Sunday Coffee – Readathon Wrap-up

Posted on April 29, 2018 by Thistle

I kinda failed this year’s Readathon. Heh. Things were all set up for me with the kids gone, but y’all, my reading mood is just not there these days! I started my day by trying and culling three books: Stalking Jack the Ripper, City of Masks, and Change Your Schedule Change Your Life. Then I finally started both an audiobook (Red Sister) and physical book (Since We Fell) that I enjoyed. Unfortunately, I just don’t think I’m cut out for Readathon anymore. As I sat around and read all day, I just started to get tired, and stressed about the stuff I wasn’t doing. So it was a good thing I got the text that gave me a break.

A college friend, Nicolette, was in town this weekend. She and I haven’t seen each other since 2006, and before that, we hadn’t seen each other since around with Morrigan was born. We’ve kept in contact mostly via social media, so I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to get together with her for an early dinner. My Readathon essentially ended around 4pm. I spent three hours out with Nikki and her boyfriend, which was an amazing time. I posted the following picture – my favorite of the four we took – on one of my RaT updates, but I’ve got to post it again here, because it’s just awesome!

That dinner date made my night. Afterwards, I got home, finished Since We Fell (only had about 70 pages left anyway), and then greeted Jason and Morrigan as they finally made it home from Kansas. After that, I was just done for the evening. Instead of moving on to more books, I hung out with them, watched Trading Spaces, learned all about KU, and eventually went to bed.

Today, I’m stressed! I have to catch up on all the stuff I missed, because I really don’t like missing stuff, heh. I’ll be fine, but honestly, I think this may be my last Readathon. Perhaps next time I’ll participate in another capacity, hosting a mini-challenge or donating prizes or cheering others. I still want to be involved, but I think my reading brain has gone a route different from the way I used to do Readathon, and it’s time for me to accept that and let it go. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy myself, because I did – I love this event and the nostalgia that I have about it. I’m glad I signed up. I just think I’ll sign up differently next time!

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Readathon – Spring 2018

Posted on April 27, 2018 by Thistle

I wasn’t sure if I would sign up for Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon this time around. My TBR pile is pretty low, my reading has been unmotivated, and Jason will be out of town taking Morrigan on a college visit. However, my mom decided to take the other two boys for the weekend, and I have the place to myself! And hey, why not? The setup doesn’t get much better than that!

So here goes! I signed up, and tomorrow I’ll begin at 7 am. (Or, well, whenever I wake up, as I plan to sleep in a bit if at all possible. Probably not, since cats.) I have a kind-of pile of possible reads (or possible culls), and some audiobooks queued up. No goals, no particular designs other than to go with the flow and enjoy what I can of the day. So that I don’t clog up your feeds, I’ll be posting all updates below on this post, again starting tomorrow morning!

Updates

7:00 am – Good morning! As anticipated, the cats got me up well in time to participate from the beginning of this thing. Heh. My reading pile today consists of a scattered assortment of books, mostly ones I have marked to investigate. Part of what my day will be all about is culling those which won’t work for me. I also have several audiobooks lined up, and that’s where I’ll be starting while I get ready for the day: Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco.

10:30 am – Off to a decent start this morning. So far I’ve culled three books from my list, and I’ve settled on a physical book (Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane) and an audiobook (Red Sister by Mark Lawrence). I’ve walked 2.3 miles this morning and spent the rest of my time with a cat or two on my lap (ha!). I’ve looked into a few mini-challenges and quite enjoy the spread of them this year. I particularly love that they’re all-day this time!

2:00 pm – Not much else to report. Been going back and forth between my audio and physical books. Quite sucked into the latter!

7:30 pm – Took a couple-hour break from reading to go meet up with a friend that I haven’t seen in 12 years! She just happened to be in town, and that took far more precedence over RaT. I’m back now, and since my last update, I’ve just continued making a bit of progress on my books. I’m almost done with my first physical book and hope to finish tonight. The audiobook is 44 hours long so I definitely won’t finish that one, haha! But I’m making progress.

9:30 pm – So…well, not much else happened in my Readathon. I got home from my evening out in time to finish Since We Fell right before Jason and Morrigan got home from Kansas. Then my eyes were pretty tired and my interior design book had tiny print, so I decided to watch Trading Spaces with Jason instead. Now I’m heading to bed. So nothing too impressive today – one finished book, about three hours of an audiobook, three books culled from my list, and a few mini-challenges that I played with. I hope the rest of you have a great reading night!

Running Stats

  • Books: 1 finished, 1 in progress, 3 culled
  • Pages: 450
  • Audio: 213 mins
  • Exercise: 47 mins
  • Mini-Challenges: 4

Mini-Challenges

Pre-Event Survey
1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?
San Antonio, TX

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?
Interior Design Master Class (I’m such a dork)

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?
S’mores!

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!
I’m a long-time blogger who has adapted this undertaking to fit all my various interests. 🙂

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?
It’s been a year since I participated, but mostly this time I’m going to concentrate on going with the flow. I have several other things happening today which will take me away from books, but I’m okay with that. No stress!

Anthology: I’d love to see an anthology about synesthesia and all the different ways it can be experienced!

Page Pen Pals: I would love to be pen pals with Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle – she’s smart and funny and I admire so much how she grew into herself despite her curse!

Mid-Event Survey:
1. What are you reading right now? Since We Fell, Red Sister
2. How many books have you read so far? None completed…
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? I’m looking forward to finishing Since We Fell and maybe getting into my interior design book.
4. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? Tons! My biggest was spending a couple hours out with an old college friend, and I just totally said that was okay! Always nice to see old friends!
5. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? I’ve done so many of these, not much surprises me these days I suppose?

*****
And finally, thank you to all the wonderful hosts, cheerleaders, volunteers, prize-donors, and all the rest of the people out there who make this event wonderful!!!!!

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged | 2 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – 100 Happy Days

Posted on April 25, 2018 by Thistle

Most people have heard about the 100 Happy Days project by now – an attempt to take a photo of one thing that makes you happy each day for 100 days. This is my third time participating in the challenge. This time, my goal is to help me with my one-word for 2018: Cultivate, as in to cultivate a life that I love. To cultivate happiness and contentment with my life as-is, even though I struggle with depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues.

So why do this challenge a third time? There are two parts to that:

Part 1: The Challenge
As I said, this is the third time I’ve done this thing. The first time was in 2014, when we were in the process of moving to Boston and my life had fallen apart completely. It became a touchstone in a difficult time. I repeated the challenge the next year, in the days we were preparing to move back to San Antonio amidst personal and family chaos. Both times, the process of taking happy photos for 100 days in a row helped to ground me. I was able to work through very tough times. I posted the photos both on Instagram and on Facebook, and while Instagram doesn’t work in albums, I have a dedicated album both on FB and on my home computer where I can see just those 100 photos as a snapshot of my life. Despite the pain in those months, there’s nostalgia there, and I credit that entirely to the 100 Happy Days Challenge.

Part 2: The Motivation
This time around, I’m not in quite so negative a space. Rather than a lifeline, I want to use this challenge as a tool to appreciate the good in my life. I’d been thinking about doing the challenge for awhile, but I chose my start date for a specific reason. On April 14th, I’d gone 38 days without drinking any alcohol or having any binges. I’ve said before – my reasons for cutting out alcohol weren’t to do with drinking too much, but because drinking tends to make me binge-eat, and that isn’t helping me with weight loss! In the 38 days of no-alcohol-no-binging, I lost just over six pounds, the first real loss I’ve seen in quite some time. My scale was moving steadily downwards. But then on April 15th, I had a couple glasses of wine, and ended up binging for the rest of the day, as I often do. My streak was broken, and my weight bumped up a few pounds as it always does. So I’m starting again. April 16th was Day 1, and I decided to correspond my goal of 100 days alcohol-and-binge-free with 100 days of happy photos. Wish me luck!

If you’d like to follow along, I’m posting once again on Facebook and Instagram.

Posted in Wellness | Tagged | 3 Comments

I’ll Be Your Blue Sky, by Marisa de los Santos

Posted on April 23, 2018 by Thistle

It’s the last few days before Clare’s wedding, and her misgivings about the whole thing have reached a crisis point. As she struggles through a panic attack, she’s comforted by an elderly stranger named Edith. Edith gives Clare the courage to call the whole thing off before making this mistake. Clare goes home feeling like a monster, no longer sure what to do with her life. Then Edith dies and for unknown reasons leaves Clare a house, a sanctuary where she can find herself in peace. Only Clare is not just finding herself – she’s discovering Edith and the mysteries of a long life of service and dangerous secrets.

So you know how I’ve been saying I needed to read something to break through the monotony of mixed-review books? Well, people, this is it! Marisa de los Santos always delivers, but even more, this is a book made up of old friends: Clare, Dev, Cornelia, Teo, the whole big sprawling family and almost-family of Love Walked In and Belong To Me. Though I hadn’t read either of those two books in nearly a decade, I remembered every single face and voice, and it was lovely to revisit them all as they’ve grown up and older.

Marisa de los Santos is a master writer. She weaves Edith’s story into Clare’s both in the present and in chapters told from Edith’s younger days. This isn’t the sort of mystery where you discover a culprit or event, but instead, you unravel the life of a stranger and the reasons two lives intersected. In the meantime, Clare deals with fallout from her broken engagement and rediscovers the true meaning of home and family. It’s this last one that gets to me personally – I think one of the reasons I love de los Santos so much is that she just gets family in the way that I’ve always related to it. Big, sprawling, messy, tangled, not-always-blood family. That network of support that should always be there even though it’s not for everyone, and the beauty that exists when you’ve had that cradle of love, even when it’s broken and messy and difficult. It’s perfect – not idealistic, but real and present in all the good and bad ways.

The characters, too, are real and messy and not always good. I love watching several of the characters struggle with demons that are trying to lead them into anger, violence, and menace, and how they are trying so hard to channel that anger into good. It doesn’t always work, and it’s not always enough – that’s real. Heartbreaking, but real.

This is just what I needed right now. I have a feeling I’ll be going back to read through those older books again soon.

Notes: First, you don’t need to read the older books to follow this one. It’s completely standalone. Second, a trigger warning: This book heavily discusses physical and verbal spousal abuse.

Posted in 2018, Adult, Prose | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Sunday Coffee – Landscaping Progress (Tier 1)

Posted on April 22, 2018 by Thistle

About a month ago, I mentioned that we were starting to landscape our front yard because it’s on a major slope that has seen a lot of erosion. We’ve made some progress on the first tier of the yard and I thought I’d update y’all. Pictures have been posted along the way on my Instagram but I only want to do larger updates on the blog.

Big lesson we learned from this project: Starting at the top and working our way down is actually a really tough way to do this. We thought it would be easier, because starting at the bottom and working up would involve a lot of projected height calculations that may turn out to be all wrong. But it turns out that while this doesn’t involve a lot of guesswork, it does mean that we had to start building into the next tier in order to prevent the first one from eroding before we get to Tier 2. Ah well. Another thing we now know: Either there was never a lot of topsoil in our yard – we’re literally digging through mostly rocks and bricks and debris stuck in tough hard-packed dirt – or most of it has eroded away. There was maybe an inch of actual soil.

On the bright side, that means we all got to learn how to use a pickaxe! That was fun. Also it means that we could sift through all the “dirt” we dug up to find larger rocks for backfill on the walls, and gravel for underlayment on the paths. What was left over was mostly semi-organic sand that we could mix with soil to use as a base for plants that will eventually populate Tier 1.

The design and prettifying with plants and such isn’t done yet of course. But the structure is complete. It’ll look better once there are no longer beds of soil just sitting around, and once we put some potted plants and fun stuff on the little flagstone patio outcrop area. We’re waiting on the local water agency to come out and give us all the coupons/discounts etc since we’re xeriscaping, and then we can buy the plants (we already have them picked out). The plants and stacked stone walls are going to be awesome together, and the pathway feels like a cobbled street, and I love that we have a little patio area to play with. Plus the semi-expansion of the driveway (see below) is nice since our driveway is way too narrow. That will still need to be completed during Tier 2.

Speaking of Tier 2, Jason has already started making plans for that level, but it might take awhile before that’s fully complete. It’s getting a lot hotter around here, plus Jason has a huge work project that will take a lot of his time for the next three months. But at least we should get the plants in next week or so. Then the yard will look pretty, even if it also looks unfinished. I’m looking forward to the day when every person who walks by doesn’t stop and survey the project, ha!

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White Sand Volume 2, by Brandon Sanderson and Rik Hoskin

Posted on April 20, 2018 by Thistle

Since this is a continuation of a series, I’m not going to say more about the story, but instead direct you to my review of White Sand Volume 1. Most of what I have to say about this book is already said at that review, so in brief:

I’m not a huge fan of graphic novels normally, and this art style in particular is difficult for me to follow. Additionally, being a huge fan of Brandon Sanderson and having read many of his books, I can see just how much is missing (in characterization, world-building, politics, religion, magic system, connection to the rest of Cosmere…) when a book of his is adapted into GN form. There is no actual published novel available, or I’d be reading that, though I’m happy to say that Sanderson allowed his newsletter subscribers to get their hands on the rough draft novel that makes up the backbone of this adaptation. I have it and will read it at some point, which will hopefully help me understand and enjoy the GN series better!

Posted in 2018, Adult, Visual | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Wellness Wednesday – Fitbit Charge Review

Posted on April 18, 2018 by Thistle

Last week, I mentioned that I had to replace my Fitbit One tracker with a Fitbit Charge. This was not something I wanted to do. I wanted a hip-clip pedometer that tracks steps, miles, and elevation, which is exactly what the One did. The Charge tracks those three things, in addition to your heart rate, which is supposed to make the daily calories-burned number more accurate. (Oh, and they both track sleep, but I never really used that feature on the One and didn’t really care about it for the Charge.) So now, after using the Charge since the beginning of April, I have a review: it’s awful.

Wearing
The Charge is a wrist-tracker, which means several things. First, it’s frickin’ hot to wear in Texas. Second, it’s big and bulky and obviously screams, “I’M A FITBIT!” Third, it has metal contacts in order to track your heart rate, and after only two weeks of wearing it, I started getting a rash in that area. (Not uncommon for me – I’ve had this kind of metal contact allergy before.) It’s hard to see in the picture, but the top half of that indentation is red and raw and shiny, starting to shred. And that indentation? That’s after wearing the band loosely.

Accuracy
This is a four-part thing:

  1. The so-called heart rate monitor is completely inaccurate, and it’s even worse when you’re doing any kind of exercise with your upper body. For example, when I’m using a pickaxe and shovel, my heart rate soars, but you could never tell from the wrist monitor because it slides around no matter how tight you wear it (because of the sweat from it being frickin’ hot to wear), so it never gets a real measure of what your heart rate is doing.
  2. As for steps, it seems to count them accurately only if you’re actually just walking around. If I go to the grocery store and push around a cart for an hour, I might get 100 steps out of that hour. If I’m carrying something in my hand so that my arm doesn’t swing as I walk, I might as well not be walking at all. Seriously, Fitbit, if your wrist-trackers can’t track your steps when your arm is up/immobile, it isn’t accurate!
  3. As for the sleep tracker and calorie tracker, I have no idea how accurate those are. I don’t really care about the sleep bit, and the calorie tracker seems to be extraordinarily high. Example: I took a two-mile walk on hills at an easy 20-min-mile pace. My Fitness Pal says that’s worth about 233 calories. I imagine that’s low, because it doesn’t take into account the hills. But the Charge tells me I’ve burned almost double that, at 455 calories. Um…that’s just TOO high. My daily calories burned have shot to an average of over 3000. Even my no-exercise, low-step days are around 2700. That’s a huge difference from what the One gave me (2300-2700), and the One seemed to be pretty spot on in terms of daily calorie tracking.
  4. The elevation tracker doesn’t work very well either. I actually got the Charge instead of one of the smaller, cheaper Fitbits because it tracks elevation. However, I can go up five flights of stairs and have it only count the elevation as two flights. My One usually told me that a walk around my neighborhood – with lots of big hills – was about 25 flights of stairs in elevation. The Charge calls it under 15, sometimes as low as 10, and it varies from walk to walk even if I use the same route. Highly inaccurate.

Positives
There aren’t a lot of positives in this situation, but I will highlight the few perks I enjoyed in my couple weeks wearing this thing. Every hour, if you haven’t walked 250 steps, you get a little buzz to remind you. Similarly, the thing vibrates and celebrates when you hit your step goal. Lastly, it vibrates when you have a phone call or text and it shows the caller or message on its display. Those are lovely features, but they certainly don’t outweigh the rest of this mess.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what I can do if I want to continue having a step counter. Most companies have gone the wrist direction, no matter how many people complaining about it online (and there are a LOT of complaints). In the meantime, I’ve rebooted my old One and will see if I can keep it limping along until I find a better solution. If all else fails, I suppose I’ll have to get a Fitbit Zip, which is a hip-clip that tracks steps only. Not what I want, but what else can I do? Does anyone else know of any solid, accurate hip-clip trackers similar to the One?

Posted in Wellness | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Ten(ish) Most-Read Authors

Posted on April 17, 2018 by Thistle

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is a freebie! Since I’ve been blogging now for a bit over ten years, I figured I should take a look back at my top ten most-read authors since I began the blog! Of course, when I counted everything up, I discovered that I have to put eleven authors on the list, as there’s a three-way tie for the 10th spot. In order of book numbers:

11. David Levithan (8) – I figure that books written with other authors count, and so if I count both joint-writes and his own books, Levithan squeaks into my most-read count!

10. Marissa Meyer (8) – Every single book I’ve read by Meyer has been part of the same series/world/spin-off, and every single one of those books loved.

9. Suzanne Collins (8) – Did y’all know she wrote a five-book middle-grade series as well as the Hunger Games series?

8. Neil Gaiman (9) – I was surprised to see I’d read so many by Gaiman (including joint-writes, like with Levithan), because I was initially so turned off by his writing when I first read him. But I’ve enjoyed quite a bit by Gaiman, and he’s one of the very first authors I discovered because of other book bloggers.

7. Maggie Stiefvater (9) – This number is only going to go up as she has many books I have yet to get to.

6. Maureen Johnson (10) – Johnson is another author I only discovered due to blogging, and I’ve loved almost every single one of her books over the years.

5. William Somerset Maugham (10) – This one makes me laugh. Maugham is the author that helped me rediscover my love of reading back in 2001, and showed me that not all classics were the kinds they forced you to read in high school. I’ve read far more than ten of his books – 16 to be precise, not to mention all 91 of his short stories – but he was a prolific man and I’m sure this number will also continue to increase over time.

4. Diana Wynne Jones (13) – I only began reading Jones’ books in 2012 and they’ve been hit or miss with me, though one of my favorite books ever certainly comes from her!

3. JK Rowling (14) – This is no surprise, eh? I had a hard time deciding how to add up the number of books I’ve read by Rowling. The Harry Potter series, yes, but do I count reading the British version of the first book? How about the French versions of the entire series? In the end, I counted the HP books only one apiece, and the other seven books come from her other works, including her Cormoran Strike series and her joint efforts with other authors on The Cursed Child.

2. Scott Westerfeld (15) – I discovered Westerfeld early in the days of blogging and quickly read through just about everything he had on offer. He hasn’t put out a lot over the last few years, so it’s been awhile since I’ve read something by him, but he’s one of few authors who I pretty much trust to almost always deliver.

1. Brandon Sanderson (22) – Aaaaand we get to the number one slot, an author I’d never even heard of until 2011 and didn’t begin reading until 2012. Sanderson is now my very favorite author and I’ve read everything I can get my hands on. I’m now at that point where I either have to revisit books or just wait for the next one to arrive. Sanderson is one of very few authors whose books I’ll buy outright before ever reading them, because they are always, always worth reading and having on my shelf.

There you have it! My top most read authors since I began blogging! It’s quite a diverse group – adult, YA, classics, fantasy, literary, mysteries, authors that write alone or with others, authors who work in both print and graphic novel format…and to think, only three of these eleven authors are ones I found either before blogging or from a non-blog source! Just another way that book blogging has totally changed the way I read over the last ten years. Hurrah!!

topten

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged | 4 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Cat Drama

Posted on April 15, 2018 by Thistle

(my new “Freudian Sips” mug, ha!)

A good chunk of my readers probably saw what happened this week if they know me on Facebook. For the rest of the group, it has been cat-drama-central here in April!

So remember back when I said Jojo needed to go back to the Cat Cafe because he was really aggressive toward our cats? Well, that same day, we decided to give him another week’s trial. With no improvement, we took him back to the Cafe on April 2nd, the day after Atticus came home with us. I saw him again on the 3rd when I went to do Yoga With Cats. He was cuddly but eventually bit my wrist to tell me he was done with me, and went to play with the other kitties for the rest of the night. That’s the devil I’d come to know and love, heh. I thought he was adjusting well, and despite still feeling guilty and heartbroken about our decision, I was okay. Until a week later.

Last Tuesday, I suddenly received a bunch of cancellation notices for former yoga classes at the Cafe. Then my friend Stephanie, who goes to yoga with me, said that all classes were off the calendar until July. She wrote them on Facebook to see what was up, but didn’t get an answer that day. I started doing research around lunchtime that day, and saw that oddly, there were a bunch of negative reviews up on their FB page all of a sudden. They were all from former employees, making allegations about the Cafe. Some of the allegations I know to be true, others appeared to be exaggerations and didn’t tally with what I had experienced firsthand, and still others hinted at a possible Animal Care Services investigation with seizure of the cats.

(Jojo and Atticus)

This sent me into a panic. Jojo had only been back at the Cafe for a week, and I worried that we’d sent him back into an unsuitable environment, plus if he went to ACS he could very well be euthanized if not adopted in 30 days. Extremely distressing! Jason felt equally distressed, and he suggested we go pick him up from the Cafe and take him home again, just to get him away from all the mess, no matter how true or untrue everything was. He wrote to the owner and asked if we could pick him up, and she readily agreed. I went right then and there, spoke with the owner a bit (who told me her side of the story, allegations against former employees that had some truth and some exaggeration, as one might expect from both sides of a problem), and brought Jojo home.

The Cat Cafe is currently closed for the next month, and they have that time to get themselves in order. They’re under investigation and have several citations for code and health violations, plus they need to thin out their cat population and get the cats healthy before they can open their doors again. Frankly, I’m not sure I’m going to go there anymore, even if they can get themselves in order. Jojo came home with an upper respiratory infection and having lost over half a pound in the week he was there. We’re having to nurse him back to health all over again. As much as I loved the idea of the Cafe and grew to love the kitties there, I think I need to pull my support over to a different no-kill shelter that has better resources, management, and ability to care for rescue-cats.

In the meantime, Jojo is back home again, at least temporarily. We don’t know how it will work out long term, and we might be looking for a different home for him. We’re taking it one day at a time, focusing right now on getting him healthy again. Sigh.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 6 Comments

A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Thistle

Steffi suffers from a lot of mental health disorders, including severe anxiety, panic disorder, and selective mutism. She cannot talk except in rare circumstances or in the few locations/with the few people she’s most comfortable. Rhys is new at school, introduced to Steffi by their head of year because Rhys is deaf and Steffi knows a little sign language. For the first time, Steffi can communicate with someone without her voice, and between that and beginning a new medication for anxiety, she starts to improve.

Let me start by saying this isn’t a magic story where people with disabilities (physical or mental) suddenly get 100% better. There are no magic cures. One of the things that Steffi deals with all through the book and what frustrates her the most is that even when she’s happy and things are going well, anxiety or panic still strikes whenever it feels like it. Her voice will still disappear, even in moments when she most needs it. There is no “Super Steffi” waiting to pop out in the middle of a crisis. Barnard does a really good job portraying Steffi’s disorders realistically. That was my favorite part of this book.

The romance part – because of course you’re going to have a romance in a contemporary YA novel with that kind of book cover, no? – was also pretty cute. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, and there were a lot of barriers that kept erecting themselves between Steffi and Rhys. Again, that was a good, realistic portrayal, even if at times I felt like there was just too much here, like Steffi should remember that she has a life outside of her newfound boyfriend. Not unrealistic in first-love stories, but still, a bit too much for me.

Unfortunately, I have two negatives to go along with my two positives, making this the fourth book in a row that I have mixed feelings about. (I need something to break the streak soon!) The first has to do with the lack of breadth in the novel. I get it – Steffi’s world is small. There are perhaps half a dozen people she can actually speak to. However, she attends school, works at an animal shelter, and has two family sets (divorced and remarried parents) that she interacts with regularly. Other than Steffi, Rhys, and Steffi’s best friend, Tem, all other characters are few and far between. Even people like Steffi’s family only have short cameos, and I think there were only three or four student names ever mentioned. I didn’t feel like the world was entirely fleshed out, and that made the novel feel a bit tunnel-like. Again, I get it, Steffi’s world probably feels tunnel-like! But even if she stays as invisible as possible, others still exist for longer than a few sentences. It almost seemed as if the book could have been Steffi-and-Rhys, all other characters removed, to tell the story, and I would have liked to see her in a more populated world.

The second thing that bothered me was Steffi’s relationship with Tem, or really, with anyone other than Rhys. Many books don’t pass the Bechdel test, but this one was extreme about it. Steffi literally could not have a conversation with any other female character that wasn’t about boys. I know that romance is a big part of many adolescents’ thoughts, but this girl has far bigger things to think about than boys, and those concerns rarely cropped up in conversation beyond a quick mention. That was a huge downside for me. I loved that this was a story about living with a disability in a world that often ignores disabilities, and I would have liked to see more of that beyond the romance. Yes, there’s a lot about it when Steffi is just narrating, alone, but I would have liked to hear more when she was with others. Plus, I would have liked her to talk with others about things that were not just her disability and/or romance. I’m sure she had more in her life beyond those two things!

I do think the positives outweigh the negatives, however. It’s just so rare to have books that deal with disabilities in a down-to-earth manner, and I think it’s important to have stories like this one out there.

Posted in 2018, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged | 2 Comments