5 Celebrity Memoirs I Want to Read

From the Broke & the Bookish
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5 Celebrity Memoirs I Want to Read
Sorry for doing my own topic this week, but I'm not a huge Halloween person.

1. Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood & Scientology by Leah Remini - After 30+ years in Scientology, she bares all. I have a friend who grew up in Scientology and I'm interested to learn more about its aftereffects. I saw them in my friend and I'm sure Leah has a lot to say on the subject.

2. Wildflower by Drew Barrymore - From clubs at 7 to rehab at 12, her life was very unconventional. Regardless, she has blossomed beautifully. Her first memoir, Little Girl Lost sounds like a good read too.

3. There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me by Brooke Shields - Brooke's stage mom pushed her into puberty too early and lived vicariously through her until daughter didn't know where she began and mother ended. Her mother sounds like she had Borderline Personality Disorder, like my mom does.

4. Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography - While I'm not a fan of his - I think he comes off as rather arrogant at times - I do think the concept of this book would make it an interesting read.

5. unSweetined by Jodie Sweetin - How America's Sweetheart turned into a Meth head. Sad.

Celebrity Memoirs I've Read & Recommend
1. High on Arrival by MacKenzie Phillips - This is a very sobering, sad read. Trigger Warning: Incest. Well-written though and really helps you understand her lifelong drug addiction.

2. Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain by Portia di Rossi - Trigger Warning: Anorexia

3. Off Balance: A Memoir by Dominique Moceanu - Trigger Warning: Abusive Childhood with father and gymnastic coach Bela Karolyi

Monday Mish Mash

Mondays often find me rambling about things other than books. Here's today's offering.

Things on my mind:

1. My mental health - aka ptsd, anxiety, meds not working
2. Spent a week vacation with my borderline personality disordered mother
3. #1 is a result of #2

A Mess of Reason by A. Wilding Wells

A Mess of Reason
by A. Wilding Wells

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Published by: Henry Holt & Company Publish Date: July 2, 2015
Genre: New Adult, Friends-Turned-Lovers
Rating: 3.5/4 Stars
NOTICE: I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

There are three sides to our story: mine, hers, and the truth.

Best friends since age 15, Scout and Tess, have always loved one another as more than friends, but never took a chance on the other. This is the story, told from both points of view, of love finally finding a way.

This is a hard book to review for me, because there are parts that I really loved and parts that I could've done without. I'll just spell it out for you:

You Won't Like This Book If:

• Flowery, wordy metaphors aren't your thing. If you can just get past the first chapter (where it's REALLY bad), I assure you that it tones down a bit. The metaphors are still present, but not as bad as the first chapter. If that kind of thing bugs you, you won't be able to swallow this book. And speaking of swallowing . . .
• MCs drinking shots as if they're drinking water doesn't sit well with you. I don't mind some drinking once in awhile, but I often found myself wondering how their relationship would be if there wasn't so much alcohol involved. They both verged on alcoholism in my opinion.
• The Male MC spends a lot of time carrying around the Female MC and/or pulling her on his lap and/or describes her constantly as tiny and/or calls her "Baby" a heck of a lot doesn't ring true for you. No explanation needed there, although I never thought of a 5'7" female as tiny. That's taller than me and I don't feel tiny.
• The MCs spend a lot of their time kissing in the name of friendship isn't realistic to you. I've had some male friends in my day and never did we ever kiss each other unless we were officially fooling around. The MCs spend a lot of time kissing in the name of friendship, pretending that that's normal - then wondering "Gee, I don't know if they like me as more than a friend." If they're constantly trying to make out with you, they probably like you as more than a friend.
• The female MC spends a lot of time crying and/or pushing away the male MC is annoying to you. It was sometimes annoying to me and sometimes not.
• You'd sometimes just like the author to GET TO THE POINT in a scene AKA although I like sexual tension, sometimes the scene just went on for too long in my opinion.
• It bugs you when author's throw something super random into an otherwise well-detailed scenario AKA what happens at the wedding in this particular book.

You Will Like This Book If:

• T-T-T-Tension (to quote Rocky Horror) between two people is more fun to read about than actual sex scenes (although there are plenty of those). I happen to like this and felt the author employed very creative ways of achieving this.
• H*O*T not-sex-but-almost-sex scenes make up much of the book giving you something to look forward to when they FINALLY make love. Kind of related to the above bullet point, but I figured this deserved its own line.
• Surprise secrets thrill you. Yes - secrets are supposed to be private thus making them secretive, but we've all read 100 books in which the MC has a "secret" that always turns out to be a secret we've already read about. Writers just aren't creative these days. I was taken aback and delighted that AWW created her own unique secret. Bravo!

Now, while my pet peeves list is greater than my like list, overall I really liked this book and gave it a pretty high rating. While not up to the level of my favorite NA books, the International Series by Chanel Cleeton, this book was a good runner up to what I liked about those books. I think I may purchase one of AWW's other books on my own. :)

FF: If I Could Re-Write a Book . . .

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On 4/6/15 I traded in my Swagbucks for a $100 Amazon Gift Card. No lie. LOVE LOVE Swagbucks!! Join here or read below for more information! They have GB Amazon Cards on there too!

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Yep. If you haven't heard of Swagbucks yet, it's a Google-powered search engine that earns your free bucks that you can trade in for things like $5 Amazon Gift Cards. I've earned $300+ in Amazon GC since 2009. Join here now to get some free just for signing up. Yes, I will earn points as you earn points if you sign up under me, but once you sign up, you earn points from all your friends who sign up too! Win win! PLUS = FREE BOOKS! Here's my Swagbucks Tutorial for all the information you need!

Question of the Week: If you could re-write a book, which one would it be and what changes would you make?
This is a hard one. I usually stop reading books when I think the plot has either gone south or the author's writing style is just horrid. It's hard to choose a book I do like, but there are a lot of popular books that I thought could be tweaked a little.

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins was loved by everyone, but I always always a bit annoyed with the obvious whining/immaturity of the MC, Anna. There was a little too much whining for me. A better alternative book, with a similar theme, is I See London by Chanel Cleeton. PLEASE read that one if you liked AATFK. So.Much.Better. :)

Yarny.Me is Going Out of Business eff 11/15

If you have any stories on Yarny, you'll want to export them now!

Wednesday Wisdom

Well, it's  not really wisdom that will be helpful to you. It's more about me. Plus, it's Wednesday - so there's that. . .

Things:

1. What I'm Watching on TV: Homeland, The Americans, Murder She Wrote re-runs
2. What I'm Watching on Film: Man From Uncle, Spy, Pitch Perfect 2, Austenland
3. What I'm Listening to: Pitch Perfect 1 & 2 mixes and Elle King
4. What I'm Reading: New Adult
5. Genre I'm Not Longer Reading: YA Romance unless it's not HEA. You can't have a true HEA as a high school student. Sorry.
6. Tropes I Can No Longer Read: Most traditional romance tropes
7. Romance Tropes I Want to Write About with a Different Spin on them: After a night of passion, the GUY realizes the GIRL is his new boss. It's always the other way around. Younger BROTHER of best friend and sister's best friend falling in love. 
8. What I Need to Do: Lose weight, eat better, start being more active

Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell

Pretty Is
by Maggie Mitchell

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Published by: Henry Holt & Company Publish Date: July 7, 2015
Genre: Psycholical, Kidnapping, Character-Driven
Rating: 3.5 Stars
NOTICE: I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Everyone thought we were dead. We were missing for nearly two months; we were twelve. What else could they think? --Lois

It's always been hard to talk about what happened without sounding all melodramatic. . . . Actually, I haven't mentioned it for years, not to a goddamned person. --Carly May

When precocious Lois and pretty Carly May were twelve years old, they were kidnapped, driven across the country, and held in a cabin in the woods for two months by a charismatic stranger. Maggie Mitchell's spellbinding debut Pretty Is is about the repercussions of that formative summer, when two girls who previously did not know each other shared an experience that would shape all their days to come.

At the novel's start, Lois Lonsdale has begun teaching British literature at a small college in upstate New York. Out in LA, Chloe Savage (formerly Carly May) is a lonely actress, drinking too much and struggling to revive her career. When a movie script with a shockingly familiar plot comes into their lives, the women must grapple with unresolved losses and gains that have lain hidden for years behind the public's feverish presumptions.

While the basis of the story is the kidnapping of two pre-teens, seemingly at random, the author chooses instead to focus on how that short amount of time altered who the girls are in present-day, even alluding that their time with the stranger was more pleasant than the lives they were stolen away from. It's not your typical, formulaic kidnapping story, and I liked that.

The basis for the plot is that Lois wrote a fictionalized account of their two months of entrapment under a nom de plume. The successful best-seller is now being made into a movie with the focus on the fictional lead detective who tracked down the kidnapper and saved the day. In a strange twist of fate, Carly May, now known as actress Chloe, is cast in that role. What at first seems like a straight forward plot of flashbacks of their time with Zed the kidnapper and the coming together of the girls in their adult lives veers off course into Ms. Mitchell's real area of expertise: a long, deep look at the psychological motivations of Zed, Lois and Carly May, then and now. While that too sounds predictable, the author turns that tired plot device on its head when we realize Zed wasn't a horrible monster and that the girls actually liked being chosen by Zed and taken away from their previously unhappy living conditions.

While I felt it took too long for the women to reunite and I felt cheated that we never really did find out who Zed was or why he did what he did, the book was satisfying on the merits of characterization and psychology alone.

Just Business by Anna Zabo

Just Business
by Anna Zabo

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Published by: Penguin Berkeley Publish Date: June 16, 2015
Genre: LGBTQ, S&M
Rating: 3 Stars
NOTICE: I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Still haunted by a tragic accident that left him with a wounded leg and broken heart, Eli has a need to be in control. But his desire for Justin makes him want to lose that control—and push them both far beyond their limits.

Justin White may not look like an up and coming corporate superstar, but his new boss knows he has the smarts, grit, and determination to succeed. Now he just has to convince his company’s CFO, Eli Ovadia. Unfortunately, Justin can’t seem to keep his cool around the domineering Eli—and soon he finds himself taking their heat from the boardroom into the bedroom….

The synopsis drew me in, but the characterization made me stay . . . While I do love a good brooding gentleman, a brooding gentleman with substance is always a win in my book.

Ruthless businessman Eli Ovadia is wounded, physically and emotionally. Justin White is a young college intern who has been physically and emotionally degraded before by someone he gave his heart to. The author really sucked me into the inner turmoil of the main characters, and had me rooting for them. Where I veered off course, was the entrance of the bondage parties. While I don't mind reading about some light bondage, I personally feel uncomfortable reading about more concrete control in sexual situations. I'm a sexual assault survivor, so that may be the reason. However, this is just my own personal opinion. The writing was imaginative and fresh and this type of story would be well-received by readers that are more open to this type of sexual encounter. It just became too much for me.