My Re-Read at Christmas time! A Discovery of Witches (All Souls #1) by Deborah Harkness

“It begins with absence and desire.

It begins with blood and fear.

It begins with a discovery of witches.”

I've been of the radar for a little while, well by my standards at least. I've been busy rereading my favorite book/ soon trilogy. Once the third book is released hopefully in 2013 *fingers crossed*.
If there is one read I would be stuck on a deserted island with it's the All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness.
Book 1

These books have EVERYTHING!!!! From witches, vampires, wolves, magic, actual history, alchemy, death, blood, birth, fear, desire, soul-mates, true love, god's & goddesses, humor, correct spelling & grammar. I could go on.

The love story that builds between the two main characters feels more real and alive compared to contemporary romance/ novels and movies. This book is about to be made into a movie by the way, read the book first, I already know there's not a way all that happens in the book will make it to the big screen, shame the book is that action packed. I'm sure the movie will still be highly entertaining.

At first I wasn't sure if i was going to make it through the book, it was a bit of a tough read in the beginning due to the intricacies that get broken down on alchemy. I now have a healthy appetite for wanting to know more on the many subjects that Harkness boasts in both books.

The relationships and interactions between all the characters is very human and not always pretty or black and white. The flow of this story is rich and kept me guessing (at the first read, obviously). I could not for see where any of them were going to go and what they were thinking. The love throughout this book filled my heart with hope for a real love such as theirs.

I learn something new and valuable every time I read this book.

A richly inventive novel about a centuries-old vampire, a spellbound witch, and the mysterious manuscript that draws them together. 

Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.

Debut novelist Deborah Harkness has crafted a mesmerizing and addictive read, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense. Diana is a bold heroine who meets her equal in vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and gradually warms up to him as their alliance deepens into an intimacy that violates age-old taboos. This smart, sophisticated story harks back to the novels of Anne Rice, but it is as contemporary and sensual as the Twilight series-with an extra serving of historical realism.

Notes before quotes: There is so much beautiful dialog and inter monolog  I didn't want to spoil any of it for you, the joy is truly in the discovery in A Discovery of Witches. Alas, I have many favorites between them, that I've left out my top and kept them for myself. I did appreciate the doubling meaning to this one, it's said during a game of chess. "'Don't try. Do it.' Hamish said gruffly. 'You're about to lose your bishop, by the way.'"

Quotes:

“Yes, I see that you are behaving like a prince but that doesn't mean you won't behave like a devil at the first opportunity.”

"I was planning on starting a new file on my computer with the tittle 'Phrases That Sound One Way to Witches but Mean Something Else to Vampires'."

"Clairmont continued smoothly, as if he were used to being the only active participant in a conversation."

"'I've see courage like yours before-from women, mostly.' Matthew continued as if I hadn't spoken. 'Men don't have it. Our resolve is born out of fear. It's merely bravado.'"

"The past weeks have been almost biblical in their tests. I think the only thing we've escaped is a plague of locusts."

"In a few weeks, you will cheerfully commit murder for a shower."

"If I still had my phone, I would take a picture of you in these hideous things and blackmail you for eternity."

"He'd slipped into unexplored, empty places when I wasn't looking. Now that he'd left, I was terribly aware of his absence."

Deborah Harkness (born 1965) is an American scholar, novelist and wine enthusiast. She is a well-regarded historian of science and medicine, specializing in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Harkness has published two works of history, John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy and the End of Nature (1999) and The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (2007). Her recent novel A Discovery of Witches, a tale of magic, science and history, has become a bestseller and was named to Amazon.com's Best Books of February, 2011 List. 

Dirty Red (Love Me with Lies #2) by Tarryn Fisher

This review contains spoilers. You can read the edited version here on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/394307367

FYI, even though this review contains spoilers I DID NOT spoil everything. The true golden nuggets are still hidden in the book waiting for you to uncover them!

“A woman shouldn’t have to fight that hard to be with a man. He should just want her.”

Dirty: whore, bitch, skank. Dirrrrrrrty: liar, manipulating, conniving weaseling little trollop. So many apt malicious descriptions for Leah. Caleb's nickname for her is Red and Dirty she most definitely is. Dirty; to take an appropriate description and marry it with a term of endearment Red. Set's the perfect title and tone for Dirty Red.

When I finished the opportunist I was bawling like a little bitch. I felt true love had fought an all-encompassing battle and lost. I didn’t realize I’ve been brooding in between The Opportunist and Dirty Red until I finished it this morning. The Opportunist broke me, shattered a little piece of my heart. Then when I found out it was only book one of a set of three, I found a glimmer of hope in my torn up little heart of make believe book world (where live more than part-time).

I was concerned when I found out Dirty Red was going to be from Leah’s POV. Severely concerned, the last thing I wanted to do was feel any kind of empathy for her. I love Olivia, I chose my side a long time ago and knew I’d always stick with her, but I didn’t want that redheaded spitting cobra slithering her way into my heart. For the most part she didn’t. I’ve only ever cried for Olivia & Caleb.

Leah’s stubbornness to never having to open up to her husband let alone anyone else, her cattiness and snobbery, oh and let’s not forget her manipulation and lies won no brownie points with me. My heart did go out to her at times in regards to her tumultuous upbringing –but that was it. I thought bitch please, get over yourself.

“How dare he think the worst of me? I am his wife! For better or worst, right? Or did the worse refer to the situation and not the person?”

I know, I know Olivia has lied and manipulated in the past to get the guy for herself as well, but her redeeming qualities out weigh Leah’s by a landslide and remember who are the true soul mates here (if you’re not sure who, then you’re reading the book all wrong). They both have lied and schemed for their tornado hurricane relationship, and I am ready to see Caleb get a little dirty to win the keeper of his heart. We got a glimpse of him doing just that in this book.

As soon as you start the first chapter Leah has given birth to a baby girl when she was convinced it was going to be a boy.

“I am going to have to share my husband with another woman…again.”

While battling her self diagnosed postpartum depression, self-pity parties, drinking binges and frozen vegetable entrees we are thirteen months give or take form the time she was acquitted into Leah’s head and her life with Caleb (at the same time Olivia is currently marrying Noah). While keeping to the formula of The Opportunist, the chapters take turns from Leah’s present to her past before and with Caleb.

I was shocked that I did a speed read through an entire book where I loathed the main character/ narrator. I enjoyed it thoroughly; it was fascinating delving into Dirty Red’s demented little head. This book is my bridge between Olivia and Caleb, the love that I continue to hold out hope for to win in the end.

“He is going to yell at me. I hate when he yells at me. I can guarantee my skin has already erupted into a splotchy mess; a telltale sign that I’m shitting myself.”

I believed Leah could truly have had it all, if she would have stopped obsessing/blaming Olivia for everything that did not go her way and just loved and enjoyed her husband….maybe….maybe not. Hopefully NOT.

“’I won’t hurt you. I’ll take care of you. Do you believe me?’ ‘Yes’ I lied.”

“I go to bed, still wearing my clothes, sadder than I’ve ever felt.”

“We can try. I silently repeat to myself. Words I want, but they have an expiration date. We can try…until we can’t anymore. We can try…but this already feels doomed. I will have to think of a way to make this more permanent.”

My heart hurt from this paragraph:

“My father gave me a prestigious job at his company to prove how little he thought of me. My boyfriend gave me smiles that didn’t reach his eyes. My mother gave me love so thin it felt more like sugarcoated contempt. If someone had cared enough to say: Leah, it’s all in your head…all I would have to do was refer them to the three people in my life who didn’t really want me there.”

And this is where I just shook my head at her and would’ve smacked her:

“I knew he never loved me like he loved her, but I wanted him anyway. I knew his love for me was conditional, but I wanted him anyway. I knew I was second choice, but I wanted him anyway.”

Love Cammie, missed Cammie, if I were a character from this book taking in to consider my real life I’m a Cammie girl.

“Go enjoy the life you stole for yourself.”

“There is a possibility that you’re worth more than being Caleb’s marriage of pity, and if that’s true then you should jump ship now. It’s only a matter of time before the Caleb/Olivia saga starts up again.”

I was so happy to have Cammie back, didn't know how that would workout with his book being Leah's POV and Cammie is part of the Olivia camp. Sam was just as amusing as Cammie, they are definitely a lot alike.

We get to meet Seth, Caleb’s older brother. Whom I like I thought he was a great match for Leah, but I don’t trust him. I think he took part in the atomic bomb at the end. Not to say I didn’t love the bomb, I did, but I think he had his hand in it.

“’You remind me of a cheap reality show, Leah. You’re shallow, and you pretend to be stupid for God only knows what reason.’…’What the hell Seth?’ He’d shrugged. ‘I know you’re not really as stupid as you put out. Shallow, maybe. You have the type of eyes that have claws in them.’”

“I dismissed his comment with a wave of my hand. ‘She is always nice to me.’ He laughed. ‘That’s because you’re a lot like her. She probably has a healthy fear of a fellow bitch.’ My mouth dropped open. ‘What is it with people in this family saying exactly what they’re thinking? It’s so rude.’ He leaned over the arm of the sofa and winked conspiratorially at me. ‘You should try it. Though, it’s quite fascinating to sit back and watch all your thoughts boil behind your eyes and never make it to your mouth.’”

“Human eyes are the sign language of the brain. If you watch carefully, you can see the truth played out, raw and unguarded.”

“I am sickly familiar with the way he looks at Olivia, because it is the way I look at him.”

“A look. How long can a look be…truly? A look can be a second long, a freaking, harmless second, and it can tell long, complicated stories. You can see three years in a second-long look. You can see longing, too. I hadn’t known that until I saw it for myself. I wish I hadn’t seen it. I wish I could never see another look transferred between two people with history.”

We learned in the first book that Caleb had a dark side in lieu of faking amnesia, and in Dirty Red we see that he can run with the big girls ie. Olivia & Leah. Caleb can play just as dirty (“He was a liar. He was a thief.”). He get’s his ass handed to him once again in this book and I cannot wait to read the course of action he will decide to take in the next book. Hooray it will be from his POV. The only thing is he is going to wish Olivia married that tool Turner and doubt he’s going to enjoy the likes of pitting himself up against Saint Noah.

“Caleb once told me love was a desire and desire was an emptiness.”

Leah and Caleb are clearly not meant to be together, but Olivia did tell Cammie once that Caleb had a thing for fucked-up women. I hope this was the end of Caleb and Leah, it’s hard to say for sure, you would think by the way the book ended that he was it was done –but if he truly is only turned on by psychoticness it still up for debate. I know Leah will not be giving up and Olivia has changed for the better. I believe that’s all Caleb truthfully wants Olivia good or bad. I hope to see him fight for her, but with dignity, I hope he wins and they grow together. I will feel sorry for Noah.

Who knows what Tarryn will do…..SHIT! I hope it’s not left open to debate for the reader to interpret. Ugh, I’m joining a convent if it is.

Hmmmmmmm Nun Kari with her smutty books….I’m pretty sure that’s frowned upon.

“I have told so many lies that I have an entire buffet of shadiness to choose from. I plucked out the worst one and rub my chin on my shoulder. This one will hurt him, probably deeper than anything that I could do or say about Olivia. Ready…set…”

Dear Tarryn, I will do anything to get an advanced copy of the third book when you start looking for reviewers for it. Including but not limited to: I will be your slave/ servant, I will clean your house and braid your hair and tell you how you’re the fairest of them all, I will most of all give an honest review and promote your writing to anyone and everyone that will…hell if they are not listening I will throw something at their heads.

The Love Of My Life by Louise Douglas

1. I really wish this was not only in an e-reader format, but sold in bookstores in America. I had to get this imported from the U.K.
2. I put a lot of quotes into this review to give you a sample of the writing and direction this book went in. I did my best to pick quotes that were meaningful to the story but did spoil the hidden surprises.
3. To me spoilers are subject to one’s own opinion, what may entice and intrigue some into learning more may ruin the story for others. I have not revealed what I’d consider spoilers in this review towards this book. But as always when reading a review, read with caution.

“May the most you wish for be the least you get.”

As soon as I saw this book on Goodreads, it was like finding a soul-mate I knew right away I HAD to have this book, I believed I would love it and I was not disappointed. I cried a lot during this book and executed it in under 24 hours.



The book starts with a prologue a year after Olivia aka Liv’s husband Luca, has passed away from a tragic car accident. She has fled the hometown where she grew up with Luca back to London where they once fled to many years ago.



The book goes back and forth from the childhood Liv shared with Luca and his twin brother Marc along with three other brothers. To the year after Luca’s death where; Liv spent in their hometown to be close to where Luca is buried. 

Liv’s got a bad rapport with Luca’s mom Angela, Marc’s wife Nathalie and her own mother. Luca was Liv’s world and now she is shutting the world out, Luca’s twin brother Marc is also having a hard time coping with his brothers death along with emotions from the past. Marc and Liv are looking to grieve, looking for comfort and solace. The closets thing Liv has to Luca is his twin brother that reminds him of her late husband and the closest thing Marc has to his brother is the love of his brothers life Liv. The two embark in an unplanned affair in efforts to work out their grief.



The Liv in the past looks up to her older sister Lynnette (a model citizen)and in missing her while she off at University in London, stuck with her holy-than-thou mother and judgmental boyfriend, Liv starts seeking attention by other means along with her goodie two-shoes harlot in training best friend Anneli.

Liv in present time does not know where to go from loosing Luca. Always felt unloved and unwelcomed form Luca’s family, not all of them mainly the mother Angela and Nathalie, whom want nothing but for Liv to go back to London and fade away from their lives permanently. Liv tries to find a life without Luca taking on a job as a copywriter to a professor with his own past demons and forges unlikely friendships with some locals.

I had a lot of questions that were not answered but left open ended, for the reader to interpret, but all the major questions were answered: Why do Angela and Nathalie hate Liv so much? What havoc could or did Liv reap when she was younger? Could Marc be the ultimate substitute for Luca? What Liv and Marc are doing is it love or loneliness and grief? Can Liv move on after experiencing such a tragic loss of love? Will the affair blossom or blow up in their faces and destroy more lives?


Quotes:

“I can’t recall any of the words the minster said at the graveside, but when the coffin came to be lowered, he gave me the gentlest word of encouragement to throw the rose I was holding into the hole. I had to look at it then and that’s when the grief came over me like a wave. I don’t think I made a sound as I stood there in my high heels and my new coat and my silver earrings but inside, every hope and wish miscarried into bloody little disasters inside me.”

“I knelt down at the head of the grave and tidied the soil, as if it were Luca’s hair.
‘Darling, I’m back,’ I whispered. ‘I’m just down the hill there.’ I closed my eyes and tried to summon up my husband, but I couldn’t reach him. I was calm, but there was a thought inside my head. I imagined scraping away at the soil with my hands, digging down to Luca, opening the coffin, climbing in beside him and just lying there, watching the sky change color. Looking out into the universe like a tiny dot at the eyeglass end of a huge telescope.
Around were thousands upon thousands of headstones, every one commissioned by somebody who had been left behind. The grief of all these abandoned husbands and wives, parents and children lapped at my ankles. It was a lake, a sea. And beyond Arcadia Vale was a whole ocean of death and loss and grief. It was unbearable. How could a world have evolved where such sadness was the inevitable result of love? There was a spasm in my heart and I thought: Yes, I will bring tablets and gin and I’ll dig down to Luca and I’ll lie there and watch the sky and that’s how they’ll find me.”

Marc: ‘I’ve cried so many tears you’d think I’d be all cried out by now.’
Liv: I gave a little smile. ‘I know.’ 
Marc: ‘Do people keep telling you it’ll get easier?’
Liv: ‘I don’t talk to people.’
Marc: ‘That’s a sensible approach. I’ve heard enough well-meaning but totally bloody inane condolences to fill a book.’
Liv: He was SO like Luca

“Marc was almost the same size and shape as Luca, he smelled like Luca, he swore like Luca, he tipped his head back to laugh like Luca, he was the closest thing in the world to Luca and I was longing for Luca like a moth longs for the moon.”

“Marc and I sat together on the settee and drank our tea. I leaned my head on his shoulder and he kissed my hair softly. ‘Do we need to talk about this?’ he whispered. ‘I’d rather not.’ ‘Thank God it’s you,’ he said. I knew what he meant.”

“Days later, when I could bear my own company no longer and was desperate for distraction, I set out for a friendly-looking café I’d noticed a few streets away. But I didn’t check as I crossed the road and stepped out almost straight into the path of a car. The driver wound down the window and called me a stupid fucking ignorant bitch and made an obscene gesture. That encounter made me feel so hollow and shaky that all I could do was turn round and get back into my flat as fast as I could.”

“’She called him a poor bent, pale, old creature, wheezy of chest and rheumy of eye, more slumped than seated in a bath chair in the shade of a fine plum tree where he could enjoy the scent of the roses’, said the professor. ‘Not exactly a sex god, then.’ I said. ‘No. She was sure that he didn’t even know who she was and apparently, confused her with his servant girl and scolded her for asking him questions.’ ‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Poor Marian.’ ‘Oh, I shouldn’t feel too sorry for her,’ said the professor, opening his car door. ‘If she hadn’t come to Portiston, she wouldn’t have found her true love.’ ‘I thought she died a spinster?’ ‘Ah, hah,’ said the professor, giving me one of his rare and beautiful smiles. ‘You haven’t reached the end of the story yet.’”


“’Are you coming to bed, darling?’ I would whisper. For some perverse reason I preferred to think of him coming to bed in one of his ruthless moods.”

“We talked for a while longer. Marc said he felt calmer. We said our good-nights, we whispered endearments. It was so late that there was already the faintest whiff of light in the sky beyond my curtainless window. I reached under my bed for the bottle of gin, poured an inch or so into my glass and swigged it down. I knew I would suffer at work in the morning, but I wanted something to take the edge off my guilt so that I could go back to sleep wrapped in the arms of the promise of a whole weekend without loneliness.”

“We never talked. We never had time. We had no mobile phones, we had no opportunity, we had no privacy, but nothing deterred us from being together as often as we could. Afterwards, everyone assumed we had been plotting and planning, but that simply wasn’t true. I never considered the future. I was just greedy for the present because I thought that was all I was ever going to have.”

“Meanwhile the professor was his usual quite, shadowy self. He paid me a small kindness and compliments, but always in a manner that suggested he was going through the motions. He didn’t try to persuade me to talk about myself and he didn’t mention his own experience again, for which I was grateful. I had never met anybody before who moved so effortlessly amongst people, but who gave away so little of himself. It was as if he shed no skin, exhaled no carbon dioxide and left no fingerprints. One day, I thought, maybe there would be a time when it would be right to talk. In the meantime, he didn’t pry beneath any of my rocks. At work there was no anxiety. The big, light, untidy office was heaven to me and to the professor too.”

“’It’s going to be OK,’ he said, squeezing my fingers. ‘We are going to be happy. Really, really happy. We are going to be the happiest runaways on the planet.’ He was right.”

“The professor cupped his glasses. ‘Grief is an illness. Different people respond to it in different ways. And they find different ways treating the symptoms.’ I picked a spring of lavender and crushed it beneath my fingers. It scented the warm air. ‘It’s like a virus,’ he said, warming to his theme. ‘Once it’s in your blood you can’t fight it and there is no cure. You just have to travel with it and see where it takes you.’
‘So how long have you been on your own?’
‘Ten years.’
‘Ten years? And you’re still not cured?
The professor sat down on a curved stone bench and held his glasses between his knees and watched the beads of water from the fountain tumble and dance as they fell. A smile turned up the edges of his lips.
‘I sound a bit self-indulgent, don’t I?’
‘Just a bit.’
‘I should get over myself, shouldn’t I?’
‘Yes.’
‘I appreciate your honesty, Olivia.’
‘Anytime, professor, anytime.’”

Truth (Consequences #2) by Aleatha Romig

Here was my state of mind right after “Consequences” right before “Truth”


I immediately dove into “Truth” and when I was half way trough Monday morning before work I made an executive decision and called in sick (I was going to be sick if I didn’t see this through promptly).


Finally sated for a little while (until book three nears), if it wasn’t for that “afterward” I would be a raging psychopath right now. “Truth” is probably more entertaining in the aspect of the action that unfolds. “Consequences” was the build up; the much needed process to this saga and the explosive mind fuck. Finally I saw Claire grow into her own, Tony mature and learn his regrets (or did he, mawhahahhaah…not telling), why was Catherine so obliging to aid Tony in the apprehension of Claire. What happened with Emily and John? We get to make new friends, become voyeurs into others lives and reconnect with old unlikely alliances.

With the book delving back into the past once again you just may change your allegiance in matters of Tony’s grandparents and parents and then it may change again by the end of this book. While keeping the love/hate inflection for Tony we get to see Claire finally get what’s due to her….I’m talking power.



I got everything I wanted and more from “Truth”. Aleatha Roming has the writing capability to draw out the premise of the game chess that lays the foundation for the story of “Truth”….brilliant. Especially considering chess is a calculating, strategizing, problematic brainiacs vice. For all the players in this novel it is played with ingenious manner and was a bountiful joy to read. I still do not know how to play chess personally, but if it were half as entertaining as the story of Tony and Claire, I’d be all over it. Think I’ll just stick with my books.

I wait with baited breath along with a slew of others for “Convicted”.


Being born and raised in San Diego, I loved the San Diego trip. I had my eighteenth birthday party at The U.S. Grant Hotel it really is glamorous with an old world vibe and a friend are going to go check out Beach Break Café in Oceanside, it was a pleasant surprise to find out that really exists as well.

I enjoyed all the epigraphs just as the first book.
Some others:


“Are you a patient person?” Claire asked. Amber’s lips and eyes revealed a smile fighting exposure. “I’ve been told I have problems in that area.” Claire returned her smile, “I’m glad to hear you don’t have a halo. I was beginning to wonder.” “Oh hell, just stick around. You’ll learn more about the horns that expose themselves occasionally.”

“Yes, Ms. Nichols? I see you’re wearing your trapping clothes.”

“Your creepy stalker is concerned. It’s almost comical.”

“Bodyguard-that does sound better than paid voyeur.”

“Perhaps, someday she’d learn to expect the unexpected, and his actions wouldn’t shock her. Yet, as was their history, whenever Anthony Rawlings was in Claire’s life, so was the potential for abrupt change. Remembering the past hour, she bowed to the reality of her new paradigm.”

“Claire watched Tony’s mental and physical wheels turn. She knew she’d sent his controlling impulses into overdrive. The muscles in his neck intermittently protruded as his jaw clenched and unclenched. She drank some orange juice and enjoyed the show.”

“There are plenty of medals to go around; one is definitely yours!”

“My talents were wasted as your babysitter, I’m very capable.”

Truth was…


Aleatha Roming if your dream is to be a fulltime novelist I really hope by now that dream has come true for you, because with your writing prose and story weaving you deserve it.

Consequences (Consequences #1) by Aleatha Romig

I took my time getting around to reading this, I was reading so many women getting pissed off at this Tony guy. Then when the second book came out and women were torn between loving him and hating him, I knew I'd cave eventually and read it. I bought the book and added it to my hoarding list.

So it was the middle of the week and I could not buy any more books to read till I got paid again, I'd reach my max for the month (I already have more books than I'll get around to next year, but I always want more). I pulled this off the back burner from my kindle.

And what do you know, by the time I was finished I was kicking myself in the ass for waiting so long getting to it.



Consequences blew my ass to kingdom come. At first I thought some parts were slow, but then I got it. It was building, buttering you up. It was lyrical in prose while doing it until you get to the remanding 85% left of the book then...
 

....I wanted to KILL Tony. I thought all these woman even considering any kind of love for him were out of their damn minds!

But then I started the second book immediately and realized...


(but lets stay on this book)



Claire....oh Claire. At first I was pissed that she didn't try escaping in the beginning, but further reading I realized, there would have been no chance in hell she would have gotten far for long. All her compartmentalizing I thought I was going to have a conniption for her.

I have too many favorite quotes from this, I'll be sitting here typing all day.

I loved this it's going into my GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) file. I could talk about it all day. Instead I'll give some advice, the ending tore me up, if you read this make sure you've got sometime to dive straight into the second book, it is the only remedy for this book!

Read it! Enjoy it! Love it! Hate it! Cause once your done there's no going back. 


“The heat of the summer transformed the green grass into long brown straw, only the weeds were green. Claire didn't mind, the weeds had pretty flowers. Unlike Tony's flowers, which had been sentenced to his yard, gardens, or clay pots, these flowers grew free wherever they wanted. Furthermore, weeds were survivors. When all else died, the weeds remained. Yes, Claire liked weeds.” 
― Aleatha Romig, Consequences