Tag: Adult Fiction

#BookReview: A thrilling read that zooms in on the bigger picture; My Not-So-Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella

Posted on by The Smart Cookie

Social media is an absolute wonder. It creates a sense of instant gratification. It connects you with millions of strangers.

All with the click of a button.

Yet, it also creates this image of “the perfect life” that no one can achieve AND be human.

Social media or obsessing over your identity over those platforms leaves room to puppet string or enlarge our deepest fears and insecurities as people.

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The greatest thing is this book used that notion to tell a story of twenty-something English-farmgirl Katie Brenner, who after graduating from college, reinvents herself and loses her country accent to appear more high-society. Her new identity? London city girl named Cat. This is all so she can fit the mold of those around her while working at an ad agency as a junior associate with dreams of being a project manager.

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This book really makes you take a second look at societal norms, relationship standards in today’s dating world, and most deeply, the imperfect human condition that should be more accepted and less altered.

Overall, the reader will leave this book realizing that things and people are not always prim and proper as they appear.

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#BookReview: Small Great Things by @jodipicoult is more than just ‘a great read’; it’s a movement.

Posted on by The Smart Cookie

We are all familiar with the hashtag on social media #BlackLivesMatter. Yet I didn’t come face to face with it until I read Jodi Picoult’s newest masterpiece, Small Great Things.

Following the main characters through vignette like first-person accounts of the story we meet Ruth Jefferson, the woman this story is centered around. Ruth Jefferson is a 20 year nurse at West Haven Mercy Hospital and is working when the Bauer’s come in because Brit Bauer is in labor is ready to deliver her baby. Ruth Jefferson is a neonatal nurse and a mother herself. Her husband died while serving in Afghanistan.

Instantly, you relate to Ruth and connect with her.

So it equally pisses you off when a wonderful woman like Ruth who was just doing her job is suddenly under investigation for murder, and not just any murder.

The murder of Davis Bauer, newborn son of Brit and Turk Bauer, known white supremacists.

 

Picoult weaves a story that shows literary merit but relevance in today’s racism-driven society, one that shares the struggle each person goes through when living based on skin color, or judged solely by it.

It’s brilliant. And I recommend you read it NOW. Get to your local bookstore and buy a copy for you and a friend or family member. It may be Picoult’s 24th book and 9th best-seller but it showcases Picoult’s true talent of writing literature that isn’t limited by time but instead exceeds beyond her years in wisdom, words, and grace.jodi-picoult-435

 

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#BookReview and #Giveaway: McDaniel’s Beautiful Debut by An Author Beyond her Years

Posted on by The Smart Cookie

As a book blogger and an author myself looking for representation, I find it hard to say no to any book request I get. Even if I later find out I was not interested in the book because the material didn’t spike my heart rate the same way four turbo shots in my Dunkin Donuts coffee might, but with Tiffany McDaniel’s debut, I found myself taken on a rejected Disney ride that ended up being the funnest ride they have yet to offer.

The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel was a big, cool glass of water in the desert even though I didn’t even realize I had journeyed that far. It was something I didn’t know I needed to read but nevertheless, now that I read it, I’m still attempting to make sense of what it all meant.

With a writing style that mimics Flannery O’ Connor, her prose swept me away in a sea of hot enticing madness, almost like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter day or coffee after yet another sleepless night.

The book follows Fielding Bliss during the summer of 1984. A symbolic year of sorts. Synopsis from the back of the book follows:
Fielding Bliss has never forgotten the summer of 1984: the year a heat wave scorched Breathed, Ohio. The year he became friends with the devil.

Sal seems to appear out of nowhere – a bruised and tattered thirteen-year-old boy claiming to be the devil himself answering an invitation. Fielding Bliss, the son of a local prosecutor, brings him home where he’s welcomed into the Bliss family, assuming he’s a runaway from a nearby farm town.

When word spreads that the devil has come to Breathed, not everyone is happy to welcome this self-proclaimed fallen angel. Murmurs follow him and tensions rise, along with the temperatures as an unbearable heat wave rolls into town right along with him. As strange accidents start to occur, riled by the feverish heat, some in the town start to believe that Sal is exactly who he claims to be. While the Bliss family wrestles with their own personal demons, a fanatic drives the town to the brink of a catastrophe that will change this sleepy Ohio backwater forever.

I’m happy I was asked to review this book by the author herself who happens to look like a Drew Barrymore look-alike, and also happens to be one of the nicest artists I’ve ever met.

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For more information about the author, you can visit her site and her book trailer for this book.

Now as a reward for reading this review, I invite all U.S. entrants to enter The Summer That Melted Everything giveaway. The author herself is sending two personally signed copies of the book to the winners. How freaking sweet, right?!

 

 

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