definitely, possibly, maybe

i'm not kidding when i tell you that i've read the opening chapter of this book 50 times. i've been dying to read this book since i finished cold-hearted rake . i liked the first book in the ravenel series just fine, but the characters of rhys and helen hooked me then. so i was thrilled to get a hold of marrying winterborne today. as soon as i had it in my hands i read the first chapter for the 51st time and then kept on reading until i was done. and oh, i just loved this book. helen and rhys are made for each other. i loved the contrast between the self-assured, independent welshman and the gentle, strong lady. they are two people who you wouldn't think could have any way of understanding each other. except they both ache for exactly what the other has to give. reading this book you could just feel the pull between these two characters. it was there in cold-hearted rake , but the magnetic attraction between helen and rhys intensifies in marrying winterborne . i can...

one of my favorite shows to binge watch is the americans . i probably would have watched it regardless of the plot because i love keri russell so much. one of my all time favorite shows is felicity  [#teamben] and besides all the angsty love triangles, it was because felicity was experiencing college the same time i was. and even though there are many, many differences in our college experiences, there is something to be said for a television show that captures a seminal time period of your life. i will always associate felicity  with my college years, and that love extends to pretty much anyone who took part in that show, but especially keri. when i first heard about the americans  i was so excited for it. not only was felicity in it, but it was a show about the cold war and the leads were russian spies masquerading as american citizens. this was basically the made up game i played my entire childhood. [i am obviously a child of the 80s. i grew up during the cold war...

wicked intentions is the first book in elizabeth hoyt's maiden lane series. as of now there are 9 novels, with the 10th ( duke of sin ) publishing on tuesday, may 31st. i had read her previous series, the legend of the four soldiers , and liked the books a lot. so i'm not sure why i didn't read wicked intentions until now. i remember reading the excerpt, but i'm 85% positive i hadn't read the whole book. amazon reassures me that it has no record of me buying the book previously and i did go through a phase where i needed a break from historical romances, which probably explains why i hadn't picked up this series until now. anyway, netgalley offered this book as a "read now" option, likely to drum up interest in the latest release. and guess what, the marketing worked! now i want to read the rest of the series, including the latest novel. wicked intentions  takes place in the 18th century england, in the st. giles area of london, which during that...

i read how not to fall in one sitting it feels like, it was a quick, enjoyable read with lots and lots of sex. i'm putting that out there first, because if you don't like books with explicit and lots and lots of sex, then this is probably not the book for you. i am also going to advance warn you that this book is part 1 of a duology. so it totally ends on a cliffhanger and since i did not know that in advance i was a little bit frustrated and a little bit like "oh my god, how long do i have to wait for book 2 ?!" [the answer to that is not terribly long, just 7 months since it appears to be scheduled to publish in december 2016.] this might seem weird, but i also researched the author a little bit after i read the book. the characters are super science nerds and what i learned about the author is that she has a phd and her area of study is human sexuality. and this all made so much sense to me. her background really does inform the book. i work in an academic sett...

i so badly wanted to like amy poehler's memoir, yes please . because i love amy. i loved her on snl. i loved her on parks & recreation .  i loved her when she hosted the golden globes. i loved her bits during the emmys. i think she is funny and smart and she has a lot of smart and funny friends. and she's been a comedy writer her whole career. you'd think that she would have written a very funny book, but she didn't. and for someone who talks about how badly she feels when a joke falls flat it's so disappointing that this was her best effort. it's like someone told amy, here's some money, write a book. but she had no idea what she wanted to write about and many ideas about what she didn't want to write about. for someone who seems to be open and committed to taking a bit as far as it can go, she does not do that here. the glimpses she gives us into amy poehler the person are too slight. and the stories she tells about the people she's met and h...

one last look at things from liz's point of view. the next chapter is more of an epilogue where everything gets tied up in a neat little package--or something like that. but before things end for good, there's just a little more to resolve after the jump. if you need to catch up here are links to parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , and 7 .

so it's no big secret that i'm a huge fan of shiri appleby's. i loved her on roswell . and i've watched terrible shows like life unexpected  just because she was on them. last summer she starred on this surprisingly amazing show called unreal .  surprisingly amazing because this show airs on lifetime, a channel better known for it's cheesy movies of the week instead of cutting edge black comedies. unreal  takes on the reality dating television genre and exposes the manipulative, overproduced underbellies of shows like the bachelor . it is totally awesome. shiri appelby plays a girl named rachel. rachel is a total mess. she keeps meaning to improve her life and do worthier things with it, but keeps getting sucked into the game by her frenemy and boss quinn, played by the always amazing constance zimmer. the first season was spectacular and i am so excited for season 2. because i know it will be totally amazing. there is so much juicy stuff to be had.  especia...

so in chemistry formulas are a good thing. in baking recipes are necessary. in construction following a set of instructions makes the difference between freestanding furniture and a pile of junk. sometimes we see entertainment follow a formula. like in a romantic comedy, where the two leads have their meet-cute and then shenanigans occur and in the end they end up together because that's what you're signed up for. i don't mind things that are predictable in broad strokes, especially if they are unique in the details. see for example the proposal   which is one of my favorite romantic comedies , and is unique in that the leads in some sense swap gender roles. but sometimes formulas are bad, in that even with different details they still feel tired or easy. things wrap too neatly. most writers follow some sort of formula, and it's usually okay. it's more common in genre fare, but even some literary folks fall prey to this. one recent example i've encountered i...

you guys, i don't listen to country music. i don't watch the voice . i like gwen stefani, but my fondness has more to do with how no doubt figured into my high school soundtrack more than the artist she's morphed into. when i see her interviewed i'm not exactly convinced she's human. or if she is human, there doesn't seem to be much going on in her head. this is probably not a fair assessment of gwen. she's obviously a savvy businesswoman, she's a musician with a proven track record, and she has enough personality and charisma to front her own band. before taylor swift made every one of her heartbreaks into a hit song, gwen stefani was doing it. i think we can all acknowledge that "don't speak" is an amazing f-u song. and the best part of the back story to that song is that gwen's ex was in the band. so he's been forced to play a bitter break-up song for 20 years. that is some amazing payback. she harnessed her bad break-up and...

imagine mild-mannered governess is actually a murderess several times over and there you have the hook for jane steele  by lyndsay faye. this homage to jane eyre  has been mischaracterized as a retelling, but that is absolutely not the case. certainly there is overlap. jane steele's life story maps pretty closely to jane eyre's, with several key differences. jane steele's victorian england is a darker, grittier place. but the fact that the seedy underbelly is explicitly rendered in the text feels fresh, this isn't just some jane eyre wannabe we're reading about. this is jane steele, a woman who identifies with jane eyre, but who has more depth and more agency than our original victorian-era heroine. even though our jane is a serial murderer, she is extremely sympathetic. also there is an argument to be made for the fact that all of her murders are somewhat justified. if anything she is a vigilante, not evil or wicked. her name is especially apt, as she has suc...

this book is loooong. so long. maybe too long? from the description i thought sway was going to be some sort of james bond–miss moneypenny erotic thriller kind of deal, except it turns out the male lead is a sort of vampire and there is less espionage and more recovering from sexual assault than i expected. not only is this book long and overly verbose, it doesn't even bother using words correctly! ascent is used for assent—and they are not the same thing at all. the word meet is used in a way i have never heard it used before and i read non-american authors all the time. silly typos just abound.  also this is meant to be canadian-british english, but it wasn't terribly consistent about keeping to one or the other and some american englishisms slipped in there too. and i get it, this was an 841 page beast of a novel, so it's no surprise that someone skimped on the copyediting/proofreading. as for story, while there is nothing truly groundbreaking here, the kind of no...

this scene in unbreakable kimmy schmidt  made my day. he is, and always will be one of my favorite actors. i wish he was in more stuff.

there are only two additional parts after this one. here's one last look at michael's journal. after the jump. catch up with earlier parts with these handy-dandy links: parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , and 6 .

when i was in college i worked at a shoe store--actually it was a high-end shoe boutique. until that moment i don't believe i had any strong feelings about footwear. they just happened to be what i wore on my feet and my mom usually took me to buy them. until i worked at the shoe store i didn't have much in the way of expendable income. [n.b. i probably should have saved more of my earnings from that job.] but then i had a 40% discount and access to all these gorgeous shoes. the rest, as they say is history. i have way more pairs of shoes than i actually need. but i still find myself buying them. i have a particular weakness for sandals and wedges. even though as much as i buy new pairs of shoes, i end up wearing the same ones until i destroy them. these are entirely #firstworldproblems as they say. anyway, what got me thinking of shoes this morning was that i ordered a new pair recently. except by the time the box arrived i had completely forgotten why i had ordered the sh...

i don't know what it was about this cover, but i thought it was so pretty. like you can imagine someone coming up to the girl on the cover and being about to tap her on the shoulder, but maybe she's a hair out of reach. in this paranormal young adult romance, xan and lila are perfect soulmates who have wasted five lifetimes together because, well, let's just say reasons for now. from the within reach back cover blurb we know that dying wasn’t on seventeen-year-old xander hemlock’s summer to-do-list. finding ways to spend more time with his girlfriend, lila, was the most critical thinking he planned on doing. but that was before he found himself trapped in a realm of only darkness with thirty days to convince lila he’s not actually dead—well, not completely, anyway. and from that description, this book seemed different than a lot of the ya i usually read, so i thought i'd give it a chance. i don't regret having read this, but in the end i think the interesting ...

i am no great athlete, unless you count my olympic level reading skills. but my eye muscle strength and ability to speed read will not really help burn calories. and as the march of time finds my forties closer each day i find that i can't diet without exercise. there are benefits to this. the last time i focused on losing weight it worked, but i didn't get toned so i didn't lose as many inches in the right places. it had been a year since i had my last baby and i hadn't dropped more than ten of the thirty pounds i put on during pregnancy, so i was ready to put some work into losing the remaining baby weight and hopefully a bit more too. an old co-worker of mine had recently gotten divorced and discovered the beachbody programs and started a personal coaching business. she looked great and the more she talked about what she had been doing the more intrigued i was about giving it a try. i started the 21 day fix program a little over two months ago, and since then i...

on an impulse i picked up the friends first series by laura drewry, perhaps the impulse dictated by one of the series being on sale for 99¢ and then realizing that it was the third one and i should really probably start with the first. which is totally an evil marketing ploy, but it definitely worked and heck, i enjoyed all three novels. the first one plain jayne  was right up my alley, it's the story of two friends (jayne and nick) who reconnect and realize that there was love between them all along. it's a bittersweet story, because there's lost time and misunderstanding and insecurity and so much love and sweetness. one thing the book does well is establish the secondary characters who go on to get their own stories. next one up was prima donna , which was probably my least favorite of the four, even though i really liked both leads (carter and regan). there was something about their story that didn't quite resonate with me. the obstacles that kept being pus...

i picked up  hello?   because i saw it on huntley fitzpatrick 's goodreads list of books and since i liked huntley's books and other things she says she liked reading i thought, let's give this a try. i borrowed the book from the library, and i have to say that i wished maybe i had gotten an ebook version? i admit this was probably a difficult book to typeset, but it felt like the text ran almost to the edges and there was no space. the text felt so crowded. it made it hard to read at first, especially since my copy hadn't ever been taken out by anyone else, so it was totally like i was cracking open a new book and it didn't have any give. what makes this book difficult to typeset is that there are 5 distinct main characters: tricia, emerson, angie, brenda, and brian. tricia, emerson and brian write in prose. brian has some illustrations in his sections, but there's mostly straight prose telling the story. angie and brenda write in poetry and screenplay form ...

i'm always impressed at how i manage to carve out time for myself even with the three kids, husband, full-time job, house, and endless appointments. but i do, i have to, because otherwise i would go absolutely crazy. since moving to upstate new york we've fallen in with some friends who take annual girls and guys trips. the guys go to a hunting lodge and spend a weekend bbq-ing and playing lawn games and ingesting insane amounts of alcohol. while there is some logistical planning that goes into the weekend, the time of year, the location, and general itinerary are always the same, so man camp is so easy to plan. the girls' getaway is kind of a logistical nightmare, especially considering that there are 10 of us in the group and we don't all enjoy the same things. plus we have to change up locales every year and not everyone can make it every year and there's a whole lot of drama. one of the husbands jokingly called the weekend cramp, and that's the moniker tha...

hey look, more from the past. this is another multi-character section, these were the hardest parts to write because i had a hard time capturing each character's distinct voice. i think there is some of that here, but perhaps not enough. oh well. you can judge for yourself after the jump. if you need a refresher parts 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , and 5 are linked for your convenience.

i've always resisted the idea of audiobooks. i thought they would put me right to sleep a dangerous thing to tempt if i happened to be driving. especially since i suffer vehicular narcolepsy, something that usually plagues young children and, well, me. it might not actually be a thing. but it's a thing that happens to me all the time. so i was convinced that audiobooks would put me right to sleep. but then, i kept getting these offers from audible . 2 free books to start a trial membership. and there were these two books i wanted to read but the library didn't have them. so i thought, what do i have to lose? the first two audiobooks i listened to were stillwater   by melissa lenhardt and first & then  by emma mills. and then i forgot to cancel the free membership in time and i had this other credit, so i decided to try listening to carry on  by rainbow rowell. and then i admitted that i didn't want to cancel this thing. i enjoyed listening to books. this in no w...

scarlet rain  is the sequel to amber smoke , which i've previously reviewed . given the cliffhanger ending of the latter i felt compelled to read the series on. even though i still think these books would have benefited from being all one novel instead of being forced into a trilogy (i'm assuming). i also still think it's so cheesy that both of them have ended with "the end...for now." it's like how the blob  ends with "the end" and then changes a "?" to the screen at the last second. i just think this is so lame. because obviously we know that the story is still in the middle--too many questions remain to be answered. i won't spoil the cliffhanger here, though i will say that it isn't as impactful as the cliffhanger in the first book, so being forced to wait for more doesn't seem like that much of a punishment. as with amber smoke , there are good things and things that don't quite work here. there is joking about alek ...

in amber smoke by kristin cast we are introduced to alek, the son of the furies and savior of the underworld and eva, a descendant of the first oracle and the only mortal strong enough to help alek save the underworld and the mortal world. sounds pretty simple right? if only the novel hadn't taken so much time to get the lead characters in the same space. the first half of the novel is setting up the big moment where alek and eva meet. because even though she is a descendant of the first oracle he has to breathe new life into her in order for her to unlock her powers. so we are treated to a lot of exposition in the underworld realm and then a lot of exposition introducing us to eva and how she's a different kind of girl. except she's also kind of ordinary and seems to have terrible taste in men and friends. her friend bridget--who nearly date rapes alek on first meeting him--is all over the place. she seems like an airhead party girl, but she also seems to genuinely l...

so i just finished reading let's pretend this never happened and furiously happy  by jenny lawson (aka the bloggess ). the former i read part of at work and seriously regretted it as i tried to mask my laughing into something dignified. but instead this made me end up snorting with laughter which is the absolute opposite of dignified and makes it totally apparent that you are not working. i basically re-read the beyoncé the chicke n story once a year, but even though i've read this blog post multiple times i still end up ugly crying i'm laughing so hard as i read it for the fiftieth time in the book. i don't know if it's just that her way of phrasing things just hits me right in my silly spot because generally speaking i'm not someone who laughs out loud at things. except maybe i'm the kind of person who laughs out loud at terrible things because the truth of the matter is that these books are about dealing with severe social anxiety and mental illness. ...

when i read a book like one paris summer  by denise grover swank i always have the urge to hop a plane to an exotic locale and fall in love. never mind that i am very happily married. i mean, it's paris. romance capital of the world. definitely on my bucket list of places i want to go. even if the only the only things i remember to say in french are je m'appelle jaques martineaux. je suis pianiste. j'habite à la place de la contrascarpe. (apologies, i just needed to get that out of my system. it happens every time i feel the urge to speak french. blame mlle. alió from my ap french class.) one paris summer  opens with siblings eric and sophie arriving in paris to attend their absent father's sudden wedding to a frenchwoman, eva. this is a family who's relationships are so fractured it is hard to know where to begin repairing it. eva, the future stepmother is written against type, she's a truly lovely person. she's warm and welcoming to her future stepki...

usually i post book reviews under the "seriously romantic" tag, but since i do occasionally read books that are not romances i figured i should have another tag and that's how "strictly literary" has come to be. i'll be honest, i'd been seeing miss peregrine's home for peculiar children on book lists for a while. and i really liked the title. so on the strength of those two things when i saw it as an available ebook from my library i decided to check it out. maybe i should have read the description first. or at least some actual reviews? then i started reading it. and i put it down. and then i had to check it out again. and finally i got to a point where things started to happen. it's just that it took so long to get there. and so much of the first 40% of the book is telling you that there is going to be something interesting happening that by the time you finally get to the interesting bits you are a like bit like, well okay, but really can t...

it's funny, i haven't read these stories in years. re-reading them now reminds me how much my life has changed. i'm not the same person i was then, but it's fun to get a glimpse of who i was through these stories. more angst after the jump! and you can catch up with the earlier chapters by following the links to parts 1 , 2 , 3 , and 4 .

now that life is so busy, what with three kids, a full time job, and a house that unfortunately doesn't clean itself, i find myself watching more comedies than dramas. i still love a good drama, but it's too hard to find the time to watch them. and at the end of the day i find that i want to laugh more than i want to experience high stakes tension. i still love modern family and the big bang theory , and watch them regularly. but i also watch a whole host of comedies that are less grounded in reality--you might even say they are downright weird. and sometimes i don't know how i feel about that as i watch. take the last man on earth , will forte's end of the world comedy is hard to describe. because in many ways this show is not at all a comedy. it's a deeply weird, deeply disturbed post-apocalyptic drama except for the fact that it is presented and acted out as a comedy. it's funny, sometimes. it's disturbing, more often than i can count. but it's a...

so everyone has heard about the gilmore girls   revival set to premiere on netflix later this year, right? am i the only person who isn't thrilled? i had such a complicated relationship with that show. there were parts of it that i loved. but there was so much more i hated. like sookie st. james. no offense to melissa mccarthy who has gone on to bigger and better things . but i found her character on gilmore girls  intolerable. so when at first it seemed like she wasn't returning, i was like nbd. but everyone else just about lost their mind, and now she's back and i'm like ugh. i guess the thing is, unlike many other people i was relieved when that show ended. i never felt like i had too little time with it. the things that remained unanswered i was okay with. but these days it seems like studios only want to produce content they know has previously been marketable. so we keep seeing shows come back from the dead. and maybe in the case of something like twin peaks...

so on a friend's recommendation i picked up the mortal instruments series by cassandra clare . this is a six-novel series we're talking about here, and it has a wealth of entertainment that includes all the teen angst i love plus vampires, warlocks, angels and demons. it's amazing! also incredibly soapy and cheesy, but it's still my jam. the great thing about this series is that it keeps going--there are at least five spin-off series that either tie into the world or directly involve characters from the original series. and then, even better, i found out freeform had adapted the books to a series called shadowhunters . there was an ill-fated attempt to launch a movie franchise similar to the twilight books, but it didn't take. from clips i've seen i think it was probably mis-cast. plus i think that given the amount of source material, these books were always going to function better as a television series. so far most of city of bones is covered by the serie...

so i can't explain what motivated me to start posting again. but i can tell you what derailed me before. i had three kids, that's what happened. now that the youngest is entering toddlerhood life is somewhat calmer. or maybe i've just gotten better about taking time for myself. who knows? i still watch loads of television, but we cut the cord on cable and have been functioning with a netflix , hulu , amazon prime combo that works for us. since we were never a family of channel surfers, it's actually worked out pretty well. and other than having to watch out for hulu expiration dates on some shows, for the most part i keep up okay. though i do have to admit that i've fallen inexcusably behind on greys . this was totally my show, but last season they introduced the other sister and then they killed mcdreamy and i was like, do i really want to watch this? the thing is, when i do make time to watch i enjoy it. so i haven't given up on the idea of catching up qu...