Review: Hot Girl Murder Club

 For a synopsis, please look at the book. This is just a review.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan  Audio for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

 

"Hot Girl Murder Club" came "thisclose" to being too ambitious -- too many characters, too many plot lines, too many reasons or justifications for too many murders -- but then she brought it all together and I couldn't stop listening.

  I wasn't sure who the main character was supposed to be, especially in the beginning. The detectives? Scout? Isabelle? I liked most of the women in "the club," although I wish the characters had been fleshed out a little bit more. I don't know what more I wanted, just more. With that said, I liked Isabelle and thought she was well-written. My favorite character was Rosie, and I wish she had more of a role. I understand why she didn't, though. (I would definitely read a book on her back story or a book featuring a character like her.) 

Bottom line: Binge-worthy and I'd recommend it.

 

 

Book Review: A Brilliant Adaptation: How Dissociative Identity Disorder & the Power of the Therapeutic Bond Saved Me

 Fascinating. Best explanation & description I have ever read about how it feels to have many “states” and how she interacted with them and, later, how they integrated. Also, the best explanation I’ve heard — in layman’s terms — about why it’s now DID and not multiple personality disorder anymore.

I appreciate that she focused on how DID kept her as mentally healthy as possible and not how it made her feel like a freak or basket case. Too often people concentrate on the mental "illness" and not the strength it took for the person to survive the unimaginable abuse they endured through any means possible.

Some parts of the therapy sessions were a little confusing and hard to read, but I completely understand why she wrote it that way, and it does give a deeper insight into those sessions. 

Many thanks to Booktrovert (NetGalley) and Harbinger Publications for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: The House at the End of Hope Street

Menna Van Praag's The House at the End of Hope Street is a delightfully enchanting tale that may have readers wishing they could find the house and live there themselves.

But they won’t be able to find it unless they need it. That’s how this magical house works. For more than 200 years the house has beckoned women who need its comfort, encouragement and insight to work out problems in their lives. And, yes, the house is a living entity that “laughs,” “applauds” and “hugs” in unique and sometimes funny ways.

Over the years thousands of women – including Florence Nightingale, Vivien Leigh, Daphne DeMaurier and Elizabeth Taylor – have spent time at the house and still talk to the current residents through their pictures that hang on the walls. One of my favorite living person/not-living-person encounters includes Beatrix Potter who, apparently, can’t keep a secret.

Peggy Abbott is the current landlady, a job that has been in her family for generations. When the quirky, cream-loving octogenarian gets a note from the house on her 82nd birthday telling her this will be her last birthday so she needs to find a replacement for herself, she frets at first. But eventually she concentrates on her gentleman friend Harry, with whom she still has good sex on their Sunday dates, and wonders if she has thrown her life away by running the house instead of running away with him.

The three women staying at the house are college student Alba, struggling actress Greer and waitress/singer Carmen. They all have secrets gnawing at them, and keeping them from moving forward with their lives.

Alba, with the help of Stella, the ghost who tells her she’s been waiting for her, grows the most during the story. Not only does she have secrets, secrets are being kept from her as well. When her family comes together for a sad event, and some of those secrets are revealed, Alba goes on a quest to find out who she is – both literally and figuratively. Not an easy quest for a girl who would rather be surrounded by books than people.

Greer and Carmen both have issues that are holding them back and keeping them from reaching their potential but, through the help of the house, they are able to overcome to those issues.

Some of the imagery Van Praag uses is breathtakin. The most shining example is her description of a laugh as being a mixture of sunshine and champagne.

I read a review in which the reviewer seemed disappointed that all the characters got what they wanted or needed at the end of the story. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with everyone getting a happy ending. The house is on Hope Street, after all.

I received this book from NetGalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review Cutting Teeth by Julia Fierro

Parenting today has myriad challenges and the mommies and daddies in Julia Fierro’s Cutting Teeth are dealing with just about all of them – along with their own issues.

We all know parents who would not be friends except for the fact that their children are friends, or go to the same school, or are in the same playgroup. That seems to be the case in Cutting Teeth, where the mommies – and one daddy – probably wouldn’t hang out together at all if not for the playgroup.

When Nicole – who is convinced a catastrophic event is about to happen in New York City (because it’s on the Internet so it has to be true) – invites the playgroup families to her parents’ house at the beach it becomes obvious how dissimilar the families are.

Also obvious is a sense of desperation many of them have. Overbearing social climber Tiffany is desperate to prove she is not white trash (which is how she grew up) and will go to any lengths to get what she wants. Stay-at-Home-Daddy Rip is desperate to have another child partly because he believes he will have no purpose after his Hank starts school. Former debutante Leigh is so desperate to have another child through in vitro fertilization (to prove her son’s problems are not her fault) that she turns to crime.

The fun part is when all of these things play out during the long weekend, which also has Nicole obsessing over the end of the world, pregnant lesbian mom Susanna wondering about her relationship with wife Allie, and Rip’s wife Grace trying to prove she’s not a bad mother. Add to the mix nanny Tenzin, the “Tibetan Mary Poppins,” who has her own story to tell. And the kids: Harper, a 4-year-old diva and the only girl in the group; Hank, the overly sensitive little boy whose greatest desire is to have a princess dress; and hyperactive Chase who no one but Tenzin and, strangely, Tiffany can connect with or control.

One of the tests of a good book for me is whether I think about the characters when I’m not reading. About 100 pages from the end, before I picked it up for the day, I said to myself, “I wonder what Tiffany’s up to today?” And I don’t even like Tiffany!

Something Cutting Teeth reminded me of is that I don’t have to like a character to have her be my favorite. At different points in the book I liked and disliked all of them. But, together, they’re a fun and sometimes poignant package that I’m glad I got to know.

I received this book from NetGalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

4 of 5

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