The Golden Darter
My Life Through Books
Middle School was a weird mix of classics and Star Wars. I was obsessed with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux to the point of the book falling apart. I also discovered that while I love Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters can go hang. As for Star Wars... I've read almost every meta-verse book that was published up until the New Order cannon. I can still go into detail and recite storylines of a few beloved books. Hence, my nerd life began.
High school was very paranormal, vampire, scifi, etc. I would literally go online and search for book series that concerned vampires and read everything on the list. We are talking Anita Blake, Charline Harris, Anne Rice, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Tanya Huff, Steven King, etc. This was before they sparkled, ya'll. Early college was philosophical and political theory for school, and mainstream fiction in my personal time. Wicked, Life of Pi, Memoirs of a Geisha. These are the 3 books that pushed me into my next phase, mostly because of how ambiguous I felt about them, and their questionable endings.
Late-mid college I was introduced to LaVyrle Spencer by way of Hummingbird courtesy of a gripe session with my Mom about how depressing the books I had been reading lately were. I've never looked back and have been hooked on the romance genre ever since. I've read and loved a ton of LaVyrle Spencer (who is a little hit and miss), Judith McNaught (of the rapetastic 80s era of romance), and Georgette Heyer (who writes in the vein of Austen). More recently I've discovered the joys of contemporary authors like Susan Elizabeth Phillips.
Lately I've been trying to read more non-fiction. I really do enjoy learning about subjects that interest me, but non-fiction can feel like work sometimes. So I fall back to romance. You just can't go wrong with knowing that there will almost always be a happy ending.
Currently reading
Addicted
This story concept had amazing potential; taking a serious and, often, heartbreaking issue like addiction and redeeming the protagonist despite himself. Unfortunately, this book ended up never working for me on several levels. The beginning seemed rather rushed and we were already in the "stable" scene before I had a good grasp on the H/H relationship at that point. The next scene, at the party, was a major "suspension of belief" moment for me as it all just seemed so contrived. After that rocky start, I couldn't seem to regain my balance through to the end. This was helped by periodically coming across statements that directly contradicted what we had been told earlier. In a few cases these are lies told by characters, but it isn't clear who is lying until the end. I don't believe this was intentional, rather a case of the editing lacking, as the passages are simply vague and confusing the read. The language seemed overly flowery at times, and the angst level was entirely too high for my taste. Entire pages were dedicated to Lindsey daydreaming of Anais, which quickly became boring. The side characters were lucky if they reached one-note, the sex was boring, and the "secret" that Anais was hiding was so blatantly obvious I never felt any suspense. In fact, I'd say there was a lack of suspense throughout the entire thing. Even the sickness Anais has when Lindsey comes back mysteriously disappears after it is no longer furthering the plot. I assume she felt well again, but who knows, the topic isn't visited after a certain point, with no clear understanding of her health improving.To top it all off, I couldn't like either of the protagonists. The only thing Lindsey seemed to do all day was smoke opium and think about Anais. This was in direct contrast to being told several times how competent and responsible he was. I can think of one responsible thing he did in the entire book (which, I should add, takes place "off screen"). I know, who wants to read about the 1850's stock-exchange, but I felt he never reached those levels of character that justify how everyone else described him. Taking off for parts unknown because "his heart was broken" didn't help his case. As the addict, he was obviously going to have some issues, but he always seemed to blame Anais and his father for his addiction and never himself directly. Anais... I'm not sure I have enough words for how weak I found her. I can sympathize with the situation she was in, but the end of the line was that she ran from him, not the other way around. She eventually accepts her bit of responsibility for the whole mess, but then compounds it with still keeping life-altering information from him. All the while, she feels that it is fine that they are both cavorting where ever there is a solid surface to be found. Honestly, I straight-up skimmed the last 150 pages. I wanted to know how one particular part of the plot was going to be resolved (didn't like it, but I can she why she wrote it that way) and that was the only thing that kept me going. I know I have read something by Charlotte Featherstone before though I cannot remember what it was... Very doubtful if I will ever try her again after slogging through this. Disappointing after such a promising premise.