Tag: Comments

Categories
Books

Review: Life Is Difficult

La Vita E’ Triste, Ma Pure Bella: Life Is Difficult, But Also Beautiful by Mary R Pagano

I give this book a 4.

LikeIt

Here I thought my family was crazy! Just kidding, but not really. 😉

This memoir is a short read for those who read memoirs all the time. It took me a while to read it, only because I read a bunch of other stuff at the same time. For me, reading intense drama based on reality requires the break of escapism through fiction from time to time. While this story does have light moments, most of it is drama…family drama.

Every family is different, it’s true, but I think we are all more alike than we’d sometimes like to admit. There were things that happened in this story that would never have gone down in my family without someone calling the cops and actually following through on the charges, but not everyone thinks that way. There are things you’ll put up with from family that a stranger couldn’t even contemplate trying to do.

I liked this story because it made me appreciate my family and my life, for all the struggles we do and don’t have that bring us closer together. This is a short and simple read filled with drama and emotion.

I recommend this book to fans of memoirs.

Disclosure-This book was given in exchange for an honest review.

This review has been posted to GoodReads. If you’d like to obtain a copy of this book, try this link.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords

Categories
Books

Review: Death of the Mad Hatter

Death of the Mad Hatter by Sarah J. Pepper

I give this book a 3 and a ½, but am indecisively bumping it down to a 3.

Okay

I’m not a traditionalist in the basic sense of the word. I appreciate things for what they are, but I was disappointed in this reading experience and probably not for the reasons you may think.  Overall, I commend this author for the ingenuity of taking a classical, commonly known, story and turning it into something completely new, but beyond that, I have issues.

First off, I was expecting this story to be more New Adult than YA (not a big fan of YA, but was willing to give New Adult a try). I had so much trouble taking, what I believe was supposed to be, the serious aspects of this story seriously because of all the high school banter. For YA fans I’m sure this isn’t a problem, but for me it was.

There is more than a good amount of crazy in this story and the added darkness was great, but some of the repetition came off as annoying, and I think it was supposed to be mysterious or add to the “crazy”. Crazy I get, but sometimes even that didn’t seem to quite hit the mark. In the story, we are supposed to have an understanding that Al is tortured, but it just comes off as silly and weird playtime to me, most of the time.

The best part of the story development, to me, was the notion and significance of the “sweets” being the link to either sanity or insanity. As far as logic goes, I know it’s Wonderland and there doesn’t necessarily need to be any logic, but there were some things that either did or didn’t happen that really didn’t make sense to the overall goals of the characters.

I loved the rummperrabit and the spiders! I was not disappointed that I read this book; it really wasn’t that bad. I’m just disappointed that I didn’t like it more. I’m such a fan of all things Wonderland, but this story was only okay.

Still, I’d recommend this to anyone who likes Wonderland tales, fantasy, and or YA fiction, with the mention that this is a little dark.

This review has been posted to GoodReads. If you’d like to obtain a copy of this book, try this link.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords

Categories
Books

Review: The Between

by Glynis Rankin

I give this book a 4.

LikeIt

Everyone at some point feels like the black sheep of their family and it seems Michele is no different. I wonder if we, as people, sometimes project how we feel about ourselves onto others and blame them for feelings they may not actually have.  Add in an intense sense of grief and you have The Between.

I won’t give away the full meaning of the Between, but I’ve been there and I know others have too. This story is a typical triumph for this author. She has a talent for not only building emotion, but for expressing it and evoking reactions to it. This story is a long emotional journey through the altered perception of someone who is lost and hurting.

This isn’t the kind of story I typically read and was uncomfortable with the style, but after it was all said and done, the uplifting message won my heart. For those who read books like this all the time, I’m sure this would be quite a treat. This is a short story that packs quite a bit of punch in the category of drama.

I recommend this story to adult readers of fictional dramas and even non-fiction biographies and memoirs.

This review has been posted to GoodReads. If you’d like to obtain a copy of this book, try this link.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords