VernetteOutLoud

The Darkest Child

The Darkest Child
The Darkest Child
by Delores Phillips

My rating* – 5

This book gets a 5 because I didn’t just read it…I lived it and I LOVED IT!

Set in Georgia in the late 50’s you can expect the elements of that time in history – racism, lynchings, fighting for equality – but that is all happening in the background. This story is about Rozelle Quinn or Miss Rosie, narrated by Tangy Mae Quinn her 7th and darkest child.

Tangy Mae is coming of age in time when Georgia was also coming of age. She is intelligent, she wants to finish school when finishing the 11th grade is unheard of in her family, she is curious about boys and she (like the rest of her siblings) is a victim of severe abuse. Her abuser? Miss Rosie!!!

Miss Rosie is freaking crazy. You want to look away, you keep praying for a silver lining and you continue reading because in your heart of hearts you just know it cannot get any worse, it just can’t….and then it does. And after only three chapters in you will be plotting the most painful death you can imagine for Miss Rosie’s. At least I was.

Delores Phillips delivered on this her debut novel. The plot was well-crafted and the themes were all relatable despite the extreme dysfunction. There is deep love and bitter hate existing in the same space. I mean this is the kind of story that book clubs are created for – it was chosen as this month’s pick for my club and I cannot wait to discuss this horrific yet somehow beautiful story.

Some of my favourites line were:

    “In less than five minutes our mother had taught us to never touch her metal box, and the true meaning of fear. I wondered that day if I was the only one in the room who knew that there was something terribly wrong with our mother.”

    “Satan is not going to leave. The only way to get him out is to invite God in, and God is not welcome in my mother’s house.”

    “I touch my scar to remind myself that I am not a coward. I am a Quinn.”

The Darkest Child is the most engrossing story I have read since Room by Emma Donoghue. I devoured it in just over eight hours and I didn’t want it to end. I wanted it to go on and on so that I could get some closure. But it when it ended it was in the perfect way. You have to read this book. You just have to. If only to come back here and discuss it.

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*my personal quality ratings are the scores I give books on a scale of 0-5 based on my personal opinion of a book. 0 is “birdcage liner” and 5 is “off-the-hook good”

The Night Circus


The Night Circus
by Erin Morgenstern

My rating* – 2.9

This review contains spoilers.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance. – Book Description courtesy GoodReads

I wanted to like this book and I tried hard to. But like the two magicians trapped in this monochromatic prison of their own “creation”…I too felt trapped in the imagination of Erin Morgenstern. And this was not a good thing.

“Fierce competition” my ass. This “competition” was a beautiful ballet of tit for tat. Nothing fierce about it. While reading this book I kept getting the feeling that the writer was envisioning how the scenes would look on the silver screen. While at first tolerable, Morgenstern went into so much detail in some cases about the “amazements” of the circus that after a while it was just boring. She would do well to learn that it’s okay to let the reader’s imagination do the heavy lifting sometimes.

There are two suicides and a murder, so there is that. But it felt gratuitous somehow. This circus does not have animals thank the literary gods for that, but there are ageless magicians with no shadows (vampires?) and some ghosts thrown in for good measure. There is glass-shattering sex which made me laugh out loud. Also not a good thing. Celia and Marco’s love story is wooden and there were shocks of red hair everywhere. Oh and Morgenstern must have said the circus smelled like caramel at least 10 times.

I gave this book an almost 3, because the prose was well written but other than that I just wanted it to get to its point. I think some of the scenes will be magnificent to see on-screen – the book is being made into a movie this year so Morgenstern has achieved her real goal.

My favourite line was:

    Wine is bottled poetry.

Because you will need lots of it to get through this book. There are fifteen different POVs and keeping up with the time jumps gets tedious very quickly. Good luck making the relevant connections. This book had potential because it deals with some pretty heavy stuff – love, death and living a life worth living, dreams and dreaming and how we perceive the world around us. But it never quite gets there. The story is slow and the descriptions of everything while beautiful is ultimately boring.

I will however, go see the movie because Hollywood magic – beautiful actors, awesome soundtrack and the power of green screens, with an explosion thrown in – just might take this story to level it was trying so hard to achieve otherwise.

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*my personal quality ratings are the scores I give books on a scale of 0-5 based on my personal opinion of a book. 0 is “birdcage liner” and 5 is “off-the-hook good”

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

The end is near...

The end is near…

My rating* – 5

“The end was near.” -Voices from the Zombie War

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead‘?” – Book Description courtesy Amazon.

We had nationwide power outage from a little after midnight until morning on March 29th this year and my first message to my family was “ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!!!” To say I’m intrigued by zombies will be putting it mildly. Ghosts and demons and clowns that live in sewers scare the crap out of me but voracious zombies I’m ok with. Go figure. And while I haven’t seen the movie and I have no particular interest in seeing it either…I simply LOVED the book. Yup, that’s right I gave it a 5 because I LOVED THIS BOOK!

Max Brooks can tell a zombie story! Told documentary style, which I suppose is what an “oral history” would be, Brooks spanned the globe getting Z-War accounts from different people, from different time periods during the war. I was enthralled from “Patient Zero” all the way to the end. It was a hard to put down book. I devoured it…cuz…BRAINS!!! There is a particularly horrifying underwater scene, that stayed with me.

And of course there are people who will argue whether zombies could actually exist or not, all I’m gonna say is when the zombie apocalypse begins, this Trini is gonna be prepared. Here’s a scary-as-eff fun fact for you: Scientists recently found a “zombie bacteria”.

Solanum aint too far behind if you ask me.

Yes, the book lacks a central character to follow or care about, which is the reason I’m not interested in seeing the movie…because what is Pitt’s role really? This is no Night of the Living Dead, or rather The Walking Dead which I am a huge fan of! We’re not following a group of survivors, trying to live in a flesh-eating-zombie world, where the government and society have crumbled and technology is a thing of the past. We get to follow Brooks/UN PostWar Commissioner who in my opinion was the central character in this “documentary” as he focuses on survivors around the world ten years after the war. We find out how technology failed them back then, why governments collapsed and why zombies ate most of the world.

Brooks explores hefty themes like fear, education vs superstition, warfare (the arms and ammunitions described are simply breath-taking), politics and most importantly how we deal with change. There were grave consequences on a worldwide scale because of how change was dealt with. Some of these consequences the world is still dealing with by the end of the book because there are still some places under the control of zombies.

Brooks scores on originality and message and now that I know that we eventually win the Zombie War…I plan to read The Zombie Survival Guide…because I wanna live to blog about it!!!

***UPDATE***
Looks like I wont be seeing the movie after all. This review says it all.

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*my personal quality ratings are the scores I give books on a scale of 0-5 based on my personal opinion of a book. 0 is “birdcage liner” and 5 is “off-the-hook good”

Red Circle Days

book cover

Red Circle Days
by Leah Vidal

My rating* – 5

There are moments in our lives that are imprinted into our very soul. Moments that don’t require a photo album or memory book for us to revisit them time and time again. Some may bring to life the very feelings of sheer happiness they brought the day we experienced them. Others bring the heart wrenching sorrow we spend years trying to erase.

These are moments that don’t need a reminder or a red circle on a calendar date, our hearts wrapping around them much like the tiny box on a calendar, keeping them contained only to bring them to the surface each year. Red Circle Days is a collection of those moments that I will forever carry with me, thought-provoking moments and stories which have left an indelible imprint on my very soul. – Book Description courtesy Amazon

When Stephanie over at When Crazy Meets Exhaustion wrote her review on Red Circle Days I knew it was a book I wanted to read…and soon.

So said, so done. I downloaded it in a matter of days.

As promised, this book was a thought-provoking, quick read and I know I will be going back to some of my favourite chapters often. Leah shares with us, moments in time throughout her life, in a series of short essays. With themes like, Family, Love, Coming of Age, Friendship and Death of loved ones these essays are intensely personal, but are common to all of us. This was something I really loved about this book. The fact that through her stories, I could relate them to my own life and some of the experiences I have had along the way was awesome!

My favourite chapter was “All grown up”; Leah shared the moment she knew she had stepped through the gateway to adulthood. Her story hit close to home for me. My mom was dying of Ovarian Cancer and despite my cousin’s urging me to maybe consider a hospice, I knew where she would want to be when that time came and I was determined so fulfill that wish.

In “Counting blessings, counting sheep..” she shares how a moment of desperation resulted in a serendipitous discovery in the blessings department. It is a definite must read! And hey…the lady likes Walking Dead – gotta love her!

At the end of each chapter, she poses a question for the reader to consider. Thinking about those questions and coming up with answers was like a walk down memory lane and this made the book even more special to me. I definitely want my Book Club to read and discuss this gem of a book. I want everyone I know to read it. We all have our own red circle days and I thank Leah for this poignant reminder that it is good for the soul to remember and celebrate them. Always.

Leah blogs over at Little Miss Wordy go check her out!

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*my personal quality ratings are the scores I give books on a scale of 0-5 based on my personal opinion of a book. 0 is “birdcage liner” and 5 is “off-the-hook good”

The Fault In Our Stars

The Fault In our Stars

The Fault In our Stars


The Fault in our Stars
by John Green

My rating* – 3.9

This review contains spoilers.

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs… for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.-Book Description courtesy GoodReads

When I realised the book was “a cancer book that was not a bullshit cancer book” I had to steel myself against all that I knew was going to come.

Many times during this book, I thought: Who is John Green and why does he think he can write a book like this? What authority does he have on this particular subject matter? And why use children with cancer? What’s his end game really?

There were times I felt like I was reading “A walk to Remember” if it were written by Diablo Cody. Gus and Hazel are teenagers but they don’t behave like teenagers. They act and speak like John Green. The supporting cast: parents, friends etal…all act and speak like John Green.

Thankfully, John Green is cool in his own nerdy, witty way. But let me warn you now, if you are planning on reading this book, make sure to have Google near at hand. When I say Green is a nerd…I kid you not. He expects you to know what a harmartia is or Zeno’s Tortoise Paradox. I felt like I was getting a vocabulary lesson, and when I thought about it, this is a good thing since this is a book for young adults. They could learn something reading this book. I certainly did.

I gave this book an almost 4, because it was better than ok, but not the best book ever. I liked that he made the distinction between a “cancer story” and “your story” because there is a huge difference. I also really identified with Hazel’s mother as care-giver. We the Care-givers have a really tough job and often don’t get the chance to really own what we are feeling. No matter how devastated you are, you are not the one with cancer. You are not the one who is dying. We have to put it all aside for our loved ones.

My favourite lines are:

    What a slut time is. She screws everybody.

    I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things

    That’s the thing about pain…it demands to be felt

    Grief does not change you. It reveals you.

What I didn’t like about the book, is what I liked about the book. It was pretty bittersweet because it was a sharp reminder of my own experiences with cancer. This tells me, that this is an adult story being played out by teenagers. Green also claims that it is “not a cancer book” ..but it so is. The whole draining of Hazel’s lungs (a side effect of the drug/cancer) was way too close to home for me. Green described the whole process in detail. This happened with my mother, we had to drain her lungs regularly. And it was one of the first indications that her cancer was back. The parts where Gus planned his funeral and then he had Hazel and Isaac write and share their eulogies…my mother planned her funeral down to the clothes she wanted us to wear (she wanted us all in white). At this point, I was back to thinking…what gives him the right?

It is a tear-jerker, but a lot of my tears had to do with some very adult questions these teen characters were pondering and I was thinking about them in the context of my mother and what she must have been feeling and thinking and asking herself.

Oh and there is teenage sex.

This book explores some pretty heavy stuff – love, death and living a life worth living. At the end of our lives, no matter how much time we had, we all want to know that it was worth it…our choices were worth it. Green’s end game? “A short life, can be a good life.”

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*my personal quality ratings are the scores I give books on a scale of 0-5 based on my personal opinion of a book. 0 is “birdcage liner” and 5 is “off-the-hook good”