Please, slay me. Put me out of my misery.

You Slay Me (Aisling Grey, Guardian: Book 1)

Katie MacAlister

Aisling Grey has been sent to Paris as a courier to deliver a valuable gold dragon statue to a woman; however, when she arrives at the woman's apartment, the woman is found murdered and her statue is stolen - by Drake Vireo. Aisling is now stuck in Paris, the main suspect for murder, and is determined to steal the statue back from the incredibly sexy Drake, who happens to be the powerful leader of the green dragon sept, present at a series of murders but claims his innocence, and is determined to seduce Aisling (you can guess to whether she puts up much of a fight on that one). She is joined by a collection of odd characters including Amelie, a healer; Rene, a taxi driver; and Jim, a demon dog.

This book was just not good, I don't know any other way to state it. The lead character was annoying, her attempts at humor failed miserably and she came off and a rambling idiot; the storyline was convoluted at best and so painfully single-minded that I was begging for a small side storyline; and the supporting characters were all pretty much the same person with a different name. Yeah, the lead male was sexy but other than that had few redeeming characteristics and sexy can only take you so far. Jim was by far the best character, his snarky sense of humor was the only dialogue that got the smallest of smirks from me.

Needless to say, I will not be continuing this series

An epic saga that is well worth every word on each page

Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell

5 stars + heart + many tears + my undying love

I decided to tackle this intimidating antebellum epic novel this month and patiently spent most of one day making a reading schedule so I could finish it by September 30th. I shouldn't have wasted my time. Instead of trudging from milestone to milestone, I flew through GWTW, devouring every word on each page and becoming completely immersed in the life of Scarlett O'Hara. Without a doubt, this book is one of my top 5 favorites of all time and has made a good case for itself for the #1 position. Many of you probably know the story of Scarlett and Rhett, star-crossed lovers of the South before, during, and after the Civil War, but I had only the faintest idea of the storyline prior to diving in - there was something about a plantation, right? I think my complete lack of knowledge made me love the story because I was constantly being surprised by what came next.

As the story opens, Scarlett O'Hara is the 15 year old daughter of plantation owners in the South. She lives at Tara and is easily the most beautiful young woman in the area...and she knows it. She has every eligible man in the county wrapped around her finger, gets everything she asks for, and carefully keeps her cool even though her temper betrays her Irish roots. Scarlett cares nothing of politics or business, these are men's jobs, but as she has single-minded focus on making the best marriage possible, the rest of the county is abuzz with rumors that the South is succeeding and may go to war against the north in order to protect their way of life...including the owning of slaves.

As war breaks out, Scarlett finds her life completely changed; she spends her time between Tara and (mainly) Atlanta as she struggles to survive and not starve to death in the brutal times. The end of the war brings no relief to her struggles but she finds herself unwillingly responsible for several friends, family members, and servants. In and out of her life is the disreputable Rhett Butler who was banned from the societal life of a gentleman and has made his fortune doing any number of ill-advised jobs. He is obviously completely in love with Scarlett but she is preoccupied with making a living for herself to prove her nay-sayers wrong about her fast ways. As the years after the Civil War progress, Scarlett and Rhett's lives unfold in ways they never foresaw.

Scarlett was a most unlikely heroine whom I alternating between admiring and loathing. She did what she had to do, often with no thought to how her actions affected those around her, and did many things with an apparent lack of conscience. She was mean, manipulative, destructive, and superficially selfish though her actions often benefited many people. I loved her. She made no apologies, did not backtrack, and realized that the conventions of women at that time were too silly for her to worry about following. Ultimately, her bull-headedness was her downfall and during the last 1/4 of the book I wanted to shake her and force her to realize what was right in front of her face.

Rhett was equally as stubborn and manipulative but I admired him for being the one person in Scarlett's life her knew her innermost thoughts and loved her despite them. His mannerisms were perfect for a scoundrel of the time and the whole time that I was half in love with his character, I also realized that he was mishandling the largest event of his life. My surprise favorite character was Melly; she was the polar opposite of Scarlett and, while I first thought she was weak and apprehensible, I quickly realized that she was completely aware of all situations and truly was the most pure and upstanding person in the book - a soft shell of a southern woman with an iron core.

Aside from the engrossing story and complex characters, GWTW provided an interesting background of the Civil War as told from a Southerner's perspective. I am by no means a proponent of slavery, but this provided a view of slave-owning and treatment that greatly varied from the horror stories of abuse and degradation that permeate main-stream media. In the case of this book, and I am completely aware that this is a fictionalized account, the behavior of the Yankees who wanted to free the slaves and provided lip-service to them being equal while treating them with contempt was equally as abhorrent as Scarlett's view that slaves were a lesser people than whites but actually treated many of them with love and respect. As Mitchell tells the story, you question what it was the south was really fighting for.

Whether the theme was love of land, love of a way of live, love of a spouse, or love of self, GWTW encompasses all of these and tells one of the most heart-wrenching and beautiful stories I have ever read.

Child neglect...with love and best intentions

The Glass Castle

Jeannette Walls

This was an unbelievably moving story of Jeannette's childhood - she grew up poor, on the verge of homelessness, with parents that obviously had psychological and emotional problems. Jeannette and her three siblings (older sister Lori, younger brother Brian, and younger sister Maureen) grow up in squalor, often on the brink of starvation, and struggling for any semblance of normalcy in their lives. They move from California to Arizona and finally to West Virginia, always swinging through boom and bust cycles of money that lasts for a few days to weeks and near-debilitating poverty for longer stretches of time.

I have a really low tolerance for stories about child abuse, I just can't stomach them, so I was hesitant to read The Glass Castle. There is no doubt that this book is full of child abuse in the form of neglect but, at the same time, the parents were not malicious in their neglect - they just didn't seem to have the mental awareness to fully grasp the seriousness of their situations - and actually seemed to love their children and want what was best for them. I was SO angry at the parents and their immaturity throughout the story and literally found my hand balled into a fist at some parts. There were some touching moments though when the parents did small things that regained some of your trust - isn't that what makes abusers so dangerous?

Despite all of the negative and truly sad aspects of this memoir, the kids (with the exception of Maureen) made extremely respectable lives for themselves. They all got out of small-town West Virginia, escaped the control of their parents, and became content adults in NYC. More than that, they supported each other; from childhood when they stood up for each other against the neighborhood kids, through adolescence when they all saved money to buy a bus ticket for the oldest sister, and adulthood when they got together for holiday dinners. Their love and support for each other was the most inspirational part of this story.

More than any book I have ever read, The Glass Castle illustrated the conflicted feelings that neglected children feel toward their parents and different side of poverty and homelessness. This definitely had many dark moments but the story was overall full of hope and written in such a stark, matter-of-fact manner that it will stay with me for a very long time.

Sometimes your frog turns into a KING!

The Frog Prince

Elle Lothlorien

Sometimes your frog turns into a prince, even when you don't want him to.

The Frog Prince is a chick lit novel by a new author that is only available on Kindle. In my experience, that be a toss up between a poorly written, poorly edited, copycat story that is destined for obscurity or a rare diamond in the rough that introduces me to a new author. The Frog Prince was definitely the latter. With intelligent wit, self-deprecating humor, and predictable chick lit romance with a bit of a twist, this story had me spell-bound from start to finish.

Leigh Fromm is gorgeous. Super-model gorgeous. But don't be too quick to judge. She lives in a trailer park, conducts human sexuality research (which you all know I find endlessly fascinating), and she is incredibly awkward and clumsy in social situations - resulting in odd sexual facts spewing out of her mouth at odd times! She meets Roman Lorraine at her great-aunts funeral (quircky) when she impales his foot with her stiletto. Imagine her surprise when he finds her charming...and turns out to be the crown prince of Austria. It is a title in name only because Austria hasn't had a monarchy in over 80 years but all that could change in a matter of seconds and make him the King.

Leigh was funny and charming, in an awkward way; Roman was royalty with an environmental penchant, evidenced by him building homes in Swiss Family Robinson-esque tree house fashion; and the chick lit romance was predictable with a unique and fun twist. A couple things that I found irritating were that the dating timeline contradicted itself and there was a little too much German for me (I don't have anything against German, I just don't speak it. A sentence here or there is great and I can usually get the general meaning but paragraphs of it with no translation just kind of annoyed me).

Overall, a great debut novel that will have me reaching for Ms. Lothlorien's future books! Also, the fact that her last name is the same as a Middle-Earth Elven forest will ensure that I don't forget her :)

The fictionalized reality TV has been replaced by a realistic war

Mockingjay (Hunger Games #3)

Suzanne Collins

****Spoilers if you haven't read the first two books****

When we left out heroine the Quarter Quell had come to an end, Peeta had been captured by the Capital while Katniss went to the rebels, and the Districts were primed for war to overthrow the government. Ensconced in District 13, and the remaining citizens of the now-destroyed District 12, President Coin beseeches Katniss to become the Mockingjay - to inspire the District citizens to rise up against the Capital. While Katniss does what she can to help the rebel cause, she realizes that things are not always what they seem. Struggling with right versus wrong, Katniss also must come to terms with Gale, Peeta, and - most challenging - herself.

Mockingjay was a fitting end to the Hunger Games Series. Darker than the previous two installments, there was much more focus on the personal struggles of the main characters, who all rightly are afflicted by a variety of psychological issues following the atrocities they have lived through. As with the first two books, I don't feel like I can say too much because I don't want to give away even the tiniest bit of the fabulous plot but will say that 1) I thought it was a bit anti-climactic. We know Collins can build up the suspense in an intense manner but she didn't deliver on the promise. 2) The ending was perfect, a little expected, but what I felt was the only fitting end to the story.

Super Satirical Cautionary Tale

Super Sad True Love Story

Gary Shteyngart

Super Satirical Cautionary Tale....no wait, that's not the title, although it might be a better fit than the ill-advised real title.

At it's heart, SSTLS is a social commentary thinly veiled in a superficial love story. Lenny Abramov is a near-40 Russian-American who is obsessed with living forever - a technology that is on the brink of becoming reality. While on a working holiday in Rome, he meets Eunice Park, a young Korean-American who embodies physical perfection and youth. Their lives lead them both back to New York and sets them on the path to a dysfunctional relationship. The "love story" didn't do it for me. In fact, the main characters held absolutely no appeal for me and were the embodiment of the exact behaviors that irritate me most in real life people - superficial, self-centered, indecisive, and inconsiderate.

What made this book so interesting to me was the social commentary aspects. Lenny and Eunice live in a New York City in an undisclosed future year (or is it a dystopian present?) where mega-conglomerates like LandO'LakesGMFord rule the Credit world, real-time ego-centric streaming on apparati (think super-smart iPhone) rule the Media world, and the American economy is extremely destitute and is attached to the Chinese yuan for any kind of value. People no longer interact except through their apparati, the written word is virtually extinct, and the ruling government is the near-dictatorial Bipartisan Party that determines your worth based on monetary value.

There were times when I got very frustrated with the self-absorbed, technology-obsessed characters but then I took a step back and realized that perhaps society isn't as far from that as I would like to think. SSTLS was very slow-moving for me at first but picked up about 100 pages in - I kept slogging through the first bit because there were little gems hidden here and there to make me realize that the ending was going to hold more than meets the eye.

Overall, an intriguing and worthwhile book for every reason except the love story.

Getting Smarts - the Jenaissance way!

My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being A Dumb Ass Is the New Black; Or, A Culture-Up Manifesto

Jen Lancaster

Jen Lancaster is back with hilarious tales of her life in Chicago with her husband, writer friends, and house full of pets - this time she is convinced that her TV diet of reality television has made her uncomfortable in social situations and makes people look down on her. To solve this problem, she is taking a page from Miss Eliza Doolittle and is getting some culture -Jenassaince style! Nothing is taboo: plays, operas, classic literature, poetry, and Eating the World! As always, she manages to add a touch of humor to every situation and sometimes even gets the Shame Rattle....laugh out loud funny!

I was pretty disappointed in Jen's last book - Pretty in Plaid - but this was a flash back to Jen's earlier works. The central theme was a little weak (especially in the beginning) but it finally came together and added continuity to the story. I heard a rumor that Jen has already been signed for another book and I will definitely be picking it up to see what ensues next in her life!

Ps. Kudos to Fletch (Jen's husband) for managing to tolerate her crazy tactics and keeping a wry sense of humor through it all! lol. I would love for an entire book to be published of Jen and Fletch's emails to each other while she is at home doing "research" for her books and he is at work. Those emails in between the chapters are some of my favorite parts. :)