“I saw my old high school guidance counselor in a bar called The Duck Blind one night and he said, “I thought you’d end up in a gutter, dead. Glad to “I saw my old high school guidance counselor in a bar called The Duck Blind one night and he said, “I thought you’d end up in a gutter, dead. Glad to see you made it.”
✮✮✮ 1/2
This is the truly moving memoir of Natasha Miller. She grew up with an abusive mother, and a father that didn’t appear to help her. On Christmas Day at age 16 she was dropped at a homeless shelter. But she never gave up, she learned to live with what she had and started multiple money-making ideas over her years, eventually owning a multi-million dollar corporation that she started from scratch.
The first half of this memoir had me crying. Natasha’s childhood was the type of thing you hear about on TV when a child has been killed, but luckily it never got out of hand that much for her. I felt so sorry for her that nobody in her life never really tried to help her get out from the situation she was in. However, the second half of this memoir showed exactly how Natasha handled herself, and how she made the decisions to do what she now does. She had ups and downs, but don’t we all?
I’m really not sure how to feel now that I’ve finished this book. Was it written in good heart, hoping to help others going through abuse? Absolutely. Does it show that anyone can get to the top if they try hard enough? It sure does. But there just seemed to be so much missing between the lines. It contains her history of all the hardships she faced, all the phases she went through building her business, but I just feel there seems to be something missing. Is she happy now? Has she found love again? Does she want to? What does she aspire to do now? Maybe I’m being overly picky but it just felt like so much more could have been said....more
“Part of me wished I could turn back the clock and tell young Jade that it would be okay. Another part of me understood that the decisions I made when“Part of me wished I could turn back the clock and tell young Jade that it would be okay. Another part of me understood that the decisions I made when I was growing up were necessary; they helped make me the girl I am today, and I should never want to change a thing.”
✮✮✮✮✮
Based on a true story. Jade Xiu is half Chinese and half American. While she lives in America, she speaks Chinese at home, and is expected to teach her mother English from the age of just seven. Being a female in a Chinese household comes with a responsibility, and her parents expect her to be the good Chinese girl. Jade on the other hand, just wants the dream American life and to become a rockstar. She starts hiding stuff from her family, and starts leading a double life that ends in a downward spiral.
It has been a long time since I’ve connected with a book on this level. The teenage angst, the want to fit in, but feeling like you don’t fit in anywhere. The need to feel like you’re pleasing everyone, when you can’t even please yourself. This really is a story worth reading. Told from Jade’s viewpoint, the story shows exactly how parents ideals can be taken in the wrong way by children, and how everything they say shapes the future choices of the children, especially coming from a background where so much was expected of children.
The characters were really well developed, and the relationships between them were incredible. Aaron was one of my favourite characters, because he would have gone to the end of the earth for Jade and that was clear from the very scene when he entered the story, unfortunately just not to her. The relationships and things happening throughout this tale can be seen in so many ‘youngsters’ in real life, and how it is a real issue when you feel like you can’t open up.
Lena Ma has written a masterpiece here, and I honestly don’t think any review I write can do it justice. My emotions were all over the place!...more
“What exactly makes someone a killer? Nature, nurture? Both?”
✮✮✮
This is the true crime memoir of Stuart Campbell, his brother and the murder of Daniel“What exactly makes someone a killer? Nature, nurture? Both?”
✮✮✮
This is the true crime memoir of Stuart Campbell, his brother and the murder of Danielle Jones. Alix Sharkey writes about their lives growing up, his own feelings, and thoughts now about his these could have affected his brother if he’d only known. The tale of family secrets, abuse and deception, and how a little innocent boy can grow up to be a murderer…
This was a really interesting true crime novel. I’d never actually heard of this case before, and I wonder if that’s because I was only 4 years old when it happened. I just can’t believe I didn’t hear it in the news last year. I liked the way this was written by Alix, he would flip back between the events of Danielle’s disappearance, and their childhood, and Alix managed the switch in his writing really well.
I love to read true crime mainly from a psychological perspective, as that’s what I’m studying at university. I like to see how crimes have affected not only the people involved, but the families too, and Alix really did show how this affected him. However, as much as I loved reading his thoughts and feeling, especially surrounding his own daughter, Fiona, finding out as well as during the trial, his life seemed to be way more inserted than his brothers. Some of which I felt was unnecessary to the background.
Overall, this was a really good piece of true crime writing, especially if you love to know about the background behind why his brother may have killed....more
“Travelling with someone could tell you things about a person that even living with them couldn’t. It could make or break a relationship. Maybe people“Travelling with someone could tell you things about a person that even living with them couldn’t. It could make or break a relationship. Maybe people getting married should be required to hitch to Mexico on $50 before the wedding.”
✮
I actually feel like I shouldn’t be giving this book a rating technically, because I could not finish it. Maybe if I had somehow managed to make it to the end I would be able to rate it higher, but honestly, just no.
This book was based around the fact that Cynthia’s mum is dying, and these are all the things she never told her mother about. The short stories cover many things but I didn’t feel like there was really a tale there at all. Did I need to know that Cynthia hitchhiked to Mexico because she had nothing better to do, except the fact she should have been studying for her exams. Okay kudos to her for making it all the way to Mexico and back with bare minimum money, but it seemed like the most tedious boring adventure ever, and obviously hitchhiking can be dangerous so there’s that too. Where are the feelings? The lessons learnt?...more
“Everyone ignored the finger marks on Mom’s throat and smiled as we ate.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Shelly brings her past to life in this book. It’s true-crime meets “Everyone ignored the finger marks on Mom’s throat and smiled as we ate.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Shelly brings her past to life in this book. It’s true-crime meets memoir. The very first chapter is about her mothers death in a house fire, and is so well written to capture all her emotions and thoughts in the moment. The book goes on to detail the history between her family over the years, and how from the age of just three or four she knew her father was abusive. He gets charged with arson and murder, and it goes to trial. During and after the trial, so many events occur within Shelly’s life, but especially her link to religion.
I feel like this book isn’t what I was sold. It is true-crime, but only until approximately the half way mark. Afterwards Shelly goes on to detail her life years past the fire and the abuse, but I had such a massive connection to this book. Especially towards the end when Shelly fell really ill. I’ve been there, obviously not the same situation, but similar enough that I connected to the writing on a truly, personal level.
All I can say is…. Shelly I am so, so sorry that you had to experience all of that in your life. There were so many moments when I genuinely thought that surely everything you’ve experienced couldn’t get worse. But, d*mn was I wrong. Nobody deserves to experience all of that, you really deserve happiness now.
I recommend this to everyone, and I will be getting my hands on a few copies after release!
Thank you to BooksGoSocial, Shelly Edwards Jorgensen and @netgalley for providing me with a copy!
“So long as the prisoners could believe in the greater good, they were not defeated. Witold's men perished in many terrible ways, but they did so with“So long as the prisoners could believe in the greater good, they were not defeated. Witold's men perished in many terrible ways, but they did so with a dignity that Nazism failed to destroy.”
Would you sacrifice yourself to save thousands of others?
Now I’m not usually one for non-fiction reads, however, once this won the Costa Book Awards in 2019, it went straight onto my TBR list. I’m not much of a history buff, and if we got into the topic of Auschwitz, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you much, other than the odd fact.
This book, however, bought Auschwitz to life. It was a really gripping tale of one man, who really did go above and beyond to gather intelligence on the camp and try and save his camp mates. Witold Pilecki is one of the great―perhaps the greatest―unsung heroes of the second world war ...
The things mentioned in this book were incredibly shocking, and I can’t believe some of the tales told about the camp and the escapes, the illnesses, the bribes, the things the Kapos would do for a laugh. It’s all unimaginable in today’s world.
This is really an incredible book, and for something so based in history, it is incredibly well written and easy to read. It makes you feel as if you are reading a thriller, when in actuality, it’s just the painful truth. And the ending was just destroying.
As a UK citizen, I am appalled at the length of time it took Churchill to react to the news about Auschwitz and try to do anything about the “death camp”, which is frighteningly shown throughout this book....more
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