The Moors by Jen Silverman

4.5 Stars

What do an estate house, a dysfunctional family, a dog searching for more, a catfishing expedition, murder plotting, and a musical number inspired by . . . .



Have in common? Well, that’s all things you’ll find in Jen Silverman’s brilliant play The Moors.

I’ll spare you all the boring details regarding just how I ended up looking for last-minute tickets to a play for my son and I to attend and simply say I needed some last-minute tickets to a play for my son and I to attend. We literally had ONE available evening (yesterday) in which to see said show and not $100 to drop per ticket (and also I hate A Christmas Carol so I would have cried if that was my only option). Miracle of miracles, UMKC was putting on this show – which I knew nothing about. I simply snatched up tickets, told the kid to STFU (in the nicest way possible) and suffer through if it ended up being crap since this was for his class and off we went. And holy crap this play and production were amazing.

As I said before, the play itself was simply brilliant. Dark humor at its best. The cast of only six (along with us attending a performance held in a 40-seat theater) . . . .


(No joke - smaller than a two-car garage.)

Left zero room for error. These students were amazing and turned an evening I’m honest enough to be admit we were pretty much dreading into one we won’t forget. Highly recommend to theater fans who like their comedy with a bit of a murdery edge to it.

Fast Lane by Kristen Ashley

4 Stars

Life in the fast lane – surely make you lose your mind 

Wellllllllllllllllllllll well well. Doesn’t this one just put me in quite the pickle. Theoretically it should automatically receive 1 Star due to the fact that it’s a blatant rip-off of another (nearly brand) new release. From the story to the interview-style delivery, Fast Lane is 100% Kristen Ashleyl’s version of Daisy Jones and the Six . . . . but I liked this one better. And I know that sucks, but my ratings are due to my enjoyment level and this was more my jam. Literally. TJR had the idea, but Ashley had the execution . . . .

American Girl, by Petty. Heroes, by Bowie. Me and Bobby McGee, Joplin, but Kristofferson wrote it, and listen to all the versions, including Gordon Lightfoot’s. Because the Night, Springsteen and Smith. Fire and Rain, by Taylor. Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole by Wainwright. Gold Dust Women. Into the Mystic. Living in the City. Walk on the Wild Side. What’s Going On.

I promise you, what you get out of those songs will not be what you got out of them after you have more life under your belt.

It also helps that the majority of Reid’s fanbase is probably too young to remember “Behind the Music” so they didn’t realize that her “fresh” idea was simply a rip-off too. The one thing I can’t knock? That full-cast audio. The narration of Daisy Jones deserves 5 Stars.

Anyway, back to this one. I could have lived without the graphic sex descriptions this go ‘round. (I mean, I have read plenty of KA and I know it’s her calling card, but seriously you’re getting interviewed for a book and you’re talking about his big cock and how he used to alpha speak you into an orgasm? You stay classy, San Diego). And it also wouldn’t be Kristen Ashley without it being a bit too long in the tooth for its own good (even though this one actually isn’t 600 pages, it still drags on a tad) – but again EXPECTED. The main difference between Fast Lane and Daisy Jones for me? The feeling. Ashley is either a true fan of music or a very good researcher. These characters seemed legit and not just cardboard cutouts of what “famous musicians” are supposed to be. Just enough backstory/development was given to get me interested, but not bog things down – after all, at the end of the day this is a romance book and not a Pulitzer candidate . In addition, Ashley is an author who writes for a crowd that is around my age and this was no exception. The above quote is just a drop in the bucket with regard to references made when it came to namedropping bands, cover songs played and the reasons why. Every single mention was familiar to me and it boosted my enjoyment level tremendously. There’s nothing quite like the power of a song . . . .

Out there in the spotlight
you're a million miles away
Every ounce of energy
you try to give away
As the sweat pours out your body
like the music that you play
Later in the evening
as you lie awake in bed
With the echoes from the amplifiers
ringin' in your head
You smoke the day's last cigarette,
rememberin' what she said
Here I am
On the road again
There I am
Up on the stage
Here I go
Playin' star again
There I go
Turn the page



^^^^ That’s the song (and Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band was the band) that immediately came to mind when I started reading this book. Thanks to Ashley, Townshend’s Let My Love Open the Door is my earworm today. That ain’t a bad thing, kids.



Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin

4 Stars

Saint X is the story about a family of four who goes on the annual Christmastime holiday and return to their lives in New York City with only three members. More particularly . . . .

What is known about the night Alison disappeared: At approximately 8 p.m. she met the blond boy by the swimming pool, a fact confirmed by an elderly security guard named Harold Moses. They went to the staff parking lot and smoked a joint together. At 8:30 p.m., the boy arrived at the hotel bar without Alison. At approximately 10:15 p.m., Alison returned to the parking lot, where Edwin Hastie and Clive Richardson picked her up in Edwin’s car, a 1980 Vauxhall Astra, eggplant in color, and the three of them drove across the island to the Basin. They spent two hours at a local watering hole called Paulette’s Place, where my sister was seen with the two men, smoking pot and drinking rum and dancing. Several patrons at Paulette’s Place confirm that she departed with the men at approximately 12:45 a.m. At 1:30 a.m., a police officer named Roy Cannadine pulled the Vauxhall Astra over on Mayfair Road for erratic driving. Only Clive and Edwin were inside . . . .

I know it’s against the “rules” to quote from a not-yet-published book, so please note the above may change/not even be in the final version, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the pink elephant in the room that is automatically going to make many readers' minds go to . . . .



And that is absolutely okay because obviously the jumping off point of this book is truly “ripped from the headlines” – just don’t expect the end product to be some Nancy Grace titillating twisty turny over-the-top type of thriller. If that’s what you’re looking for, there’s a solid chance you will end up becoming a “wrongreader” like so many others (myself included – times infinity, sadly). Same goes for . . . .

For readers of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies.



First, because I’ve never read Fates and Furies so I have no clue (but it did receive a lot of stinky ratings from my friends), and second because THE GIRLS???? That thing was a turd and it is nothing like this. Nope. This is the story about the people affected most by the disappearance/presumed death of Alison – even years and years and years after the fact. It’s a story about how one event can change lives forever. It’s about grief, and a bit about obsession (but again, not in some sort of tabloid television type of way). And if you really feel the need to compare it to another author? Make that author be Ivy Pochoda because if you like the way she delivers a story there’s a good chance you’ll like this too. The blurb is right about the ending, though. It comes out of left field and makes you have some unexpected feels. For those looking for shock and awe? Readjust your expectations and give it a go because this is real good.

ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renée Lavoie

4.5 Stars

What if – instead of our good friend Bridget returning for a round three in order to have some bizarre late-in-life baby . . . . .



Oof.

We pretend that never happened and instead . . . .

I’m forty-eight – almost forty-nine – and after twenty-five years my marriage just blew up in my face. On a good day, I take a sledgehammer to my house between swigs of white wine. I’m a total mess.

Depending on what you consider “hysterically funny” this may be a flop for you. I can say it definitely made me laugh every time she smashed the crap out of another piece of furniture (or “grew a meadow” in the backyard) and I absolutely fell in love with both Diane and her best pal Claudine. While (as far as I know) my husband isn’t planning on leaving me due to the fact that I’m “boring” (as if), I found this book completely relatable. Aside from one thing – you cheat on me mother&^%er?????



Actually, it would be hard to convince the PoPo that he just happened to fall on that butcher knife, so I’d probably have to get a good lawyer, but that’s beside the point.

Mad props to the translation as well, as that is something that doesn’t always work for me and I don’t think one step was missed with me not being able to read this in the original French. Thoroughly enjoyable and recommended to other “boring” wives ; )

Toil & Trouble by Augusten Burroughs

5 Stars

JFC, this one didn’t make it to the Currently Reading list either??? Methinks things may have been getting glitchy up in the phone version of the ‘Reads. I can see me missing marking one book, but not two. Toil & Trouble was the third Burroughs’ offering I picked up and I have one thing to say . . . .



And also, WHERE MY GIRLS AT?!?!?!?!?! You know who you are (*cough Debbie cough*) – the ones who get dreamy swoon-face like Lisa Simpson here whenever our favorite culottes-wearing elf releases a new memoir . . . . .



Now, I can’t say that all of Augusten’s personal history will be something you want to consume since he was raised by a literal mental patient and molested throughout his youth (just to name a couple of cringe-worthy inclusions), but in this book Burroughs is married, pushing 50, moving to Connecticut and it is oh-so-very-Sedaris-esque which had me like . . . . .



Tales of Eddie the fix-it man, an undisclosed candy addiction and (of course) the first house he fell in love with . . . . .



Not even kidding:

Wow. The walls down here are literally made of mold. I am doing the renovation math in my mind as we walk, and we are now at around four hundred thousand dollars.

So far, I kind of hate it.

“I love it,” Christopher tells Corky.

Christopher has always loved a good wreck. He married me, after all. When we first started dating, he asked, “Have you seen Grey Gardens?” I told him I hadn’t. He said, “Oh, you have to watch it. It’s a crazy, great documentary.” He’d already seen it a few times, he loved it so much. But I told him to shut it off after the first five minutes. “I’m sure it’s amazing, but this reminds me way too much of my childhood. People living in squalor and eating cat food is a horrible memory, not entertainment, even if they are related to Jacqueline Kennedy.”

And, of course, there’s the witchcraft. Whether you are truly able to pick up what Burroughs is putting down or simply dismiss it as something like The Secret Oprah was pushing on everyone a decade or so ago or chalk it up to . . . . .



It certainly makes for some entertaining reading. After all . . . .

You don’t have to believe in witches.
But don’t ever fuck with one.

Every Star.

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy

2 Stars

The fact that this one didn’t even make it to my “Currently Reading” list probably says everything that needs to be said about how much I enjoyed it. I picked this up during Nonfiction November as a challenge to myself to break away from my usual “nonfiction” selections which generally take form as comedic memoirs. I knew Dopesick had won a bunch of awards and I will admit I was hoping for a reading experience like I had with Evicted. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. What I got instead was the Lifetime Television for Women Mothers version of the opioid epidemic which centered around the addiction and/or death that they discussed regarding their children (one of which only took ONE PILL and it killed him because – yeah, that sounds legit). While the history of Oxy was barfed out like a high-school term paper and there was a dealer or two thrown in for good measure, they were but blips on the radar. Nope - Dopesick wants to pull on the heartstrings and sadly for it . . . . .

 

Brooklynaire by Sarina Bowen

2 Stars

Okay, the year is quickly ending, I find myself 11,000 reviews behind and a bunch of those aren’t really even worth me wasting my time on (like this one we can just label as Exhibit A) so I’m going to puke out a couple of sentences real quick and call it done. Brooklynaire was obviously released as an antithesis to all things Christian Grey . . . .



Not that I was a big fan of the Red Room of Pain, but at least something was going on.

You see, professional hockey team owner Nate is a billionaire with heart. He has loved his office manager Becca from afar for years and years (and apparently has chosen to show it by making her the office manager of a billion-dollar empire, but paying her so little that she lives in a shitty neighborhood in an apartment she winds up having to share with her sister, her sister’s baby and the baby daddy). When Becca suffers a concussion, Nate jumps at the opportunity to be her knight in shining armor – promptly moving her into his palace and opening up about his feelings in fairly short order. The two commence the banging, there’s a teensie little bit of very contrived drama thrown in and they get their happily ever after.

Everyone else but me loved this, so obviously I’m once again a wrongreader, but I found these characters, the sex, the (non-existent) plot and everything else about this to be sooooooooooooooooooooo . . . .



This was my first read by this author, but I actually have a couple of her other books on the Kindle. I need to get around to them to see if this was truly just me sucking a turtle or not.