lot in it that I think, if the author's skills were lacking, would not have worked at all. But it did work, and quite well.

As for things I disliked....none immediately come to mind but when I think more about it, I almost disliked Mika. He was almost too perfect. lol I don't actually have a problem with it; it just serves as another reminder that flesh and blood men oftentimes don't can't live up to the men in our minds. LOL I had a con with the book but I think I understood why it was there so it didn't really count anymore--without spoiling too much, Julianna, our heroine, thought she was getting into one type of relationship but it was actually another and she didn't find out until later, validating her fear of not being in control. I understood that this was part of her building trust in Mika, but I'm also a skittish gal so I understood her apprehension. I thought this was a great story, if not dragged out just a touch long, and I'm open to reading more installments in the series.

My rating: 

Crime Lord's Captive by Mia Knight

I wanted to like this book, but I found it infuriated me the further into it I got. The heroine's weakness made sense--at first--because the supposed hero of the book literally stole her life right from under her and she was dragged back into a life she'd finally escaped from. But her resistance crumbles fairly quickly, and then she seems to forget that her 'hero' is a murderous, abusive psychopath. I'm annoyed that this book was made to appear sexy, alluring and slightly dangerous when what it really is is a cautionary tale to not confuse dangerous with abusive. I'm very firmly in the minority though, as the Amazon reviews are glowing and the book is highly rated. People are in love with this series and its characters. I, however, found Crime Lord's Captive hard to root for anyone, found it hard to enjoy and nearly impossible to finish. I didn't see any growth, any progression, any redemption. And there's a series based off of these characters! I couldn't do it. I think maybe its a matter of personal preference so don't take this as a knock on the author--the Las Vegas she fleshed out was so realistic and descriptive I was sure it was based off of someone's actual life lol--and her writing skills are without question. She did an amazing job creating these characters, the world they live in, and establishing a basis to build an entire series from. That's no easy feat. It's hard creating a world in which people are layered and still unredeemable, but she did that. I don't know if that was the intention, but that's what I came away from it with. I thought this was going to be a story about a person being taken captive and changing the crime lord's mind over time so the two fall in love, or about a woman who gets taken captive and eventually gets away from the man who ruined her life. Crime Lord's Captive was neither. Again, this isn't a critique about the author at all. The other reviews are positive and probably loads more helpful than mine. lol  This just wasn't a book for me and if you're not into reading about emotionally abusive situations or are easily triggered by them, this isn't a book for you either. 

My rating: 

Why Men and Women Can't Be Friends by Oliver Markus Malloy

Even though my overall opinion is that this is a sexist, vulgar look into relations between men and women, I can't deny that it had some blunt truths in it. While the vast majority of men I've met do nothing to rid my impressions of men as gassy, lumbering cavemen who think with the wrong head and lack depth or secret r/niceguys with a douchebag complex, I have met a few who aren't quite as surface level as this book implies. Neither sex is quite as simple-minded. We certainly can be, but I wouldn't generalize it that way. It was as amusing as it was irritating to follow along with the author as he shared his thoughts on how he feels women think and what shapes our interactions with men. There were some points of truth, but there were a lot of parts where I could see that his personality shapes a lot of how he perceives both genders but more specifically how he perceives women to think and behave. In theory, I understand some of his points. For example, he says that all men would be rapists if it weren't for the law. And for quite a few men, I believe this to be the case in a way. Many women, survivors and otherwise, have met men who, instinctively, we know would absolutely take without asking if not for their fear of the law and its repercussions. But at the same time, the #metoo movement is a direct contradiction of that mentality. The blunt truth of the matter is that if a man wants to rape a woman, he will. And vice versa. The law doesn't deter all sexual assault and it's pretty stupid, especially in today's society, to say that the law successfully deters rape with a rape-specific movement in the foreground. It's stupid and tone-deaf as fuck to even put such an idea out there right now.

One thing I did appreciate was the tone. I appreciated that his thoughts were unfiltered and blunt, even the thoughts I didn't agree with. I liked that his sentiments weren't wrapped in a flowery tone. He expressed everything in this really dry, blunt style that made the book easier to read. The tone was rather condescending from a woman's point of view and that I could have done without lol, but I appreciate that he was real about it. While I disagreed with a healthy amount of this book, there was a lot that, minus the snark and condescension, I agreed with as well. It's not an awful book, just a judgmental one. I can see a lot of people on both sides of the fence agreeing with the points stated in the book, and I can also see a lot of people on both sides of the fence--but probably more women than men--wanting to tear the author a new one for it. It's one of those books. lol It has a no-bullshit sort of stance, and even though I didn't agree with the majority of thoughts, I can respect them. Some of them. lol

My rating:

Broken Little Melodies

This was one of my favorite reads of the month. I was probably going to read the book anyway because I genuinely enjoyed the preview blurb I read about it on BookBub, but when I saw that the hero's name was Roman, I was all in. If you know me at all you are already aware of my immoral lust slight crush on a certain wrestler, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I'm partial to the name Roman. lol Anyway, it's always appealed to me to read about when broken people can come together and create something new, but it appeals to me more when there's backstory involved. This one has backstory dating all the way back to puberty, and being able to follow along from both perspectives as they grow into their bodies and feelings for each other was a treat. I think it made me more invested in each character, both for their individual stories and the one they needed to create together. The author did an excellent job at creating two characters who fit like a glove. Their personalities seemed to be shaped by their circumstances and while I know exactly how that goes sometimes, I would have liked them to have more individual characteristics apart from those that were either carved from or shaped by their pain. As teens I got a sense of them as people, but as adults they mostly seemed raw and one-note because of said pain. On the one hand it made their feelings all the more intense because if their thoughts weren't about music they were about each other so the reader was able to understand how deep their love for each other went. It dominates and pushes the entire book, in large part because of Roman's love for her and Isabelle's fear of her love for Roman. Both of their music careers take off because of their love, and the beautiful part is that the agony and heartbreak their love created is also what brought them back together, and as cheesy as that sounds it's what makes the story what it is.

The drama that separated the two seems a bit contrived, especially when you hear exactly what went down, but I think the time apart makes the story more impactful than if they'd naturally grown up and apart or if they'd been together the entire time. Minor spoiler alert, one of the minor characters dies and even though nobody's mourning his death, almost immediately after the news is revealed Roman and Isabelle are having sex. I dunno, maybe I've never despised anyone to the point that their death is completely meaningless to me, but the timing was a little off for that. Other than that, loved the plot, loved the characters, really enjoyed reading the backstory.

My rating: 

What am I reading right now? Egyptian Mythology, Victim Zero, Epiphany

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