2021 Popsugar Reading Challenge - Eat, Tan, Read

2021 – Book 3: A Book about a subject you are passionate about

I don’t know if passionate is the right word but it is a subject close to my heart. I hate that Depression and suicide is such a taboo topic that gets swept under the rug and people are embarrassed to discussed. Why is this disease viewed any different that diabetes or high blood pressure? Why does society look at people with depression and anxiety as weak? This is unexceptable and needs to change!

A big thank you to Brad Neaton for gifting me this copy!

Blurb:
Eric is an 18-year-old struggling with depression and teetering on the brink of suicide when he encounters a gorgeous, utterly fascinating plot twist named Jenny. They meet in an unlikely way, but soon discover they’re kindred souls. A heroin addict, Jenny is also caught between wanting to escape life and wanting to live. Despite circumstances conspiring against them, Eric takes a leap of faith and decides to try and help Jenny. The two become an endearing pair, connecting through shared struggles and a mutual desire to overcome life’s myriad challenges, and they embark upon an adventure that seems destined to fail.

Funny, irreverent, insightful, tragic, and raw, Because of Jenny explores many of life’s deepest questions while shedding light on what remains a little known epidemic. An unflinching portrayal of addiction, love, and resilience, it’s a book you’ll never forget.

2021 – Book 2: A Book about Forgetting

After my last two books, I need something a little lighter, they sure left a stone in my heart that is weighing me down. I think a little romance is just what the doctor ordered. And I love anything and everything Ireland. 💕

I think that we all loose ourselves sometimes, not necessarily amnesia but we get lost in our day to day life and forget who we are inside.
That is what I am focusing on this year. No “goals” to stress over, just doing things that make me happy.

Blurb:
For Clementine Haas, finding herself is more than a nice idea. Ever since she woke up in an Irish hospital with complete amnesia, self-discovery has become her mission.

They tell her she’s the lone survivor of a plane crash. They tell her she’s lucky to be alive. But she doesn’t feel lucky. She feels…lost.

With the relentless Irish press bearing down on her, and a father she may not even recognize on his way from America to take her home, Clementine assumes a new identity and enlists a blue-eyed Irish stranger, Kieran O’Connell, to help her escape her forgotten life…and start a new one.

Hiding out in the sleepy town of Waterville, Ireland, Clementine discovers there’s an upside to a life that’s fallen apart. But as her lies grow, so does her affection for Kieran, and the truth about her identity becomes harder and harder to reveal, forcing Clementine to decide: Can she leave her past behind for a new love she’ll never forget?

Book Review – My Dark Vanessa

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Literary, Women’s Fiction, Dark Academia

“Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed,
My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest
My Admirable butterfly! Explain
How could you, in the gloom of Lilac Lane,
Have let uncouth, hysterical John Shade
Blubber your face, and ear, and shoulder-blade?”

“He compared my hair to the color of maple leaves, slipped poetry into my hands – Emily, Edna, Sylvia. He made me see myself as he did, a girl with the power to rise with red hair and eat him like air.”

“Shielded by the desk, he reaches down and pats my knee gently, gingerly, the way you might pet a dog before you’re sure it won’t turn mean and bite you. I don’t bite him. I don’t move. I don’t even breathe. He keeps writing notes on the poem while his other hand strokes my knee and my mind slips out of me. It brushes up against the ceiling so I can see myself from above – hunched shoulders, thousand-yard stare, bright red hair,”

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2021 – Book 1: A Dark Academia book

A Dark Academia book
(A book that has an academic setting, with characters that explore dark urges, crimes, or dark secrets)

This book has been on my TBR pile for too long and I have heard good things about it. So I am going to start the new year off with this one first. I think it fits so perfectly with this prompt too.
I love the cover, it’s so beautiful. I love the black and white with the deep purple spine. It just draws you to it.

Blurb:
Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

New Year – New Challenge

Who is excited for a New Year?!

I did read some really good books last year, you can check them out in my 2020 Ratings and Review page but I am so excited for what is in store. I have some great books on deck. I will be finishing up my 50 Books, 50 States challenge, I have 23 left to go. I have also joined the 2021 Popsugar Reading Challenge as well! They have a printable list on their site you can download if you join in.

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