cae's book blog

gifted kid burnout rediscovering a love of reading

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more books with no reviews (yet)

graceling by kristin cashore how to make friends with the dark by kathleen glasgow

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just read a day no pigs would die. no review, just tears

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They Wish They Were Us

by Jessica Goodman

At Gold Coast Prep, you’re either a nobody, or you’re a Player, and Players get what they want. Jill Newman is ready to finish her senior year and go to Brown. Finally on top of the Player totem pole, the year should go smoothly. Until something from the past returns to haunt her.

Rating: 5/10 I wasn’t a huge fan of this book honestly. I think it was written well and the characters were developed, but it felt like it had a lot of filler, and it felt really slow at times. At chapter 9 of 26 I had figured out the mystery. I think it’s a book better suited to a slightly younger audience than me, though there is a tiny bit of spicy.

Highlights:

“We were desperate to recall the details of her, but we were also desperate to move on. The forgetting was nice sometimes, because we started laughing again, too...” (p 90)

“How could I be with someone who had not known her? How could you make a life with someone who never knew a whole chunk of you?” (p185)

“Sometimes it’s hard to know which qualities really define you, and which ones have been affixed to you by others so many times that you actually begin to believe them and claim them as your own.” (p256)

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Hate List

by Jennifer Brown

Valerie Leftman was a fairly typical edgy high school junior. She had friends, she had bullies, she had a long term boyfriend. Everything was fine. Until that boyfriend brought a gun to school, and changed Garvin High School for ever. Now everyone thinks Valerie was in on it, and she herself can’t for sure say she wasn’t. But five months later, she’s forced to face reality and attempt her senior year. With a bullet hole in her leg and a never ending sense of loss, she tries to survive in a town where everyone wants her dead.

Rating: 10/10 My first perfect of the year. Jennifer Brown owes me some new tear ducts at this point. I cried the whole time. Valerie was written so well, as a human, as a teenage girl, as someone trying to work their way through the world when it seems everything is against her. The care in this book over all is just beautiful. I don’t even really have the words to say the things I feel. This book deals with violence and trauma, so I would recommend it to someone that needs a good cry and won’t be triggered.

Highlights:

“That’s some sort of kid instinct I think. You could be in the middle of just about anything and if the bus doors opened, you stood up. It was one of the constants of life. You are born, you die, you stand up when the bus doors open.” (p 63)

“”Time’s never up,” she whispered, not looking at me but at my canvas. “Just like there’s always time for pain, there’s always time for healing. Of course there is.” (p 288)

“Now that I knew who I wasn’t, I was determined to remember who I was. Who I would become.” (p 403)

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One Step Too Far

by Lisa Gardner

Frankie Elkin has it made her sober life’s work to locate missing people. Timothy O’Day has been missing in the Wyoming wilderness for the last five years. In a spur of the moment decision, Frankie joins the final search party as they go out in search one last time. Little do they know, they’re not alone. Rating: 9.5/10 :: Holy cow this kept me on the edge of my seat. I’ve decided I have zero desire to hike ever again after reading this. The cast of characters are well built and despite Devil’s Canyon not being real, it feels as if you’re on the search with Frankie and the rest of the search party. Her struggles with sobriety, her lack of actual hiking experience, and her sharp wit all make Frankie an easy to love protagonist. I’d recommend this book to anyone that needs a reason not to go hiking, or someone that loves a thrill. Highlights:

“What do you remember most--the moments your parents genuinely tried, or all the times they definitely failed? I’ve never figured out that answer.” (p104)

“I am more than a finder of lost people. I am a repository of final moments, with too many of them having been seared into me.” (p161)

“At the end of the day, the people left behind matter as much as the ones who are missing. We mourn the ones we’ve lost but we agonize over the pieces of ourselves they took with them.” (p282)

“Maybe someday, I’ll no longer be just a shadow passing through, but a constellation of lives touched, people healed, differences made.” (p394)

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Verity

by Colleen Hoover

Lowen Asheligh is a struggling writer who isn’t sure where her next rent check is coming from. Verity Crawford is one of the most popular authors out there. After a devastating accident her best selling serious is left up in the air, and Lowen is tasked with finishing it. She’s left to sort through Verity’s office and what she finds is far more terrifying than any suspense novel. Rating: 9.5/10 Holy shit this book messed with my head. It’s so well written that I can’t wait to read more of Ms. Hoover’s writing. The book draws you in from the first sentence. There isn’t a chapter that feels like filler or a moment that doesn’t have a place. I don’t think I could say enough good things about this book without also spoiling it entirely. I’d recommend it to people who are fans of mystery and suspense. File this book under mysteries that will leave you scared shitless.

Highlights:

“Most people come to New York to be discovered. The rest of us come here to hide.” (p7)

“I was difficult. An emotionally challenging puzzle he wasn’t up for solving. Which was fine. I wasn’t in the mood to be solved.” (p21)

“The good thing about sins is they don’t have to be atoned for immediately.” (p64)

“And that’s what love at first sight is. It isn’t really love at first sight until you’ve been with the person long enough for it to become love at first sight.” (p73)

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Sharp Objects

by Gillian Flynn

Last summer, in Wind Gap, Missouri, 9** year old Ann Nash was found strangled to death in the woods behind town. Now Natalie Keene has also gone missing, and journalist Camille Preaker has been sent back to her hometown in order to cover what’s starting to look a lot like a serial killer.

Rating: 7/10 This was Flynn’s first novel and I think for that it’s a great read. It deals with subjects such as alcoholism, self-harm, sexual trauma and child abuse along with the obvious murder aspect. I liked the book a lot more towards the end, it definitely had a rough beginning in my opinion. I’d recommend it to those interested in mystery novels that don’t necessarily focus solely on the mystery aspect. 

Highlights:

“How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen.” (p88)

“It seemed to me that she’d been expelled into this world not quite formed. She was not ready for its weight.” (p110)

“I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions...Women get consumed.” (p293)

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How It Feels to Float

by

Helena Fox

Biz knows she lost her dad when she was seven. Biz knows she lost her bestfriend Grace last week. Biz knows she found Jasper awhile ago, and Biz knows how to float. On the surface, everything is just fine. Biz has her friends, Grace, the twins. But what lies beneath is not just fine, and Biz isn’t sure how to fix that. 

Rating: 9/10 Helena Fox does such a lovely job with this book, using a unique writing style to really bring you into Biz’s head. It’s hard to not connect with the character on levels beyond the surface. I cried multiple times through the whole book, so I have to say I’m pretty sure that means it’s good. Biz’s journey of mental illness and loss was portrayed in a real and believable way, a story that makes you remember you’re not alone, just like Biz isn’t.

Highlights:

“It’s so clear how far I’ve fallen. How far I am from where the stars are.” (p 58)

“I smile for the first time in approximately six days, or a month, or ever. Something inside me shifts, opens. It makes way for the possibility of something good.” (p 71)

“The rearrangements happen when you’re putting the parts of yourself back together...About sitting inside something good for a second and feeling that spread into and through you, filling in your lines.” (p181)

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The Stranger in the Lifeboat

Written By Mitch Albom

When a multi-billionaire’s yacht sinks at sea, only 10 people are left surviving on a life boat. Some members of the crew, people who had to work their whole lives for the bare minimum. The others part of the world’s elite, celebrities and moguls in their own rights. But after three days afloat, a mysterious castaway appears, claiming to be God. When you cry out to God for help in your darkest moments, you don’t really expect him to appear, do you?

Rating: 7/10 It was an easy read, I read it in one sitting. It contains a lot of small references to the Bible, one of my favorites was the castaway/Jesus appeared to go to sleep as a rainstorm appeared, after the other begged for fresh water. This is referencing Matthew 8:23-27. I had a few guesses throughout the book as to what was going to happen next, or about who the stranger really was. In the end it was very well written but not necessarily the type of book I like to read. I would recommend it to Christians and those who are struggling with loss or resentment.

Highlights (Doesn’t Technically Include Spoilers)

“It has always been a mystery to me, Annabelle, how beauty and anguish can share the same moment” (p35)

“...We no longer feel like passengers of anything. We are souls adrift” (p46)

“I realize now this was merely the weight of love that had nowhere to go.” (p140)

“...People always ask ‘Why did God take them?’ A better question would be ‘Why did God give them to us?’ What did we do to deserve their love...?” (p241)

“...I accepted this as a just ending, because I accepted the world as a just place.” (p 251)

“Despair has it’s own voice. It is a prayer unlike any other.” (p 254)

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Other Books I Read in 2021

for the sake of keeping a list:

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven  (9/10, sobbed) Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker (8/10, hooked in an instant) One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus (7/10, solved the mystery) Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt (10/10, sobbed, sobbed, sobbed some more)

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This Lie Will Kill You

by Chelsea Pitcher

Brett, Juniper, Gavin, Parker, and Ruby are all high schoolers desperate to get out of their hometown. After the events of a party the year before, scholarships are being withdrawn, so when the offer of a $50,000 dollar murder mystery scholarship appears, it’s a no brainer for them. But when they arrive, nothing is what it seems, and they must now solve a mystery to escape alive. Rating of 8/10 The book was entirely well written and the small details left as clues to the reader make the reveal at the end all the more satisfying. A quick and easy read, would definitely recommend to fans of thrillers and mysteries.