Author: Michelle

12 Books Releasing in September

[Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. I received copies of the books contained in this post for purposes of review.]

September has a lot of great new book releases from true crime to historical fiction, to apocalyptic novels. Here’s what is on my radar this month.

Always the First to Die by R. J. Jacobs. A horror film actress returns to the manor where her first film was made, a place she swore she would never return to after the horrors that took place there. She is forced to return to the island to find her daughter as a category 4 hurricane hits, replaying the plot of the infamous horror film that made her famous. Releases September 13.

Children of the Catastrophe by Sarah Shoemaker. This historical fiction story begins in Smyrna, Ottoman Empire, 1908. Liana Demirgis is being thrust into the spotlight by her mother in order to find a husband. An arranged marriage is made between the Demirgis and Melopoulos families and Liana is wed to Vasili. We follow the couple’s lives as the massacre of Greeks and Armenians after World War I takes place. Paperback releases September 6.

Duet: Our Journey in Song with the Northern Mockingbird by Phillip Hoose. National Book Award and Newberry honor-winner Phillip Hoose dives into the history of the mockingbird and it’s present day use as the rallying call in the Hunger Games. This YA book uncovers the connections between humans and the mockingbird over the centuries from the White House to modern day books. Releases September 13.

Enola Holmes and the Elegant Escapade by Nancy Springer. Oh, I love Enola Holmes and she is at it again. This time, trying to keep a friend with dual personalities out of trouble, while her older brother Sherlock is tasked with bringing the girl back home. What trouble will Enola find herself in this time? Releases September 6.

Fall Guy by Archer Mayor. Book 33 in the Joe Gunther series. This one is for those who love detective novels. When the body of a burglar is found in the trunk of a stolen car, the Vermont Bureau of Investigation discovers evidence in the car linked to an old unsolved child abduction case. Joe Gunther leads his team on the hunt for this psychopath before he kills again. Releases September 27.

Harrow by Joy Williams. Her first novel since Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Quick and the Dead, Joy Williams creates an apocalyptic story about a gifted young girl who stumbles upon a resort filled with elderly inhabitants who want to violently punish corporations and those who created the environmental apocalypse. Releases September 14.

Monsters Born and Made by Tanvi Berwah. This is an incredible story that leads to complete doom every which way Koral turns. This new world was hard to understand in the beginning, but once the races begin, you get snared into its net and can’t help but hope that things will get better for Koral and her family. Will she win the race and help her family out of their ruin, especially when the entire world is stacked up against her? This South Asian inspired story releases September 6.

Nothing But the Night: Leopold & Loeb and the Truth Behind the Murder That Rocked 1920s America by Greg King and Penny Wilson. For my true crime lovers, I can’t sum this up any better than the actual synopsis. The synopsis alone makes my jaw drop. SYNOPSIS: Nearly a hundred years ago, two wealthy and privileged teenagers―Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb―were charged and convicted in a gruesome crime that would lead to the original “Trial of the Century”. Even in Jazz Age Chicago, the murder was uniquely shocking for the motive of the killers: well-to-do Jewish scions, full of promise, had killed fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks for the thrill of it. The trial was made even more sensational by the revelation of a love affair between the defendants and by defense attorney Clarence Darrow, who delivered one of the most famous defense summations of all time to save the boys from the death penalty. The story of their mad folie à deux, with Loeb portrayed as the psychopathic mastermind and Leopold as his infatuated disciple, has been endlessly repeated and accepted by history as fact. And none of it is true. Using twenty-first century investigative tools, forensics, and a modern understanding of the psychology of these infamous killers, Nothing but the Night turns history on its head. While Loeb has long been viewed as the architect behind the murders, King and Wilson’s new research points to Leopold as the dominant partner in the deadly relationship, uncovering a dark obsession with violence and sex. Nothing but the Night pulls readers into the troubled world of Leopold and Loeb, revealing a more horrifying tale of passion, obsession, and betrayal than history ever imagined. Releases September 20.

Resurrection: Book One of the Manifestation Trilogy by Paul Selig. For those looking for spiritual guidance, renowned channel Paul Selig, channels the Guides for guidance and wisdom in manifesting our next phase in humanity. Releases September 20.

The Best Friend by Jessica Fellowes. For those who love thrillers, this book explores the friendship between two women. Friends at a young age, and then when men are introduced into their lives, everything takes a dark turn. Releases September 13.

The Deceptions by Jill Bialosky. This book qualifies for the tag of writing about strong women. As a woman’s life unravels at the seams, this teacher/poet spends her days in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sitting before the Greek and Roman gods. They come to life, forcing her to choose between myth and reality. This book is an exploration between ‘female sexuality and ambition.’ Releases September 6.

The Witch and the Tsar by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore. This retelling of Ivan the Terrible intertwines the tsar’s story with the mythical witch Baba Yaga. Yes, the witch who lived in a house with chicken legs. Part goddess and part mortal, she is blessed with a long life and youth. She is thrust into the tsar’s court to care for his ailing wife, Anastasia Romanovna, who was being poisoned by someone in the tsar’s court. It is rumored that Ivan’s volatile behavior came out after Anastasia’s death, thus beginning his reign of terror across Russia. This book intertwines the myths of the gods of old with the new Russia that formed as Christianity took over the land. Yaga faced more than just an irate tsar, she also faced an unknown evil that was taking over the land. Was this evil the workings of a madman or the amusement of the gods? Gilmore does an excellent job of making Yaga a participating spectator during this time in history. Yaga is seen as an inspiring demigod, a heroine, and not just an ugly, old witch. Releases September 20.

Take My Hand: A Look into Forced Sterilization of Poor and Marginalized Groups

When I first read a few years ago that women detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in detention centers were being sterilized involuntarily, I thought that cannot be true.  After reading “Take My Hand” by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, I now understand the US Government has been using sterilization on the poor, especially on people of color over the last 100 years.  And I’m mad as hell about it.

“Take My Hand” is a historical fiction novel loosely based on the 1973 Relf v. Weinberger case where two sisters, ages twelve and fourteen, were sterilized without their consent in Montgomery, Alabama by a federally funded agency.  In this story, we follow Civil Townsend, a nurse hired by a clinic to help women and girls with their reproductive health.  She believes that all women and girls should take care of their reproductive health.  Her mission is to help them.

She is responsible for administering Depo-Provera shots to two girls living in a one room shanty where they live with their father and grandmother.  They live in complete squalor. 

The girls are ages 11 and 13.  The youngest does not speak and has developmental issues.  When Civil learns that the youngest has not even had her first menstrual cycle, she questions why the girl is required to receive birth control.

Her friend, Ty, informs her the shot is not FDA approved and causes cancer in animal subjects.  This alarms Civil and she realizes this may be similar to the Tuskegee experiments.  She decides to stop giving the girls the shots and either get them on birth control pills or altogether stop administering birth control to them since they are not sexually active.

But her supervisor is monitoring the situation and notices the doctored reports.  She shows up at the girls’ home and gets dad and grandma (both cannot read) to sign a slip of paper to take the girls to the ‘clinic’ for their shots.  At least, that’s what they thought they were signing.

When Civil visits to let the youngest girl know she got her into a special school, she discovers the girls were taken to a hospital to be sterilized.  By the time she gets to the hospital, it’s already too late.

Ty’s parents are lawyers and decide to help the family get justice for what has happened.  A young white man is assigned to the case to help them.  It catches the eye of Senator Ted Kennedy and he brings the family to Washington, DC to tell a Senate committee what happened.  The story makes national news and more stories surface from across the nation of women and girls forced to be sterilized by federally funded agencies.

Reports appear of mothers in the midst of childbirth forced to sign papers that will allow the doctor to sterilize them after the birth of their child.  The doctors threaten to not deliver the child if they refuse to sign the papers.  In California, doctors report that poor Hispanic women are forcibly sterilized.  More and more stories come to light as to how bad the situation really is.

We have found that sterilization is the rule, not the exception.  It is widely endemic in this country.  It is a form of reproductive control.

Last year we did a survey and found that although two-thirds of federally funded clinics’ patients were white and only one third are Black, 43 percent of those sterilized are Black.  A report from the United States government…found that between the summer of 1972 and the summer of 1973, twenty-five thousand adults were sterilized in federally funded clinics.  Of these, 153 were under the age of eighteen.

“Take My Hand” is terrifying and shocking as you learn that this atrocity happened and continues to happen.  This is a war waged against women, especially those who are poor.

Our bodies belonged to us.  Poor, disabled, it didn’t matter.  These were our bodies, and we had the right to decide what to do with them.  It was as if they were just taking our bodies from us, as if we didn’t even belong to ourselves.

The fact that involuntary sterilization still occurs is unfathomable.  How is it that an administration that is anti-abortion and pro-life is also pro-sterilization?  

There’s also a conversation that underlies all of this and that is the importance of women’s sexual and reproductive health.  Throughout the world, talking about any of this is taboo.  From first periods to menopause, no one talks about women’s health.  It is shunned.  In some parts of the world, women and girls do not have access to sanitary napkins or tampons.  Girls end up dropping out of school when they get their first periods, because they do not have access to something as basic as pads or tampons.

Sexual health is health care.

Women needed access to reliable birth control and information about their reproductive health.

One item that is very important to mention is that many of these women and girls felt like they had no choice but to accept sterilization.  Those who accept government assistance (welfare, food stamps, housing, Medicaid) are subjected to constant government intervention.  Government officials constantly came and  went out of their homes.  For some people, they were threatened that if they did not submit to sterilization, mandatory birth control, etc., they could lose their government assistance.

In some cases, people were not given the proper information on sterilization and Depo-Provera.  They were not told that the surgery was not reversible.  Side effects of Depo-Provera were not discussed.  At times, clinics were not advised on the procedures regarding sterilization or the administering of it.  Women and girls were not given alternatives to birth control.  For thousands of women and girls, their right to have children was taken away from them without their consent.

That’s the most important thing here…their right was taken from them without their consent.

Women in prison as recently as 2006-2010 faced forced sterilization.  Less than a hundred years ago, sterilization was forced on those institutionalized.  Many women during that time were not mentally ill.  A woman with irregular periods, or a woman whose husband wanted to rid themselves of their wife to marry another woman, could be institutionalized.

During the Trump administration, rumors of detained female immigrants who were forced to be sterilized made the news.  But the only response became disgust, and then yesterday’s news.

The war on women needs to end.  We don’t hear of men undergoing forced sterilization because they are poor or an immigrant.  Their right to their own bodies is not under attack by the government.  But for women, we are constantly threatened.  It needs to stop.  We need to stop being a taboo.  Our reproductive health and overall women’s health needs to be considered important in the medical field.  When I want to talk about menopause and what happens to the body changing, I need my doctor to be able to know what exactly that is and advise me on what to expect.  When we are provided a vaccine, make it not just for men in mind, but women, too.  Sanitary napkins and tampons should not be taxed.  They are a necessity.  It should be covered as a health need.

Why not provide adequate birth control to all women?  There would be less abortions if women had the proper medical care and access to it.  Give them other alternatives to birth control.  Sterilization should be a choice, not something forced upon women by the government.  Truthfully, I have to ask, why is the government so obsessed with controlling a woman’s body?  Women must really scare them.

I have to say, this book made me mad.  It is a difficult read, but necessary.  Everyone needs to understand the way war is raged upon women, especially those who live in poverty and are a person of color.  Women are not yesterday’s news.  We are victimized daily in a numerous amount of ways, because we are women.  It needs to end.

[All quotes are from “Take My Hand” by Dolen Perkins-Valdez] [Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for purposes of a review. All opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links.]

Small Changes

As you can see, I haven’t done a lot of blogging during the pandemic. I really didn’t have much to share or talk about. It’s easier using Instagram, posting up a quick pic, some language and pressing send. Blogging (or just simply spending the time to write) takes a little longer. Frankly, I was just not in the state of mind to write until now. I want to talk about making small changes. It’s what we need right now as we move out of the pandemic.

I wanted to share what I’m doing in hopes that it will inspire others who are in the same boat as me.

Over the last few months, I’ve been making small changes to my life. I started off by upgrading my life, by giving myself permission to stop living like a peasant and upgrade to a life that’s more my caliber. It is so wonderful having an actual dishwasher, garbage disposal, washer/dryer, gym, and a place for Matthew to run around in. I guess staying cooped up in your apartment for over a year can help you re-evaluate your priorities. We now live in a Maine Coon sized home and frankly, Matthew never wants to leave to go running around outside. He’s perfectly fine running around inside the apartment. There’s more than enough space and high places for him to jump around on.

But if you are like me, the pandemic may have added a few pounds to your physique. Not like we needed any more weight on our bodies, right? For me, I gained 20 pounds. Now, before anyone gets on the whole body positivity bit, I did not need an extra 5, 10 or 20 pounds on my body. Gaining weight gave me health issues. Plus, I am in peri-menopause, so with my body changing, compounded by weight related health issues, AND the fact that over 70% of people that die from Covid-19 are obese, you can’t tell me to be positive about my weight gain. This isn’t about how I look. This is about how I feel living in this body. And I feel like crap.

Ok. Maybe it is a bit about how I look, but my health concerns outweigh my shallowness.

Throughout most of the pandemic, especially after putting on the 20 pounds in the first 6 months, I’ve suffered from really bad acid reflux. My hair was thinning and falling out. A wisdom tooth actually broke off. My body got weak from lack of exercise. I was getting UTIs more and more frequently (which ended up being hormonal issues). My anxiety was at an all time high (thanks to the anti-Asian sentiment in my neighborhood). I wasn’t doing so well.

In April, my landlord decided to evict everyone living in the building. This wasn’t a surprise. The building was slated to be demolished to make way for the new gentrified neighborhood. But contracts were held up and he decided to move to phase 2, renovating the building since he could no longer demolish it. I was given a year and a half notice, so it wasn’t any surprise. My landlord did ask me to return or move into the new luxury property when it opens. But after I heard what the town said about keeping the neighborhood white, I’m going to not move back there, since a lot of my anxiety stemmed from the anti-Asian sentiment I received after the lockdown happened in March 2020.

Since moving overseas was still not an option due to the pandemic, I decided to sign a lease for an apartment in a luxury building that caters to celebrities and athletes. I don’t regret this decision at all, because the whole premise behind upgrading my life was about changing my life one small step at a time…to give myself permission to live the life I’ve been wanting for such a long time, but was unwilling to give that life to myself.

The first change in this journey to upgrade my life was to move out of the place I lived in for 15 years and upgrade to something better. Upending my entire life helped to kick me out of that miserable pandemic funk and think about starting a whole new and better life. Next, I started decluttering my life and getting rid of the things that I no longer wanted to carry with me in life. I upgraded my wardrobe and my things. But still, I wasn’t completely happy.

So I targeted those unhappy parts of my life: 1. I wasn’t happy because I wasn’t writing. 2. This extra weight on my body doesn’t make me feel like I am me. I don’t recognize this person anymore.

So I decided to change that.

I am a big believer in taking a problem and putting it in a box. In one corner, you put the problem. At the opposite corner, you put the end result that you want. You throw the tools into the box and tell yourself, “Fix it.” So that’s what I started doing. I started fixing myself, one small step at a time.

On Writing

Rebecca Roanhorse, author of “Black Sun,” shared her writing method on how she outlines using Scrivener. I’m not a fan of the Scrivener program, but I liked her concept. So I took how she outlines her books before writing the entire book out, and decided to do something similar, but on paper.

I love paper, so the idea of prettying up my work and using paper to outline my story helped me tremendously. Binders and note cards were ordered so I could start writing out scenes, because I think in scenes. I focus on one character and write out all of their scenes, put the note cards in a plastic sleeve, and organize the scenes in the binder that way. It’s been a tremendous help, especially since I feel like the beginning is going on forever in the book. Readers don’t like beginnings that go on forever. They want to get to the juicy bits quickly.

I will say that the strange thing about my universe is that I tend to call things into my life that I totally did not expect, but it’s really magical. When I write, I cast the character. In this case, I casted an actor that I believed embodied what I was looking for in this character, based on the roles I’ve seen him portray. So while my head is stuck in my book, writing out the scenes, what I wasn’t prepared to find was said actor sitting in our courtyard when I took Matthew outside to eat grass. I honestly do not know what to do with that knowledge. I’m just going to keep on writing, because that’s like the universe saying, “You’re doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing in your life. Keep going.”

I can honestly say that I have ideas and hopes of what my future will look like with these changes, but I’m always up for things going better than I planned, because in dreams, we cannot dictate what will happen in them. Crazy things happen all of the time within our dreams. So when you start living your dreams, crazy things will happen…like finding out the actor you’re currently writing scenes for lives in your building! Did not see that coming at all.

Mission Attainable: One Pound a Week

So now we are on to part two of my unhappiness and how I am changing that. I gained 20 pounds this pandemic and I honestly hate how I look. But what I hate more is how I feel. The crazy thing though is that I was vaccinated with Moderna. A side effect of Moderna is that it cures a lot of your health issues. I’ve experienced it and I’ve heard a number of people tell me the same thing. I haven’t had acid reflux since I received both doses of the vaccine.

I saw my doctor a month after my second dose. She performed every test there was, because we are looking for the second tumor in my parathyroid (we did find it, but it isn’t doing anything that requires removal). The blood tests came back saying there is absolutely nothing wrong with me. I just needed to lose the weight I gained during the pandemic and that was it. So Moderna fixed all of my ailments I was experiencing throughout the pandemic. It’s crazy. It even kind of offset the peri-menopause a little bit, which is really weird.

So now that I am vaccinated and have the all clear from the doctor, I can focus on weight loss. I will admit that I didn’t start right away. At first, we were going to go the medicinal route with weight loss. That ended up being a no go from the insurance company. So my doctor sent me a diet plan outlining my new way of life.

This diet is the same boring old diet that doctors have been recommending for decades. Whole grains, fruits, vegetables, fish 2x a week, etc. Most people would just roll their eyes and then do whatever the latest fad diet is out there. BUT over the last 4-5 years, people who believe in science say to trust science. Trust doctors. Trust scientists. So this is where I say, it’s time to trust the doctors on this one. They’ve been using this same food model for decades. It must work, right?

I’ve been slowly changing my way of life, because my main concern now that my body is changing, is what exactly am I supposed to be doing? What am I supposed to be feeding myself? As my brother says, we can no longer procrastinate with our health. We have to do it now.

Where does one start in this battle to lose weight? Start small.

I believe that when it comes to losing weight, so many of us sabotage our own efforts right from the beginning. We think of the end game, the magic size or number and work like crazy to get to that number, but when it doesn’t happen fast enough, we lose hope and give up. Anyone can lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks. I’ve done it many times. But it doesn’t last.

So I decided to set a realistic goal for myself. Over the next 52 weeks (i.e. one year), I am setting a goal to lose one pound every single week. Not two pounds. ONE POUND.

You’re probably thinking that anyone can do that. That’s the point. It’s a realistic goal. It’s very different than saying, “I’m going to lose 50 pounds this year.” One pound a week is a more realistic goal, because it appears simple and easy. Fifty pounds is a lot of work. It’s a huge number. But one pound is attainable. The 50 pounds mentality is where we sabotage ourselves into thinking of how much work we have to do over the course of one year just to get to that goal. It sets us up for failure.

But one pound in one week? Sure. Anyone can do that. It’s easy to put in the work to do what it takes to reach that goal every single week. After a year, guess what? If you accomplish that weekly goal every single week, that’s over 50 pounds in one year. It’s the same goal, but realistically attainable. And you put in the work to get there without even realizing it.

Do you see how you can trick your brain?

Small Changes

So that’s my goal and plan over the next year. My aim is to lose one pound every week by doing whatever it takes to reach that goal. That means changing my health for the better by making small changes every week. So far, this plan is working.

Changes I’ve made to help me lose one pound every week:

  1. Started going into the office 2x a week. After being sedentary for the last year an a half, all of the walking and the countless stairs are helping me to get some exercise 2x a week. Next month, it becomes 3x a week.
  2. I started taking Matthew on walks in his stroller 1-2x a week. Thanks to the pandemic, people have been more accepting of animals coming into their businesses. Matthew loves when we go shopping, especially the Hallmark store that has his itty bittys.
  3. Eat fish 2x a week.
  4. Switch to whole grains.
  5. Eat more fruits/vegetables.
  6. Drink 8-9 glasses of water.
  7. Vitamins.
  8. Stop ordering takeout.

Each week, I plan on making one positive change for my health that will not only contribute to helping me lose one pound a week, but will also help with my overall well-being.

A friend mentioned that eating out and delivery helped contribute to her pandemic weight gain and breaking from the eating out cycle is really hard, because it’s become the norm. I used to allow myself takeout on Fridays, but I always ordered a bunch of food and it ended up lasting until the next takeout Friday. Since I always keep a stocked fridge, all of the groceries were going to waste.

So I decided to make a change. I started budgeting my groceries to $100 every two weeks. Whatever I order, I have to use up during those two weeks. This is my way of consciously focusing on ending food waste in my own home. Since I’m focusing on choosing organic and pasture raised food, that means the food I have to consume is healthy and will help me towards my goal of losing one pound a week. I’m also saving money. I never budgeted before. A trip to the grocery store usually ended up being $300-$600, and then $50-$125 every Friday for takeout. Forcing myself to budget will save money in the long run…money that can go towards our new future.

This is where I go back and mention that problem box. In one corner is LOSE WEIGHT. In the opposite corner is WEIGHT LOST. What I’m showing you are all of the tools in that box being used to reach the end result. It’s not just about diet and exercise. There’s more to this than just that. There are a lot of facets involved in our unhealthy to healthy habits. This is about changing our lives for the better so that we can reach the end result.

The next small change I am going to make is to continue to declutter my new apartment and finish organizing everything. There’s so much stuff. I honestly do not know where to put everything. I also don’t like how this clutter is taking away from the luxury part of living. It’s time to let go of the old, so I can embrace the new. This falls under the mental health aspect of weight loss. I find that the way we live and what we surround ourselves in is indicative of the state of our mental health. To me, having a bunch of ‘stuff’ around us, not knowing what to do with it, is just like having a bunch of extra weight surrounding us and we don’t know what to do with it, yet all we keep thinking is…I WANT TO GET RID OF THIS!

So that’s what I plan on doing next. Decluttering and organizing. Getting rid of the things I no longer wish to carry with me in life, because I’ve changed my life for the better.

Stay tuned over the next year. I’ll be sharing my small steps and progress towards accomplishing my weekly goals. If you want more up to date information, follow me on Instagram: @michellekennethpw. You can find inspiration and ideas there, as well as a lot of books.

Book Review: Firekeeper’s Daughter

Today is my stop on the blog tour for Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley.

[Disclaimer: Please forgive me if this post isn’t fully coherent. I had two of my wisdom teeth removed a couple of days ago. I am still on medication and not fully back to functional.]

This is the third indigenous author I’ve ever read. I think it has more to do with a lack of indigenous authors than it does not seeking out their stories. I’ve become a loyal Rebecca Roanhorse reader over the years, and I will definitely be a loyal reader of Angeline Boulley’s books, because of the strong characters they build to tell their stories.

In Firekeeper’s Daughter, we are introduced to Daunis Fontaine, an eighteen-year-old mixed race (half white, half Ojibwe) young lady getting ready for her first semester of college. She is from a hockey town, well known amongst the die hard hockey fans, called Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan (it’s not Salt, it’s pronounced Soo). Her father, Levi Firekeeper, was a great hockey player until an accident ended his career. Both she and her brother (also Levi) are hockey players.

Her family’s past though is a little complicated. Her mother is from the richest white family in town. When she discovered she was pregnant, she went to tell Levi, only to catch him in the act of cheating. She ran off, he followed and got into the accident. Her parents sent her to stay with relatives in Montreal. When she returned with three-month-old Daunis, she discovered he was now married and had a son called Levi Jr.

Despite this unfortunate beginning for Daunis, her mother always made sure she had access to her Ojibwe family, no matter how much her GrandMary (grandmother) disagreed with it. Daunis grew up in two different worlds. One that was white and French, the other that was a part of the indigenous Ojibwe community.

I’m always a big supporter of stories featuring mixed race kids, because I am one myself. You’re always stuck between two worlds, and one side is usually unaccepting of the other side. You tend to be more assimilated into one culture than the other. But you’re always an outsider of both cultures, and never fully accepted, even though you do everything you can to be accepted.

Daunis here is in the same boat. She is a star hockey player, really smart, volunteers her time, a pillar in her community, and always looking out for her friends and family. She is literally a female warrior throughout this book, and that’s what made me love her character so much. They call this Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman).

When we enter Firekeeper’s Daughter, it is shortly after Daunis’s uncle dies from an overdose. Two months later, her GrandMary is hospitalized. Her mother takes off work to watch over her while she is in a long-term care facility, and Daunis decides to forego leaving home to attend college at University of Michigan so she can be closer to her family during this time. She decides to enroll in the local community college where her friend Lily will be attending, and then transfer to U of M the following year if everything gets better.

What Daunis doesn’t know is that her world is just starting to change.

It starts with a murder, then a suicide. Then she is roped into an FBI investigation where she is asked to become an informant to help them uncover where a strange strain of meth is coming from. All the FBI knows is that it has something to do with her small town, her community, and hockey. But how?

It is here that I would like to warn readers that there are content warnings for this book. Do not read if you are sensitive to any triggers, because to accurately tell the story of the Ojibwe people, the author had to talk about the things that happen in their community. It is not all fairy tales and happy endings…although, this one had a fantastic girl power ending.

Indigenous communities suffer from a higher rate of suicide among men than any other race in North America. They are plagued with substance abuse issues, drugs, and criminal activity. What broke my heart though is that this is a harsh wake up call for those who want to understand how people of color are treated in America, especially when a group of people face systemic racism and poverty. People are forced to do things that can destroy everything about the community they love, just for their own survival. And they don’t care who gets hurt along the way.

When I realized in the story who was behind the drugs, I kept thinking…no. Please, no. This will break Daunis’s heart. But if Boulley is going to accurately describe what was happening in her community, she needed to tell the truths that would hurt. But she helps the reader survive those heartbreaks by making Daunis a strong Ojibwe woman.

Daunis doesn’t let the evils of the world transform her or stop her from being her own true self. She builds strength by standing against the evils and standing with her community. When she stands with them, they stand with her. And that is a powerful message.

I highly recommend this book. It was a 21 Jump Street meets hockey in an Ojibwe community kind of story. It tells us about the horrors that Ojibwe women go through, as well as what their community is going through. Boulley wanted to remain as true as possible to their stories when she wrote this book. She enlightens the world with who the Ojibwe people are and how they are being destroyed, yet somehow she knows all too well they will survive together if they stick together.

For those hockey fans that still read what I write, this is a great YA novel to pick up. There’s enough hockey in this that will keep you intrigued. It will also remind you of the story of the Tootoo brothers (Inuit tribe). Both brothers were hockey players. One took his own life at the age of 22. The other went on to have a 13 year NHL career.

You can get your copy here: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million.

[Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for purposes of a review. This post contains affiliate links.]

Best Books of 2021: Black Girl, Call Home

Allow me to introduce you to the second book I’ve discovered this year to make my list of Best Books of 2021: Black Girl, Call Home by Jasmine Mans.

What qualifies on this list of Perfectionist Wannabe’s Best Books of 2021? I don’t know. It is the same je ne sais quoi I saw in a hockey player when I watched him on the ice, that intuitive knowing that he was going to make it big in the NHL. It was that je ne sais quoi I saw and wrote about that gave a lot of kids their big shot in the NHL to prove to the GMs that I really did see something great within them. Many players proved me right, having long careers, even becoming captain of their teams. With books, there is no way to accurately define that je ne sais quoi. You just know when that feeling arises that this book is on a whole different level than the others.

For my second find of the year, I discovered this thanks to @berittalksbooks on Instagram. Her buddy read introduced us to this collection of poetry by Newark, New Jersey native Jasmine Mans, who is also the resident poet of the Newark Public Library.

Photo by Redens Desrosiers

I’ve read a lot of poetry over the years and I have not found any modern day poetry that has resonated within my soul the way Black Girl, Call Home has. That’s what makes this work so unique. Like Rumi, Byron and Yeats, their works survived for hundreds of years because they stirred your heart or resounded within your soul. They spoke truth to your core being. That’s what makes you grasp onto their words and carry it with you for the rest of your life.

In Black Girl, Call Home, I found my head shaking along with her intimate discussions regarding Kanye and her dire disappointment in what he could have been when he finally made it big. It was as if he betrayed everything he believed in…everything she believed in when she listened to his words when he first showed up on the scene.

Her words reside under your skin as you feel her kisses upon another woman’s skin. Your heart is yanked out of you when she describes what it is like to fall in love with someone who cannot love you back, because their kind of love is forbidden.

When she tells the story of her little four year old cousin and Michelle Obama, your hand will go to your heart knowing how beautiful and precious that moment means to all the little ladies who have finally found someone to look up to…someone that looks just like them. A little girl that doesn’t know much about the world, knows how important Michelle Obama is to this world.

This collection of poems by Jasmine Mans resonated deep within me. This wasn’t about relating someone’s story to my own story, which is what people look for in poetry. No. This was about feeling what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes. To feel that heartbreak. To feel that great love. To feel that want of someone you can never have, but you love them fiercely. To taste that potato salad at the community cookouts. To know how it feels to hear whispers of what boys say about rape. She opened the door to her soul and I saw everything she wanted to show me. This is Jasmine Mans.

That is what went into this je ne sais quoi to help me decide to add this book to my list of Best Books of 2021. I’ve read 38 books so far this year. Only two have been chosen so far.

I’d like to thank Berit and Berkley Publishing for allowing me access to this title.

[Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for purposes of review. This site contains affiliate links.]

You can order your copy and copies for all of your friends by clicking on the book below. This is a book you will want to add to your curated library. I have.

Black Girl, Call Home Jasmine Mans Author

The High-Rise Diver: A New Dystopian Novel

Book: The High-Rise Diver
Author: Julia von Lucadou
Publisher: World Editions
Release Date: March 2, 2021
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars (5 / 5)[AMAZON]

The High-Rise Diver is the perfect book for lovers of Brave New World, 1984, and The Handmaid’s Tale. This book rises to the ranks of those amazing pieces of dystopian literature, stories you will never forget and refer back to for the rest of your life.

Imagine you live in a world of perfectionism. Society dictates your appearance (thin, beautiful and fit people), your mind (daily meditations to calm you), your activities (they select who you date or mate with), and your pay is determined based upon your performance (only good performance is compensated).

For those who want to eat junk food, have normal families, have fun, or be whatever weight they want to be, they live in the peripheries outside of normal society. They struggle to find meaningful work. There is no ability to rise up in society or make more money. They can’t live in nice homes, because they do not fit into society’s mold of perfectionism. Society stamps them with the label of rebels, vagrants, and terrorists.

In this story, we follow Riva, a young high-rise diver (someone who leaps from tall buildings – quite similar to aerialists in a circus) who has lost all willingness to function in society. She doesn’t want to train, work, or do anything, but sit in her apartment and stare into nothingness. She has lost all motivation to be a famous high-rise diver. Something inside her is broken.

We watch Riva through the eyes of Hitomi, a psychologist that is tasked to watch Riva and help her find a way back to diving again. If she doesn’t return, they will seize her bank accounts, kick her out of her apartment and force her to move to the peripheries. But Riva doesn’t want to return. She has no desire to take part in this highly successful and famous life anymore. She wants to be free.

But freedom is unheard of in society. Your entire existence is regulated by the society. To resist who you are is to rebel against society.

For Hitomi, there is something about Riva’s predicament that is familiar to her. It reminds her of unresolved issues from her childhood of a friend that was taken from her, a parent that has rejected her, and a parent that is not even allowed to parent her. She longs for that feeling of having a real family, one with a mom and a dad living together, raising their children, hugging and kissing them good night. She longs for just that comforting, familiar touch of love, something that society does not allow.

In this world, parents have nothing to do with their children beyond assisting in paying for their schooling to help them place well in society. Visits are rare. Love, or basically any emotion, is non-existent.

As Hitomi watches Riva through cameras setup in her apartment, she starts to become obsessed with Riva’s demise to the point she is destroying herself. First, it’s missing a meditation. Next, it’s missing a workout. Then, she starts thinking creatively. “Once you start with self-deception, it’s hard to stop.”

Can Hitomi save Riva? Or will Riva drag her down with her?

This book is one that will stay with you for the rest of your life the way 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale or Lord of the Flies will stay with you. These stories are the ones you will return to, because you can see society floating in this direction, or at least, you fear society will one day become this nightmare world. Then you will think back one day and say to yourself, ‘Remember when that author wrote about this? It was a prediction of things to come.’

I enjoyed this book and hope dystopian lovers will love this, too.

This book will be published on March 2, 2021. You can order your copy from my AMAZON SHOP.

[Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes. This site contains affiliate links.]

How To Create Beautiful Flatlay Photos

On Instagram Live [Year of Me Challenge Video 2], I mentioned I would do a post on where to find products to beautify your flatlay photos for Instagram, so here we are. My first post in months.

To simplify everything, I’ve created an Amazon store that you can access here [AMAZON STORE] or in my bio on Instagram [@michellekennethpw]. In the store, look under “As Seen on Instagram – Backgrounds.” I added everything I spoke about in the video from pretty giftwrap paper to the foam boards to the photography background paper.

For those who were not able to see the video, that’s what this post is for. I’m going to share my tips on how to create the beautiful flatlay photos you see of food, books and various other products. Believe me, those gorgeous flatlay photos against gorgeous wooden floors are not really wooden floors.

Flatlay Photos Tip One: Giftwrap Paper

When I first started out doing flatlays, I used a lot of gift wrap paper I picked up from places like Paper Source or Papyrus. They have an array of beautiful one sheet paper that ranges anywhere between $5-$12 per sheet. Since I’m a lover of paper products, I would sometimes go in and peruse their selection, looking for the perfect backgrounds to use. It was my treat to self because the paper was just so beautiful.

Even something as simple as paint splattered on craft paper created interesting backgrounds for photos. While you could probably make this yourself at home, I’m not that talented. I purchased this from one of the Makers on Amazon.

One of the benefits to double-sided paper is that sometimes when you need just a blank background, but with texture, it serves as a perfect backdrop so you can add your own extras in the photo.

[AMAZON SHOP]

Tip Two: Photography Background Paper

Ever wonder how people got their floors so immaculately clean EVERY SINGLE TIME they took photos using their floors as a backdrop? Or did you ever think, wow, they have incredible marble countertops? I swear I did every single time. Imagine my surprise when I learned their secret.

They were using Photography Background Paper.

There are various different floor backdrops out there. Most sheets of photography background paper are double-sided with two different backgrounds on each side. Costs for these sheets can range between $11 for a single double-sided sheet to $20-$40 for 2-4 sheets.

You can even find backdrops that can serve as a wall for pictures where you need a wall background for book stacks or just a clean back drop for regular non-flatlay photos.

They even have concrete floors for a more intriguing contrast.

I mean, have you ever seen a concrete floor so clean that you could eat off of it???

My favorite backgrounds though are for those who post about food. Not everyone is blessed with marble countertops. Yet, there’s a way to fake it.

For those who like a more wintry or darker background, they do have black marble countertop paper to use. I am considering trying the darker side of food photography later this year, but it might also work for those Instagram feeds that are a bit on the darker side.

Tip Three: Scrapbook Paper

I am relatively new to this tip. @notinjersey (Dara) was using a background I absolutely loved, so I asked her where she got her photography backdrop paper. Imagine my surprise when she shared it was scrapbook paper.

Scrapbook paper comes in varying sizes. I recommend getting the 12×12 (or larger, if that exists) for your flatlay needs. Each package contains 2 sheets each of multiple backgrounds. This may be the most cost efficient method for those just starting out or those who want to not invest a lot of money into this. I bought two packages of scrapbook paper and it cost a little less than $6 each.

For this photo for The Photographer, I used two sheets from the package I purchased.

In this photo, I am using only one sheet of the scrapbook paper.

Tip Four: The Extras for Flatlay Photos

For this tip, I want to give a shoutout to @stephsbooktherapy for this little tip. Go to her Instagram for a tutorial on how to use foam boards with your photography background paper (Tip Two).

I purchased two of the largest foam boards I could find on Amazon, but it ended up being too small. Steph informed me she had to get hers custom cut to fit the actual size of the photography background paper.

So since I’m stuck with these two boards that don’t fit my paper, I started using them for something else. I use them as a flat surface for photos. I can still lay the paper down on top of it or binder clip one side and tuck the corners down underneath my couch cushions (or have Matthew sit on one side of it to keep the corners from curling).

Since these are white boards, they can also help serve as a way to soften the photo or refract the light to brighten the photo. Just position the white board outside of the frame. You’ll be able to see the difference. Find the right spot with the light and then take your photo.

In the photo above, Matthew is sitting on the white board. You see how it brightened up the photo and gave him a softer look? No filter or adjustment was needed.

Truthfully, yes you can live without these boards, but if you’re serious about this, I think it’s worth buying a couple, or even getting them custom cut to fit the photography backdrops. It will just make your life easier when you go to photograph your flatlays. For Steph, she uses one board to create the wall, and the other to create the floor.

Here’s the shop [AMAZON] where you can find everything I’ve referenced in this post, including the white boards. You will not be able to find the actual gift wrap paper I’ve used in Tip One. I’ve listed similar items in the shop. If you love paper as much as I do, I recommend Paper Source and Papyrus to view their handmade collection.

A Golden Fury

Book: A Golden Fury
Author: Samantha Cohoe
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Release date: October 13, 2020
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (4.5 / 5)

Happy Friday, Lovelies!

Fridays mean it’s movie night for me. It’s that little bit of normalcy I continue to do even though our world has changed. But instead of rushing home after work to watch a movie with Matthew, I spend all day watching movies while I’m working.

Hey, I can multi-task.

On today’s roster is last night’s episode of Supernatural (I’m going to miss this show so much), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Craft, and Trolls World Tour. I may sneak in a scary movie or a Disneyfied version of scary (hello, Freeform!).

I’ll also be monitoring Matthew. He’s not doing so well right now. We went to the vet on Sunday to get him ready for his pet passport application process. His allergies are horrible right now. He’s scratched off the right side of his face and scratched up his ears. His back paw is still hurting him from his allergies. So he had a bunch of tests performed on him, plus he got his medicine. Wednesday night, he snuck out and stayed out way past dark. He discovered that next door has small pine trees planted that he can play hide and seek in. I think he got bit by an insect, because Thursday night, his lip started bleeding.

This is something that happens every fall. He already had his shot for this on Sunday, plus he’s already on meds. I just have to soak up the blood when his lip bleeds, and then apply cornstarch to stop the bleeding. I feel so bad for him. Luckily, this isn’t as bad as previous years.

So on to the book review for “A Golden Fury.” Thank you, Wednesday Books for sending this title along to me. I love stories like this where a young woman becomes the last alchemist by creating the infamous philosopher’s stone.

Synopsis

Thea Hope longs to be an alchemist out of the shadow of her famous mother. The two of them are close to creating the legendary Philosopher’s Stone—whose properties include immortality and can turn any metal into gold—but just when the promise of the Stone’s riches is in their grasp, Thea’s mother destroys the Stone in a sudden fit of violent madness.

While combing through her mother’s notes, Thea learns that there’s a curse on the Stone that causes anyone who tries to make it to lose their sanity. With the threat of the French Revolution looming, Thea is sent to Oxford for her safety, to live with the father who doesn’t know she exists.

But in Oxford, there are alchemists after the Stone who don’t believe Thea’s warning about the curse—instead, they’ll stop at nothing to steal Thea’s knowledge of how to create the Stone. But Thea can only run for so long, and soon she will have to choose: create the Stone and sacrifice her sanity, or let the people she loves die. 

[Synopsis from Goodreads.]

Review of “A Golden Fury”

What can I say? This had a very unexpected ending. I’m going along in this entire story thinking that this stone is so dangerous to create, yet it’s desperately needed to cure everyone in Thea’s life. And then the author does something I didn’t even ponder could happen. She doesn’t just do it once. She does it multiple times, so if you think the story will play out according to Thea’s plans…think again.

Honestly, I love when writers do this. As you read, the entire time you are wondering if she will be able to make the philosopher’s stone and save everyone. Will she go insane before the process is completed? Will the stone even work?

And then because the reader is so focused on this, when the author decides to throw a monkey wrench in there that we’re not expecting, the story becomes even more compelling and interesting, making you beg for more.

I will say that I hoped an unexpected love story would branch from this, but it never materialized. Cohoe had other plans for Thea in the love department.

I also kind of felt bad for Thea. She had a strange childhood. Alchemists as parents! Her mother is strange. Her father, well, that’s left to be seen what kind of dad he’ll be. But I felt bad for Thea that her mother couldn’t be a loving mother, because she was so super feminist for their time. It’s like being a loving mother worked against her idea of feminism. She wanted to spit on everything that was expected of women, including being a nurturing mother. Thea deserved a better mother.

I enjoyed this book. I was lost in the pages, waiting to see what would happen. Would Thea survive the madness of creating the philosopher’s stone? Would she find people she could truly trust that would not betray her? Those questions kept me entranced in the story.

I really enjoyed this. It was such a good story!

[Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a review. This post contains affiliate links.]

You can purchase your copy of “A Golden Fury” at any of these approved PW retailers.

New Historical Fiction to Read Now: When We Were Young & Brave

Book: When We Were Young & Brave
Author: Hazel Gaynor
Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: October 6, 2020
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars (5 / 5)

Hello Lovelies!

Seven months of lockdown. Insanity, right? Like many others, I have had difficulty getting back into reading 10+ books a month. I decided to take a break from Facebook and attempt to not stay on Twitter too long, except to read the headlines, so I am not completely out of the loop.

I found that forcing that little break has allowed me to actually finish reading a few books on time. I’m also less anxious.

It took stepping away for a few days to see how crazy our world has become. So I’m going to focus on me and my life, because I can’t do the crazy anymore.

So that leads me to today’s new release from Hazel Gaynor. I read “Meet Me in Monaco” earlier this year and it was absolutely lovely. The whole story of Grace Kelly procuring a special perfume for her wedding, as well as a love story between the woman creating the scent and a reporter, was just sigh worthy.

When William Morrow reached out to ask if I would review this title, I did not hesitate, because Gaynor is a wonderful writer and spins such wonderful tales.

Synopsis

Their motto was to be prepared, but nothing could prepare them for war. . .

The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home sets her unforgettable new novel in China during WWII, inspired by true events surrounding the Japanese Army’s internment of teachers and children from a British-run missionary school.

China, December 1941. Having left an unhappy life in England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China, Elspeth Kent is now anxious to return home to help the war effort. But as she prepares to leave China, a terrible twist of fate determines a different path for Elspeth, and those in her charge.

Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always felt safe at Chefoo School, protected by her British status. But when Japan declares war on Britain and America, Japanese forces take control of the school and the security and comforts Nancy and her friends are used to are replaced by privation, uncertainty and fear. Now the enemy, and separated from their parents, the children look to their teachers – to Miss Kent and her new Girl Guide patrol especially – to provide a sense of unity and safety.

Faced with the relentless challenges of oppression, the school community must rely on their courage, faith and friendships as they pray for liberation – but worse is to come when they are sent to a distant internment camp where even greater uncertainty and danger await . . .

Inspired by true events, When We Were Young and Brave is an unforgettable novel about impossible choices and unimaginable hardship, and the life-changing bonds formed between a young girl and her teacher in a remote corner of a terrible war. 

[Synopsis from Goodreads.]

Review of “When We Were Young & Brave”

This book is absolutely marvelous and beautifully written. I fell in love with the book within the first 25 pages.

This book is told from two different perspectives: Elspeth, the teacher, and Nancy, the young student. Telling the story in this manner allows the reader to have a deeper understanding of the situation at Chefoo School.

There’s a teacher running from her past to heal her broken heart. There is a young girl who is forced to leave her parents for a British missionary school. The ones they love are both spirited away from them, and they must learn how to cope without them.

The teachers at this school teach the students how to be prepared. For the girls, they learn how to do this by being a part of Brownies (i.e. Girl Scouts). So when Japanese soldiers take over the school at the beginning of World War II and the Chinese servants are dismissed, the students and teachers pull their weight and make chores a game. They make it easier for the kids to want to help out. In fact, teaching this to the kids in the very beginning helps them in the coming years as they face one internment camp after another.

Before the gardener leaves Chefoo School, he gifts Elspeth nine sunflower seeds. A Japanese soldier (nicknamed Trouble) demands to see the package. In his evil manner, a seed is tossed out and he stomps it into the ground. But like a lotus flower extending itself out of the mud, that sunflower seed grew. It gave hope to the students and the teachers that despite their circumstances, something beautiful can still come from it. Life moves forward and blooms.

Those seeds become very important. They serve as markers on their journey.

After a year, the teachers and the 100 students leave Chefoo School for Temple Hill. It is at this point that I really felt worried for them. Where are they going? What is going to happen to them? Will they be ok?

Then there’s Trouble. In every war there are good soldiers and then there are the dangerous ones. Trouble is one of the dangerous soldiers.

The same group of soldiers follow them from one internment to the next. Home Run is probably one of my favorite characters in this book. The children love him and he does his best to do what is right, despite the circumstances. Why? Because he has young children of his own that he misses and these kids remind him of them.

One of the questions I had at the end of the book was what happened to Home Run after the war? What about his family? I would have liked to know more.

This book comes with content warnings. For those sensitive to rape or animal abuse, please note these warnings. Unfortunately, rape is systemic to war. If Gaynor had left this out of the story, I don’t believe she could have been 100% true to what happens to prisoners of war. She touches briefly on what happened to Chinese women when Japan invaded. It is a foreshadowing of what happens later on in the book.

Mind you, this is just a tinny part of what happens in this story. It is not the main focus. It does not go into the full details of the abuse, but it is there.

There are a lot of great quotes and lessons throughout this book. The signs of an excellent piece of literature is when you can find multiple moments that resonate within you. This quote above is my new life’s motto, taken from page 191 in the book.

So many historical fiction books out there focus on Europe during World War II. I loved that this one was based in China.

I enjoyed this story. Just wonderfully done. I highly recommend reading “When We Were Young & Brave” if you enjoy historical fiction. You’ll appreciate the new change in WWII scenery.

[Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a review. This post contains affiliate links.]

You can pick up a copy from any of these PW approved retailers.

Book Feature: Where Dreams Descend

Book: Where Dreams Descend
Author: Janella Angeles
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Release Date: August 25, 2020
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars (3 / 5)

Hello Lovelies!

So this month, I decided to review a book a little differently. I joined a buddy read with a few fellow Instagram book reviewers and we read the book together and chatted about the book a couple of times this month. I have to say, it was much more fun to review a book this way. I honestly think we should do it more often.

Here’s the synopsis for the book.

Synopsis

In a city covered in ice and ruin, a group of magicians face off in a daring game of magical feats to find the next headliner of the Conquering Circus, only to find themselves under the threat of an unseen danger striking behind the scenes.

As each act becomes more and more risky and the number of missing magicians piles up, three are forced to reckon with their secrets before the darkness comes for them next.

The Star: Kallia, a powerful showgirl out to prove she’s the best no matter the cost

The Master: Jack, the enigmatic keeper of the club, and more than one lie told

The Magician: Demarco, the brooding judge with a dark past he can no longer hide

Where Dreams Descend is the startling and romantic first book in Janella Angeles’ debut Kingdom of Cards fantasy duology where magic is both celebrated and feared, and no heart is left unscathed. 

{From Goodreads}

Review: Where Dreams Descend

As you can see from the ranking above, I gave “Where Dreams Descend” three stars. I agreed with the group’s assessment on the ranking. Here’s why.

The story was confusing. A whole group of us had so many questions at the halfway point and at the end. None of our questions were answered at any point.

Sure, we had some crazy conspiracy theories at the midway point, trying to figure out who was the bad guy and what was really going on. Was the villain really the villain or do we have this all wrong? What’s up with this strange town? Why does no one know anything beyond 50 years ago? What happened 50 years ago? What was this fire? Where in the world did Kallia come from? What’s her backstory and Jack’s? What is up with these mirrors? What’s with the cards? What’s with the houses? What about this fire they talk about?

NONE OF THE QUESTIONS WERE ANSWERED.

Granted, by the time we got to the end, we were even more confused than we were at the midway point. So in other words, it wasn’t just me. ALL OF US were confused!!!

Granted, I kind of liked our conspiracy theories we came up with. It made us want to race to the end to see if we were right. Sad to say, none of us were right. Instead, we were going, “HUH?” In other words, you will NEVER guess how this book will end.

But that’s not why we ranked it 3 stars.

The author created some very strong characters. I loved Kallia from the very beginning. I loved Aaros, too. Kallia and Aaros made the perfect partners in crime. I also loved the love story that developed between Kallia and DeMarco. These characters made you feel either a strong love or distaste for them. Even when you can’t quite figure out if someone is innately good or bad, you feel something for that character.

Creating strong characters is Janella Angeles’s strong point. But like all authors, writers have a strong suit and a weakness. For Angeles, her weakness lies in the plot. It is all over the place. Then when we get to the end, the plot is just lost on everybody.

But here’s the thing, this concept is great. The whole concept is intriguing and interesting, but it became too much and too many plot lines that nothing was answered at the end. It just sort of fizzled out and we’re all left going, “HUH?”

There will be a book two, and I need that book like last week, so I can figure out if all of our questions would be answered. Is everything resolved and fixed in book two?

This debut from Janella Angeles (a Filipino-American, for those interested in reading more books from Asian American writers) has great potential as a series. I love the whole concept, but it needs work to sort of streamline all of us out of its confusion. To build what Angeles has built, you have to truly master piecing it all together so it becomes that masterpiece. It’s like Erin Morgenstern’s “The Starless Sea.” The book is brilliant, but you have to be a genius to do what Morgenstern was able to do by tying up all of those loose ends. It also took her eight years to write that book.

Trust me, writing is not an easy process. Also, something I learned from other authors is that we all tend to be masters of one part of the writing process, and have a serious weakness in other parts. You can be strong at developing characters, but be weak at plot lines…or even spelling. I swear I saw an author put you’re in a post instead of your. That kind of drove me batty.

Writers are not perfect. This is an art that has to be continuously worked on and perfected. We have to work on our weaknesses in order to make them our strengths. I could also say that we should do that in all facets of life, especially in our jobs.

I’m looking forward to the next book just to see if any of the questions are answered and the plot lines resolved.

[DISCLOSURE: I received a copy of this title from the publisher in exchange for a review. This post contains affiliate links.]

You can pick up your copy at any of these Perfectionist Wannabe preferred retailers.

Book Review: Lobizona

Book: Lobizona
Author: Romina Garber
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Release Date: August 4, 2020
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars (5 / 5)

Hello Lovelies!

I just finished reading this incredible YA fantasy about brujas and lobizones (i.e. witches and werewolves), and it is something else. The last 10% of the book had me wrapped up thinking, NO FRIGGIN WAY!

This is book one in this new series and it is amazing.

Synopsis

Some people ARE illegal.

Lobizonas do NOT exist.

Both of these statements are false.

Manuela Azul has been crammed into an existence that feels too small for her. As an undocumented immigrant who’s on the run from her father’s Argentine crime-family, Manu is confined to a small apartment and a small life in Miami, Florida.

Until Manu’s protective bubble is shattered.

Her surrogate grandmother is attacked, lifelong lies are exposed, and her mother is arrested by ICE. Without a home, without answers, and finally without shackles, Manu investigates the only clue she has about her past–a mysterious “Z” emblem—which leads her to a secret world buried within our own. A world connected to her dead father and his criminal past. A world straight out of Argentine folklore, where the seventh consecutive daughter is born a bruja and the seventh consecutive son is a lobizón, a werewolf. A world where her unusual eyes allow her to belong.

As Manu uncovers her own story and traces her real heritage all the way back to a cursed city in Argentina, she learns it’s not just her U.S. residency that’s illegal. . . .it’s her entire existence.

[Synopsis from Goodreads.]

Review of Lobizona

[Disclosure: I received a copy of this title in exchange for a review. This post contains affiliate links.]

Wow. The last 10% of this book was just…WOW.

The first 90% is Manu’s search for her identity, home, and place in this world. There’s the world she’s running from and a world she’s running towards.

While her mother sits in a detention facility awaiting deportation, Manu is in a whole new world with people like her. But in this world, girls are brujas (witches) and boys are lobizones (werewolves). So when Manu arrives in this world, she tries to fake being a bruja, because that must be who she is, right? There’s no way she could have entered into this world unless she had magic.

But it ends up she’s not a bruja. She’s a lobizona. Not just any lobizana, she’s the result of a forbidden love between the notorious lobizon, Fierro, and a human mother. This relationship is illegal and cause for her and her parents to be executed if they were to ever be caught. But Manu doesn’t know who her father is. She’s been locked inside an apartment in Miami the first 16 years of her life with her mother and an old woman who took them in, because her golden eyes with star pupils betray her as not being human. Her mother came to Miami in search of her father after he fled the tribunal and their agents. She came with Manu, a daughter he never knew he had.

But she knows her father is on the run. What she never knew was that fate would lead her to him by following her true nature.

For teens wanting to learn about social justice and being the change our world needs, this is your book. Reading the author’s note at the end made me see how much Romina Garber is Manu in coming from Argentina to America, escaping governments that steal children and kill people for falling out of line. It’s about finding identity in two different homes. She explores what it feels like to be an illegal, and fitting into a society that doesn’t quite accept you, because you are different. Garber twisted all of those issues within her into an incredible story of witches and werewolves in Lobizona.

Just amazing. I am looking forward to reading book #2.

You can pick up your own copy of Lobizona on August 4, 2020 from any of Perfectionist Wannabe’s preferred retailers.

Book Review: The Lost City

Book: The Lost City (The Omte Origins #1)
Author: Amanda Hocking
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Release Date: Out Now
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars (5 / 5)

Hello Lovelies!

Today is my stop on The Lost City book tour. I am so happy I signed up for this tour, because this book is about trolls. Not the ugly, warty green folk that live under bridges, but a whole society of trolls where they look just like humans, but bigger.

Here’s a brief synopsis (from Goodreads).

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling author Amanda Hocking returns to the magical world of the Trylle with The Lost City, the first book in the final Trylle arc.

Nestled along the bluffs of the forested coast lays the secret kingdom of the Omte—a realm filled with wonder…and as many secrets.

Ulla Tulin was left abandoned in an isolated Kanin city as a baby, taken in by strangers and raised hidden away like many of the trolls of mixed blood. Even knowing this truth, she’s never stopped wondering about her family.

When Ulla is offered an internship working alongside the handsome Pan Soriano at the Mimirin, a prestigious institution, she jumps at the chance to use this opportunity to hopefully find her parents. All she wants is to focus on her job and the search for her parents, but all of her attempts to find them are blocked when she learns her mother may be connected to the Omte royal family.

With little progress made, Ulla and Pan soon find themselves wrapped up in helping Eliana, an amnestic girl with abilities unlike any they have ever seen before—a girl who seems to be running from something. To figure out who she is they must leave the city, and possibly, along the way, they may learn more about Ulla’s parents. 

Review

I loved this book from start to finish. It was a five star read for me. The main reason why has a lot to do with the fact that I have never read a book about a whole society of trolls before. It was so different. In this universe, there are literally two worlds, the troll world and the human world, existing alongside each other.

The human world does not know the troll world exists. The trolls live on the outskirts of humanity, but they are very human in so many ways. They are vegan and can cook up some seriously amazing food. They are scholarly and have places like the Mimirin dedicated to the study of trolls and their history. Cars, computers and cell phones are things they use, just like humans. And don’t think they won’t partake in a bit of Riverdale every now and again.

When this strange creature called Eliana drops into Ulla’s car, who knew where this story would take them? There’s the part where Ulla feels she must protect this girl, but she also needs to find the truth of who she is herself. What’s strange is that this strange girl says she is from a city that the troll world calls a myth. But is it really a myth, or is it deemed so because no one has ever returned from this place? At the end, you will still be asking that question, because it leaves you with a mighty cliffhanger to prepare you for the actual adventure.

This book is a bit like S. A. Hunt’s Burn the Dark series (aka Malus Domestica, a series I am absolutely obsessed with) in that the first book lays down the background to the story and the characters in it. The next book is where the adventure begins.

Considering my obsession with Burn the Dark, if I am comparing The Lost City to S. A. Hunt’s series, that should tell you how much I really liked The Lost City. Let me just put it to you this way, Tor Books is aware of my obsession and actually sends me the advance copy of the next installment in the Malus Domestica series. Book Two hasn’t even been released onto the market yet. I already have Book Three. Like I’m that kind of crazy obsessed.

Don’t expect any jam packed thrills in this first book. She saves that for the last bit of the book as a teaser to prepare you for what will happen in the next one.

I had so many questions at the end. For instance, following Eliana seems to be her only answer. But is she following her to save her, or to find herself? If Ulla is from this mythical place, what kind of troll does that make her? Heck, what kind of troll is Eliana? That’s what I really want to know. So many questions left unanswered. That’s what hooks you.

Like I said, I really loved this book, because I’ve never read a book about a whole troll society before. It caught me from the very beginning, because I kept thinking how interesting it was that this book was about a troll society and it wasn’t about a bunch of big green, ugly, scary monsters. It was about a whole society of beings told from a very unique perspective.

The next book can’t come fast enough.

You don’t need to read any of Amanda Hocking’s earlier books to jump into this book. This is book #1 in this series. No previous knowledge is necessary. BUT this book will make you want to pick up the other books. I know I will be ordering all of them.

You can pick up a copy of The Lost City at any of these Perfectionist Wannabe preferred retailers.

[Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a review. This post contains affiliate links.]

New Release Tuesday: MAYHEM

Mayhem by Estelle Laure

Hello Lovelies!

I have to tell you about this book I just finished reading called “Mayhem” by Estelle Laure. This book is everywhere. I kept telling myself for the past few months that I have to have this book. Well, somewhere along the course of needing this book (because I have a serious fear of missing out, aka FOMO), the publisher contacted me about reviewing this title. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity.

When I went to download the title, I put myself on pause, because how much do you want to bet, I probably had this book in my Kindle already? Oh, I was right to assume I already had it this entire time I was going nuts over the fact I needed this book. Don’t ask me where or when I got the book, but it was there waiting in my Kindle for me to consume already.

And consume it ravenously I did.

This being one of my first posts during the pandemic, I thought I would let you know that I have only been reading certain genres lately. I am gravitating towards horror, supernatural, YA fantasy, and some historical fiction. I really can’t deal with people’s problems right now, being a pandemic and all. We all have way too much to deal with as is.

Like most books, I don’t read the synopsis very often. That was the case with “Mayhem.” So when I started this book, content warnings started to flash before my eyes. So if you are sensitive to domestic violence, drug/alcohol abuse, suicide, murders or rape, please steer clear of this title, because it has all of that.

If you can shoulder on, then let me tell you about this book.

Mayhem and Roxy are back in Santa Maria, California. They come crawling back to their hometown, after having fled from an abusive man with only the clothes on their back and what they could grab in a few short minutes. It took Lyle banging Mayhem against a wall repeatedly to get Roxy (her mother) to run with her back home to Santa Maria.

Once upon a time, Roxy fled Santa Maria with a three year old Mayhem. She swore never to go back there again, but dire circumstances caused her to change her mind and take Mayhem back home to the Brayburn Farm.

The Brayburn women have a secret that Roxy ran away from. They are special in a sense that they protect Santa Maria from the weird stuff that happens in this strange psychokinetic blip on the world map. Strange things happen here. If you ask the weird Frog Brothers what’s up in Santa Maria, they’ll tell you vampires roam the Boardwalk.

You really get some kind of The Lost Boys vibes coming from these two. Actually, a lot of what’s happening in Santa Maria seems very much like The Lost Boys. After reading “Mayhem” I decided to watch The Lost Boys again (available to buy/rent on Prime Video), which was released back in 1987. Ironically, that is the same year “Mayhem” takes place.

Ends up the Frog Brothers are the very same Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys, comic bookstore and all. The Boardwalk, roller coaster, the Sax Man, mom going to work in a movie rental store, and even the Brayburn Farm set up on the hill overlooking the town are very reminiscent of The Lost Boys.

So if you loved that 1987 classic, you will like this book. One side of the boardwalk is for the vampires. The other side is for the Brayburns.

What exactly are the Brayburns? They are a cursed lineage where magic and terror combine in a Doctor Sleep kind of way. They will suck the evil out of you, especially if you are a very bad person.

When Roxy and Mayhem arrive at their ancestral home, Elle (Roxy’s twin sister) is living on the farm with three foster kids. At first touch of Kidd’s hand (the nine year old), Mayhem reveals a little too much of her own truths. Yet, she doesn’t understand why she would just blurt out to anyone how she was truly feeling. You can tell right from the beginning that these three kids are different.

They wake up late and stay out all night long, not returning until almost sunrise. What exactly are they doing all night long? Their neighbor is a cop and notices that these three always seem to be around when another girl goes missing.

Yes, there are girls missing. Six of them, in fact. The cops are not doing anything, claiming that maybe they just ran away. But everyone knows there’s a serial killer on the loose.

Will they find the serial killer before he claims his next victim?

This book was so good. I couldn’t put it down. I am actually hoping there will be a book two, because if you’re a Lost Boys fan, any continuation or side story to go along with that amazing movie will make you want more. It is still a legendary cult classic for a reason.

Now, I don’t want anyone to be dismayed by my review. Remember, I said vampires to one side of the Boardwalk, the Brayburns to the other side. What that means, I guess you’ll have to read the book to find out.

Get your copy today at any of Perfectionist Wannabe’s approved retailers:

[Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a review. This post contains affiliate links.]

Darkhaven Saga Tour PLUS Giveaway

Check out my stop on the blog tour for Darkhaven Saga by Danielle Rose!

Dark Secret (Darkhaven Saga #1)
by Danielle Rose
Genre: YA Supernatural
Release Date: February 18th 2020
Waterhouse Press

Summary:

There’s no wrath like that of a witch scorned.

Seventeen-year-old spirit witch Ava López is the self-appointed guardian of the witches and humans of Darkhaven, an idyllic village nestled between the forest and the sea. Her watch: vicious and bloodthirsty vampires.

Ava is a novice in the eyes of her coven. If she expects to protect them and the secrecy of their powers, she must gain better control of her own. When a full moon ritual goes awry, control may be lost forever, and Ava is exiled from her coven. Forced to seek refuge among the beings she had always sworn herself to hunt, she vows revenge on those who have upended her life.

But the more time Ava spends away from her coven, the more she discovers a startling truth: the witches haven’t been honest with her. Ava’s quest to strip the truth from everything she’s ever known begins with the toughest realization of all—coming to terms with who she has become.


Dark Magic (Darkhaven Saga #2)
Release Date: March 10th 2020

Summary:

There’s something about the scent of blood from the undead.

In the heat of battle, hybrid Ava López discovers she has new and fascinating powers, but she does not know how to control them. Though her former enemies have offered her refuge and helped her acclimate to the vampire lifestyle, even they don’t understand her enhanced magic.

With mounting threats from Ava’s former coven and reckless rogue vampires, Ava and her new friends have no choice but to request the wisdom of Holland Taylor to help her understand her powers. Holland is one of the most powerful witches Ava has ever met, and he is also Jeremiah’s ex, which introduces another wrinkle.

Tension between the vampires and Ava’s former coven is building, and when the witches offer a deal Ava would be remiss to reject, she is forced to choose between the life she once considered safe and the life she never wanted.
Purchase Links:
Dark Magic: 
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2WSTMFm
Print: https://amzn.to/32pMwC4
Nook: http://bit.ly/2OOSaKm
Apple Books: https://apple.co/2JQ64Ja
Google Play: http://bit.ly/2reInEl
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2PQQ79j

Dark Promise (Darkhaven Saga #3)
Release Date: April 14th 2020

Summary:

There’s a little witch in all of us…

Ava López’s best friend from childhood is missing, and her former coven has asked for her help to find her. Despite all the pain the witches have treated Ava to with their rejection, she is determined to find Liv—even though her new allies harbor resentment.

Ava hopes finding Liv will put an end to the feud between the two groups, but she realizes that to help the witches, she must turn her back on the vampires. But this is the least of her problems.

Ava must choose sides and test loyalties with a decision that comes at a cost—one even Ava, with her ever-growing powers and connection to spirit magic, never could have foreseen. To repent for her disloyalty, Ava must bind herself to a dark promise. A promise no magic can break.
Purchase Links:
Dark Promise:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2NhQpVd
Print: https://amzn.to/2oOXXVY
Nook: http://bit.ly/2YijrHY
Apple Books: https://apple.co/2PQRi92
Google Play: http://bit.ly/2OOSUiC
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2NjB6et

Excerpt from Dark Secret

      The house is silent save for the howling wind outside. It threatens us with the commotion of an incoming storm—its strength and fury already enough to send the occasional tree branch crashing against my windowpanes.
      This is the first time I’ve had to sneak out to go on patrol. The thought doesn’t sit well with me. I’m used to trust and freedom, not the threat of banishment.
      Tossing my covers aside, I sit up and allow my legs to dangle over the side of my bed. I’m already dressed. I began preparing for this moment as soon as Mamá told me I wasn’t allowed to hunt tonight.
      Instinctively, I reach for my necklace. I run my thumb down the length of the cross, my strength rejuvenated by its mere presence. The metal is cold to my touch. This two-inch silver cross is the last thing Papá gave me before he sacrificed himself to save Mamá and me from vampires. I never take it off.
      I glance around my room in search of his portrait, but I don’t find it. For the first time, I’m thankful Mamá is having the frame redone. I can’t bear the thought of him watching—not tonight. Not until I have proof.
      I tiptoe across the room, careful not to step on loose floorboards, and slip into my combat boots. I’ve strategically placed them in front of my dresser, which is directly to the right of my bedroom door.
      I’m just feet from my escape now. My breath comes in shallow huffs, and my hands are clammy. I can’t wait to feel the cool breeze against my skin. I wipe my palms against my jeans and try to shake off the fear of being discovered.
      I stare at my reflection in the large mirror that hangs on the wall above my dresser and replay each scenario in my mind. Mamá will not be pleased when she discovers I’ve disobeyed her order to retire early and skip my patrol. But I must ignore her. I can’t skip even one night of patrol in favor of rest before our upcoming full moon ritual.
      For weeks now, I’ve been burdened by the truth. Nestled deep within the pit of my gut is the feeling that something horrible will soon befall my coven. When I told Mamá, she simply made me a potion mixed with dandelion, wormwood, and calendula herbs to aid my clairvoyance and encourage psychic development. Her disbelief stings. Being the only other spirit witch in our coven, she is supposed to trust my instincts. I may be a novice compared to her, but I still know the signs of impending doom.
      Quickly, I tie my hair back and assess my look. I carefully choose my attire for every patrol. Tonight, I’m wearing all black—not unusual for me. My clothes are tight, yet loose enough to sidestep attacks. My jeans are tucked into my boots, and my long-sleeved shirt has small holes that loop around my thumbs, keeping it in place. My exposed neck is protected by my cross.
      Missing only two things, I’m nearly ready to begin my patrol.
      I grab the small mesh baggie. Last night, I filled it with horehound and mugwort. They’re strong herbs used in protection spells. These aren’t a guarantee, but they can’t hurt. And I’ll take anything I can get. Usually I try to patrol with another witch, but tonight I’m going alone. It’s reckless, but I don’t have another choice. I must hunt until this uneasy feeling goes away.
      A long, narrow black box rests atop my dresser. I open the lid. Something washes over me every time I see it, touch it. I run a finger down the long, cool metal, and a jolt of energy shoots down my spine.
      What started as plain, bright, and reflective silver is now a formidable weapon. On one end, it’s thick and fits firmly in my hand. On the other, it’s pointed into a sharp dagger.
      Forged by witches, the metal was melted into its liquid state and mixed with the strongest protection elixirs. No longer shiny, the weapon, my stake, is a matte dark gray and etched with runes that represent magic, the elements, death, and power.
      When I grasp at it to pick it up, it rolls into the palm of my hand as if it somehow knows it should be there. It’s nothing but metal and magic, but it feels alive. It feels like it’s part of me, and as a spirit witch, with little control over the elements, I rely heavily on this stake. It’s saved my neck more times than I care to admit.
      I tighten my grasp around it, and suddenly I’m no longer afraid to sneak away and hunt vampires.
      I don’t fear Mamá’s reaction or care what the coven thinks. All I can think about is driving this stake into a vampire’s heart and ridding the world of another monster.
      I slip the stake into its sheath, which hangs comfortably against my side. Hidden by my arms, blissfully unaware humans don’t notice it. Of course, vampires do. Their senses are far greater than mine. Their strength and speed are unmatched. But they haven’t access to the earth’s magic, and that, in the end, is always the reason why they bite the dust and I make it home for dinner.
      I consider staging my room so it looks like I’m sleeping. I could adjust my pillows to make them mirror the shape of my body, but I shrug away the thought. I’m only planning a quick loop around the village. I should be back long before Mamá wakes.
      My door creaks as I open it, and I freeze. Seconds tick by. I poke my head past the threshold and scan the hallway. Mamá’s door is still closed. I listen for her soft snoring, my racing thoughts slowing with each exhale.
      I tiptoe down the hall and press my ear to her door. If she catches me, I will tell her I am just going to the bathroom. Or maybe I’ll say I can’t sleep, so I’m going downstairs for a snack. Of course, she’d see through both lies. Mamá is a natural lie detector. But I’d have to try.
      No noise comes from her room, save for her heavy breathing. I rub my cross for strength and dash through the hall and down the stairs, skidding to a stop at the front door. Before I even realize what I’m doing, I’m grasping the doorknob, twisting, yanking, and pulling the solid oak open and then closed behind me.
      The cool breeze sends a shiver down my spine. I pull my jacket tighter around me to keep out the cold night air and wipe the sweat that’s beaded at my temple. Slowly, I turn to face the outside world.
      Our house is still dark. Every other step, I toss a glance behind me until I’m so far down the street I can’t see home anymore. There’s nothing but dark space, guilt, and dread between Mamá and me now.
      I don’t cherish the thought of upsetting her. Some of my worst memories are from times when she’s told me I’ve disappointed her. My very worst memory is when I was too young to help her and Papá. I was the ultimate disappointment.
      I kick the pebbles at my feet. I tried explaining how important patrols are right now, but Mamá wouldn’t listen. It’s frustrating that she believes in my magic as a spirit witch, but she doesn’t believe in me. Something dark is coming, I know it, and it’s heading straight for our coven. If she won’t protect them, I will, even if it means lying, sneaking out, keeping secrets, and breaking promises.
      The streetlights are bright at this time of night, illuminating the world around me in rays of light, showcasing all the things I don’t notice during the day. That’s my favorite part about patrolling. Mamá doesn’t understand why I love it so much—the hunting, tracking, killing. But there’s something about the way the moon speaks to me. It’s like she sings songs for my ears alone. She calls to me in ways Mamá doesn’t understand. I am destined for the night. For the hunt.
      The witches aren’t very good at training me to fight. Rather than using hand-to-hand combat, they rely on their magical affinities for one of the five elements—earth, air, water, fire, and spirit. Even as a coven at full strength, the slightest hiccup can prevent a successful ritual.
      Since witches are earthly vessels, our power is finicky and dependent on too many outside factors. To perform a ritual properly and to cast even a simple spell, timing matters. We’re servants to the moon, to the sun, and to the seasons.
      Our magic is so much a part of us, it affects witches on a cellular and characteristic level.
      A naturally masculine element, fire witches are passionate and creative, and harness a fierce temperament. Fire witches can ignite a flame within their victims, burning them alive, but the element is only at its strongest during midday on a summer afternoon.
      The other masculine element is air. Air witches are wise, intellectual beings who rationalize even the most chaotic of times. They can hack through skin with forceful blasts of wind, but they’re only at their most powerful at night in the winter, when the moon is high and the air is cold.
      Water is a feminine element. These witches are mysterious, intuitive beings who can turn water droplets into ice shards. They are at their strongest at dusk in autumn.
      The final feminine element is earth. Users desire stability, practicality, and materialism in the physical world, but with the snap of their fingertips, earth witches can wield bullets made of stone. Their power is most potent during sunrise in the spring.
      Four of the five elements have weapons at their disposal to easily disarm prey. Together, at their strongest hour, they would be unstoppable—but this would never happen. It can’t be midday in the summer and dusk in autumn at the same time. Mamá says the earth can only handle so much magic at once, which is why witches have natural limits and time boundaries.
      As a spirit witch, my powers are mental. I have prophetic dreams and can visit the astral plane. Basically, I can feel when something bad is going to happen, and occasionally, I can see snippets of the future when I sleep. These really aren’t the greatest powers to have when I’m facing a vampire in real life.
      I keep my mind sharp and focus on the world around me. Darkhaven is a small village in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by the sea on one side and forest on the others, it is a safe haven for the witch covens that call this home. Humans don’t seem to notice when we make our way into the forest for a ritual or to collect plants and berries for elixirs.
      The sun won’t rise for hours, so I have plenty of time to loop around town, making sure I hit all the spots vampires are likely to search for food. Evernight Bar and Grill is Darkhaven’s local restaurant and pub. It’s closing in an hour or so, and drunken humans will be stumbling their way through the dimly lit streets like they’re meals-on-wheels. Most of the walking blood bags will be lucky to make it home.
      The soft smack of heels alerts me.
      I am not alone.

About the Author

Dubbed a “triple threat” by readers, Danielle Rose dabbles in many genres, including urban fantasy, suspense, and romance. The USA Today bestselling author holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine.

Danielle is a self-professed sufferer of ’philes and an Oxford comma enthusiast. She prefers solitude to crowds, animals to people, four seasons to hellfire, nature to cities, and traveling as often as she breathes.
Social media links:



Book Review: Dark Magic (Darkhaven Saga #2)

Book: Dark Magic (Darkhaven Saga #2) by Danielle Rose
Publisher: Waterhouse Press
Release Date: March 10, 2020

5 out of 5 stars (5 / 5)

Synopsis

There’s something about the scent of blood from the undead.

In the heat of battle, hybrid Ava López discovers she has new and fascinating powers, but she does not know how to control them. Though her former enemies have offered her refuge and helped her acclimate to the vampire lifestyle, even they don’t understand her enhanced magic.

With mounting threats from Ava’s former coven and reckless rogue vampires, Ava and her new friends have no choice but to request the wisdom of Holland Taylor to help her understand her powers. Holland is one of the most powerful witches Ava has ever met, and he is also Jeremiah’s ex, which introduces another wrinkle.

Tension between the vampires and Ava’s former coven is building, and when the witches offer a deal Ava would be remiss to reject, she is forced to choose between the life she once considered safe and the life she never wanted.

[Synopsis from Goodreads.]

Review for Dark Magic

Ava Lopez just can’t let go.

After living a few weeks with her new vampire coven, she still feels compelled to run back to her old witch’s coven, the one that kicked her out after she turned. It’s difficult leaving a family that is the only one you’ve ever known for a new one. It’s difficult understanding that your family does not want you anymore. You have to stay away.

That is the problem Ava is having in book #2 of the Darkhaven Saga. While she grows to learn how to be a vampire and get her newfound powers under control, she still has that hope that she can return to her mother and her coven once she masters being a vampire that will not harm anyone.

She does not understand that she is forsaken. She can never go back to her family. This is a difficult lesson for her to learn at this time. But she doesn’t stop running back home every time the rogue vampires attack the witches. She is trying to show that they can work together, vampires and witches. There is no need for this feud. There is no need to be enemies. She is trying to be the difference by showing them that both sides can ban together…even if that means leaving her new vampire’s coven to prove it.

This story is getting more and more interesting. The book leaves you with a cliffhanger at the end to prepare you for book #3. I hope that in the end of this saga, Ava will be able to accomplish everything her heart leads her to.

This series is written in penny dreadful style. This is book 2 in a 5 part series. I so can’t wait to see how this story turns out.

[Disclosure: I received a copy of “Dark Haven” from the publisher in exchange for a review.]

You can pick up a copy of Dark Magic at any of these preferred PW booksellers.

Book Review: The Wish and the Peacock

Book: “The Wish and the Peacock” by Wendy S. Swore
Publisher: Shadow Mountain Publishing
Release Date: February 4, 2020

5 out of 5 stars (5 / 5)

Synopsis

Paige’s favorite family tradition on the farm is the annual bonfire where everyone tosses in a stone and makes a wish. This time, Paige’s specific wish is one she’s not sure can come true: Don’t let Mom and Grandpa sell the farm.

When Paige’s younger brother finds a wounded peacock in the barn, Paige is sure it’s a sign that if she can keep the bird safe, she’ll keep the farm safe too. Peacocks, after all, are known to be fierce protectors of territory and family.

With determination and hard work, Paige tries to prove she can save the farm on her own, but when a real estate agent stakes a “For Sale” sign at the end of the driveway and threatens everything Paige loves, she calls on her younger brother and her best friends, Mateo and Kimana, to help battle this new menace. They may not have street smarts, but they have plenty of farm smarts, and some city lady who’s scared of spiders should be easy enough to drive away.

But even as the peacock gets healthier, the strain of holding all the pieces of Paige’s world together gets harder. Faced with a choice between home and family, she risks everything to make her wish come true, including the one thing that scares her the most: letting the farm go.

[Synopsis from Goodreads]

The Wish and the Peacock REVIEW

I grew up on a farm. I was a city girl, doomed to a childhood on a farm and I hated every single second of it. When I turned 18, I could not wait to get as far away as possible from that place.

Reading this book, I can tell you I was nothing like Paige. She is a 12-year old girl completely running a farm mostly by herself. That’s all she cares about is running the farm. If people help her, good. If they don’t, she’s okay with it, because she’s still going to do it. But try to stop her from doing her work and that person has got another thing coming. This is her life and she’s passionate about her farm.

A lot of Paige’s passion in running the farm has a lot to do with a promise she made to her father before he died. It was the last thing she said to him. She would take care of the farm. A year after his death, her family is facing foreclosure on the property.

While a real estate agent and a strange journalist poke around the farm, Paige and her brother Scotty (along with her two friends) try to sabotage the sale. Business men want the acreage. They don’t care about the farm. But Paige and her family want the farm to go to farmers, because once the industry comes in, the world will never get that farmland back.

While all of this is going on, Scotty discovers a peacock hiding out in their barn. The bird is injured, but it trusts these two kids to take care of it. When the journalist starts asking them if they’ve seen this peacock, they lie, because they have no idea what this man wants with the exotic bird. It’s obvious the bird ran away from something. Maybe it ran because it was running from a bad situation. They don’t know, but they will do anything to protect that bird.

This story will make anyone (including this city girl) appreciate the farm life and what Paige is doing to keep her family’s farm running. She really makes all of this look easy. From fixing motorcycles and riding tractors, laying down pipes to birthing a cow, this girl does it all. She’ll make you appreciate this life she’s so passionate about.

It is an excellent read. My heart just warmed to their situation. It almost made me want to buy a farm…and then I thought…nah, I’m not Paige. But I do appreciate what she taught me in this book.

I read Wendy S. Swore’s A Monster Like Me, and I really enjoyed that book. But this one, I think I love more. Definitely a great read for those who love YA.

[Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes. This post contains affiliate links.]

You can get your copy of “The Wish and the Peacock” by clicking on any of these PW approved retailers below.

The Book Every Woman Needs to Own

Book: “Fierce Fairytales: Poems & Stories to Stir Your Soul” by Nikita Gill
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Release Date: September 11, 2018

5 out of 5 stars (5 / 5)

Synopsis

Poet, writer, and Instagram sensation Nikita Gill returns with a collection of fairytales poetically retold for a new generation of women.

Traditional fairytales are rife with cliches and gender stereotypes: beautiful, silent princesses; ugly, jealous, and bitter villainesses; girls who need rescuing; and men who take all the glory.

But in this rousing new prose and poetry collection, Nikita Gill gives Once Upon a Time a much-needed modern makeover. Through her gorgeous reimagining of fairytale classics and spellbinding original tales, she dismantles the old-fashioned tropes that have been ingrained in our minds. In this book, gone are the docile women and male saviors. Instead, lines blur between heroes and villains. You will meet fearless princesses, a new kind of wolf lurking in the concrete jungle, and an independent Gretel who can bring down monsters on her own.

Complete with beautifully hand-drawn illustrations by Gill herself, Fierce Fairytales is an empowering collection of poems and stories for a new generation.

[Synopsis from Goodreads]

Review of “Fierce Fairytales” or Simply, Why Every Woman Needs to Own This Book

I could easily just copy and paste my review, but I am not going to today, because I can’t stop thinking about this book. Since I finished this book, I’ve told at least three of my girlfriends that they must buy, not borrow, this book. Hell, I’ll even buy them a copy.

In this book, Nikita Gill transforms fairy tales, or simply, every Disney princess cartoon, into something we can truly understand. Like: why was Captain Hook so obsessed with Peter? Why did Gaston turn villainous at the end? Why did Jack sell the cow for three magic beans?

She explains why villains become villains. For the evil witches and queens, she doesn’t let you hate them. She makes sure you understand who they are and how they took strength from the pain they endured, so that they could survive.

But one of the most important aspects of her poems is how she helps explain to you the pain you hold inside yourself. She cracks open your soul and explains why this and that hurt you. And then she shows you that the reason why you are the way you are today is because of this or that. She’s spot on every single time. At least, she was for me.

For example, I recently called it quits with my work husband. It just became too much for me, all the cruelty and passive aggressiveness. When he accused me of betrayal, I felt like the words he spun did not make sense, but then I realized we weren’t talking about some stupid email.

You see, this guy, he’s a hero. He’s someone everyone looks up to and respects. He’s the guy every single person in his field strives to be. He is perfect in every sense of the word. My boss always described him as being someone that walks between the raindrops. Then, all of a sudden, he turned into a villain.

Here’s what helped me understand what happened better:

How a Hero Becomes a Villain

Trauma when left untreated
has the capacity to make
a villain out of you.

No one understands how little boys
who save villages, who become war heroes,
who have fathers that just expect
them to be brave no matter the cost
to the insides of their mind, become
villains without even trying to.

How then hearing the word ‘no’ becomes a trigger,
how love rejected becomes
cautiously pieced self-worth dissolved,
how the thought of losing love and it being
given to someone else makes this
entire facade you have carefully constructed fall.

How you weren’t always an arrogant,
self-involved, obsessive bad guy, how that is
just the way you project yourself
to keep the vulnerable little boy hidden;
this is what is expected of you,
the strongest man in the whole village.

How obsession is a symptom of a dark
thing left untreated, and how truthfully
under your brash surface you have kept a beast
inside you secretly hidden, and what seeing the girl you love
hand over her love to someone who looks
just like the demon you fight every night does.

This is how a hero like Gaston
becomes the devil in the story which could
have been about his only chance at finding love.

Take this as your reminder:
Not all heroes wear capes.
Some wear darkness, some wear wounds.

[“Fierce Fairytales,” Nikita Gill; pp. 51-52]

Of course, it made me think back to Valentine’s Day last year. The way he apologized to me and then my response was not one he was expecting. I pushed him towards her and told him to make it the most fucking romantic weekend for her. I watched him flinch, as if his heart broke right there in front of me. What did he expect? I would beg him not to go? Ask him to make it up to me?

I had always suspected he felt more for me than he should have. I feel bad every time I look at him. He wanted me to love him back. I never wanted to break his heart. Instead, he watched me become heartbroken over someone else. He attempted to put me back together again, thinking he would be my knight in shining armor. But then it all fell apart. He wasn’t my “The One.”

He never could be. Why? Because for him, I’m not worth fighting for, but she is. She is worth fighting for until the day he dies. She is worth it. As his friend, I want him to be happy. That’s why she deserved the most fucking romantic weekend ever. She deserves that from him, because she has always loved him freely. He’s just forgotten to see that her love is there.

In the end, I got a Gaston that I knew would try to destroy me the second I tried to break away from him. I saw the beast inside of him come out. That is just something I will never be able to unsee. I mean, how does this perfect hero all of a sudden turn into a villain? Well, read the poem above.

You see, Gill’s words in her book hit me to my very core. That’s why I can’t stop thinking about the things she said in this 155 page book. You know that her work is good when you are constantly churning her words inside your soul, because she touched you in a way that helps you to understand your pain. But it helps you know that you can find strength in understanding that pain.

She has a little something for everyone. From abusive homes to alcoholic parents to getting your heart broken over and over again, she knows. She understands that pain so much, but she knows how to explain our humanity in ways no one else is able to. In the end, she leaves you feeling like everything is going to be alright now.

Ladies, this book is perfect for whatever ails your soul or your heart. She has a prescription for each and every one of us.

You can get your copy of “Fierce Fairytales” at any of these PW approved retailers.

Book Review: Dark Secret

Book: “Dark Secret” by Danielle Rose
Publisher: Waterhouse Press
Release Date: February 18, 2020

4.5 out of 5 stars (4.5 / 5)

Synopsis

There’s no wrath like that of a witch scorned.

Seventeen-year-old spirit witch Ava López is the self-appointed guardian of the witches and humans of Darkhaven, an idyllic village nestled between the forest and the sea. Her watch: vicious and bloodthirsty vampires.

Ava is a novice in the eyes of her coven. If she expects to protect them and the secrecy of their powers, she must gain better control of her own. When a full moon ritual goes awry, control may be lost forever, and Ava is exiled from her coven. Forced to seek refuge among the beings she had always sworn herself to hunt, she vows revenge on those who have upended her life.

But the more time Ava spends away from her coven, the more she discovers a startling truth: the witches haven’t been honest with her. Ava’s quest to strip the truth from everything she’s ever known begins with the toughest realization of all—coming to terms with who she has become.

[Synopsis from Goodreads]

“Dark Secret” Review

What a great start to this new YA series from Danielle Rose!

Ava is a witch set on protecting her coven from the things that threaten them…mainly, vampires.

While out patrolling, she picks a fight with the wrong group of vampires. She makes the mistake in letting the leader get away. He comes back with a vengeance and attacks her coven, leaving her on the brink of death.

That’s when another group of vampires shows up to aide the witches. One vampire gives Ava his blood after she’s been bitten…dooming her to a vampire’s life. She is tossed out of her home and forced to reside with this group of vampires who tries to protect humans (and witches) from rogue vampires.

Fortunately for Ava, if she has to be a vampire, she can still continue to protect her family and her coven from the bad vampires that seek to hurt them.

This series is broken up into 5 books, which is essentially 5 different parts. The first part is Ava’s beginning and her first fight as a vampire where she realizes she needs to train to control her newfound powers. Book two comes out in March, followed by book three in April. Books four and five will be released in the fall. The way Danielle has broken this book up reminds me of the way penny dreadfuls were released. You get just a little bit of the story each week. You have to keep reading each week in order to find out what happens next in the story. That is how the Darkhaven Saga is written.

I can’t wait to read what happens next…

[Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher and author.]

You can purchase “Dark Secret” at any of PW’s preferred booksellers below.

Book Review: The Sea of Lost Girls

Book: “The Sea of Lost Girls” by Carol Goodman
Publisher: William Morrow/HarperCollins
Release Date: March 3, 2020

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5)

Synopsis

In the tradition of Daphne du Maurier, Shari Lapena, and Michelle Richmond comes a new thriller from the bestselling author of The Lake of Dead Languages—a twisty, harrowing story set at a prestigious prep school in which one woman’s carefully hidden past might destroy her future.

Tess has worked hard to keep her past buried, where it belongs. Now she’s the wife to a respected professor at an elite boarding school, where she also teaches. Her seventeen-year-old son, Rudy, whose dark moods and complicated behavior she’s long worried about, seems to be thriving: he has a lead role in the school play and a smart and ambitious girlfriend. Tess tries not to think about the mistakes she made eighteen years ago, and mostly, she succeeds.

And then one more morning she gets a text at 2:50 AM: it’s Rudy, asking for help. When Tess picks him up she finds him drenched and shivering, with a dark stain on his sweatshirt. Four hours later, Tess gets a phone call from the Haywood school headmistress: Lila Zeller, Rudy’s girlfriend, has been found dead on the beach, not far from where Tess found Rudy just hours before.

As the investigation into Lila’s death escalates, Tess finds her family attacked on all sides. What first seemed like a tragic accidental death is turning into something far more sinister, and not only is Tess’s son a suspect but her husband is a person of interest too. But Lila’s death isn’t the first blemish on Haywood’s record, and the more Tess learns about Haywood’s fabled history, the more she realizes that not all skeletons will stay safely locked in the closet.

[Synopsis from Goodreads]

Review: The Sea of Lost Girls

This gripped me from the very beginning. I couldn’t put it down. This book reminds me a lot of “The Woman in Cabin 10” and “My Dark Vanessa.”

It reminded me of “The Woman in Cabin 10” because you don’t know what’s going on. In Ruth Ware’s book, the lead character is either drunk or drugged. She doesn’t know what’s what and she’s trying to see through her drunken lens. In “The Sea of Lost Girls,” the reader is the one trying to see through the haze, because Tess (our protagonist) lies all of the time. Her story is constantly changing. You don’t know what the truth is until the very end and that’s because someone else is trying to tell you what really happened.

Each time the story is told, it changes just a little bit. You think you’ve heard the story already, but then it changes. You have to pay very close attention.

“My Dark Vanessa” deals with an inappropriate student/teacher relationship. In “The Sea of Lost Girls,” Tess runs off with her teacher after she finishes her schooling, because she is pregnant with his child. Then later, after she goes back to school (at 23), she ends up marrying her teacher. The first relationship was the really bad and abusive one. She ends up living on a remote island in a cabin with this teacher (Luther) and their son (Rudy). Luther is abusive to both of them. She doesn’t decide to flee until after she discovers that he is a serial pedophile, dismissed from 4 schools for inappropriate relationships with students. The girls were all much younger than Tess.

During their flight off of the island, Luther receives a head blow with a rowing oar. But who did it? Who killed him? That story changes as it goes.

There’s the story of Tess and her relationships, but there’s also another story involving the lost girls who went missing from this school/wayward home in Maine. In the 1960s, 3 girls disappear. One girl notes that these three disappearances are all linked to one person. Next, they find her dead body out by the Maiden Stone.

Fast forward to present day. Lila, Rudy’s girlfriend, is also discovered dead by the legendary Maiden Stone. Her death comes just hours after Rudy and Lila get into a fight. Lila’s death also occurs right around the time she discovers the identity of the Lost Girls’ murderer. Is her killer the same murderer? Is it Rudy? Or maybe it was Luther, back from the dead? Or maybe it was Tess’s husband who was helping Lila with her paper? Did one of them have an inappropriate relationship with Lila?

There are so many possible motives, so many lies spinning, you will not be able to tell who is telling the truth until the very end.

A very enjoyable read.

[Disclosure: I received a copy of an eARC from the publisher.]

You can purchase “The Sea of Lost Girls” at any of PW’s preferred booksellers below.

Starting Over Again

When I first started this site, I called it Diary of a Perfectionist Wannabe. It was borne out of the desire to be perfect, to have a sense of perfectionism. This is a trait many Asian Americans understand. We strive to be the best, so we try to perfect ourselves in order to be accepted.

When I read “Searching for Sylvie Lee” by Jean Kwok, I understood why I always had this desire to strive for perfection. It is because I am trying to be accepted by a family and a society that has rejected me because I am not 100% white.

Yes, I said family. My brother and I are a bit of the outliers in our family. My mother is Thai and she married an American in order to escape the slavery she was subjected to in her home country. She wanted to give her future children the opportunity to grow up and live in a world where their family would never sell them in order to put food on their table.

She gave us freedom, but also gave us hell. We were the ones who were not accepted, because we were the minority in our white schools. Our racist Christian family pretended like they loved us, but we knew they didn’t. They tolerated us, because they had no choice. It was the Christian thing to do…pretend to love these kids because they’re blood, but they’re not white.

Love was not something we received from them. We had to search outside of our home for love. I spent most of my life trying to prove to them that I existed. I just wanted to be accepted. The thing is, the world accepted me, but my family never did.

I remember when I invited my wealthy aunt and uncle to an Indy 500 party. Senators and everybody that was anybody in the political world was there. Senator after Senator told my aunt and uncle what a wonderful person I was and how they thought the world of me.

The look on their faces was not one of being proud, it was of shock that these Senators even knew I existed. It was so much easier for them to believe that the life I lived was a complete lie. It did not fit their mold of what they believed I was…someone who would never amount to anything. To them I was not anyone of importance, no matter how many Senators spoke so highly of me and knew my name.

These are things I carry with me even to this day. Like Sylvie Lee, you get to that point where you just want to give up and not care anymore. If they don’t see you now, they will never see you for who you really are. They will never accept me as someone they could love, all because my mother is not white.

It doesn’t matter that I grew up in a white household and the only thing that connects me to the Thai culture is just the food (something I can’t even make). My mother made sure to assimilate us into the American culture, because she was running from her past and wanted nothing to do with it.

I understand that completely. I understand running from the things that have hurt you and caused you pain, looking to start over again. I’m watching it happen to my friend right now. I see her pain and humiliation. I’m watching her preparing to run. I see her not giving a shit about her life right now, because truth be told, no matter how many times she tries not to talk about it, I know what it’s like to be in her shoes. It took me eight years to get over the last guy that made me run.

That’s the thing about pain. When people wound you deeply, you lose all sense of yourself. You walk through life like a ghost, just trying to survive the monotony and move on to the next day. We’ve all been there.

I don’t even like to admit how hurt I was when my boss left. I never thought it would effect me the way that it did. For the last two years, I’ve stopped living my life. I just settled into the flow of existing. Hell, my Instagram feed just screams that I am part of the floodwaters. I’m not me.

That’s what’s been missing these past couple of years…me. There was a time I lived in the VIP world. Yet, these past couple of years, I’ve not done anything. I didn’t go to the opera or the ballet. I barely saw friends. Hell, I barely go out to the movies. All of those celebrity filled events, film festivals, rubbing elbows with directors, actors and fashion designers…I stepped away from.

They’re so busy creating and living, while I’ve fallen into that world that they despise…the mediocrity of life…all because someone hurt me.

So I’m writing all of this, because my universe keeps saying live for today. That mantra is on repeat every single day.

Someone I know recently retired. Then they found out they had stage 4 colon cancer. That’s also known as the death cancer. The lesson here is don’t wait for tomorrow to live life. Do it now, because you are not promised tomorrow.

I tell myself this every single day…since last June. Yet, I did not let it truly sink in that I am not living. I’m just doing the bare minimum to withdraw from life and go on autopilot. But the truth is that it is okay to let yourself grieve and to go numb for a little while. Just don’t stay there so long that you forget who you are and what you are meant to become.

I have been trying very hard to write daily. Sometimes I write one page in one month. That is just how withdrawn I’ve been. I started to see the people that inspire me withdraw from me, because in the grand scheme of the way things are done, you can’t keep sucking the life out of them. They’ve got to shine, and they can’t have you around dulling up their sparkle. They need other gems to sparkle alongside them.

Which leads me to why I am writing this today. I have been out of it for two years now. For some strange reason, I feel like I’ve woken up from a dream where nothing gets done. I looked at my final receipts for the clothes I bought last year and it amounted to $1500. That is so not me. That means, I just did not care. I had emptied out my closets, wanting only easy pieces to wear. These were items that took absolutely no thought whatsoever to pull out to wear.

I realized recently that something was amiss. This just isn’t me. That wake-up call within me finally happened. Now, I’m ready to get back to my life and living it.

This means I want to share my world with the people that come here to read or go to my social media to view. It means not just putting a book up in front of me for you to see, but letting you see more into my life and what I am doing, as well as the things I am trying to accomplish.

The fact that this is my second post this month is a huge step in the right direction.

So with that step, let me tell you what I plan to do from here on out. In my previous post, I shared I wanted to read a book a day. Oh, believe me, that is still a goal. But I am going to take a little step back in the reviewing process, so that I can spend more time writing.

I plan on going back to the film festivals, going to the ballet, operas and Broadway. I plan on hanging out with rock stars, like I used to do. I have every intention of dining out more and trying all of these incredible places that Manhattan has to offer. I plan on building up my wardrobe again. I also plan on buying my first house in the upcoming months, because I need to move in that direction.

Oh yeah, a developer purchased my apartment building. I was told they are giving me a year and a half before they begin the eviction process. I believe that is the amount of time they think they will need to be able to purchase up the remainder of the properties on my block, so they can tear it all down and build something more modern.

I’m kind of tired of people doing that to me and my home, so I am just going to go and buy a place. I spoke to a mortgage lender and we walked through the process. I have more than enough money for a down payment on a house, so it is just a matter of finding the right property.

So right now, my apartment is basically halfway packed up. It’s basically boxes everywhere.

Matthew has had severe allergies over the past few months. First, I came home to the Maine Coon from Pet Semetary and had to run to the vet’s office because his mouth was bleeding again. This time, it wouldn’t stop. We got him on meds fast enough. But come the next month, he needed stronger meds, because he scratched up his face so badly, that it took a couple of months for it to heal. The vet says that like humans, as we get older our allergies get worse. It’s the same for cats. So I’m looking forward to more bleeding and itchiness for the little guy.

Other than that drama, I’ve been thinking lately about the life I want to live. Living is the important part, because that’s the part that’s been missing from my life these past two years. I was stuck in a moment I could not get out of…and once I realized I was stuck in a moment, I decided it was time to get out of it and start living again.

Now, I know there are people that go out there, travel the ends of the earth, completely stuck in a moment inside of themselves, trying to escape it. But the truth is we cannot escape ourselves. We will carry that pain, sorrow, humiliation, and grief with us no matter where we go. A new destination does not mean we will be free of our tormentors. Because we still carry what they did to us no matter where we go to try and heal. Moving forward begins inside of us.

Change begins when we decide we need to change ourselves. What happened to us does not define us. Who we choose to become as a result of everything that has ever happened to us, that’s up to us. We hold that power to become better than we were yesterday.

Me? I’m just tired of waiting for my future to happen, when I know I am the one in charge of creating my own destiny. The universe just falls in line based on the energy I put out there. Change begins within me.

I may strive to be perfect and to create a more perfect system in my life, but I know I am always going to want to be a perfectionist, and never a true perfectionist.

For the family who never saw that perfect child who is a far greater success than anyone else in the family, I may not exist to you, but I exist to others. They see me and they love me for who I am and all my imperfections. They’ve taught me that you were wrong. This is not normal. I deserve better, because I am a way better person than you are. Just too bad you didn’t want to know me at all. Then again, I’m better off not wanting to know you anymore.