Hopefully, he’s not related to Charles Manson, but then, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Mark was here in the country last month, giving a talk about not giving a fuck. Which is great, since I don’t in general. However, I thought I’d give the book a go to see what it was really about. I’d popped over to his website a couple of months ago and had a quick look, but didn’t stay.

So, let’s not give a fuck about this book…

It’s full of self-important shit.

He tells a lot of stories, and yes, it sucks that his friend killed himself, but in reality, the stories about Mark are of no importance to anyone BUT Mark. We all have our own, and yours are not money inducing, nor best-selling.

The book doesn’t help you in any way, shape or form, it’s just about him, or some stories of other people. It’s definitely not self-help, so don’t bother there. And if you can’t handle the word fuck, A LOT, then again, don’t bother. It’s everywhere.

What this is, is a whole book about one man claiming to not give a fuck when he actually does, he just doesn’t realise it, or maybe he does and just doesn’t give a fuck. It’s all about him, which, I guess was the publishing house’s point, but there is nothing to be learned or gained from the self-centred all important ramblings of a Gen Y who thinks his own shit don’t stink (Aussie saying).

As far as I know, he holds no degrees, certificates, licences in any kind of psychiatry, psychology, mental health areas etc, yet, here he is, spouting his typical narcissistic Gen Y bullshit that shows, in reality, how incompetent some Gen Ys really are.

He was, and possibly still is, incompetent at getting his shit together, and so, felt the need to possibly watch a lot of Oprah, or read a lot of books, and then spout everything he’d read that we’d all read and watched and heard thirty years ago and learned then to not give a fuck.

That’s what Gen Ys seem to be doing these days. They’re stealing good shit from experts, pretending to be experts themselves, and in actuality, that shit was seen thirty years ago on Oprah when you pissants were still shitting in your diapers, tucking your high school uniforms into your knickers, or pulling the wedgies out of your arse.

Gen Ys are so dead set on believing they come up with this shit, when they just come across as half-baked try-hards who think they can espouse top notch advice like a ten-degree-wielding expert.

You can’t, and that’s all there is to it.

God help the fact people think this dude is akin to Buddha, or the Dalai Lama, because he fuckin’ ain’t.

As for the second book, Everything Is Fucked…I’d say at least 2/3 was stories from everyone and everywhere else, not much from him except for him espousing his usual self-indulgent bullshit. Oh, and I didn’t think you gave a fuck, so why write a book about hope…

God knows how this guy was published, but then trad pub houses only want to make money, and if you have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of followers or likes, then they’re heading in your direction. You’re nothing but a cash cow to them, and when the well runs dry, like so many other authors, Mark will fade into obscurity because the only time he wrote books was when a trad pub house paid him to and he STILL owns nothing of his own books. Signed a deal and got screwed over for the long run. Bet he’ll give a fuck then…

But then, it’s not like I need to give a fuck, now, is it.

 

 

 

 

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle in the UK and The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle in the US (apparently they didn’t want to get it confused with the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)

The author, Stuart Turton, was in Australia earlier this year and that’s when I first saw it. It’s touted as a story about a character coming back seven times, into the bodies of other guests to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle.

The way I got it, it sounded like Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day.

It was anything but.

It was long, drawn out, thick with descriptive paragraph after paragraph and suffocated me with details that weren’t always necessary.

It jumped between characters and days, and became somewhat confusing trying to keep up. The main character of Aiden didn’t know who he was, who he could trust, and how this was all happening.

As he jumped into each character, how he knew and spoke of things that he had previously not come across, thought of, or mentioned was not explained, and you had to struggle to keep up with how could he possibly be figuring these things out without having come across them before.

I read until the end, expecting this to be a murder mystery in the guise of a Miss Marple or Poirot. Sadly, it was not, and left me so stumped at the end I felt bitterly disappointed in the resolution, and like my time had been wasted on what could have been a good simple murder mystery.

The reason why it was happening was not fully explained, nor was why they were at Blackheath in the first place, except that it was because of the family. They were all criminals stuck in a loop until they could figure it out and get out. Get out of what? Jail? Purgatory? Who the hell knows? Towards the end I expected aliens to pop up and claim responsibility for the stupid game like in Under The Dome. The ending was so utterly ridiculous.

Was the murder solved? Sure. Did Aiden and Anna get out? I actually don’t know. I cannot stand endings that are not fully explained. It’s the same as when a TV show is cancelled and you never get your resolution ending.

Maybe I need to google this book to see what it’s actually all about.

I give it a 5/10.

 

Three Little Lies by Laura Marshall is the follow up to her first book, Friend Request.

Overall the story was better than Friend Request, but the layout was annoying, jumping decades and telling the story from different characters point of view. It was hard to keep up with who was telling the story.

There were some things left unfinished, maybe that’s the way they were planned. What Tony was dying of, probably alcoholism, what secret Sasha was really hiding, why Leo kept lying to Ellen, why Ellen was so blind and stupid, why Karina was still so scared ten years later.

I figured about halfway through the book that the person Karina was talking about could be pinpointed down to two. Tony or Nick. I was veering toward Tony, but nope, it turned out to be Nick.

Funny how it was Karina who finally decided to get strong in the end, but only after Ellen forced her into going with her to Olivia and Tony’s house, and Daniel came to the rescue.

I’m over psychological thrillers, I have to say. They are all the same; an insecure woman finding out her life is a lie. All the same concept, different names, different locations, different lie.

They’re boring, but clearly not going away.

It’s time authors stepped away from each book and wrote something new to show us they can write in different genres other than the one they just released in, instead of continually writing the same book over and over.

And I’m wondering if the title was taken from someone else’s book. Trad pub houses come up with great titles for books, but they don’t always align to the actual story, and giving a book a similar title to others is annoying as it gets confusing. Pretty Little Liars, Big Little Lies, Three Little Lies etc…

“Two best friends, one fateful night”. Well, weren’t they three best friends? Is it referring to Ellen and Karina? Or Ellen and Sasha? And Ellen never actually lied; she just made the assumption and believed it, so then was it Nick’s lie as well? Sasha’s, Karina’s and Nick’s lies? Or Sasha’s, Karina’s and Ellen’s lies?

I give this book a generous 7/10

 

 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

I don’t cry during many books, but this one hit a nerve on all fronts.

I LOVED IT.

It kept me reading, wanting to learn the secret that Evelyn had to tell, the tall tales of her seven husbands, the fame and fortune she amassed along the way, and why she wanted Monique to write it. There was a twist I did not see coming, although my brain was working overtime to guess what the twist was, I certainly didn’t expect it to be what it was.

This story was like a fictional retelling of an old Hollywood version of Elizabeth Taylor’s life. The men, the money, the fashion and jewels.

Evelyn was no different to any other star back in the day, always striving to be the best, get the best roles, marry the hottest hunk of the time, most of them did back then. And yes, many turned out to be gay.

Poor Harry, he and Evelyn loved each other dearly and his death killed me.

I’m surprised it wasn’t explained more clearly. He and Evelyn were flying home that night to their daughter, but for some reason he went to see his lover, got drunk and crashed his car, killing his lover and putting himself within hours of death.

It made no sense that he would do that. Not after talking to his daughter on the phone that morning, telling her they’d go to Wiffles the next morning. The only reason I can formulate, after finishing the book, was that he’d been speaking to his lover, his lover had given him the letter/he’d received the letter, and they’d gotten drunk and maybe argued on the way home and crashed.

Why no one else found them, or called an ambulance beats me, but then it was the set up for the story.

Evelyn sobbing by his grave killed me even more. So did Connor’s death.

It’s not hard to go through husbands or wives these days. These days are no different to those of Hollywood past. Men beat their wives, you grow apart, you cheat. It’s all the same, no matter what era, no matter what country. Marriage, followed by a divorce, was the norm, all for covering up the fact many stars were gay, and the studios dictated their lives.

I loved it (despite what I thought were its minor issues), probably because I love stories of old Hollywood, and the hardcover is awesomely green.

But damn you, Taylor Jenkins Reid for making me sob my eyes out and needing to take antihistamines and anti-inflammatories to calm the swelling down after reading it. And crying again after re-reading parts to write this review.

I’m giving this book a 100/10. And yes, I know it’s two years old, but seriously, I just never find these books until years have gone by.

 

I don’t get to read many books these days, other people’s that is. Usually, I’m so entrenched in reading, re-reading and editing my own that I don’t have much time.

I also have that weirdo thing of thinking I’ll absorb the book and sometime down the track start writing it myself. So I try to refrain from reading everyone else’s books when I’m writing.

But, in a train of thoughts and ideas, one led to another. I was trolling Book Depository for Nancy Drew books when I saw the “people who also bought” section underneath. I clicked on book after book after book and most of them sounded really interesting, so I made a list.

These next two books were on that list.

One Of Us Is Lying, by Karen M. McManus, may have been released in 2017, but I’ve only just hear about it. It sounded interesting, and so I borrowed it. I gotta say, it’s one of the few rare books that actually made me 1 – want to buy it after I’d read it, and 2 – want to know more about what the characters got up to after the end.

For those who haven’t read it, here’s the blurb...

On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention.

Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule.

Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess.

Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing.

Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher.

And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app.

Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention Simon’s dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn’t an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he’d planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who’s still on the loose?

Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.

I’ve never read Pretty Little Liars, but have seen The Breakfast Club, and this book has been described as a mix of both, and it definitely has that Breakfast Club vibe going on. In an interview with Karen, she said – “I actually got the idea while I was driving and listening to the radio,” McManus said, noting that she gets lots of ideas that way. “I think there’s something about having half my brain engaged in a mundane task that kind of gives the other half freedom to roam.” During her drive, the song “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds from the Breakfast Club soundtrack came on. “I started thinking it would be fun to write an update of that movie, which I loved, but with some sort of a twist,” she said. “And the phrase ‘The Breakfast Club with murder’ popped into my head and it just stuck there.”

You can read the rest of the interview here at Publisher’s Weekly.

It’s a fairly easy read and described as a thriller. I wouldn’t call it a thriller, not like Jonathon Kellerman, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Lee Child etc, I’d call it more of a teen young adult suspense novel. But then I guess it all depends on what publishing houses call thrillers these days.

The story is told from the views of the kids involved, so it can get a little confusing when you try and remember whose point of view you’re in and who’s currently talking. There were some twists and turns even I didn’t guess, thinking I’d guessed right and it was the detention teacher. Nope, not him. Then I thought it was Maeve. Nope, not her. I kinda fell in love with Nate, guessed what Cooper’s secret was, was surprised by Addy’s change, but could have kicked her for the ending, and was completely surprised by who actually did it.

I’m not sure if I will buy this book. I generally don’t re-read books, and don’t really have the room for my own books and the collections I do have, but who knows. I might one day.

I’m definitely getting Karen’s new book, Two Can Keep A Secret from the library and will be doing a review on that too.

And google the book here, you’ll see all the versions of the cover from around the world.

I highly recommend this for a read. 9/10.

 

 

The next book was Friend Request by Laura Marshall, another book found on BD and the concept seemed really interesting. Here’s the blurb…

When Louise Williams receives a message from someone left long in the past she feels sick.

Maria Weston wants to be friends on Facebook.

Because Maria Weston has been missing for over twenty-five years. She was last seen the night of a school leavers’ party, and the world believes her to be dead. Particularly Louise, who has lived her adult life knowing herself responsible for Maria’s disappearance. But now Maria is back. Or is she?

Overall, the book dragged on. I became bored and couldn’t wait to get to the end. Another “psychological thriller”, which I’m sick of because they all sound the same and all have girl or women in the titles, it was only the twist in the story kept me going. I had to find out what happened to Maria. Henry (god bless that name), was adorable for a four year old, but alcoholic women who don’t get their shit together, or blame themselves for something they don’t actually know they did, shit me up the wall. I do not want to read about pathetically piss weak women.

I give the book 5/10 for the twist alone. Coz I did not see that one coming.

I have ordered her follow up Three Little Lies, but even though it sounds good, doesn’t mean it is actually good.