Book Review: Regretting You by, Colleen Hoover

Regretting You by, Colleen Hoover

Summary: I suppose I am back on the Colleen Hoover wagon with yet another book of hers. This story is about a girl named Clara and her mom, Morgan figuring out that someone they both loved, deceived them in a way and how they are navigating that. Being a 16 year old girl, Clara blames her mom for what is happening in her life and in turn it’s causing their relationship to become strained. Morgan, is trying her best to be Clara’s mother, but at the same time is young herself and doesn’t know exactly how to reach her daughter. This is the typical story of a teenager rebelling against her mom and everything that goes along with that. There are a few other plots sprinkled in as well- like affairs, betrayals, first loves, etc. but nothing to write home about.

Thoughts: This type of book is exactly why I steer clear from reading romance novels. This is the run of the mill romance story with a predictable ending. It was written fairly well, but again, not my style. Why did I choose to read it you may ask. Because Colleen Hoover’s writing is captivating and once you pick up one of her books, it’s hard to put down.

Criticisms: In most of the other Colleen Hoover books I’ve read, there was some kind of plot twist at the end. I feel like the plot twist came at the beginning and then we saw how that situation was handled throughout the rest of the book. I didn’t like this because that’s what made the book predictable in my opinion. Regardless, a quick and easy read.

Rating: 2.5/5

Book Review: Confessions by, Kanae Minato

Confessions by, Kanae Minato

Summary: I’m not even sure where to start with this book. If I could sum this book up in three words they would be: page turner, psycho, and repression. This book is about a teacher who announces to her class that she’s quitting mid school year and won’t be a teacher anymore. BUT, there’s so much more to this story than that. The teacher’s daughter dies suspiciously at the school and the teacher thinks a few of her students were involved. Each chapter of the book is from a different person in the class’ perspective and it all ties together at the end. Without giving too much of this story away, this book is a revenge story between the teacher and her students.

Thoughts: Typically I don’t read too many translated books, but I saw a review for this one and decided to give it a try. The style of writing is interesting. It’s quite possible that the translation doesn’t explore the author’s true meanings behind situations, or that there aren’t specific words in English for the Japanese sayings, but nonetheless this story was interesting.

Criticisms: This is a perfect example of a revenge story. There were some points that were extremely fictitious, and others where it would be crazy if it happened in real life. Another qualm I have is that there were a few parts in the story that were the slightest bit difficult to follow along to and piece together what was going on.

Rating: 3.8/5

xoxo,e

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

“If there’s even a slight chance at getting something that will make you happy, risk it. Life’s too short, and happiness is too rare”

Book Review: Layla by, Colleen Hoover

Layla by, Colleen Hoover

Summary: Leeds and Layla meet at a wedding. They are in an instalove relationship and get married shortly thereafter. All is good in their relationship until Leeds’ psycho ex hookup girl went to his house and shot him and Layla. This book is about Layla after the accident and how Leeds tries to take Layla back to where they met to help her recover.

Thoughts: This book was weird. This book has elements of supernatural beings so take that for how you’d like. It was pretty decent and a quick read, but I don’t think I’d read this again.

Criticisms: This story was okay, but wasn’t the greatest to me because it involved supernatural beings, soul switching, etc. I’m not even sure what genre I’d put this book under. I don’t think it was romance, but I don’t think it was supernatural.. I can’t really describe how I feel about this book, but the best I could describe it as would probably be taking a sip of hot chocolate and not being satisfied because it’s Luke warm rather than hot..

Rating: 3.8/5

xoxo,e