Review: The Fairer Sex Collection 4-6 by Micheller Miller

 I have read the fourth, fifth and sixth book in the Fairer Sex collection and the fourth one started with a bang. I think that I would give this a low 3.5 star rating.

In this story we follow a girl named Paige. I know the book title says Heidi, but this is written as a screenplay. Paige is the main protagonist as a 20 something college girl in New York. The narrator should be either David Attenborough or Samual L Jackson. Reading that sentence immediately made this book more enjoyable because every time the narrator part came up, I could hear Attenborough or Samual L Jackson in my head.. Most of the time it was Morgan Freeman. 

Paige is basically a gold digger and she is trying to sleep and bag all of these finance men. One of a meathead who fucks her in a bathroom bar and he comes, smacks her ass and leaves the bathroom. One wanted to roleplay as the same person. One had a small penis and he wanted her to say it was an awesome penis. There was a guy who picked her up off the street after she left the role playing guy and he didn't do anything and he told her he had been celibate for 8 years because he only wanted money.

There was one guy who had an app on his watch that notified him that he had an erection and he immediately got on VR to get off because he said that it didn't result in pregnancies, diseases or commitment. 

It just proved that wealthy couples are truly miserable because they think money will solve everything an that it doesn't matter how big your penis is, or if you can fuck good. One guy told her that she was mediocre on top and that her vagina was too stretched out to make him happy and that it wouldn't be a good match for him. He basically called her a hoe.

The true woman of this story is Heidi. She is married to a finance guy named Paul who is nothing like these guys in her screenplay. She tells Paul about her screenplay and that the character based off his job was going to rape and kill Paige because she signed a contract selling her soul. Paul and Heidi ends up having sex after talking and they fall asleep cradling Heidi's pragnant belly.

This is another bomb. It was so boring and plain. This story was about a woman named Clara who is out to eat with her husband who is a finance guy. He is at dinner and he is screaming into his phone and ignoring Clara. He goes out front of the restaurant and continues his call for a long time. Meanwhile Clara is feeling the judgemental stares and she is starting to get tipsy from the wine. She is also spiraling thinking about why her husband has not read her book yet.

He comes back and he asks about the movie that they are going to go see and she tells him that it is a foreign film with subtitles and he groans. They get to the theatre and they go to their seats. Clara locks eyes with the director who is similar in age to her husband. The director email her throughout the movie about her book. He invites her backstage and Claras husband is in the bathroom on his phone. 

Clara meets up with the director and they end up fucking behind the screen. Clara is getting off on the fact that the people in the theatre can't see them fucking. When the movie is finished, her husband shows up and gets pissed that she was not in her seat and he puffs up once he sees that she is with the director. She looks at both of them and sees the same thing and she walks away alone. So dumb.

I have found my least favorite of the collection. If you have a eating disorder.... PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS BOOK OR THIS REVIEW!

 This follows a woman named Lauren and she has just had a big art gallery opening. She is so happy and buzzing, because she did it.. but there is one nagging feeling. A person that she has wanted approval from didn't show up.

She gets back to her home and it feels like there will be a moment between her and the doorman, but there is zero spice in this story. She is getting comfortable and the doorman tells her that there was a gift left for her. He brings it up and the gift is a box of cupcakes from her mother. Her mother is the person that didn't show up. Lauren gets realliy pissed at the cupcakes and her mother because her mom knows about Lauren's eating disorder. 

Lauren throws them against the wall and has a full blown meltdown. She then proceeds to eat every single one and the frosting off the wall and then goes into her kitchen and eats out of her fridge. This is the triggering part. The author goes into detail of Lauren making her self get sick. Lauren compares the feeling of vomiting to the feeling of being choked while being intimate and I did not need to read that. I was so disgusted by this story, that I do not remember how it ended. 1 star!

Review: Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

 

I have been wanting to read this book for the last few years, and I picked it up because of the Goodreads reading challenge bookmark. I started this on the 15th of February and DNF'ed it on page 147 on February 20. I could not get into this book and I was just fed up with the main character. I also hate the writing style but since it is translated, I don't know if it is the author's writing or the translation.

This book won a major award and was pitched as a mystery thriller. There was nothing mysterious or thrilling about the first half of the book. It was mainly about a woman who lives in a isolated area in the winter and she has two neighbors. One dies from choking on a bone and our main character calls him Big Foot. She creates names for things and doesn't use their actuall names. The neighbor who got her when Big Foot was found, she named him Oddball. 

They go into Big Foots house and they proceed to put him into a suit. They also see traps and a animal head on the table. When they leave to wait for the police, Janina takes the animal head home with her and she buries the bones that were with it, but not the head. 

She cares about animals more than people and she is a total Karen when it comes to the smallest rule breaking, even the police are over her constant whining. She also tries to tie every bad thing to astrology and the planets being in line and houses are the reasons why major historical events happend. 

She also thinks that the deaths are occuring because the animals are behind it. This gave me major animal farm vibes and it just gave me the ick even more. There was also a part where she sees a woman who is pregnant and there is a thought about miscarriage, which pissed me off. 

I just do not see the point in this story and what the hype is.

Review: The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

 

Was not interested in this series, but I am wanting to complete all of the Goodreads challenges this year and I also want to go see the movie. I have read two Freida McFadden books before and find myself thinking about 1 of them every once in a while, and that one is The Crash. I hope that one gets adapted one day.

But, this is the first book in the Housemaid series. We follow a girl named Millie who is interviewing to be a maid for The Winchesters, who is a wealthy family. Millie is recently unemployed and living in her car. We learn that she is an ex con and that she has been estranged from her family for the duration of her incarceration. We learn later why she got arrested. She also meets the young daughter and compares her to a robot.

It is a couple of days later and she gets the job after thinking that her background check has failed her. She goes back to the gorgeous house and meets the landscaper who speaks only Italian and gives her a shake of the head and says one word, which eventually translates to danger.

Millie walks into the house and she sees that it is filthy and a complete pigsty. Millie is appaled that the house could get so bad in just a few days. Millie immediately gets to work and cleans the house from top to bottom. She is shown her room which is a little attic space with a cot. She is grateful but realizes that the lock to the door is on the outside and there are gouges in the wood.

The next day, Millie wakes up to see the kitchen a complete disaster and Nina chucking everything around looking for her PTA notes that she left on the table. She blames Millie for throwing them away and this is the start of the whiplash that is Nina. She is bi polar and you don't know who you will get.

People around town know that Nina has a past where she was institutionalized and has a mental disorder. Millie and Nina's husband Andrew grow close. Nina takes her daughter to summer camp and Millie and Andre have a night out on the town in Manhattan. 

Andrew is so fed up with Nina, that he kicks her out. I laughed so hard at the next part because Millie offers to help Nina pack her stuff. Nina of course gets pissed and when she is done, she is struggling with the bags and to open the door and Millie runs to open it. 

After a few days of Millie being the homewrecker, shit goes down and we really learn what is going on and who the real enemy is. I had my suspicions from the mid point, but I was annoyed with the characters. I was questioning whether the next books follow the same characters and questions get answered in the epilogue.

Review: The Fairer Sex Collection 1-3 by Michelle Miller

 I started a new collection on Kindle and it is a bunch of short stories. I am going to be reading these while I am at library events with me daughters. It is Tuesday, the 10th and I read three today while sitting in my truck. These are so unrealistic and mood changing. I will be reviewing the three I read today in one post and then repeat with the rest.

The first is about a woman named Candace who is on a first date with a guy named Patrick. This is the third attempt at a first date between these two because he has had to reschedule twice. The story immediately starts off with talking about how Pinky and the Brain was the superior duo in the Animaniacs show because they got their own spinoff. 

They hit it off and Patrick invites her to leave with him and head to one of their places. He asks for the check and she is fantasizing about his fingers and hands and his mouth when suddenly, he asks her to split the check. He claims that it is because of all the equality that women want and if women want equal everything, then they should split the bills.

The thing that confused the hell out of me is that she pulls out an itemized list of everything a woman does and has to have and has yearly costs for each for male and female. It makes Patrick pay the full bill and they leave together. I was so confused and was second guessing myself about continuing the series and this was only the first one. 

I was seriously considering not reading this but then thought, why the fuck not. This was so mind blowing and a what the fuck did I just read. We follow Meredith who is going to Whole Foods after work because she has been craving a certain item all day. I have never been to Whole Foods and I will never go because I am traumatized to step into a bulk food section now.

She is waiting in the long ass lines and this dude behind her starts chatting her up and he is eating the food he is going to purchase. He tells her to go ahead because she is going to buy it anyway. She ends up eating it all and wanting more. She doesn't want to lose her place in line and the guy named Patrick, which made me think that the stories would be connected by the same guy, but they are not.

She refuses to leave the line and Patrick pulls out his phone and gets on Tinder. Meredith gets frustrated and goes back to the bulk food aisle and gets more of her choconola whatever. Patrick shows up behind her and he swipes on her Tinder profile. 

Next thing we know, they are full blown making out and getting naked. He pulls her tit out right in the aisle, What makes it even more awkward and hard to believe is that there are still customers around them shopping and pulling things off the shelf and grabbing food from the bulk food bins.

Why would you get food from where to people are fucking????? 

I went straight into the third story and I think I should have waited because I was still reeling and thinking about the Meredith story. I ended up giving this story a 2 star because Alicia just pissed me off. She works at a bank and she has wealthy clients. She is an aspiring artist and the guy in this story knows. He offers her a chance to sleep with him for a million dollars. He wants her to take the money so she can quit the job and focus on her art.

She refuses at first, and then she accepts. She is so against the whole thing and is doubting and overthinking the whole thing while walking to the hotel room. She patiently waits and then waits all night for him to show up. She gets piss drunk from the mini bar and then she leaves. The next morning, she goes to work and there is an email from the man with the bill from the hotel. He has sent her the bill for the mini bar charge and he has taken it out of the 1 million dollars he has already put into a Cayman account for her. 

I just did not see the purpose of this because what kind of man would just give a million dollars away and not show up to what he proposed. I also didn't like Alicia and what she planned to do with the money. She was going to take a trip to Paris. Bitch.... WHY????? 

I will be reading the next three stories this weekend when my kids have another library event.  

Review: The Baby Dragon Cafe by A.T. Qureshi

 

The first book I downloaded with my kindle unlimited. I had so many negative reviews for this and was expecting to dislike it, but I enjoyed reading it. The relationship could have been more fleshed out and not so instant with the feelings and declaration of love, and there was a smut scene that definitely could have been longer. 

We follow a girl name Saphira and she owns a cafe in Starshine Valley and she is the only business in town that allows people to bring their baby dragons inside. She learns very quickly why the other business owners forbid them and that is because they are menaces and very destructive. 

One day a baby dragon completely destroys the espresso maker and Saphira is crumbling because she feels like her dream is slowly going down the drain because of money and the constant repairs she is having to do. A guy named Aiden comes in after his baby dragon runs into the cafe. Saphira is immediately smitten with the little basalta dragon Sparky and of course Aiden. Aiden is party of the wealthy Drakkon family and he is very introverted an shy. 

He sees that Sparky acts differently around Saphira and he offers to pay her to train him. She agrees because money, and immediately she does fantastic,but it won't be great if Aiden doesn't stick around to bond with his dragon. 

I love the back story of how he got the egg and why he is hesitant to do anything with Sparky or even get close because he doesn't want to take part in the illegal fragon racing that his family is apart of. Aiden and Saphira get closer and they end up becoming a bonded couple with Sparky. 

I loved the Mount Echo trip where Sparky did his rituals and there were close encounters in a hot springs with our couple. My favorite part was the epilogue where Aiden gets the gem back that Saphira got from the cave when she did the outsider ritual. I love that it was similar to how Sparky was described and after finishing the book, I wanted fan art of the ring. 

I gave this a 4 star because I do think that the smut could have been more detailed, and I would want a cover change eventually because the dragons on the cover do not depict the main dragon in this installment. 

Review: Behind the Veil by E.J. Dawson

 

I am going to make my Netgally reads a major priority this year and this book was the oldest download on my to read shelf. I really really enjoyed it and it makes me want to get back into watching Ghost Adventures. 

It is set after WW1 and we follow a woman who is living in Los Angeles and she has moved from Britain because she got chased out because of her work. She is a medium and she is legit. She has rules and routines for herself to keep her self grounded. She will refuse murder cases and she is all about giving closure to clients. She refuses to tell them how their loved ones have died because that will require her to go into the death and she could feel everything and she may get too far in that she may die in the same way.

One day a man named Mr. Driscoll comes to her door and begs her to come help his niece because she is having terrible nightmares and screaming about a man or dark shadow doing things to her. Mr Driscoll offers her money and she is refusing because he has seen Letitia without her veil and that is her comfort, along with her gloves. He touches her and she immediately see a dark shadow standing behind him and it takes her back to what made her go insane and have to be sent to an asylum.

The reason she left Britain is because she lost her husband in the war and she was pregnant. She went to a seance hosted by a woman who did not know what she was doing. She welcomed something evil into the circle through the ghost of Letitia's husband, and the evil spirit killed Letitia's baby and possessed her to kill the seance witch host.

There is another plot where some people are coming to Letitia to help find their missing daughters. She sees that they are being held in a dark place but she is adament that she cannot tell them where they are located or if they are still alive. One man gets so pissed, he goes to the police and tells them that Letitia is involved in the missing girls. It gets her in deeper when one of the girls that gets kidnapped is Mr. Driscoll's niece, and that the evil spirit who has been tormenting her, is the culprit.

I gave this a 4 star. I wanted to give it a 5 star because I was hooked and spooked, but then the ending was romance and not what I wanted.