Tag: read

Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes

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After reading You, I absolutely had to know where the story would go.

I thought that it would be more about what happened to Joe after he killed Beck, how he was worried about the mug, the therapist, etc. There was a little about that and it was sort of interested, but for the most part it felt like this story wasn’t going anywhere.

After Beck, Joe dated Amy. Again there were obvious red flags with her, but he thought he was in love. She, of course, left him and stole from him. It made him feel like an idiot, so he decided to hunt her down.

I honestly would have preferred that the story just be about getting back at Amy. Instead he meets a woman named Love (completely ridiculous to literally name a character in this story love). I really have no idea why the author felt the need to distract him from everything else going on by having him fall in love with a character literally named Love. Then there’s a whole side story with her brother that I’m not even going to get into. It all just felt like a distraction.

The only purpose of Love is that Joe ends up confessing his crimes to her and she goes and gets the mug from the Salinger house. Honestly, I feel like there had to be a better way to get Joe in there to get that mug. It’s a bit of a stretch honestly.

It’s crazy too that she was just cool with his entire confession, all because she has a crazy brother. It was incredibly dumb and made me hate it honestly.

Eventually Joe runs into Amy, but it’s very anticlimactic. He just sees her and decides not to kill her because he’s in love with Love.

Joe finally gets caught at the end, but it doesn’t really come together well. There were just little things here and there, no real evidence was found against him. The part about Joe and Love having to figure out the answer to the police officer’s question was dumb.

Just overall, I wasn’t very happy with the storyline. It doesn’t feel like it was well thought out and it’s too complicated. There were also way too many celebrity name drops. It was almost like the author thought that the first season would get picked up as a tv show or movie so she wrote the second novel to see how many celebrities she could actually get into it.

I actually would not recommend this to anyone that liked the first book. I’m interested to see how true to the storyline the show will be in it’s second season. I hope they simplify it some.

You by Caroline Kepnes

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Yet another Netflix inspired read! I promise I’ll start reading books that haven’t been made into movies or tv series eventually.

I’m so glad I read this one though. The book was 100% creepier than the show. Joe was so creepy and the worst kind of stalker. Watching Beck from outside her apartment, stealing her phone, reading her emails. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to find out someone was doing that to me.

As much as Joe creeped me out, Beck was honestly worse. She was a terrible person, so I didn’t care that Joe was so creepy toward her. I felt like she deserved it, or like it’s what she actually wanted.

I don’t want to victim blame, but Beck really didn’t care about anyone other than herself. She was miserable and wanted to make people around her miserable, and she expected these people to worship the ground she walks on.

I do really hate to say it, but I feel like she was just asking for something like this to happen to her and I think she actually enjoyed the drama of it all. She even mentions that she knew he had followed her, like she didn’t mind that he was stalking her from the beginning. It’s all pretty messed up honestly. As much as I didn’t like Joe I felt like he deserved better than Beck.

Beck definitely needed a better therapist because she clearly had a lot of issues that she needed to deal with.

The craziest thing is how relatable the story actually is. I thought to myself “how many times have I looked up someone I just met and stalked their social media accounts?”. We all do it.

You look at someone’s profile online and immediately make up your mind on if this is someone that you want to get to know better or not. I can definitely understand creating this image of someone in your head and what your future would look like together. I can understand the willingness to look past the bad stuff about them because you have this perfect future planned out.

It’s so crazy dating in a world with social media, especially with the jealousy and insecurity that it creates. I’ve been here. I spent two years trying to date someone who never gave me the attention that I craved from him. I would see him like other girls’ pictures when he never liked mine. It made me feel like shit about myself, but then also made me feel like it was a challenge. Like maybe if I did something differently it would get his attention. Why do we hold on to people who don’t want us?

This book definitely does a good job portraying how bad it can really get. I’m going to have to read the next book in the series now.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

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I remember being little and watching The Haunting when it first came out in 1999. I’ve seen the movie about a million times since then and honestly can’t believe that I never knew it was a book.

It wasn’t until Netflix adapted it into a series that I realized it was based on the novel of the same name and absolutely decided that I had to read it. (Side note: Netflix is becoming a bit of a theme here isn’t it?)

The movie is definitely a closer adaptation of the book than the show was, but I feel like all three were done really well and told the story of Hill House.

I actually don’t think I’ve ever read a “horror” novel before, so this was a first. It was really creepy and I really liked the little scenes here and there that showed the house was haunted.

All of the characters had very strange, very different personalities. It was interesting to see how their personalities meshed together. It was obvious from the beginning that Nell was being affected by the house the most. I honestly was absolutely positive she was going to jump off that tower (probably because of Nell’s fate in the series).

The crash at the end happened pretty quickly, so I wasn’t sure that Nell had actually died. I hoped that she didn’t, or that if she did there would be a little bit about her ghost.

It’s super creepy how the house seems to consume the people in it. The series did a really good job showing that too.

I’m interested in seeing what the next season will be about since they’ve stated that it’ll be an entirely different storyline. It’s kind of sad honestly because I really fell in love with those characters, but it did have a good ending.

I did really like how there were subtle nods to things in the book in the series like the cup of stars, throwing rocks at the glass greenhouse, and the poem that the flapper woman recites.

Highly recommend the book if you’re a fan of the show. It was definitely worth the read.

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

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I definitely jumped on the Bird Box bandwagon when this movie first came out on Netflix. It was crazy how much it blew up on social media and how popular it became so quickly.

I really enjoyed the movie but there were a few things I had questions about, so I hoped that reading the book would explain everything better.

There were a lot of differences right off the bat. The story starts a lot slower, Malorie is living with her sister for awhile when it all starts happening around them and she saw an ad in the paper that mentioned a safe house. Definitely understand why they sped things up in the movie. I’m not sure it’s very believable that with all this panic going on someone took the time to go out and pay for an add in the newspaper.

The whole thing with Gary was really crazy, both in the movie and the book. I definitely liked how it was written better than how it was portrayed in the movie. It just didn’t make sense that he seemed normal and then was crazy out of nowhere. The book explains that he’s sort of immune to whatever is going on outside and believes that others can be immune too. That just makes more sense to me.

I can’t believe that after they kicked him out he was hiding in the attic and that Don was the one that pulled down all the curtains and blankets. I also can’t believe that everyone died and Malorie had the patience to wait that long by herself with babies before attempting to go down the river.

Ending at the school for the blind is definitely interesting. I’m curious why the author  chose to have people there who blinded themselves. It’s definitely understandable given the situation, and she understood because she almost blinded the babies. Maybe it makes her trust them because she could relate and they’re honest about it? Just felt like a weird detail to throw in at the end.

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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In high school I was assigned The Great Gatsby and absolutely fell in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s storytelling. My grandmother had a collection of his short stories and I read through them pretty quickly. I’ve always meant to read more of Fitzgerald’s work, but have definitely let other books take precedence over them.

I finally decided to sit down and read This Side of Paradise.

From the beginning, Amory is an odd child. He’s definitely privileged, thinks he’s smarter and better than everyone else. He doesn’t believe that the people around him, other than his mother, can hold intelligent conversations with him.

He believes that he thinks differently than other people. I’ve read that Fitzgerald based Amory on himself, which is actually kind of funny because I do think that creative people believe that they think differently from other people and that others won’t understand their ideas. I feel like I’ve felt that way about myself a few times, not to say that I’m necessarily the most creative person in the world, but I think my brain sometimes works differently than others.

The story continues and Amory moves to Chicago where he meets a girl that he sort of likes. Throughout the story, he basically will fall for every girl that’s beautiful and slightly different from how he expects a woman to think or act. I guess this relates back to him thinking that he’s different and he’s attracted to anything that also seems to stray from the norm.

He eventually goes away to school and again doesn’t fit in with anyone. He still has this mindset that he’s a free-thinker and that he’s above everyone and everything, doesn’t really try to fit in. It’s surprising honestly that he finishes college.

He then goes to war. I was a bit surprised that there wasn’t much to this part of the story. I guess maybe Fitzgerald didn’t think it was relevant enough?

Amory returns home and falls in love with Rosalind. Once again it’s a very quick and sort of shallow love. She was probably right that it wouldn’t have lasted, but he couldn’t accept it because he wasn’t the one to end their relationship.

It’s hard to feel sorry for him honestly. He’s so entitled and really makes poor decisions very spontaneously. After Rosalind breaks his heart he feels sorry for himself, becomes an alcoholic, loses his job, and spends the rest of his family money on alcohol.

By the end he’s still struggling to fit into society and there’s a long conversation he has about socialism in the back of a taxi.

I’m just not really sure what this book was about or if there was a point to it. I guess Fitzgerald was just sort of writing about his personal feelings and things that he’s experienced in his life. It was interesting, but it’s sort of shocking to me how much people seem to love this book. I’m not sure that I’d ever recommend it to someone or that I’d choose to read it again.

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (Series) by Jenny Han

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After hearing a lot about the movie, I finally sat down one day and watched To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before on Netflix. I absolutely loved it. It was so cute and relatable. It made me laugh and cry. I just really loved it.

Of course I had to read the books. They were so good, I could seriously read about Lara Jean and Peter all day long. I actually wish that was an option in life.

I read the three books in this series so quickly that it doesn’t make sense for me to make three separate posts about how great they were and how much I loved each one. Definitely light reading compared to some of the other books I’ve read, but they were all so so enjoyable to read.

I was actually pretty upset after reading them all that Jenny Han said she wouldn’t be writing any more books about Lara Jean. I want to know about Korea, college with Peter, the rest of their lives, etc.!

I’m so glad that Netflix announced they’d be making the second movie and the cast looks really great. Definitely looking forward to it’s release!

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

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I really enjoyed Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, so when I heard that HBO was making a show based on another one of her books I was definitely intrigued. I watched the show before reading the book and absolutely loved it. The acting was so good, and I was completely shocked with the ending. Of course, I had to read the book afterwards.

There were so many more details that helped explain things in the show. Meredith talking about Amma’s biting explained the teeth pulling so much better, and it was something I was curious about when the show was on.

I don’t think I realized that Amma was only 13. Maybe because the actress looks a lot older and I definitely wasn’t doing the things she was doing when I was 13. It’s pretty crazy to think a person that young is capable of doing the things that she did. I wonder how much of it was because of her mother and the way she was raised.

The book had so many more details in the ending, so I’m really glad that I did read it. The show had a few flashes at the end revealing Amma and her friends as the murderers, but the book really goes into detail about what happened after Camille figures it all out. It was definitely an enjoyable read.

Pretty sure I’m going to read Dark Places next. I saw that movie when it came out and wasn’t really interested in the story, but I’m thinking it may make more sense if I read the book. Plus Gillian Flynn is obviously a great storyteller and I kind of just want to get my hands on anything she writes at this point.

The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks

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I’ve been on a bit of a Zac Efron kick lately and this is probably one of my favorite movies that he’s starred in, so of course I decided to read the book.

This was actually a really nice break from some of the longer, more serious books that I’ve been reading lately. I actually read the first half of this book so fast that I really delayed finishing it because I didn’t want it to be over.

It was nice how there were little differences from the movie like Logan meeting Keith at the beginning. This was actually really interesting because it set up the hatred Keith had for Logan even before he was with Beth.

The different perspectives for each chapter really worked to tell the story from all sides. When authors do this in books a small part of me always thinks about how I had professors in my writing classes say that this is lazy storytelling. I don’t really care about it though or think that it’s lazy, Game of Thrones does it and that’s one of my favorite series. It’s almost necessary sometimes and helps to bring a story together from different points of view.

The end had me freaking out. I almost cried when Zeus was in the creek. I was seriously more worried about him that anyone else, and they made it seem like Logan died too! I was actually really angry that they would do this in the book and almost put it down. Super relieved when I kept reading and found out that he had survived.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

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I’ve been reading some pretty great stories written by women lately.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch hands down has some of the best writing and storytelling that I’ve ever read. It’s so lyrical and each line felt so purposeful and important to the story.

This is such a crazy story on the surface. A woman murdering her ex-lover and her child having to deal with the consequences and ending up in so many horrible situations completely out of her control.

I thought that the mother in The Glass Castle was terrible, but this mother really takes the cake. It’s really hard to accept that redemption Astrid gives her at the end, and makes you kind of sad for her.

This book really accurately shows the different dynamics between mothers and daughters with each of the women who come into her life. Her own mother seemed to think that she owned Astrid. That she was just another one of her creations that she could shape into whatever she wanted her to be, and was shocked when Astrid ended up as someone she didn’t recognize.

Starr showed how there can be jealousy with having another woman around a man who isn’t her father. Even though Astrid was a child, she was beautiful in a way that Starr felt challenged by and she couldn’t handle it. Astrid definitely didn’t do herself any favors sleeping with Ray, so she kind of asked for the trouble in this situation.

Claire was the real loving, overbearing, needy mother that Astrid ended up having to take care of. She was so fragile, but so nice in comparison to the women that Astrid had been with before.

Rena was probably the best at helping her realize that she didn’t need to hold on to all of these experiences and people. She could let go and live her own life and do what was best for her.

I really loved the interest in art and poetry throughout the entire story. Creative people always seem like they’re the most interesting, and I’ve always been attracted to that lifestyle, even though I know I could never actually live like that.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was a fictional story. I would never wish this life on anyone and I realize that there are probably so many children who go through situations way worst than this with their actual parents and in foster homes, but I kept thinking of Astrid as this real person who was able to grow and overcome so much, which is inspiring. I’m glad that she isn’t real and didn’t have to deal with this, but these situations are real and make me sad for the children that have to go through them. I hope that they are able to find peace with their lives like she did in this story.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

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Took a little break from Harry Potter before coming back to read the final book, but it felt so good to come back and all I have to say is WOW. This book was seriously sooooo good.

It’s definitely the best out of all of them. Seriously there was so much action from beginning to end, I’m not surprised at all that they decided to break it up into two movies.

I am so sad that so many characters had to die in the end. It was hard to read about the deaths of so many of them.

I really can’t believe I never read these books before now. I grew up with these books around constantly and I’m so sad that I missed out on the hype of the new books being released and the movies coming out, but I’m so glad that I’ve read them now. Better late than never, right?

Seriously this series is just so amazing and the writing is so good. Everyone should read these books. I can’t believe I’m done!