The Princess and the Fangirl

I started writing this August 2019 but stopped before I got all my thoughts down. It is now October 2019 and I don't remember what I was going to write. This is all I wrote. Might finish eventually:



Even now in my mid-20s I still love those angsty teen romance books that you can read in one day. And Princess and The Princess and the Fangirl by Ashley Posten is definitely one of them.
The story follows Geekerella but works as a stand-alone book.

Fiona Davis

I started writing this March 2019 but stopped before I got all my thoughts down. It is now October 2019 and I don't remember what I was going to write. This is all I wrote. Might finish eventually:


 The three Fiona Davis books I've read (The Dollhouse, The Address, and The Masterpiece) along with The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton all have a common theme of a down-on-her-luck young lady who discovers a thing of mystery surrounding a historical location which she further investigates. And back in history that thing centers around an also down-on-her-luck young woman whose life gets changed by a man. The present day woman investigates the mystery of the past one discovers she died in a tragic way.

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson - Unfinished Post

I started writing this August 2018 but stopped before I got all my thoughts down. It is now October 2019 and I don't remember what I was going to write. This is all I wrote. Might finish eventually:

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson is centered around an experiment of a communal family. Ten families live together in the same complex and their kids are brothers and sisters to each other and all the adults are their parents. The experiment is meant to last ten years but of course there's drama when living in a close-knit environment. The story is told from the alternating points of view of the doctor conducting the experiment Dr Preston Grind and the only single parent in the experiment Izzy

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue [Spoilers]

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

Before I begin, I acknowledge how hard it is to write a 300 page book and I could personally never do such an amazing feat. 

 I hate having to say this because I usually love (or at least like) all books but this is the worst one I've read in a really long time. This book took me over a month to finish and not just because it was kinda long (almost 300 pages with small font - hardcover version) but also because it was boring and slow. It's hard to describe exactly what happens in the book because each chapter is so slow until we get to the ending.


Here's some basic premise of the story:
Little girl (Anna) stops eating after her 11th birthday. Her brother died a few months prior. People think it is a miracle of God. The town hires two people to watch Anna day and night. A nurse trained by Florence Nightingale (Lib - the narrator) and a Catholic nun.


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 Lib watches Anna and is convinced the family is secretly feeding Anna but it stops after the two nurses start their watch. It turns out that the mom was "baby-birding" (regurgitating into her mouth) Anna in the morning when hugging her good morning and calling it mana from heaven.
 And the reason Anna stop eating? She found out that it was a sin for her brother to be having "marital" intercourse with her in the night and that he was stuck in limbo/hell. She would have to fast and pray in order to save his soul. It ended with Lib telling Anna that Anna is joining her brother in heaven and she gets to wake up as a different girl the next day.

The Wangs vs the World by Jade Chang - Book (Spoilers)

The Wangs vs The World by Jade Chang

Spoilers throughout the post

    First of all, I want to say that I can relate to this book. A brief synopsis of the book: a Chinese-American family goes bankrupt and the dad goes around collecting his children so he can go back to China to reclaim the family land stolen by the Communists. My family is Taiwanese and we also have 3 children; during the entire book I worry about what if the same thing happened to us? Would we have enough money to go back to Taiwan? Will we have anywhere to go back to?

Each chapter of the book is from the point of view of a different character. In the Wang family there is Charles, Barbra, Saina, Andrew, and Grace.

    The chapters are each numbered with Chinese characters instead of numerals. Also there's some conversations in Chinese that are in pin yin so you might need to get someone to help you translate if you don't know Mandarin. 

   Charles Wang – Chinese name Wang Da Qian. Family fled to Taiwan away from the Communists when he was young. He went to school at National Taiwan Universitu. Before senior year, his parents sent him to America with “a list of fertilizer manufacturers” to help earn the family fortune back. Instead, he got into the cosmetics industry and grew big. He married his first wife May Lee who was a model. They had a house in Bel-Air. May Lee died getting onto a helicopter to view the Grand Canyon in order to rekindle their marriage after the third child was born. After the death of his first wife, Charles married Barbra who he knew back in Taiwan.

   Barbra – Chinese name Hu Yue Ling. Full Taiwanese, her family worked in the University where she met Charles. She always had a crush on him. One summer she decided to work on her appearance and lose some weight but when school started back up, Charles had already left for America. After awhile, one of her classmates heard from Charles that he was going to be marrying a model. When she had heard about May Lee’s death, she took all of her parents’ savings and flew to America to find Charles.

   Saina – The oldest child and daughter lives in Helios, New York by herself. She lived in Manhattan for a while as an artist until she had a failed show and her then fiancé, Grayson, cheated on her and got another girl pregnant. Saina moved to Helios as a personal exile from society and also away from everything that reminded her of Grayson. But he came looking for her saying that the other girl lost the baby and Saina was the only one for him. After being together for awhile, his son was born. She found out that Grayson had lied to her and he went back to his baby-mama. Besides Grayson, Saina was dating Leo – a local – who took her back after Grayson left.  

   Andrew – The second child and oldest son. Goes to school at Azusa Pacific University and wants to be a comedian. He believes in waiting to find love before having sex. He has his car repossessed the day everything happened. As Charles goes around picking up the children, they stop in New Orleans and he meets the thirty-five year old Dorrie who not only gets to him to have sex but also to stay in Louisiana with her instead of going to New York with his family to get Saina. After a few days of being with Dorrie he realizes that they don’t love each other (blinded by the sex) and he leaves her behind. Andrew goes around the state trying to figure out what to do and finally performs a comedy routine that goes well. He ends up having to fly to Beijing when their father ends up in the hospital.

   Grace – The youngest child and daughter. She is away at boarding school in Santa Barbra. She’s only able to pack up the basics of her possessions when she finds out. Grace is in the teenage rebellious stage and she wants to be a fashion designer. Grace is the first one to be picked up by the dad and is on the journey the longest.

   Charles has about $10,000 stowed away in cash and that is the money the family uses to travel across the country. At one point, they stop at one of his factories (and break in) to pick up a shipment of some cosmetics for a small town general store that Charles personally helped kick start. Unfortunately, the products had melted by the time they reached the destination. Another stop along the way was to New Orleans where one of Charles’s longtime friend Nash lives. This is where Andrew leaves the journey. And somewhere in North Carolina the family get into a car crash. They get a rental car and Grace drives the entire way to New York while her dad and stepmother sleep. 

Keep scrolling to see how the book ends.

If you don't want to know then the post ends here for you.

You have been warned.

After getting to Saina's house, Charles leaves Barbra and Grace there to fly to Beijing by himself and find his land. When he gets to his land he finds out that his grandparent's friend had been pretending to be him (Charles Wang) for years and had already claimed the land. But the impostor is a gambler so he gambled the deed to the land away. Charles gets into a fight with the man and ends up in the hospital - as a result of the fight and the mini strokes he has been suffering from.

The three children and Barbra all fly to Beijing to see Charles in the hospital. The book ends with Charles dying while surrounded by his family and his last words are "Daddy discovered America!" This was his way of saying that he found his place in America and was able to prosper. 

It was a happy-sad ending. I cried a lot afterwards and wished the book were longer so I could find out what happens when the kids get back to the States. 

The Girls by Emma Cline - Book (Spoilers)

The Girls by Emma Cline

There will be spoilers in this post and it will be clearly marked.

This book is loosely inspired by Charlie Manson and his "girls".

I was very sad when the book ended where it did. It didn't feel like anything was resolved. The story is about Evie who meets this group of people the summer before she goes to boarding school. They live on a ranch together and don't believe in worldly possessions and they share their clothes and food. They go dumpster diving in town because they don't have any money since most of the people are runaways from life or family. The book has four parts and each part starts with a short narrative of present day and then the chapters will be about Evie's time with this group of people.

The group is led by Russell Hadrick who convinces them that they can all love each other and he loves all of them. Most of the girls there probably didn't get enough love/attention in their own lives so they thrive when they are with Russell. Russell is all about putting out a record because he wants to share his message with the world and he believes he is the next big thing. He relies on Mitch Lewis, a musician, to get him a record deal and help him along.

Evie is drawn to the group by Suzanne, one of the girls there. She understand Russell's message but isn't as mesmerized by him as the other girls are. Evie spends the summer going off to the ranch to visit the group and eventually stay there when she gets in a fight with her mother.

It ends with something big happening with the group, Evie goes off to boarding school, and how she's dealing with life now.

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The whole story leads up to a major crime that happens with the group. Turns out, Mitch "betrays" Russell and doesn't get him a record deal. (Mostly because the recording session with Russell went horribly.) Russell plans revenge by "suggesting" to Suzanne and some of the other girls to go to Mitch's house and make a statement.

Evie tags along because she's attached to Suzanne but is kicked out of the car on the way to Mitch's house. When the group gets to Mitch's house, Mitch is not there but his ex-girlfriend, her child, the groundskeeper, and the groundskeeper's girlfriend are all sleeping. Suzanne and the girls take the people sleeping in the house and brought them to the living room eventually killing them one by one.

I thought the ending was kinda terrible. Evie wasn't there, she was afraid that the group would come to find her and she would some how get into trouble. She also goes to boarding school and everything eventually returns to semi normal. She makes friends, she enjoys life. (That's all it says about this.) Now that she has had this experience, she can tell when a girl hasn't had enough attention in her home life because she will crave the attention of others. The book ends with Evie seeing a man walking towards her and thinking he is here to get her. Turns out it was just a stranger taking a walk. THE END

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I wish there had been more to the book and it hadn't ended where it did. That's all I can say right now.

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena - Book SPOILERS

 The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

when the spoilers part starts there will be bold letters stating "start spoilers" and "end spoilers"

 I'm ashamed to say, I definitely judge a book by its cover. And by the first page/paragraph/sentence of chapter 1. I was debating between reading this or The Girls (which I received in my August book of the month box) and this book jumped out to me right away.

First sentence:

"Anne can feel the acid churning in her stomach and creeping up her throat; her head is swimming".

Yup, I definitely want to find out what happened to her (next sentence "she's had to much to drink"). I'm hooked!



First of all, I thought it was going to be a drama novel with a small bit of who-dunnit mystery involved. Also I thought there was going to be murder but you find out at the end of the first chapter that it's a kidnapping.

Now about the characters involved. No spoilers yet but we will be revisiting the characters in the the spoilers section.


Anne and Marco Conti - They are the parents of the missing child Cora.

Richard and Alice Dries - Rich parents of Anne. Richard is the step father.

Cynthia and Graham Stillwell - Anne and Marco's next door neighbors.

A short plot summary: Cora goes missing while Anne and Marco are over at Cynthia and Graham's apartment for a dinner party. The entire book is finding out what everyone is hiding, where the baby is (if she's even still alive), and who took the baby.

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Everyone wants to know who did it. Marco set up the kidnapping but Richard set Marco up. Cora is fine and alive.

Details:

The Conti family are over at the Stillwell apartment until after 1am. They go home and find their 6 month old daughter missing from her crib. They were checking on her every 30 minutes.

Anne - She has a dissociative condition where she sometimes blacks out and doesn't remember what she has done. Also has postpartum depression. She doesn't remember anything during the time she checked on her daughter at 11pm. She only remembers breast feeding, the baby being fussy, and slapping the baby.  (She ends up killing Cynthia at the end for something else)

Marco - He set up the whole thing with his friend Bruce Neeland (whose real name was actually Derek Honig). Marco had planned to hand the baby over to Derek briefly after 12:30 and Derek would call asking for a 2 million dollar ransom about 12 hours later.

Something goes wrong and a package arrives a few days after asking for 5 millions. Marco goes alone because he knows the baby will be there nice and safe. When he gets there, there is an empty car seat and he gets hit over the head and blacks out. Marco and Derek had become friends over the (doesn't say how long) and after Marco asked Richard for money and was denied, Derek suggested fake kidnapping Cora so they can both get money from it.

Richard - Turns out he was having an affair with Cynthia (yes, Anna's neighbor). It's implied that he was the one who set Derek up with Marco because he ended up with all the money and the child. Richard's assistant was the one taking care of the child while it was missing.

Alice - She's pretty innocent throughout all this. She's the one who tells Anne that her stepfather was cheating with Cynthia.

Cynthia - Came onto Marco during the party at the beginning of the book. Turns out she and her husband Graham like to watch her having intercourse with other men and they film it. They have hidden cameras all around to record whenever she's with someone else. They end up having video footage of Marco taking the baby out to Derek in the garage.

Graham - Graham is against giving the video footage to the police because he would get into trouble for filming people without their consent.

Video footage: Showed Marco going into the house at 12:30 to "check on the baby" but then he comes out at 12:33 and brings Cora into the garage where Derek is parked in a Prius.

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I think that's everything anyone would want to know about the book. I finished reading it in four house. I could not put it down.