The Word Game by Steena Holmes

2 Stars

 

I've come to the conclusion that there may only be two types of people in this world . . . those who enjoy Lifetime movies and those who don't . . .



Just kidding - don't get your panties in a twist. I am a woman who records "The Real Housewives" of EVERY. FRICKIN'. CITY. in order to see things like this . . .



and this . . .



Obviously I am not one who is able to judge another.

The Word Game is the story of what happens when Lyla, the daughter of a real helicopter mother, is allowed to attend her first sleepover. Being that said sleepover is at her aunt's house, Lyla's mother Alyson is nervous, but fairly comfortable that things will go smoothly. It becomes apparent immediately upon picking Lyla up that something is off with her and Alyson's own past won't allow her to let it go until she gets answers.

So I get the point of this story and it's a good one (know what the f*&^ is going on with your damn kids), I just didn't like the delivery. Not only did it come off very "movie of the week" to me and I knew everything that was going to end up being revealed way too early, I also had a major problem with the characters. Especially Alyson. I get where her intentions were coming from, but . . .



With a friend like her you definitely wouldn't need any enemies!

Please note that Deanna and Shelby and Jan all really liked this one. It's probably safe to assume I read it wrong . . . .



ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you, NetGalley!

The Fold by Peter Clines

3 Stars

 

After reading Ron 2.0’s review I had no plans on reading The Fold, but then Ed loooooooved it so I just assumed Ron 2.0 read it wrong per usual and this little baby went back on the TBR. But THEN? Then Shelby agreed with Ron 2.0 and if you are familiar with them you’ll know that never happens. I figured that meant the apocalypse was nigh and I had to make sure I had some stuff taken care of before I read it . . .



Alright so here’s the deal. Mike Erikson lives the life of an Average Joe, teaching at a small high school in New England. Mike’s brain, however, is anything but average . . .



Mike chose the simple life rather than cashing in on his smarts – but when an old friend comes asking for a favor his curiosity makes it become an offer he can’t refuse. What’s the favor? Travel across the country to find out as much as he can about a project that has been affectionately nicknamed the “Albuquerque Door” . . .


(If you don’t get that reference, you may have had a terrible childhood.)

The project (teleportation, for those of you not familiar with the “left turn” imagery above) appears to be successful, but everything other than the results have fallen under a “trade secret” umbrella and therefore have been allowed to remain secret. Using the little marching ants who file every minor detail away in the recesses of Mike’s brain . . . .


(Get it? Dave Matthews? Ants Marching? Hilarious!)

Combined with Mike’s easy-breezy personality, perhaps some information can be retrieved without anyone really saying much of anything.

When Mike arrives he already has assumptions of what potential problems might be discovered . . .


(My undying gratitude, Mr. Clines, for presenting a legit opportunity for me to conduct some Goldbluming.)

What he never expected to find was an invention that actually works. However, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes obvious there is something seriously off about the flux capacitor . . .



and it’s up to Mike to discover why everyone has remained so hush-hush.

The Fold sounds pretty amazing, right? Yeah, I thought so too. And then the last 100 pages shit the bed. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut – I still couldn’t put the dang thing down and read the whole book in a few hours and seriously got on board with the last few pages . . .



If this is on your reading list, definitely keep it there.

ARC provided by Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.

Concussion by Jeanne Marie Laskas

3.5 Stars

 

For those of you who know me, you are already aware I’m a mom of boys. (You’re also well aware of the fact that I don’t really write reviews of books, but more just ramble on about whatever I feel like and post a bunch of gifs, so this “review” should be par for the course.) My one experience with football looked a little something like this . . .



Yes. They are doing exactly what it looks like they are doing.

When our youngest was a tiny little pipsqueak he wanted to play football. Baseball season was over and he wanted to be able to see all of his little buddies (we live in a metro area, so our kids don’t usually go to school with their teammates) so we signed him up for peewee flag and ended up on a team that was known for being the best. It didn’t take long to realize that even the non-tackle division was a little cuckoo when it came to being competitive and the boys were encouraged to “lead with their heads” and “let us hear those helmets.” Now, this was before CTE was discovered and senate hearings were held, but as a mom I knew I didn’t like it. If they were expected to crack skulls in Kindergarten, how long would it be before this was the norm???



Yikes!

I wasn’t thinking about brain trauma, though. I mean, that’s what the helmet is for, right? I was thinking neck/spinal injury was likely to occur. Just look at the first picture above - those little fellas looked like bobble heads! Having all that extra weight on their neck was bound to cause whiplash, right?

Turns out neck (or knee or shoulders or back) injuries were quite possibly the last thing anyone should have been worried about and a conversation had already been going on since the early ‘90s about a potential life-altering concern – closed-head injuries. The man who brought it to everyone’s attention???



Iron Mike Webster, the best center in the NFL. A true monster of the midway who spent 15 years as a professional, played in four Super Bowls and eight consecutive Pro Bowls. A man who went from having it all to being someone who forgot to eat, who became lethargic, who peed in an oven and took up residence in a storage closet at Arrowhead Stadium, whose teeth started falling out and attempted to fix them by super glueing them back into his mouth, a man who could only get some sleep by tasering himself into unconsciousness. Iron Mike successfully sued the NFL in 1998 and was the first to win a claim for a football-related brain injury. When Mike Webster died a few years later of a heart attack at the age of 50, it was his brain that pathologist Bennet Omalu was interested in. He wanted to know what made Webster go crazy and suspected an underlying brain disease – and boy did he find one.

Concussion is the story about the discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the fight to make it public knowledge, the massive tort case consisting of nearly 6,000 players suing the NFL for future benefits should they fall victim to the disease, the Senate hearings surrounding Big Tobacco the National Football League and the realization it wasn’t necessarily the big hits that caused the damage, it was the repetitive little hits (that amount to between 20-30 g’s on every play . . . .



This was a horrifying yet fascinating read that I could not put down once I started. So, why the mediocre rating? Sadly, it’s because Omalu appears to suffer from a severe form “God complex.” I was interested in the story about concussions and the truth about the potential for my no-longer-peewee-sized (but very much linebacker-sized) son to end up with a debilitating disease should he ever want to play. What I wasn’t interested in was more than a taste of Omalu’s life story and I really wasn’t interested in hearing about his bassackwards views on relationships and family or what seemed to be imagined slights due to his race. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Dr. Omalu has dealt with racism, but I believe him being overlooked in participating in particular discussions/hearings/lawsuits regarding CTE were due more to him being completely unlikeable rather than him being black. Good news is Concussion credited another book (League of Denial) that I hope will be one that gets more of the stars from me.

Many thanks to my friend Elyse for bring this story to my attention.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you, NetGalley!

Fallen by Lauren Kate

1 Star

 

Hmmmm, I wonder what my friends thought of this one????

^^^^^“This should end well,” said no Mitchell ever.

Let me begin by swearing to all of you that I’m not becoming one of those “rage reviewers.” You know who I’m talking about. They are the people who seem to only choose books they know right from the jump they will hate and then write up a huge rant only to repeat the process over and over and over to infinity and beyond.

Fallen had actually been on my TBR since its release – along with eleventy billion other books and since it was YA and part of a series (which I have zero more evens for) it just kept getting bumped further and further down the stack. But thennnnnnnnnnnn 2016 rolled around and those damn “must read” lists started popping up all over my Facebook (this was on a "soon to be a movie" list) and they are my kryptonite and I get all “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!” I also unapolagetically liked The Twilight Saga when I read it and this was supposed to be for “fans of Twilight” (I know boo hiss, whatevs) so I figured what the hell.

I did not realize the salespitch "for fans of Twilight” meant I was going to be reading Twilight 2.0. I mean Fallen followed the plot points of Twilight to a T. From the not-so-meet-cute between Bella and Edward errrr, I mean Luce and Daniel in the cafeteria . . .



to the saving of Bella’s errr DAMMIT! I mean Luce’s life from a runaway skull crusher . . .



to coming to her rescue and whisking her away in his fine automobile . . .



(okay, that part was a little different since he didn’t own a car and had to “borrow” the nearest jalopy he could find, but you get the picture.)

to showing her his mad skills . . . .



which, of course, meant Fallen was basically a kissing book . . .



I thought I was going to be lucky enough to escape the super creeper scene, but nope. No such luck . . .



We are talking this book was nearly a complete regurge of EV.ER.Y.THANG. Now, there were a few differences – like stuff actually happened in Twilight, but jackshit happened in Fallen. Bella and Edward errrr Luce and Daniel also attended a reform school rather than regular high school (but no details were ever really provided explaining why – that’s how they get suckers to buy all the other books in the series) which eliminated the need for meddling parental units from the story . . .



There also wasn’t a wicked hot werewolf love triangle thrown in which really sucked for me (#teamjacob4eva) . . . .



And although the love could be described as “insta” it made a bit more sense since the two had loved and lost each other for centuries so the combo of deja vous and horny teen made it a bit less pukey. Also, the chicks who friended Luce weren’t total assholes like Jessica and Daniel wasn’t a vampire. Instead he was . . .



Ha! I keeeed. He was an angel.

On any other day this might have earned 2 Stars from me, but when a story makes me appreciate the fact that an unpolished turd like 50 Shades really WAS simply “inspired” by Twilight and not a blatant ripoff I’m like . . .



So it only gets 1.

Did You Ever Have A Family by Bill Clegg

4 Stars

 

Ignore the three-point-eight-something Goodreads rating. Did You Ever Have A Family has an unheard of 4.36 from my friends and those people have some serious diversity when it comes to what they like and don’t like. It’s that rating that had me finally check this book out – but it’s also that rating that had me terrified to do so.

If you’re like me and Christmas is a major fake-it-‘til-you-make-it type of holiday, a book like this is the perfect choice. Rather than attempting to justify my melancholy I could blame it on a book and have an excuse to mope around the house Big Ang style . . . .



Win!

What a book this was. Nominated for both the Man Booker Prize and National Book Award Did You Ever Have A Family was most definitely literary fiction. On the surface this was the story of loss when tragedy strikes a family the night before there is to be a wedding. That alone was enough to have me test my head in the oven skills . . . .



But that storyline was only the beginning. This book wasn’t about the whodunit (you will probably know immediately) – it was about peeling layer after layer of this onion until everything you’d ever want to know (or not want to know) about the affected parties was revealed and it left me sad and happy and angry and forgiving and barking things at my husband like . . . .



Told by various narrators over various points in time, Did You Ever Have A Family was woven together nearly seamlessly. There were a few moments when I had to regroup and figure out if I was reading a Lydia or June chapter, but I blame it on trying to fit my head in the gasbox next to the turkey rather than a problem with the writing itself.

I don’t recommend a lot of books, but I’m recommending this one. Don’t want to take my word for it? I don’t blame you. Go read Shelby or Delee or DJ or Elyse or Jennifer or Diane or Larry or Vanessa or Zoeytron’s reviews instead.

Book received as a gift from the Wickedest Witch I’m lucky enough to call a friend.

Upper Hand by Freya Barker

2 Stars

 

Let me tell you a little story about this jerk who sends me pictures of sploosh worthy covers from NetGalley with messages like "come on, go request this one, it'll be funnnnnnnn." Then both she and myself end up approved only to find out the tattooed cowboy on the front was most definitely the sexiest thing about the book. Payback's a bitch sometimes, though, because I ended up liking this more than she who shall remain nameless. Go figure *shrug*

The basic premise of Upper Hand is Clint and Beth have been attracted to each other for some time, but they both apparently suffered some sort of brain injury that made them unable to communicate like humans. Speaking of brain injury - Clint suffers one and Beth becomes glued to his side at the hospital . . . . even though they never really even spoke to each other before and she's a waitress so how in the hell can she afford to not work for a month and then when he gets released she volunteers to move in and help care for him and . . .



Yeah. I kinda feel like you should. I'm assuming since this is #5 in the series some of the ins and outs were lost on me for having not read the previous books. However, I still can't get how the kind of rapey alpha male approach that was a turnoff all of a sudden morphed into needing to be his Florence Nightingale. But whatevs. I'll just go with the flow on that part.

Next a "mystery" got added to the mix for good measure. Although this part of the story drug on (A. LOT.) and featured one too many kidnappings and bad guys getting away and refusal of the average Joes to leave stuff to the professionals, it kept my interest and was most definitely a welcome diversion to all the other stuff in the story . . . .



I'm an admitted failure when it comes to reading many of the sexytimes books. Generally it can be blamed on my dislike of dirty talk and descriptions of the acts themselves. This one wasn't too barf-inducing, but the dude sure did like to eat a lot of . . .



Upper Hand did have something I haven't ever come across in romance novels before . . .



Please note I am not a hater of the granny drawers (or MCs in their 40s). Those are my go-to underpants of choice (and that is my soon-to-be demographic). I can't say I want to hear about those underpants over and over (and over and over) again whilst reading a porno, though. Things got even worse better when Beth went on to talk about her "sagging tits, swollen stomach, neglected pubic hair and pitted thighs" . . . .



If I want to know any more about this topic . . .



I'd go look in a mirror.

And dare I fail to mention the flood in those granny pants or her symptoms of early onset menopause sprinkled throughout the story. When my husband heard I was reading a naughty book (plus baking cookies since it was a snowy vacation day here), he was all "BAZINGA!" Insert sad face when he got home and discovered . . . .



That's probably hot. I just haven't found the book that talks about it yet.

As for the state of MY granny panties after finishing this story????



ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

F*ck Love by Tarryn Fisher

3 Stars

 

SPOILERS. SPOILERS EVERYWHERE.


It all begins with a dream. Helena dreams of her future, but instead of her current serious boyfriend starring as her husband, it is her best friend’s boyfriend Kit in the role of leading male. Now, I admit I’ve had some dreams that seem realistic and have even had that “David After Dentist” moment when I’ve been super angry at my husband until I was able to clear the cobwebs and differentiate between what happened during R.E.M. and what was actually real life. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for Helena. Nope, after her kind of cuckoo and obviously very dreamy dream about Kit Helena just can’t let it go . . . .



I mean, for real. For all the bashing of instalove that I’ve seen over the years, how the heck does this currently have a 4.48 rating? The bitch don’t even KNOW him and falls in lurrrrrrrrv. And then? Well then the story became The Opportunist version 2.0 . . . .

“Girls always choose men, and men always choose the wrong girls. It’s an endless cycle.”

The same tired tropes were troped out yet again – the “I can’t have him, but I want him and I’ll develop a “platonic” relationship in order to get him to see we are meant to be” and “whoops, I accidentally knocked this chick up who I don’t even love anymore but since I’m a pigman I have to continue having much of the sex with her anyway and also now I have to marry her.” (Sidenote: What f-ing year is it that people HAVE to get married because of a baby and seriously over half of all marriages fail anyway which sucks but you REALLY think you’re going to be able to pretend a happily-ever-after just because you have a kid? Uhhhhh, notsamuch.) And I can’t forget this is yet another Tarryn Fisher story with an attractive yet quirky female lead who is petite with waist-length, raven hair that is frequently tied in a top-knot who continually runs away from anything related to love and speaks in Harry Potter terminology. Basically, she has written herself. AGAIN.



At this point you’re probably asking why I didn’t rate this lower. The simple answer is it’s because I have an enormous girl crush on Ms. Fisher . . .



You’re damn right, Honey Boo Boo. This story may have been too familiar and too “beige” for my liking. However, I appreciated the lack of purple when it came to the writing and I’m 100% a basic bitch who gets sucked in by the right words if I read them at the right time . . .

“Stop saying my name. It gives me butterflies and I don’t trust you or your butterflies.”

I'm also fairly comfortable saying even though I read this on the second day of the new year it will win best title/cover combo of 2016 hands down.

What can I say? I’m merely a Muggle who is under Tarryn Fisher’s spell . . .



(But I’m still ready for her writing to go back to the dark side.)