"I can do better than hope: I have faith, because nature is the very best example of integration. Things grow differently when they're damaged, showin"I can do better than hope: I have faith, because nature is the very best example of integration. Things grow differently when they're damaged, showing us how to occupy strange new ground to bloom red instead of green. We can be found, brighter than before."...more
"How did something timeless fall in love with something subject to time?""How did something timeless fall in love with something subject to time?"...more
"All this time when I felt alone, she whispered to the earth, you were with me.""All this time when I felt alone, she whispered to the earth, you were with me."...more
"Despite our mundane lives, perhaps we make our own magic with words."
What a beautiful story. It's, dare I say, a readers dream story. We all want to "Despite our mundane lives, perhaps we make our own magic with words."
What a beautiful story. It's, dare I say, a readers dream story. We all want to read our favorite book for the first time again, don't we? Well, you get to in this, and I can tell you with certainty that it is sweeter than you can imagine. Divine Rivals follows a love story between words, letters sent between two souls looking for a mirror. Ruthless Vows follows that same story. The same love told between two people meant to fall in love in any universe, in any lifetime, through any hardship or pain. Roman and Iris are the blueprint, "constellations that burned side by side."
This story isn't just about falling in love with your soulmate for the second time. It's also about pain, and how sometimes it is healing to feel it. To know it. To overcome it. It's about paying attention to the small things so you can understand the big things. It's knowing someone so entirely, loving someone so thoroughly that nothing can break you apart. It's friendship, the building of it and the constancy of it when it's good.
It's about how "sometimes, I don't think we know what we're made of until the worst moment possible happens. Then we must decide who we truly are, and what is most important to us. I think we're often surprised by what we become." Because whether that be good or bad, change is inevitable, and accepting it in ourselves is what allows it to move fluidly through earth. The way Rebecca Ross writes constancy into nature, a reminder that time never ends no matter what we are going through, we will always wake up and try again the next day. It was beautiful, and encouraging, and kind.
It's about wondering "how many things hid magic. Or perhaps it was better to think of it as how much magic liked being married to the ordinary, to simplicity and comfort and overlooked details." Because how many times do you feel like you are too much when you love something? How often do you feel as though when you do love something, you can never love it as much as the person beside you? There is no one correct way to love anything in the world, and what might be ordinary to you is a dream to another. It's about all the things that make up who we are.
It's heart breaking. It's heart stopping. It feels like a dream made out of words.
It's exactly as Ross writes from Iris' perspective, "Write me a story where there is no ending. Write to me and fill my empty spaces."
This book, this duology filled my empty spaces. It's grief, and friendship, and romance built into a beautiful love story on the many different levels love exists. It's for writers, and musicians, and artists, and dreamers. It's for anyone that wants to fall in love for the first time... again. It's a seemingly mundane girl falling in love with a boy because a typewriter decided to introduce a little magic into their lives.
"You're worrying in the wrong direction. Worry the other way."
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I have found it extremely difficult to review this book because of the absolutely p"You're worrying in the wrong direction. Worry the other way."
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I have found it extremely difficult to review this book because of the absolutely profound impact the first half of it had on my heart. To be understood so thoroughly is a gift, and as Jacob says "a lifeline in a hostile place." So that is what I am going to focus on for this review. The respect, the laughter, and the joy the first half of it made me feel.
That being said, I will never read the second half of this again. I can't just pass by how sick to my stomach I got while reading it. The fact that Briana went from being the only person to meet Jacob halfway, giving his voice space, helping him realize that his anxiety isn't all the is... to never allowing him to explain, misreading every clear indication of love, and mistrusting every word that came out of his mouth I will never understand. How someone can be a lifeline and then suddenly be the monster in the story: it's heart breaking.
And I was so disappointed because of how she made both Jacob and I feel in the first half.
When anxiety is coursing through your body, nothing makes sense. No matter how many rational thoughts your throw against it, until it passes, there is no making sense of the truth. There is only you and your rebelling nervous system. The way Abby wrote that to life was exhilarating. There were times that Jacob's feelings so reflected my own that I had to put the book down, take a deep breath, and remind myself his feelings are not my own.
He started over after his worst nightmare came true, and he never once gave up on trying each day. Sometimes, that's the hardest part. Especially when your first day goes wrong and everyone starts calling you Dr. Death. Especially when you think everyone is talking about you, hating you, and they are.
To learn with him, to feel with him, and to grow with him was a gift.
His story doesn't end, because anxiety doesn't end. It gets handled every day, and I love when authors recognize that. I love that Jacob's journal was clearly a part of his daily schedule and was never skipped over. I love that his coping skills were brought up every time he got lost, and never pushed to the side. I love that I have so many new coping skills to bring into my own every day life.
What I loved most of all was the idea of "she made me feel alone—the way I felt when I was by myself." I feel like I know Jacob the way I know my own soul. And I've only ever heard this metaphor one other time, and it hit just as deep then.
If you think of the world as a battery, anxiety is an old one. A battery that should have been changed out years ago, but has never been changed because it still works. You don't realize how much a new one is needed until you see how well that new one works. Maybe you don't have the money for a new one, or maybe you just don't like change, but whatever the reason, the old battery remains.
To not feel drained, to see someone else and know that they will always meet you half way, and promise to be harmless to you... to be able to trust that... it's everything. To feel alone, to know your battery that never starts at 100 will never be drained with someone, to feel like you don't have to be anything other than yourself is a gift. To be understood and never be made fun of for the quirks that make your day easier is a gift.
Though Briana is the epitome of why I hate misunderstandings, I will always be so grateful for her in the first 200 pages. Anxiety needs reality in order to thrive, and for a while, Briana is a life jacket. She quiets it all down and makes Jacob feel at home. He makes space for her to do that.
I wish she didn't break my heart and remind me that sometimes, fiction isn't any better than reality. Sometimes a five-star person (book), is a one star reality-check (Briana) in disguise.
This might be one of the most powerful books I ever read. I loved every second of it. I've never been a very big"Being broken is part of being whole."
This might be one of the most powerful books I ever read. I loved every second of it. I've never been a very big fan of reading about things that give me anxiety, but from the very start of this book... it wasn't mean to provoke fear. I believe that it was meant to comfort it.
I've been aware of my anxiety and its triggers for many years now, and with time, you realize when you can and cannot handle something. I think I've put this book off for so long because I was always moving, and I needed to be patient with myself for this read. I needed to be silent, and I needed to be aware.
That was the greatest gift I could've given myself for this read.
Anxiety is all about knowing the worst that can happen, and trying to avoid all the small things to make that worst thing less likely. This book followed that thought process completely. A storm is coming in? Okay, let's do what we know we can to make the impact less detrimental. Those comforts of boarding up a house and staying inside can only create so much comfort in devastation, but I believe that doing the small things allows those big thins to pass.
There was heart break, but there was always a comfort in knowing that person did all they can to avoid it before it happened. There was survival, but always a next step even when I couldn't find one. I lived an entire lifetime in this book, quite literally, and I found each moment of it to be a lesson and a reality all in one go.
Sometimes there is someone who wants to save the world rather than escape it. Sometimes there is magic in science, and sometimes there is only change. Survival and risk belong together, and being broken is only the first step to becoming whole. Life costs more than it gives... but life is worth the cost.
We are never truly alone. Even when the worst happens, we can find other people to take us is. Fear, and anxiety, and feeling lost and alone are always temporary. Love may feel that way, but to feel alone, you will have had to know what it feels like to be loved as well.
I loved this book. I know I'm going to think about it for a long time. Maybe forever....more
"You can't just pick and choose when it comes to healing."
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I was quite honestly not loving this book very much at all. It was slow, and confusing,"You can't just pick and choose when it comes to healing."
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I was quite honestly not loving this book very much at all. It was slow, and confusing, and it took until the last 50 or so pages for me to understand what was going on. But even with that said, I can't help but recognize how important all of the confusion was to get to the ending. How important it was to be lost in a plot that didn't seem to exist.
Matthew Quick so wonderfully portrayed trauma that by the end I couldn't imagine how I was so lost at the start.
This book followed one man's recollection of a shooting at a movie theatre in December and the effect it had on the town. Our main character Lucas lost his wife, and the town lost seventeen other members as well. One of which was the shooter. That's eighteen lives lost in the span of only a few minutes. We read about shootings on the news all the time, see the effect, but we never truly live it unless we're there. I love how closely that idea followed this plot.
It also followed, through Lucas, the shooters brother Eli. It showed how much blame we put on a family when in reality two people can grow up in the same house completely different. I don't want to spoil how moving Eli's story was for me because it's so much of the reason I ended up loving this book by the end.
I swear it was a solid two stars, so confusing, and was so lost on me... and then I turned the page again. This book is the reason I will never allow myself to dnf something. The reason why even if I can't get through a book in that moment, I will always try again.
Books define who we are in so many ways. Writing... reading... they heal. This book proves that for Lucas, and per Matthew's note at the end, for him as well. It may have been confusing, but it was never slow. And it was more than worth it in the end.
"Who did I want to be? I didn't know, but I suspected that if I didn't figure it out soon, the world would decide for me."
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This was a slow start, "Who did I want to be? I didn't know, but I suspected that if I didn't figure it out soon, the world would decide for me."
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This was a slow start, as most historical fiction tends to be, but boy was it worth it. I don't think I've ever actively searched out any information about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, but I can absolutely promise that after this read I will be.
When it comes to history, it is entirely too easy to hear a specific version of the world and believe it. Not because we don't want to know more, but because time must be taken and interest must be peaked. Ann Mah wrote, "History helps us understand the present" and I knew I was going to have to take that and run with it.
Jacqueline struggles constantly with the ideals she was brought up on, wondering what her life could be if she formed her own opinions, her own life, her own dreams. Being in Europe after WWII really showed her how much she didn't know, how much she had to learn. Watching her recognize the pain of a nation and respect and love what it's doing to rebuild was magnificent. The quote about the world deciding who she was, it broke my heart. Media truly does shape so much of our opinions on public figures, and while in this book Jacqueline had no idea what her life would be, it was very present in the pages as the reader that we do.
It added so much melancholy. It added so much weight.
Ann Mah captures Jacqueline's light so perfectly. We got to see the center of who she was as she traveled through Paris. We explored her life at her best, her dreamiest, her happiest. We got to see a Jacqueline most of the world has probably never tried to see, or love. I learned so much about her ideals, and her passions.
I know her memory will live on for lifetimes, especially if books like this keep coming out.
Reading historical fiction always puts a bit of a weight on my heart, but it's the weight of memory. And just as it's written in these pages, memory is a "museum of comfort." I hope this book can be a comfort to anyone who's trying to figure out who they are. I hope that now that women have the options they didn't in Jacqueline's time, all of ours dreams can come true.
Even if Jacqueline's dream life in Paris didn't happen, she got a year, and that's something.
This book started off so well, so fun, so entertaining. I loved the idea behind an older group of women, as"I want to work. To make my own life."
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This book started off so well, so fun, so entertaining. I loved the idea behind an older group of women, assassin's nonetheless, going on a cruise vacation to celebrate their retirement. It was such a cool vibe... until I realized that the cruise portion of the story was a total of 50 pages.
This book just wasn't for me.
The humor fell flat. The plot was slow. The ending was very underwhelming. I wish it had more of their friendship present, more of the bond they created over the 40 years they'd spent killing together. I wish anything was expanded on more. There were so many small details that I wish became bigger ones.
I'm positive that's what the author was trying to accomplish with the time jumps and perspective changes, but for the most part it only confused me. I wasn't very connected to any of the characters, so I was lost in the past a lot of the time.
One thing I did like, though, was that there was a lot about the loss of a loved one with so many years under your belt. I feel like that's something that people don't write about as much, because devastation reigns in the surprise of losing someone so much more often. I loved that we got to glimpse how much more treacherous it is for someone who has shared an entire lifetime with someone. I wish we had followed that story so much more. A glimpse didn't feel like enough.
With such a compelling summary, I was hoping for so much more.
"Sometimes the dust of our memories is best left unswept."
°•*⁀➷
I took some advise from Joey Tribbiani on this one and put it in the freezer, aka it's "Sometimes the dust of our memories is best left unswept."
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I took some advise from Joey Tribbiani on this one and put it in the freezer, aka it's rightful place for the rest of time. I don't know what it was about this book that made it so terrifying, but it really got me. Maybe it's something about truly terrible people trying to rationalize their misgivings. Or maybe it's simply that there was not one single likable character in this book so I couldn't latch onto anyone to allow the fear to slip below the surface.
That's probably it. If you like to be freaked out for almost 300 pages, this book is for you.
Now that I've gotten that out of my system, this book is amazing. It's fast paced. It slips between three different perspectives. It has so many cliff hangers worked into the ends of chapters. It's compelling, and interesting, and there are so many minor details to latch onto that become so important later on. When I get over how I'm feeling right now, I'll be so excited to go back in and find even more. I'm sure they're there.
I think the only reason I can't move this up to five stars is that I was a little bit underwhelmed by the climax. There was so much lead up and I was a little lost in that when everything was revealed. And because I was lost in it, I felt like I had to keep going back to understand what was happening.
In Feeney's defense though, I was terrified and probably blocked it out initially. It's probably my fault.
I loved how there was so much conversation about memory and how it affects our past, present and future. How we warp our memories so often just to fit our understanding of what happened into reality. Someone else's perception can be so different than yours.
And the way these three storylines come together in the end to prove that... goosebumps.
"Life is a performance, and we don't all like the scripts we're given; sometimes it's best to write your own."
I want Halloween to be here tomorrow. I'"Life is a performance, and we don't all like the scripts we're given; sometimes it's best to write your own."
I want Halloween to be here tomorrow. I'm going to read this again on Halloween. I might just read this every October for the rest of my life. What an incredible book. What a terrifying story. What a sad, broken family.
This took me longer to read than I've spent on any given book in a long time. Don't let that give you the wrong impression as this is probably going to land in my top 10 of 2022. It took so long because I wanted it to last. I wanted a book that happened over the span of 12 hours to last so much longer than that. I wanted to work up my own theories just like any good thriller makes you do. And it was so fun to make it last a week simply to puzzle over who on earth was murdering the Darker family.
I have to admit, I didn't guess. And that made this book the 5+ star read that it was. I wonder if I'll see it better in my next read or if I'll still assume it is who I thought it was this time. I can't wait to find out.
Beyond the mystery and the thrill, though, Daisy Darker was an absolute joy to follow. There are so many incredible one liners, thoughts about being lost and unloved and unseen. We all feel a little bit like that, I think, alone. And Daisy has always been alone.
I love the idea of telling your story no matter how broken it may be. I love every quote about life not being exactly what you wanted, but making the most of it anyways. I love the way this story was told. And I love that everyone can find a piece of themselves in a member of the Darker family.
I love that this pulled me in before I even open to the first page of the book. I love Daisy Darker as much as I hate her family. I didn't like a single character other than her. And that's some incredible writing.
I can't wait to read another Alice Feeney book....more
paige (ptsungirl)
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