Book Review: Verity by, Colleen Hoover

Verity by, Colleen Hoover

Summary: Lowen is a nobody author who is scouted out to finish the three books in a series by Verity Crawford, a famous author who is no longer able to write due to a car accident. By chance, Lowen meets Jeremy, Verity’s husband to which offers his home to Lowen so she could go through all of Verity’s notes, outlines, etc. Lowen accepts the offer to finish the series and moves in to The Crawford’s home. When she arrives, she immediately feels like something isn’t right, and she’s right, there’s something not right in the house and it’s up to Lowen to figure out what that might be.

Thoughts: I. COULD. NOT. PUT. THIS. BOOK. DOWN. Everything about this book is what I enjoy reading- psychological thrillers, weirdos, and even some romance sprinkled in. Lost sleep over this book for sure, but rightfully so. It was a bit different than the other Colleen Hoover books I’ve read and it did not disappoint.

Criticisms: I didn’t really like how the author portrayed the ASD diagnosis. There was a part in the book that said one of the Crawford children’s teacher’s suspected the kid to have Aspergers Syndrome. This might just be because I have a background in education, but teachers should NOT be so quick to say a child has Aspergers. Aspergers is a form of autism and autism disorders spans almost indefinitely, therefore the teacher’s in the book would not have known that, AND for them to suggest a diagnosis, no thank you!

Rating: 4.5/5

Book Review: It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

It Ends With Us by, Colleen Hoover

Summary: This story is about Lily and Ryle, two people who couldn’t be more different from one another. Lily is a flower shop owner and Ryle is a neurosurgeon who never has real relationships. Lily and Ryle find their way to each other and Ryle discovers that he could in fact have a relationship with Lily. All is well until something happens between Ryle and Lily out of the spur of the moment. Not only this, but someone from Lily’s past makes their way back into Lily’s life. Lily now has to decide the future she wants for herself as not to follow in the same pattern as she is so accustomed to.

Thoughts: This was the first Colleen Hoover book I read (thank you Tiff!) and I literally could not put this down. Colleen’s writing is so easy to read and each chapter makes you want to keep reading more and more. I lost sleep over this book because of how enthralled I was with it. At first, you don’t want to believe what is happening with Lily and Ryle, but then you think about her past and what she went through and it all makes sense. The title makes sense! She’s such a strong heroine of a character. This book cover is probably my favorite out of all the Colleen Hoover books-it’s so pretty!

Criticisms: After reaching Colleen’s books, I’m starting to see slight similarities to events, personalities, or locations she uses throughout all her writing. This book has similar senes to Heart Bones. Not a criticism per se, but just something to note.

Rating: 4.5/5

xoxo,e

Go Green: Soap nuts

Steadily, for the past several years I’ve liked to make lifestyle changes to help reduce my footprint. Yes, I understand that one person cannot change the world, and a bunch of people cannot change the world for that matter, BUT we can all makes all changes little by little to help our Earth.

That said, recently I stumbled across washing agents called soap nuts. Soap nuts are berries that have been used since the ancient times for washing and for medicinal purposes. They create a washing agent when mixed with water so I’ve been using them in replan of laundry detergent. MY skin is extremely sensitive in the first place so I need to use laundry soap that doesn’t have fragrance. These soap nuts are derived from plants, have no sent, and apparently do just as good a job as your run of the mill detergent.

To use these, I take a few and put them in a tiny porous bag and throw them in the wash with the rest of my things. After a few cycles, you compost the soap nuts, and use a few more for the next few cycles. When I was doing research on these, I read that even though the washer doesn’t suds up like it does with regular detergent, doesn’t mean it’s not cleaning your clothes. Traditional laundry soap is just SO concentrated, AND people correlate seeing suds as being clean.

So far, they have been getting the job done. Of course, I am not rolling around in the mud all day everyday, so I can’t speak on the effectiveness of heavy duty stains, but for my day-to-day clothes, these seem to work just fine and don’t seem to have an effect on my skin.

Will I continue to use regular laundry detergent? Yes. If I have clothes that are extremely dirty and need a little extra TLC. But, rather than buying a new laundry detergent each month, I will only need to buy it every half a year or so.

xoxo,e