Chaotic Ninja

I didn’t plan on reading  Live For This   by  Kathryn Biel because in my mind, it’s one of those stories that will make me feel miserable after reading. Surely, a man with a broken body and woman with a shattered soul is a downright depressing combination, yeah? Well, guess what? It’s not that at all. I didn’t feel like the world is crashing down on me. There’s no feeling of heaviness or misery or grief. Nothing of that sort. This is superbly written. It’s hitting the right notes. The jokes are landing. The drama bits are heart-rending and just tug at this ninja’s heartstrings. Perhaps the only problem here is that it has similarities to Jojo Moyes’ “Me Before You” . Now, I don’t know if t his was inspired by the book or the similar events are just mere coincidences. It might bother some readers, but it does not bother me all that much because there is a clear divergence in storyline. This is not a story that’s just written for the sake of eliciting ...

Been playing catch up with reading and reviewing. I’m 33 books behind schedule. Goodreads said so.  Why should I care about what Goodreads say? You see, I joined the 2015 Reading Challenge and pledged to read 80 books, which translates to 6.66 books per month (I’m glad I’m not superstitious).   Easy peasy, right?  No.  It’s September and I’m still struggling to get halfway through the challenge. I’m still convinced I could do it, but I’m going to need a strategy of some sort.   I realised that I could probably pull this one off by reading all the short stories and novellas on my TBR list. It’s not cheating. Just slightly devious planning. The Memory Man by Helen Smith Two women, memory loss, a dead man, and a psychic. Everything else are fragments. This is a bizarre story that I quite frankly did not get the first time I read it. So I had to read it again. I like to believe I got it the second time around. Or probably not. It’s like the movie...

  I wrote the first part of this 2-part Chick Lit review three months ago for International Women's Day .  I didn't provide an explanation on what brought this on, so, let me just do that now. Chick Lit is a much-derided literary genre and yet it's embraced by millions of readers, largely the female kind. I don't pretend to know how the genre came into existence, but I vaguely remember the genre gaining prominence at the time of the publication of Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones Diary" . Since then, there were a multitude of writers who went the chick lit route; some were successful, while others disappeared into obscurity. The genre continues to be criticized for the perceived superficiality of the topics and themes.   After reading these books (7 of them), I can safely say that, yes, there are recurring themes and situations that are common in these books. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's what makes chick lit book a chi...

Real Ninjas read Chick Lit. Read the Reviews Part 1 I'M STILL HERE by Kathryn Biel  ★★★ ★ ★ 5/5 Let me start with a warning: Author Kathryn Biel pushes you into the abyss of mental illness and gives you Ho-Hos and Fritos to break your fall. It’s dark. It’s disturbing. It’s depressing. But it’s also hysterical and uproariously funny. If that doesn’t mess with your mind, I don’t know what will. The Comely clan is so dysfunctional, they make the Bluths and the Tenenbaums look so boringly normal. Esther Comely-Cox is quirky in a charming sort of way, but can also be totally unpredictable and can exhibit a combustible personality when provoked. But she is completely disarming. How can a hopelessly flawed character be so likeable? This is a story that touches on the serious issue of mental illness. And when it is correlated with dysfunctionality and parental neglect, it can become downright unsettling. But the author has injected a healthy dose of wi...