Honestly, this one's on me. I know I don't like Ruth Ware's thrillers, so why did I read this? Because I needed something to read on the train to workHonestly, this one's on me. I know I don't like Ruth Ware's thrillers, so why did I read this? Because I needed something to read on the train to work and this was the first thing I saw on the "available now" section of my library's e-book section.
The plot of this book feels like someone got a bot to create a word cloud of the most popular BookTok terms ("dark academia", "true crime", "rich kids", "Oxford", etc) and then tried to make a story around them. Unsurprisingly, this is a poor strategy. ...more
I want to make something very clear right off the bat: I am not giving this book one star just because"I've gone to therapy, but it was inconclusive."
I want to make something very clear right off the bat: I am not giving this book one star just because it’s written by a reality TV star. I gave Holly Madison’s Playboy memoir five stars and I meant every single one of them, so I went into this book with a pretty open mind, and wasn't prepared to dismiss it just because it’s written by someone who became famous for being awful on a Bravo show.
I’m giving this one star because it’s the lowest tier of ghost-written celebrity literature: the so-called “how-to” book. Sometimes a C-list celebrity will attempt to write a book, but because they’ve already laid so much of their life bare on TV, social media, etc (and have no particularly interesting thoughts or inner life to share), they have to brand themselves as an “expert” in some vague and difficult to define field like “entertaining”, “balancing life and family”, “keeping it real”, or “having it all” (ie, nothing so specific where you need some kind of degree or certification to prove your expertise). Stassi has apparently decided that her particular Thing is “owning it” and at my most generous, I’d say that the purpose of this book is to help you find your self-confidence.
Which is, weirdly, a very appropriate subject for the woman whose claim to fame on Vanderpump Rules is systematically destroying the self-esteem and emotional well-being of her enemies. Who better to teach us how to hone our self-confidence than the woman whose greatest skill set is identifying weak points in the emotional armor of others?
Unfortunately, Stassi has completely de-fanged herself for this book in order to appeal to the broadest possible audience and not appear controversial in any way. This book is not written by the Stassi who once threatened to send an acid-soaked dildo to her enemy, and that’s a real shame. Any declarative statement in this book is immediately followed by the caveat that if it’s not your thing, that’s fine too! Everything is fine! There is no wrong way to be! Everyone just get along!
A weirdly fascinating aspect of this book is seeing all the various ways Stassi essentially rephrases the same core idea of “you do you, girl” and stretches it over a couple hundred pages. In fact, that’s pretty much the only lesson to be gleaned from this – so really, Stassi didn’t need to write a book, she could have just gotten t-shirts made. (Also, the “girl” part of “you do you, girl” is crucial, as this book is not remotely interested in speaking to anyone who is not a cishet woman)
But my one-star review mostly represents this book’s wasted potential. Stassi is trying to be a bootleg Oprah here, but that’s not what we want from her. You can draw a direct line from Dynasty villains to Stassi Schroeder’s persona on Vanderpump Rules, and that’s the person I wanted to read a memoir from. This book reads like an audition for a bland lifestyle show on the Home network, and that’s disappointing.
And Now, A List of Things I Wanted From This Book That Were Never Delivered:
-detailed step-by-step descriptions of how Stassi forced multiple girls to quit SUR because she didn’t like them -how to hack your boyfriend’s social media in order to keep tabs on him and exert full psychological control -a lengthy chapter explaining the how and why of that time Stassi tagged along on Katie and Schwartz’s honeymoon -a more honest memoir that would address the fascinating insight into Stassi’s adolescence that we got when her mother said that teenage Stassi would lie on the kitchen floor and eat bread every day after school -becoming a reality TV villain for fame and fortune: how did Stassi do it, and was it worth it? -a straightforward industry memoir about what it’s like to work in a West Hollywood restaurant that’s also a working reality TV set
At least I got this from the library and didn’t pay actual money for it....more
**spoiler alert** Before I really get into this review, I should start with a disclaimer: I raced through this book in about four days, and read the l**spoiler alert** Before I really get into this review, I should start with a disclaimer: I raced through this book in about four days, and read the last two hundred pages in one sitting. So even though this review isn’t going to be overwhelmingly positive, the fact remains that The Roanoke Girls is gripping and (dare I say) impossible to put down.
I just wish that Amy Engel had been able to stick the landing.
The Roanoke Girls has a very similar setup to Paula Hawkins’ latest novel, Into the Water (which, full disclosure, I was also not a huge fan of): a young woman is called home after tragedy strikes a close female relative, and while she’s back in her hometown, the woman starts digging into her relative’s secrets while trying to come to terms with her own trauma. Family secrets are forced into the light, there are dramatic and violent confrontations, and men continue to be just the Absolute Worst.
In this case, our heroine is Lane, who as a teenager was sent to live with her cousin Allegra and their grandparents after her mother committed suicide. Lane’s grandparents live on a ramshackle mansion, known as Roanoke, in the middle of the Kansas prairie. The family is unique because, aside from her grandfather, Lane and Allegra have only female relatives in their immediate family tree: their grandfather’s sisters, his daughters, and their daughters. These women are known as the Roanoke Girls, and they have something else in common: with the exception of Lane and Allegra, all of them either died at Roanoke or fled the house as a teenager. Lane spends one summer living at Roanoke, and as an adult, has never gone back. Then Allegra disappears, and Lane returns to the house to find out what happened to her cousin.
I feel that it is not a spoiler to say that there are some very, very dark secrets lurking under the surface at Roanoke, and one of the (many) frustrating things about this novel is how the author chooses to reveal those secrets. Engel, perhaps realizing that an audience already familiar with Law & Order: SVU-style storytelling with be able to guess her big twist easily, decides to lay her cards on the table and spill the incest secret relatively early in the book, first by broadly hinting at it, and then by having adult Lane directly accuse her grandfather of sleeping with Allegra.
This is a confounding choice, mostly because it clears up the main mystery of the book when we’re just barely halfway through it. For the rest of the story, Engel's narration dances around the issue, using vague language and never having her characters come right out and say what’s going on. This was very confusing to me – why keep trying to hide the secret when the cat’s already out of the bag? – to the point where I wondered if maybe Engel was just leading me on a massive misdirect, and it would turn out that someone other than the grandfather was sleeping with the girls. But this doesn’t happen, and the best that Engel can do as a final twist is reveal that the grandmother, who previously admitted that she hated her granddaughters, killed Allegra and the other dead Roanoke girls. This revelation is not shocking, and it kind of sucked all the fun out of the final confrontation.
Also disappointing was Engel's decision to end the book – a book brimming with trauma, sexual abuse, incest, murder, and suicide – on a happy, candy-coated ending: Lane gets back together with her old boyfriend, who Engel goes out of her way to present as the perfect man (he has a violent streak, is dismissive of women in general, and has a lot of inherited trauma from his abusive father but whatever I’m sure it’ll all be fine), and they pack up and move away together, driving off into the sunset and what Engel apparently believes is a great future together. Eesh.
This was so frustrating to me, because on the one hand, Engel is using this book to explore the lifetime trauma created by abuse – how abusers spend years grooming their victims, to the point where the victim believes that not only was the abuse their fault, but they actually wanted the abuse – and how difficult it can be to move past such trauma. So in light of this, it’s incredibly disappointing that Engel chooses to end her book by just slapping a Band-Aid over everything, trying to get us to believe that Lane’s new relationship will fix everything. LOL no – the story has already established that Lane and Cooper hurt each other emotionally whenever one of them feels threatened, and Lane admits to us that she intentionally hurts people in order to scare them away. Lane is dealing with not only the fact that her family is built on three generations of incest, but also that her own grandmother murdered her cousin and at least one other relative. Lane doesn’t need a man, she needs therapy, and Engel's apparent belief that everything will be okay for Lane from now on is naïve at best; at worst, it’s a dangerously misguided idea of how trauma works.
But I’m probably taking all of this too seriously: this is, after all, a story built on the idea that a man had sex (and fathered children) with almost every female relative he ever lived with, like he’s goddamn Craster from Game of Thrones. This is intended to be a dramatic, scary, Southern Gothic-esque thriller, and in that respect, it succeeds.
In conclusion: reading this is basically like watching a Law & Order: SVU marathon when you’re home sick from school in the middle of the afternoon. It’s thrilling in a disturbing sort of way, you can feel smart when you guess the culprit twenty minutes in, and you know better than to think about it too critically.
(Okay, just one more nitpick: Allegra is only “missing” and not “immediately found dead” due to some truly incompetent police work. Like, Allegra was last seen at the house and there’s a swimming hole on the property, yet apparently no one suggested they drag the pond looking for a body. C’mon, guys. Also Susan totally should have been the murderer and not Gran, but this review is long enough already.)...more
**spoiler alert** Wow! What an ending!!! I love the ambiguity of it! How we just get the final scene at Mason Verger's, where Starling rescues Hanniba**spoiler alert** Wow! What an ending!!! I love the ambiguity of it! How we just get the final scene at Mason Verger's, where Starling rescues Hannibal and he escapes! And then the book ends right after that! With no more scenes! So we're left to imagine! How Starling works her way back into the good graces of her FBI superiors! And continues her cat-and-mouse pursuit of Hannibal Lecter! But Thomas Harris knows that it's better to leave this up to the readers' imaginations! So he has Starling save Hannibal from Mason Verger! And then that's the end! There were no more chapters!
When I started this, knowing that it was one of the big It Books of the year, I was pretty sure I knew what to expect. I had read the publisher-providWhen I started this, knowing that it was one of the big It Books of the year, I was pretty sure I knew what to expect. I had read the publisher-provided description, which goes like this:
"Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.
And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done more harm than good?"
Based on that, I was sure that I could make some pretty safe assumptions about what would happen in the story. A girl, bored on her daily commute, notices a particular couple every day when the train pauses behind their house, and she amuses herself by making up stories about their life. And then she sees, I don't know, the husband strangling the wife or something like that, and gets drawn into the investigation surrounding two strangers.
Sounds right, doesn't it? Just a normal story with lots of opportunities for reflection on perception vs. reality and how we never really know what goes on behind closed doors. The Girl on the Train sounded, in short, like a perfectly nice and very literary exploration of these themes.
I am delighted to report, therefore, that The Girl on the Train is nothing like this. It is melodramatic to the point of hysteria, it is convoluted, it is absurd, it is consistently cranked to eleven. The Girl on the Train is the best worst Lifetime Original Movie ever made.
(mild spoiler warning: I'm going to describe exactly what Rachel saw, and the circumstances that set off the action. Normally I wouldn't really view this as a spoiler, especially since it all gets revealed in the first few chapters, but since all the descriptions and reviews I've read have kept this information super vague, I thought it was better to be cautious. So, if you want to be completely surprised by the events that start the plot, don't continue!)
Rachel, the main character of The Girl on the Train, has joined Mary Katherine Blackwood in my unofficial Unreliable Narrators Hall of Fame. Rachel, we quickly learn, is not just some bored commuter picking a random couple and making up stories about them. The couple, who Rachel calls Jason and Jess (but are actually named Scott and Megan) live a few blocks away from Rachel's old house - the layout is the same, even. Rachel's former home is now occupied by her ex-husband, Tom, and his new wife (and former mistress), Anna. Rachel, frankly, is a mess. She takes the train into London everyday, but actually lost her job months ago because her drinking was out of control. She still drinks excessively, and is unable to stop visiting her old neighborhood and watching what goes on in her old house. For her, the fantasy she's created for "Jason" and "Jess" is a way for her to deal with her failed marriage - because Jason and Jess seem so happy, and their life seems so perfect, Rachel can console herself with the knowledge that someone, at least, managed to get it right.
And then one day, the train pauses by the house, and Rachel sees "Jess" in the garden, kissing another man. Rachel is shocked, and feels personally betrayed. The next day, she learns that the woman she calls Jess has disappeared. And, because this isn't dramatic enough, Rachel was in the neighborhood on the night of the disappearance, but because she was blackout drunk, she can't remember if she saw anything.
(are you excited yet? Strap in, because this crazy train is just leaving the station)
Rachel is one of three narrators - the other two are Megan (aka Jess) and Anna, the woman who had an affair with Rachel's husband and then married him. Each woman is unhappy in her current circumstances, and each is her own variety of unreliable and vaguely repellent. The time frame skips around, with the majority of Megan's chapters taking place months before the main action occurs while the other two women's chapters take place at mostly the same time. This was my one big complaint with the story, and it's really more of a warning: each chapter is labeled with a date, and you need to pay attention to them. I didn't, and was really confused when I read about Megan's disappearance in one chapter, and then the next one opened with her at home.
Look, this book is ridiculous. But it's fun ridiculous, like when you're wine-drunk at 1 am and decide to watch William and Kate in its entirety. Not that that's ever happened to me.
It's not a mistake that this book is being advertised as the next Gone Girl, and how you felt about Gillian Flynn's rollercoaster of screaming insanity will be a good way to gauge how you'll feel about this one. Look, even I started rolling my eyes once I got to the ending and everything went fully off the rails (seriously, it is the most Lifetime ending you've ever read in your life, and that is a compliment), but the fact is that I tore through this book in two days.
The rights have already been purchased by some major film studio, which is a real shame, because this book was meant to be brought to life by Tori Spelling and filmed in a shitty backlot at Lifetime Studios. It would be called Next Stop: Danger, (or, if they wanted to go subtle, The Wife) and it would be amazing....more
The year is AE3, 3 years after the Event. Within the walls of Meritropolis, 50,000 inhabitants live in fear, ruled by the brutal System that assigns eThe year is AE3, 3 years after the Event. Within the walls of Meritropolis, 50,000 inhabitants live in fear, ruled by the brutal System that assigns each citizen a merit score that dictates whether they live or die. Those with the highest scores thrive, while those with the lowest are subject to the most unforgiving punishment--to be thrust outside the city gates, thrown to the terrifying hybrid creatures that exist beyond.
But for one High Score, conforming to the System just isn't an option. Seventeen-year-old Charley has a brother to avenge. And nothing--not even a totalitarian military or dangerous science--is going to stop him.
Where humankind has pushed nature and morals to the extreme, Charley is amongst the chosen few tasked with exploring the boundaries, forcing him to look deep into his very being to discern right from wrong. But as he and his friends learn more about the frightening forces that threaten destruction both without and within the gates, Meritropolis reveals complexities they couldn't possibly have bargained for...
Francoise Sagan was seventeen when she wrote Bonjour Tristesse. SE Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was sixteen. At fourteen, Anne Frank's writing Francoise Sagan was seventeen when she wrote Bonjour Tristesse. SE Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was sixteen. At fourteen, Anne Frank's writing demonstrated an emotional sensitivity and clarity that most adult authors struggle to achieve. So, to dismiss a book simply because it was written by a teenager is unfair - it's been proven over and over that teenagers are capable of great writing.
On the other hand...Christopher Paolini wrote a poorly-conceived Star Wars ripoff that succeed mainly due to his parents' connections in the publishing world and the (admittedly strong) blockbuster marketabiltity of his series. We can't all be Francoise Sagan, and unfortunately, Schuyler J. Ebersol belongs in the Paolini camp.
I don't know, guys - maybe we should stop letting teenage white boys publish novels. It hasn't worked out too well so far.
I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I probably should have known what I was getting myself into right off the bat, because the book was pitched as a novel "for the Harry Potter generation" (which seems a bit premature, really, considering that the Harry Potter books ended like five years ago, so it's not like we're getting all nostalgic for it) and Ebersol explained his reasons for wanting to write The Hidden World thusly: "As a young adult male I wrote what I wanted to read." (Mr. Ebersol, please explain to me in 500 words or less how you, as a young white male, are underrepresented in literature while I sit in the corner and serenade you with my tiny violin)
Anyway, our Not-Harry-Potter hero is Nate Williams. When he was six years old, he was found wandering the woods after his family was mysteriously murdered, and he was adopted by a family that apparently owns half of the United States. So right off the bat, we're veering far away from the source material: where Harry spent his childhood being bullied by his classmates and treated like dirt by his adopted family, Nate Williams grows up with a billionaire father, a movie star mother, and generally the most perfect life you could possibly imagine. It's sort of like Ebersol read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and thought, "This is cool and everything, but what if Dudley Dursley got the Hogwarts letter instead?"
When Nate is seventeen, he has a massive heart attack and is in a coma for a week. When he comes out of the coma (with no apparent brain damage, yay!) he finds that he can transform into a wolf when he sees moonlight. As one does. In a scene ripped directly from the X-Men movies, Not-Dumbledore shows up at the Williams' house and tells Nate that he is, in fact, even MORE special than previously assumed and gets to go to Not-Hogwarts with all the other shifter kids and learn magic and generally be awesome, and I cannot even begin to explain how much this disappointed me, because by this point in the book I hated Nate Williams. He was a privileged little shit who was perfect at everything he did, worshipped by everyone he knew, given everything he wanted - and then someone shows up and grants him even more privilege. Think I'm exaggerating how much of a Gary Sue Nate is? Here, let Ebersol introduce his protagonist who, I will remind you, we are supposed to like:
"Nate Williams was shockingly extraordinary, in addition to having a financially privileged life and striking looks. He struggled with the problems and reveled in the joys that one would expect of someone his age. He had his faults, like anyone else, though it was difficult to see them under the mask of his popularity and confidence."
It was at this point that I started to wonder if Ebersol was trolling me, because no one in their right mind could think that an introduction like that would make readers sympathize with the protagonist. It's not possible, right guys? Right?
OH! And when Nate gets the invitation to go to Not-Hogwarts (it's called Noble College but that's a dumb name so I'm going to keep calling it Not-Hogwarts) Nate is initially hesitant, saying he doesn't want to leave his school and his friends. I was excited, because maybe Nate would finally have to experience some hardship by being thrown into an unfamiliar environment by himself. But nope! Turns out that Not-Hogwarts has this great rule where every student who gets accepted to this secret, ultra-exclusive magic school is allowed to bring two friends along, who will also be enrolled in the school and taught how to transform into animals!
What. The actual. Fuck. In what world does that make any sense? First - no, that is not how colleges work. You don't get to bring a buddy along to ease the transition. This is not summer camp. Second - hang on, so normals can be taught how to be shifters too? Then why are there so few shifters? There's some minor ass-covering later, when Not-Dumbledore explains that Nate's two friends (who, by the way, completely discard their future plans and their families in order to follow their once and future king Nate to Not-Hogwarts, because God forbid something not work out perfectly for Nate fucking Williams) always had the potential to be shifters, which is why they were allowed to come. But that's pretty fucking convenient that Nate is buddies with the two dudes who are also secretly future shifters. And what about everyone else who brings two friends along? And third, with each student bringing two friends along to Not-Hogwarts, wouldn't the Artificials outnumber the Naturals? What would that mean for the student body of Not-Hogwarts? But I'm not supposed to be thinking about that, because Ebersol certainly didn't.
So Nate and his loyal sidekicks skip off to Not-Hogwarts, which was apparently designed by Willy Wonka after an acid trip - the walls and floors of the dorms are made out of a different material every day, and the hallway to the Astronomy classroom is a mini solar system that the students have to walk through every day. They start learning magic, and by magic, I mean they start learning how to do literally everything. In Ebersol's world, these people (who I had foolishly assumed could only transform into animals) can control the weather, communicate with animals, cure any illness, transform materials, and control other people's minds (the horrifying consequences of giving teenagers the ability to control others' actions and thoughts is never addressed by Ebersol, and it's treated as a cute joke that students can take over other students' minds and make them fall down). There's never a really concrete explanation of how they're able to do these things, and I don't mean how they can do magic in the first place - I mean the actual mechanics of how the students do all of this awesome stuff is never explained or shown. They don't use wands, they don't learn any incantations, there doesn't seem to be any special hand gestures involved - stuff just happens.
The plot resembles Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, because of course the guy who killed Nate's parents escapes from prison and starts murdering people, but he's never much of a threat, because none of his murder victims are established characters, and also the guy (Gray) is forgotten for the majority of the book so we can watch Nate being perfect some more. Gray, unfortunately, is one of those villains who is only villainous because the characters keep assuring us he's super evil, so we never actually have to see him doing evil stuff. Nate's final confrontation with the villain, where we finally learn the Deep Dark Secrets of Nate's past (which are neither deep nor dark, nor very secret because they can be easily guessed by anyone who's read a book before) carries so little weight that it's not even worth discussing. There were so many missed opportunities, though. Ebersol establishes early on that Gray has lots of people working for him, who help him carry out murders across the country. Following the laws of novel writing, this means that one or more of the characters will be revealed as Gray's associates. (view spoiler)[Or not. I was really hoping that Nate's foster father would end up being one of Gray's followers and that he had only adopted Nate in order to keep an eye on him for Gray, because it would mean that the silver spoon shoved up Nate's ass was just a little bit tarnished. But no. The foster father was entirely on the level, and Nate's perfect life (like his Christmas gift - a choice of a new Audi, Aston Martin, Maserati, or Porsche. This was the point where I said out loud to the pages, "Fuck this kid.") was really as perfect as we'd been led to believe. (hide spoiler)]
The pacing is terrible - there are numerous pointless diversions, including several trips to Not-Hogsmeade and a lot of Not-Quidditch games (it's called Jeka, is a combination of soccer, football, and rugby, and weirdly involves no magic whatsoever) that take up entire chapters and can be skipped entirely, because nothing important ever happens in them. The characters are one-dimensional at best, and there are too many useless subplots that go nowhere. There's an extended subplot involving Nate and his friends' romantic lives, and it mostly serves to prove that Schuyler Ebersol believes that female characters should exist only in relation to the male characters - every single girl in this book functions only as the mother, sister, or girlfriend of a male character, and it's fucking irritating. The girlfriends are particularly frustrating, because they are virtually interchangeable (seriously - Nate and his friends acquire and swap girlfriends with the ease and emotional detachment of someone picking out a pair of shoes). Also all the female characters are treated with a sort of good-natured condescension and "Women be shopping!"-style humor, as in this sentence: "Emma and Sophia left to dress, taking their time as all girls do." and this one: "He listened to Baako and John arguing about the last hand and to the three girls talking about which actor was the hottest." It's Misogyny Lite, and it's infuriating.
The writing is bad. It's not average. It's bad. The dialogue reads like lines from a bad video game ("Everyone here knows of the Williams, and I have been to other parts of the world where your name is known as well.") and the descriptions are weirdly formal and blowhard-y, like they should be spoken by the narrator of an overly-serious documentary ("The landscape had been shaped by time: the greatest sculptor of all.") With time and practice, Ebersol will get better at writing, and eventually be average. But Jesus, this shit is painful.
But what disappoints me most is the missed opportunity this book presents. Simply put, Nate is the villain of the story, and Ebersol is too enamored of his protagonist to see it. Nate, it is established throughout the story, is an arrogant, spoiled little shit. A character even calls him out on his arrogance, but instead of using this as an opportunity for reflection, Ebersol just has another character reassure his protagonist in this cringe-inducing exchange:
"'You don't think I'm arrogant and self-centered, do you?' 'No, of course not. Jasmine didn't mean it.' 'But I kind of think I am.' 'Well, then that's who you are, and no one would like you any different than who you are.'"
It's all like that. Characters are just lining up to suck Nate's dick. Here's another conversation, this time between Nate and Not-Dumbledore:
"'Don't let things that have already happened bother you, because there's nothing you can do about them.' 'Damn good reasoning. We don't have teachers as smart as you.'
*bangs head on desk repeatedly, laughter turns to tears*
I'm now going to discuss the ending, and its wasted potential, so don't click if you are planning to read this and want everything to be a surprise for some reason. (view spoiler)[So at the end, Gray reveals that the reason he tried to kill Nate when he was little was because Nate is "The Natural" - the most special of all the special snowflakes. Basically Nate, this spoiled seventeen-year-old who has grown up surrounded by far too much positive reinforcement, has just been informed that he is the most powerful person on earth. What happens when you take a teenage boy who has grown up being treated like God and tell him that he IS God? He's going to destroy the fucking planet, that's what. Nate Williams isn't Harry Potter - Harry went through hardship, and learned to be humble, and resisted every attempt to be turned into a hero. Nate Willaims is Lex Luthor, and the only reason I would read the second book in this series is if it started with Nate going on a killing spree, and his former friends banding together to put a stop to his madness. (hide spoiler)]
This is not a book for the Harry Potter generation. This is a fairy tale for the 1%, a story of a dude born into unimaginable privilege who then acquires even more privilege by virtue of his genetics, where the supporting characters constantly validate the protagonist's belief that he is the greatest person to ever walk the earth. Fuck this book, and fuck every entitled rich white boy who got the world handed to him on a silver platter and then demanded more. I'm going to go re-read Bonjour Tristesse and pretend the world isn't horrible now, but I'll give the last word of this review to a friend of mine, who summed up my feelings on The Hidden World quite succinctly: "No more books by spoiled rich white boys at least until they get some fucking life experience."
Andi Brown sent me a free paperback copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, and I will do my best to uphold my part of the deal. Brace youAndi Brown sent me a free paperback copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, and I will do my best to uphold my part of the deal. Brace yourselves.
Animal Cracker takes place primarily at the fictional Animal Protection Organization in Boston. Our heroine is Diane, a twenty-four-year-old just starting a job as the communications director of the APO. Her boss, Hal, is a cartoonish nightmare vision of a horrible boss – he’s patronizing, vaguely misogynistic, lazy, and stupid. The book follows Diane and her coworkers as they try to take down their terrible boss. Hijinks and attempts at humor follow, accompanied by unlicensed shelters and dying homeless animals. It’s a weird blend, to say the least.
Okay look, the whole thing isn’t terrible. At least, the idea behind it isn’t – a group of women working together to upset the patriarchy and save cute animals! That’s like, four things that I love all rolled together. Where Animal Cracker fails, spectacularly, is in the execution of just about every aspect.
Simply put, this needed an editor. A real editor, not just friends of the author who agreed to proofread the novel a few times before it was self-published. A real editor – or hell, someone who knows how to use Google – would have at least been able to catch the numerous and glaring errors littering the text. To name a few: it’s Stephen King, not Steven King; you drink margaritas, not margheritas; and no twenty-four-year-old alive today would ever dial Information when trying to locate a specific bar. (I’M twenty-four, and until I read this book I wasn’t aware that “telephone operator” was a job that still existed in the 21st century) But the biggest suspension-of-disbelief-ruiner happens towards the end of the book, when Diane is trailing Hal to figure out what he’s up to. To make sure she isn’t recognized, Diane disguises herself as a man and follows her boss. To the airport. And onto a plane.
Pop quiz, readers: what can you absolutely not do in post-9/11 America, ever? Get through airport security carrying the identification of a person who looks nothing like you, that’s what. I can’t even really remember what happened in the pages immediately after that part, because I was too busy trying to figure out how Diane, dressed as man, managed to pass security by showing a woman’s driver’s license. It threw me out of the story so hard I think I still have whiplash. (At the end of this book, Andi Brown thanks the numerous people who helped her prepare this manuscript, and my question is, how did none of them catch this?)
This story is fixable, I want to emphasize that. It needs to go through at least two more drafts, but it can be done. But it’s going to take more than a red editor’s pen, Ms. Brown – someone needs to take a hatchet to this book and cut out all the excess. And there’s a lot of excess to get rid of. Entire scenes can be removed (almost an entire page is wasted describing the time Diane goes to the movies by herself), and the character list could be sliced almost in half. There are two female reporters in this book that could easily be combined into one person, and the APO office staff needs to be downsized to three characters so the author can spend more time making them actual characters and not interchangeable cardboard cutouts. Diane, Katelyn, and Mary Day – that’s all we need (oh, and if Mary Day is really going to be portrayed as a clichéd Southern belle, make sure she doesn’t misuse the word “y’all” or say "fuck" twice in a workplace setting, because trust me, those are two things a Southern belle never, ever does) All romance aspects should be sent to the Graveyard of Unnecessary Subplots – Diane does not need to be dating her boss’s son, and she definitely doesn’t need to be consumed by grief over her last failed relationship, as both subplots add nothing to the story and only pissed me off. Also, it was super weird to me that what eventually brought Hal down was (view spoiler)[the fact that he went hunting, not that he was embezzling millions of dollars from the APO (hide spoiler)].
But these minor issues pale in comparison to the greatest problem, and the reason I cannot in good conscience give this book more than one star: Diane is a complete asshole.
First there are the little nuggets of casual racism she drops throughout the book – at one point, her date is describing the Japanese-to-English instructions on a hairdryer, and Diane goes, “I’m picturing a Japanese guy in a cubicle…he’s got his sake in one hand and a dictionary in another.” Ha ha, it’s funny because Japanese people drink sake and aren’t born speaking English! You’re so funny, Diane! Then there’s the way she confides to the reader that she considers herself to be just like Bridget Jones, “minus the poundage and the alcoholism.” But the worst, the absolute worst, is the way she treats her office “friend” Katelyn. Katelyn is poor, you see, and has a son with behavioral problems, and also has an abusive ex, because this is a fucking Lifetime movie. Diane cannot spend longer than five minutes with Katelyn before she starts mentally thanking God that she doesn’t have Katelyn’s life, and condescension seeps from every pore whenever she interacts with her token Down on Her Luck Friend. I kept waiting for Katelyn to smack the snobby bitch upside the head, but sadly this never happens. The best way I can sum up Diane’s hideous personality is by quoting the following passage: “We went upstairs and I plopped into one of her shabby armchairs. Katelyn went into her kitchen and emerged, not with tea, but a bottle of wine that looked cheap, which she poured into a couple of chipped coffee mugs.”
Right, because if anyone is going to have high standards for wine, it’s a twenty-four-year-old struggling to pay her student loan bills. Again – Diane and I are the same age, and I (like everyone in my age group) have never paid more than eleven dollars for a bottle of wine in my life. Even if I went over to a friend’s house and she offered me a glass of Two Buck Chuck I wouldn’t think a goddamn thing about it, because I’m twenty-four and also I’m not a bitch.
This book could have been a fluffy, fun, hijinks-filled romp about a group of women taking down their horrible boss and saving some cute animals at the same time. Instead, it reads like the first draft of a failed multi-cam sitcom. A few more rounds of revision could have saved Animal Cracker, but instead we’re left with this hot mess instead: a weird hybrid of Nine to Five and The Devil Wears Prada (not the hybrid of The Office and Bridget Jones’ Diary, as the jacket description insists) that completely misses what made those stories enjoyable in the first place. ...more
This is not a good book, but it's fascinating in its terribleness. As a straight novel, it's not awful, but as a mystery it fails on every level, to tThis is not a good book, but it's fascinating in its terribleness. As a straight novel, it's not awful, but as a mystery it fails on every level, to the point where it becomes almost a manual on how mysteries should not be written. I read in another review that Heyer wrote this book as a "contract breaker" with her publisher, and it certainly makes sense - when you start reading the book as it was written (as a giant literary middle finger to Heyer's publishers) it becomes almost fun to see how she goes to great lengths to write this boring, drawn-out, not-mysterious mystery.
It's your basic murder-mystery setup: elderly patriarch (Penhallow) rules his family with an iron fist and is hated by all, and every member of his family has secrets and reasons for wanting him dead. When he dies (of course), suspicion lands on every character.
In another writer's hands (or rather, a writer who gave two shits whether people liked the book) this story would have gone differently. The patriarch would have been found dead near the beginning of the story, and as his death was investigated, the family member's various secrets would continue to come to light in one twist after another, with the police officer finally discovering the one crucial clue that pointed to the murderer. But because Heyer, like the majestic honey badger, simply does not give a fuck, the story goes backwards. Penhallow doesn't die until page 292, and Heyer spends the pre-murder pages telling us exactly what each character's Deep Dark Secret or Murderous Motive is. It still has the chance to be a fascinating character study, since the murder of Penhallow forces the various family members to confront each other and try to divert suspicion from themselves while they try to figure out who killed Penhallow...except the reader knows who did it. Heyer shows us the scene where the murderer poisons Penhallow, and then goes on with her story. Why? Because fuck you, that's why.
The whole story was like watching a glorious, perfectly choreographed trainwreck, but no trainwreck is interesting after 457 pages. But then again, Heyer had a point to make.
Two stars for the story itself, five stars for sheer balls-out, unrepentant spitting on mystery conventions, and altogether much more entertaining than Heyer ever intended it to be....more
Imagine if someone set out to write a ghost story that was a combination of The Shining and The Haunting of Hill House, with some forgotten-in-ten-yeaImagine if someone set out to write a ghost story that was a combination of The Shining and The Haunting of Hill House, with some forgotten-in-ten-years current events tied in...and then the movies The Wicker Man and The Craft came along and vomited over everything. The result is Chris Bohjalian's The Night Strangers.
I can't even do a The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly-style review, because it's all bad. Instead, I will now present the follow list of reasons this book failed me, in ascending order from minor to major offenses.
-False advertising. All the publisher-provided descriptions of this book make a big deal about how this family moves into a ramshackle Victorian house (+5 horror movie points) that has a creepy basement (+10 horror movie points) with a mysterious door that has been bolted shut 39 times (+25 horror movie points), and the house is in an isolated small town with creepy locals (+10 horror movie points), no cell phone reception and frequent power outages (+20 horror movie points). Also the father is a former airline pilot who recently crashed his plane into a lake, killing 39 of the passengers (+30 horror movie points). So with all that in mind, I was expecting a good, cheap haunted house story with some melodramatic family issues thrown in, a la American Horror Story. That's what the book jacket promised me. But instead, I got a load of bullshit about the pilot's PTSD and the creepy locals. The goddamn house wasn't even haunted at all, but I guess it's not Bohjalian's fault that the publishers didn't understand his book, which is why this is a minor offense.
-The people who buy the house have ten-year-old twin girls named Hallie and Garnet. What, you wonder, could possess two otherwise-normal people to name a child Garnet? Let the narration explain: "Garnet because her newborn hair had been the deep red it was even now". For Christ's sake. First, garnets are dark, dark red, which is not a hair color that occurs in nature. Second, I get that you want to give your kid a name that references her hair color (which has a good chance of changing before she grows up) so people can make tired jokes about it for the rest of her life, but why Garnet? Was RUBY too mainstream? The point of all of this is that although I was supposed to be rooting for the parents, I immediately hated them because of the stupid name they gave their child.
-Bohjalian has no idea how children talk or think. Remember Danny Torrance in The Shining? He was obviously an intelligent and sensitive seven-year-old, but that doesn't mean he talked or thought like an adult. Hallie and Garnet (ugh), on the other hand, talk like forty-year-olds all the time. At one point Hallie says, "Do you hear them? ...You must!" WHAT. And the narration never bothers to explain why these girls talk like no ten-year-olds I've ever heard of. It was an easy fix: "Wow, those girls sure do love reading Dickens novels! No wonder they talk like that!" But no - we are expected to believe that these average children talk and think exactly like the adults. And by "think", I of course mean, "don't think at all", because...
-Logic doesn't even make an appearance in this story. The pilot has PTSD, which means he's haunted by three ghosts of the people he killed - two of which are a man and his little girl. The ghost dad wants the pilot to murder his two daughters so his kid can have ghost kids to play with (obviously), and the pilot goes from "I'd never hurt my daughters!" to "Welp, guess it's time to murder my kids!" in the space of a chapter and it made no sense. Similarly, there's a coven of herbalists/Shamans (no, seriously) in the town, and they want to sacrifice the twins for witchcraft (obviously). And no, that does not count as a spoiler because basically the second we meet any of the herbalists they're like, "We looooove your twiiiiins, they're so...special" and their mom is like, "My, our neighbors are friendly! I love how they keep bringing my ten-year-old daughters over to their houses to learn about plants without my supervision, and the way they gave my daughters and me new names! This can't possibly have sinister implications!" and it's like WAKE UP, WOMAN. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.
Similarly, at the end of the book (view spoiler)[after the mom and her daughters have survived the plant cult's attempts to sacrifice one of the girls so they can all be immortal (again, not joking), we flash forward ten years and the FAMILY IS STILL HANGING AROUND WITH THE CREEPY HERBALISTS, inviting them over for dinner even though they BOTH SAW THESE PEOPLE KILL ONE OF THEIR KIDS. Bohjalian's explanation for this is literally, "they forgot about it because of MAGIC!" and it. Is. Retarded. (hide spoiler)]
-Did I mention that the pilot has PTSD? Because Bohjalian would want me to mention that, judging by how goddamn insistent he is that we never, ever forget that the pilot crashed into a lake and killed a bunch of people. Until about 2/3 into the book, every single section told from the pilot's perspective is just a rehash of the same exact idea: "the plane crashed, people died, and I am sad about it." Nothing new is learned, aside from the fact that the ghosts want him to kill his daughters. It's just repeated over and over and over and over again, like Bohjalian is afraid we're going to forget about the crash. And this might be bearable, except for some reason all of the pilot's sections are narrated in second-person present, while the rest of the book is narrated in third-person past tense, and I cannot stress how annoying this was. It got to the point where I would cringe and consider skipping ahead every time one of the pilot's chapters began. "You pause in your work in the kitchen, replacing the paint roller in the tray and sitting back on your heels as you wonder: Where was He when Flight 1611 crashed?" *facedesk*
-The story is frequently ridiculous when it means to be scary. It has lines like "The child is losing blood fast and it's being wasted. Wasted! You're a New Englander, how can you abide that?" that I cannot imagine getting any reaction other than laughter. Towards the end, when everything is going off the rails and the cult is revealing their true crazy, the story becomes much more reminiscent of Hot Fuzz than The Shining. (honestly, towards the end, the herbalists might as well have started chanting "It's for the greater good!" "The greater good" and I would not have blinked an eye.
-The two main storylines have nothing in common with each other. So there's the pilot's PTSD-related ghosts, and the creepy herbalists. For almost the entire book, the two plots are kept completely separate, and at the end when they finally do intersect, it's in the most insignificant way possible. I think Bohjalian should have picked one story - either the PTSD or the plant cult - and committed to it wholeheartedly. Instead he tries to do both, and what results is a crazy mess of a book that fails at every opportunity: it fails at creating sympathetic characters, realistic and well-done prose, carefully crafted plot, and a scary atmosphere.
On the plus side, with all this evidence in mind, Bohjalian would make an excellent addition to the writers' team over at American Horror Story. He'd better hurry up and jump on that crazy train before it derails halfway through the second season.
(yes I am a little addicted to American Horror Story, why do you ask?)...more
Fantastic bathroom reading. Here, have some random facts:
Every time Beethoven sat down to compose music, he poured ice water over his head.
EosophobiFantastic bathroom reading. Here, have some random facts:
Every time Beethoven sat down to compose music, he poured ice water over his head.
Eosophobia is the fear of dawn.
Coca-Cola was originally green.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
The average woman consumes six pounds of lipstick in her lifetime.
Charles de Gaulle's final words were "It hurts."
The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses.
If a statue of a person on a horse depicts the horse with both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
The Taj Mahal was scheduled to be torn down in the 1830s.
Sister Boom-Boom was a transvestite nun who ran for mayor of San Francisco in 1982. He/she received more than twenty thousand votes.
The youngest pope was eleven years old.
The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast it breaks the sound barrier; the crack of the whip is actually a tiny sonic boom.
A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
A donkey will sink in quicksand, but a mule won't. ...more
I don't even remember what this one is about. There's a CIA computer technician, and all I can remember about her is the scene where a security guard I don't even remember what this one is about. There's a CIA computer technician, and all I can remember about her is the scene where a security guard is ogling her sweet, sweet ass and wondering in bafflement how a woman with a 192 IQ could be so damn fuckable. Also, I'm pretty sure she saves the world with computers, but we're not supposed to care because she does it while her shirt is partially unbuttoned. She may have gotten wet at some point, too.
This was read at the tail-end of my brief Dan Brown phase (let he who has never enjoyed an airport-bookstore novel cast the first stone), and by this This was read at the tail-end of my brief Dan Brown phase (let he who has never enjoyed an airport-bookstore novel cast the first stone), and by this point I was getting a little tired of Brown's storytelling formula. And by "formula", I really mean "formula". Here it is:
How To Make A Guaranteed Bestseller in Fifteen Minutes or Less -1 intelligent, bookishly handsome man who in no way is supposed to be Dan Brown of course not why do you ask -1 really intelligent, preferably foreign woman who has an IQ of like a billion but the important thing is she is hot and has very low standards as far as men go (see protagonist) -5 exotic locations, more if you prefer -25 full pages of technical/historical/whatever background information that serves only to show the audience how goddamn smart the author is -3 conspiracy theories found after 5-minute Google search -8 death-defying situations and improbable escapes -1 villain of cartoon-level evilness -3 OMG SO SCANDOLOUS revelations that will ROCK THE FUCKING WORLD
Blend until well combined (or not so well combined, whatever) bake at 350 degrees until it can be adapted for the screen in five minutes or less, serve hot to adoring public on plates made of $100 bills. ...more
I should have read this before The Da Vinci Code, not because the two novels need to be read in any particular order (the plots are literally interchaI should have read this before The Da Vinci Code, not because the two novels need to be read in any particular order (the plots are literally interchangeable; see order in which the movie versions were released for evidence), but because Angels and Demons is usually regarded as the better story. Unfortunately, by the time I read it I was already familiar with Dan Brown's "HISTORY! CONSPIRACIES! SMART CHICKS! MORE HISTORY! ORGANIZED RELIGION! DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNNNN!" style of plot organization, and the thrill was a little cheapened. ...more
Bestowing four stars upon this book gives me a distinctly airheaded and silly feeling, because I know that this book ranks only a few spots above chicBestowing four stars upon this book gives me a distinctly airheaded and silly feeling, because I know that this book ranks only a few spots above chick lit on the "Annoyingly Superior Quality Scale of Real Literature". Anyone seeing my rating of Dan Brown's work will immediately leap to the conclusion that the rest of the books I've read are just as poorly written/reviewed/researched/organized, and that within my "read" shelf they can find glowing summaries of the latest chick lit and Twilight reviews that consist entirely of the word "omg" repeated three hundred times.
In short, I am perfectly aware of how this rating makes me look. And I am aware of the many, many problems with the book that is allowing Dan Brown to spend the rest of his life rolling around naked in a pile of dollar bills. The "research" is poorly done, almost all of the earthshattering claims made in the story are exaggerated bullshit, the characters are mostly undeveloped and unrealstic, Robert Langdon is clearly Dan Brown in a flimsy fan-fic worthy disguise, and even the minor details in the story are...well, totally made up. Despite what Professor Langdon says, I don't think Disney's The Little Mermaid is a thinly veiled Mary Magdalene allegory, you cannot simply lift a painting off a wall in the Louvre and use it as a shield, there are only twelve disciples in The Last Supper, and the Louvre does not have bars of soap in the bathrooms that one can push a tracer into and then toss out the window.
Dan Brown is a silly, silly man who would like nothing more than to be the Indiana Jones of the literary world (bitch, please) and his books deserve all the derision and terrible movie adaptations they've received so far.
But the fact remains that I fucking devoured this book in twenty-four hours, and the experience was sort of awesome.
It is for this reason that I gave this book four stars, which according to Goodreads translates to "really liked it". Because I did. At least for a little while....more
I tried to resist. When everyone starting losing their shit over this book and pre-ordering it, I told myself that this was a literary bandwagon I wouI tried to resist. When everyone starting losing their shit over this book and pre-ordering it, I told myself that this was a literary bandwagon I wouldn't jump on. I read the reviews posted here, and saw that for the most part the consensus was that this book was grossly overrated. All the parts that Grahame-Smith wrote (and there aren't many) weren't very well done, the zombie device got old quickly, and the whole thing could have been much better. It was with all this evidence in mind that I went into a bookstore a week ago and bought a copy.
All of the previously mentioned criticisms are true. But you know what I decided? Criticism be damned, go ahead and revoke my Intelligent Reader membership card, I don't care. Because this book fucking rocked, and was the most fun I've had reading a book in a long time.
It's the exact same plot as the original story, except it takes place in an alternate universe where England has been overrun with zombies for "five and fifty years". Why did this happen? It doesn't matter. All you need to know is that zombies are cool, and the Bennett sisters (thanks to their Shaolin training) are the best zombie slayers in Hertfordshire. Enter Mr. Darcy, who "drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien - and the report which was in general circulation withing five minutes after his entrance, of his having slaughtered more than a thousand unmentionables since the fall of Cambridge."
I don't really know what else to say about this that hasn't been said already in the 1,000+ reviews already posted on this site. If you enjoy zombie movies, either genuinely or ironically, you will like this book. If you're a Jane Austen fan, you'll either think this book is brilliant or are already setting fire to Seth Grahame-Smith's lawn.
We now present our closing arguments in support of the awesomeness of this book: -The story appears exactly as it does in the original, but with infinitely more general badassery. The scene where Darcy first confesses his love for Elizabeth becomes much more interesting when the entire converstation occurs while Elizabeth is beating the shit out of Darcy. -"'It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some sort of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.' He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say would be said. 'Very well. That reply will do for the present. Perhaps by and by I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones.' 'On the contrary, I find that balls are much more enjoyable when they cease to remain private.'" -Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a famous zombie killer, and has a personal army of ninjas. NINJAS. -"The entertainment of dining at Rosings was repeated about twice a week; and, allowing for the loss of Sir William, and there being only one card-table in the evening, every such entertainment was the couterpart of the first. On one such occasion, Elizabeth was solicited to spar with several of her ladyship's ninjas for the amusement of the party. The demonstration took place in Lady Catherine's grand dojo, which she had paid to have carried from Kyoto, brick by brick, on the backs of peasants. The ninjas wore their traditional black clothing, masks, and Tabbi boots; Elizabeth wore her sparring gown, and her trusted Katana sword. As Lady Catherine rose to signal the beginning of the match, Elizabeth, in a show of defiance, blindfolded herself."
It's interesting - the more time I spend at college, the more I become convinced that the best career move I could ever make would be to marry a RussiIt's interesting - the more time I spend at college, the more I become convinced that the best career move I could ever make would be to marry a Russian billionaire and live out the rest of my days as a well-educated trophy wife. One of my friends, knowing this about me, gave me this book for my birthday with the advice to study it religiously. Amusing and eye-opening, this little book induces eye-rolls and disgusted head-shaking more often than genuine laughs (the section on childrearing was particulary effective in bringing out the latent bourgeouis-hating Marxist in me - did you know you can buy a silver pacifier accented with 278 diamonds for only $17,000? Your toddler will be thrilled!). Reading this was a fun way to waste an afternoon, but I'm glad I got it as a gift instead of buying it myself.
Some of my favorite bits from the book:
-The advice on choosing and then dealing with an interior decorator. "Realize that he hates your horrifically pedestrian taste. The sooner you internalize this and bow to his will, the sooner he will allow you to speak." -The flowchart explaining "who reports to whom" in your squadron of hired help. (essentially everyone reports to the majordomo except the personal assistant) -Anecdotes about historical filthy-rich figures, like this description of a banquet the Roman emperor Nero supposedly held: "highlights included slaves showering guests with snow water and then having sex with the host. The menu: a roast boar which - when carved - released live birds; sweetmeats molded to resemble piglets; 12 dishes representing every sign in the zodiac; fish spouting pepper sauce; and rabbits fitted with wings." -The "How to Buy an Island" chapter. -"It's no accident that the kid picked last in dodge ball...is often the one who scales the Forbes 400. It's for this reason that plutocrats so often enjoy golf, a genteel game that doesn't involve breaking a sweat and involves a suitable amount of expensive equipment." -"When he kicked it in 1950, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw bequeathed a portion of his wealth to whomever could invent a new English alphabet. He specified that it had to have at least 40 letters and be easier to use than the current one." ...more
Yes, it's fluffy, undeveloped chick lit with no real literary value or interest. Yes, the protagonist doesn't really have a personality, and none of tYes, it's fluffy, undeveloped chick lit with no real literary value or interest. Yes, the protagonist doesn't really have a personality, and none of the characters manage to progress beyond 2-dimensional stereotypes. But it takes place mostly in India, and I have a weakness for Bollywood movies, so it amused me. Endless stories of horrible dates and weddings where our Dateless Wonder Protagonist stands on the sidelines become a lot more interesting when the dates are arranged and chaperoned by the parents, and the weddings are lavish, multi-million dollar affairs where the bride is covered in jewelry and diamond bindis, and wears lavender glitter in her hair to compliment her sari. ...more
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