Tag: Handle With Care

Don’t Get Stuck in a Genre Rut

When I was younger I used to only read Stephen King, R.L. Stein, Dean Koontz, you get my drift, pretty much thriller and horror only.  When I was in High School, I stared my first job as a barista and found my co-worker’s copy of Nora Robert’s novel Lawless.  That was my intro into great Romance novels.  I very rarely left that comfort zone of those authors though. I had no idea the books I was missing out on. 

The past several years I have made changes in the way I choose what books to read and I have been picking up ones that I normally wouldn’t.  I join reading challenges that prompt me to choose books outside my comfort zone.  We are two months into the year so far and my genre resume has already been so vast, Literary Women’s Fiction, Contemporary Realistic Fiction, New Adult Romance, Literary Fiction, Crime and Comedy Thriller, Poetry, and Non-fiction Memoir.

Here are a few that I have thoroughly enjoyed recently:

I hope that this will give you the push to expand your reading beyond your comfort zone as well.  There is a whole world out there to explore.  Don’t be afraid to check them out.

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January Wrap Up

January Wrap Up:
3 Books
1,292 pages
Average Rating: 4.33

My Dark Vanessa 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Handle With Care 🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Upside of Falling Down 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Well I am a little behind in posting my wrap up but it’s been a little crazy here lately.

January was a pretty good month for me.  I stayed home and avoided all the madness going on around me in the country.  Having faith that somehow we as a society will work it all out. 

I read some great books!  I was hoping to complete 4 but I feel good about it taking into account how busy I was. 
We added 5 new reptiles 🐢🦎 to our collection.  Penelope (Penny) a Cherry head Red foot Tortoise, Echo a Bearded Dragon, and Ragnar, Lagertha, and Freya are our Shinisaurus Crocodilurus (Chinese Crocodile Lizards).  My husband does an amazing job on his enclosure builds.  So much goes in to getting everything set up for them that it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for anything else.  😄

My Dark Vanessa was definitely the stand out for the month for me and probably for the year.  Devastatingly beautiful. Enthralled … how can something so horrible be written so beautifully. I was captivated from the start. You don’t want to put it down. Be aware that this contains very graphic instances of sexual abuse to a child, at times it is very difficult to read.  The story goes back and forth between Vanessa as an adult and then as the 15 year girl reliving the juncture that changed her life forever. Definitely one of the best books I have read.

Handle with care is a heart jerker of a book for sure. Written in several points of view, directed toward the six year old daughter Willow who has Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a brittle bone disease.  Her parents are suing the OB-GYN for wrongful birth.  It’s definitely a conversation starter.

The Upside of Falling Down is a cute, easy, breezy New Age romance. Clementine wakes up in a hospital in Ireland with absolutely no memory; she was in a plane crash and she is the only survivor. 

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Book Review – Handle with Care

Handle with Care

Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Contemporary Realistic Fiction

“If you chose to stop a loved one’s suffering—either before it began or during the process—was that murder, or mercy?”

“I would never have wished for an able-bodied child, because that child would have been someone who wasn’t you.”

“You were Willow, pure and simple. There was nobody else like you. I knew it the moment I first held you, wrapped in foam so that you wouldn’t get hurt in my arms: your soul was stronger than your body, and in spite of what the doctors told me over and over, I always believed that was the reason for the breaks. What ordinary skeleton could contain a heart as big as the whole world?”

Six year old Willow was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, which is a brittle bones disease. She will have several hundred broken bones in her, most likely, short life, among an array of other disabilities that will cause pain and constant struggle. Her parents, Charlotte and Sean love her just the way she is, she is perfect. After a nightmarish trip to Disney World, they visit a lawyer who advises them they have a case for a lawsuit, just not the kind they were thinking, a wrongful birth suit.

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Book 29: New Hampshire

Blurb:
When Willow is born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, her parents are devastated–she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, a lifetime of pain. Every expectant parent will tell you that they don’t want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O’Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they’d been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of “luckier” parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it’s all worth it because Willow is, funny as it seems, perfect. She’s smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.

Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte had known earlier of Willow’s illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?

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