Book - Before We Met by Lucie Whitehouse

Love the cover!

Hannah is a British woman in her 30's who was living and working in New York City when she met Mark Reilly, also British, and a successful businessman who owns a well-known software company. The two soon fell in love and Hannah gives up her friends and career to move back to London, due to the closing of Mark's company office in New York. 

The two got married and Hannah settles in Mark's apartment. Fast forward to a few months later, she is still unemployed and he is often travelling for work, especially to New York, where he still has clients. One day, Hannah decides to surprise her husband and went to pick him up at the airport. She waits for a long time, but there isn't any sign of Mark and he isn't picking up his phone. 

Concerned, Hannah decides to contact Neesha, his personal assistant, and his colleagues, who all thought Mark was in a romantic getaway in Rome. On the next day, Mark calls Hannah apologizing extensively, justifying what happened with a bunch of excuses, and promising her he'd come back home on Tuesday.

But something still feels off to Hannah. On a whim, she manages to get inside Mark's company building and get access to his desk, only to find evidence that her money was completely wiped out of her account. Here, is where things really get tricky. Is Mark's company in trouble? If so, why didn't he tell her directly? But it makes no sense, because he is still keeping the same lifestyle as before. And on a conversation with Neesha regarding who Mark might be talking to, she told Hannah a woman named Hermione has been calling and he always closes the door while talking to her...And Mark's family, why does she know so little about them? Dead parents, a estranged brother, and that's pretty much it.

Although Hannah is feeling bad for betraying her partner's trust, she can't shake the feeling that something isn't right and starts looking for answers. Their life will never be the same.

At the beginning, the story was going back to the time the couple met in NYC, which I thought was kind of slow and bland, but as the narrative progressed I started to find it very intriguing. It wasn't predictable, at times I thought the story would end a certain way but after all the ending was completely different. I definitely recommend this novel for fans of domestic and psychological thrillers. This is my first book by Lucie Whitehouse and I'll definitely check out more of her! 

Rate: 4/5

Book - No Exit by Taylor Adams

Darby Throne is a sophomore college student in Colorado who was planning to spend Christmas alone in her dorm room, away from her estranged mother. However, after learning from her sister that her mother is dying of cancer, Darby drops everything and heads to her hometown in Utah.

But the weather conditions are not favorable and she finds herself in a severe snowstorm. In the early evening, she finds a rest stop to wait for the weather conditions to improve. There, the girl meets 3 other people: Ashley (a guy), a talkative accountant, and Ed and Sandi, two cousins on their way to visit family. They are soon joined by Lars, a quiet guy who doesn't say much about himself. There is zero cell reception there, so they have to entertain themselves talking to each other and playing games.

Eventually Darby goes to the parking lot and spots a small hand in the back of a van. At first she thought she was dreaming, but she looks again and sees a little girl inside of a dog cage with duct tape over her mouth. This is where the story really begins: Who is the owner of the van? Do these people know each other? Is there anyone Darby can trust? What I can say here is that Darby is not just going to ignore what she saw. She is going to react. 

This book is really intense! I found it so addictive, I read it in less than a day. I do not agree with all of Darby's decisions but I can understand where she was coming from. It all made sense considering what she reveals about her past and what she has become. 

The story is not told in the first person, so the narrator is not an unreliable one, as sometimes happens in this kind of stories. But it stays on Darby's side, portraying her like a hero and the others as villains in a very comical way (e.g nicknaming and mocking them) and, at the same time, scary and absolutely convincing. 

I absolutely recommend this book if you love thrillers full of action, unpredictable twists and well developed characters. Reading this was a very cinematic experience, it would work perfectly in a movie or a miniseries! 

Rate:5/5

Movie - Love, Simon from Greg Berlanti

This movie was adapted from Simon vs. Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Although I feel that I'm getting too old for teen movies, I always enjoy watching them. That's why I decided to stream the well praised Love, Simon this afternoon. First things first, Simon, is a senior in high school with loving parents and a stable group of friends. This guy has a completely ordinary life...Except that he is hiding a secret: He is gay. 

There's a blog where people from his school write (anonymously or not) gossip posts and confessions. One of them caught Simon's eye, as it was a message which addressed the same issue as Simon's: being closeted. He immediately emailed the guy, who only signed as Blue, and they soon start a conversation, which keeps going even though they remain unknown to each other. 

While using the school library's computer to answer one of Blue's emails, Simon is interrupted by the vice-principal and, trying to end their interaction, he goes away without logging off. Martin, a drama club classmate with poor social skills and weird nerdy behavior, comes to use the computer after Simon and ends up reading the whole conversation between the two. 

Martin is desperate to win Abby's, one of Simon's friends, attention, so he sees this as an opportunity to blackmail Simon and threatens to expose the emails if he doesn't help him accomplish that. From there, Simon tries his best to keep his sexuality from being revealed even if it means he has to act against his wishes. He also has to deal with confusing scenarios, his friends' love problems and above all, trying to figure out who Blue is and if they'd ever meet in person. 

So, I never have great expectations towards a teen movie in terms of being realistic. I know they're generally quite flawed and this was no exception. I think it would have been better if the teachers at Simon's school were not so over the top - I'm not American, but I'm sure they don't go around randomly talking to students in the hallways and taking phones away from their hands like the one in this movie did. Also the bullying situation in the cafeteria when the drama teacher intervene with an inappropriate posture and language made me cringe. I get that it's a movie and sometimes situations are exaggerated, but this could easily be avoided. It'd make no difference to the story if these two characters behaved normally. 

I was also confused by the whole shared blog thing as I've never encountered something like that in real life. But I get it - The two had to meet somewhere anonymously.

Martin's character is way too much. I think it'd been more believable if instead of a bizarre kid the person who'd seen the emails was one of the bullies, who rarely made an appearance. Also, I don't think I'd forget to sign off my email account, specially regarding something as important as this. 

One thing that annoyed me in the beginning of the movie and that I've seen before is making family plans early in the day to do the more mundane of activities in the evening, in this case, watching TV. I mean... Do people really do this? But anyway, his parents are the cliché liberal parents who are caring and supportive but don't make a big deal if he sleeps in the same room with his female best friend and gets home drunk. I didn't dislike them (although Simon's dad jokes are terrible) but I feel that I've seen them before too many times. Yeah, that's one of the problems with teen movies. 

However, despite these flaws, Love, Simon has good intentions. I've seen other films with main gay characters but this is the first mainstream teen comedy to feature one and I think that's important and well fitted in today's society. The movie is very entertaining and although it become more obvious in the end, I liked how throughout the film they made it difficult to find out who Blue was. In general I enjoyed the characters and the acting. I recommend it for people who enjoy a cute teen movie from time to time!

Rate: 3/5

Book - It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

Lily Bloom is 23 years old and moved from Maine to Boston 2 years ago to work at a marketing firm. On the night her father dies, after she returned from Maine to give a speech at his funeral, she meets Ryle, a gorgeous neurosurgeon. Handsome, seductive and smart, more cliché is impossible.

She somehow managed to get in a random building near her house to think about the situation and was sitting on the ledge when she heard Ryle kicking a chair in the distance. This is the first scene of the book. I find it so ridiculous and unrealistic I couldn't help but wonder if the whole book was going to be filled with these kind of situations.

Moving on, they spot each other and begin a conversation. Ryle tells Lily he has no desire to get married and have children and is into one night stands, while she is still looking for the one. Although they enjoyed talking to each other, they decide to not meet again due to their differences.

Fast-forward months later, Lily is now pursuing her dream of opening a flower shop with her inheritance money, and, while she's remodeling the store, a bored housewive named Allysa walked in offering to help, which led to a very close friendship between the two. Once again, very out of the blue. This girl lives with her husband, Marshall, an app develop who makes millions, so the couple is super rich. And super annoying. I seriously disliked these characters. Not only the way Lily met Allysa is far-fetched but her relationship with her husband felt extremely childish. But the worse is yet to come. 

Lily hurts her ankle while working at the floral shop and Allysa called her brother and husband to come and help. That's when Lily finds out Allysa's brother is Ryle! And then the complicated love story begins. Seriously? I mean, this could have made more sense if the story was set in a small town...But it's Boston! What are the odds? If only that was the last coincidence though...

There's also a side love story with a boy named Atlas told through Lily's high school diaries. Wait, unsend letters to Ellen DeGeneres...Yep, she was a bit of a fan girl. 

I know this is an unpopular opinion but I definitely have a problem with books like this one. The point is to portray domestic abuse from two different perspectives, which per se is an interesting idea. The thing is, the writing is too bland and superficial for me to be able to feel some kind of empathy for the characters. I just didn't care about what happened to them.

However, I did enjoy reading the development of Lily's relationship with Atlas.

It was one of the parts that felt more genuine because the rest was just artificial. The end fitted well within the story but was so damn predictable I just wished the author had been more creative and thought of something else. 

This is the first book I've read by Colleen Hoover. It's a very light read, I finished it in less than a day. I started it with good expectations because it has a high (4.40/5) Goodreads review rate. However, I am very disappointed. I probably won't read another one by this author again. 

Rate: 2/5

Book - My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

Millicent and her husband are your typical couple: They live in Florida suburbs with their two teenage children, Rory and Jenna. He works as a tennis instructor at the local country club and she as real estate agent. They also have a good social life. 

However, after 15 years of marriage, the couple became bored and decided to spice up their union with an unusual hobby: murder.

We learn that they do not commit the murders together. The unnamed husband, goes to bars impersonating Tobias, a deaf man, in order to find potential victims for Millicent to kill. 

One day, Tobias sees on the news that the body of one of the women Millicent killed the year before were found. However, he was shocked to find that she was not dead for long. In fact, she was just killed, which means that Millicent was holding her captive. 

Confused, Tobias confronted his wife about this, and she told him it was a surprise because it coincided with Owen Riley's (a local serial killer who murdered several women years before) anniversary of disappearance. 

Hyped by the possibility of using Owen as a scapegoat, Tobias starts sending letters to the news reporter claiming to be Owen and threatening more killings. At the same time, the couple starts thinking about the next victim. But this convenient solution has its faults and the consequences are unimaginable. 

This book starts extremely slow and has way too many domestic life scenarios and references. That includes flashbacks from the past, e.g, about the circumstances Millicent and her husband met and when and why they moved to their neighborhood. I feel that most of these were unnecessary and a bit boring. 

The couple's kids also play a role in the book, as Rory finds his dad sneaking out to go to bars at night wearing a suit and thinks he is cheating on Millicent. Jenna develops anxiety about the supposedly serial killer Owen being out. There is also a side story regarding Millicent's past that led to them becoming engaged in murder. 

I can't say this wasn't entertaining, but I've certainly read more suspenseful thrillers. The end is what I thought it was going to be, however I wasn't expecting the final twist. And although the characters, specially Millicent, are portrayed as smart, considering how the story went I have to say they're not as bright as it seems. Much of the way they act and their decisions are non-nonsensical. On a positive note, I liked the author's writing style and the fact that she didn't name Millicent's husband gives the book a more creepy vibe. 

Note: As the book is told by the husband's perspective and he is not present in during the captivity and murders of the victims, there aren't any graphic descriptions of those moments.

Rate: 2.5/5

My Summer To-Read List

I love a good summer read! This season is definitely the best for a reading catch up! ❤ Here are my choices:

• The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson (current read)

I'm a sucker for stories with bookstores or libraries involved and this book was a bargain, so I had to buy it at Lisbon's book fair last month! 

It was published in 2015 but it's set in 1962, in Denver, where Kitty Miller runs a bookshop with her best friend, Frieda. She dated Kevin, a doctor, for a while, but it didn't work out. Now she just does what she pleases, without having to justify herself to anyone. 

Eventually she begins to have very lucid dreams about an alternate reality.
At night, she is Katharyn, a married mother of two small children, living in a nice house surrounded by good friends. In the beginning, Kitty was convinced this was a product of her overactive imagination, but as time goes by and her dreams start to look like reality, she is overwhelmed by confusion. 
Ultimately, she has to figure out if she can choose who she wants to be and what's real and what's imagined. 

• No Fences in Alaska by Glen Sobey

A free e-book version of this Young Adult novel was provided to me by NetGalley, which I'll review when I finish reading it.  

Harper, a 16-year-old teenager from Texas, has a complicated relationship with her conservative parents. She has already engaged in sexual activities and uses drugs with her older boyfriend. 
After a confrontation with her father, her boyfriend's betrayal and the discovery that she's pregnant, Harper needs to get away from the mess her life has become.
She calls her grandfather, Cooper, who she hasn't seen in 10 years, and although he's dealing with problems of his own, he's willing to give her granddaughter the help that she needs. 

• V by Thomas Pynchon 

This is another novel I bought for a lower price at the book fair. I was going to buy Inherent Vice, by the same author, as I recognized it because of the movie with the same name, but I ended up finding this one's premise more interesting. 

V, first published in 1963, is the debut novel of Thomas Pynchon, and tells the story of Benny Profane, a discharged US. Navy Sailor and his return to New York, where he spends an idle existence with his friends.
However, Benny's life is turned upside down when he meets Stencil, an ambitious young man on a mission to discover the identity of a woman named V., who met his father during the war and disappeared without a trace. 

• The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

Elfriede Jelinek is an Austrian author, and I've been wanting to read The Piano Teacher ever since I visited Vienna in May and did some research on Austrian books. I wonder what great stories are out there in non-English books. 

This is the most famous work of the author, for which she was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Erika Kohut is a thirty-eight year old piano teacher at Vienna Conservatory who lives a seemingly boring life with her controlling mother. However, she has a side no one knows: she secretly visits Turkish peep shows at night to watch live sex shows and sadomasochistic films. 
At the same time, one of her teenage students becomes obsessed with her and it origins a dark and strange relationship between them. 

• My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

In this book, which has been described as a mix of Dexter with Gone Girl, we are introduced to Millicent, a real estate agent, and her husband, a tennis pro at the local country club. They live an apparently ordinary life in the Florida suburbs with their two teenage children. They do date nights, family dinners and have plenty of friends. 
However, this kind of life is too dull for them. They needed something new and exciting, so they found an unconventional hobby to keep their marriage alive: murder. 

I love a good psychological thriller. This is definitely going to give me the chills! 

• Valencia and Valentine by Suzy Krause

This novel caught my eye as I read it's recommended for readers of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, which I absolutely loved. It tells the story of Valencia, a debt collector with OCD and many fears, especially flying and turning thirty-five. 
In order to confront this, her therapist suggests that she flies somewhere before her birthday. Meanwhile, she begins a telephone romance with a man from New York that might actually not exist...

Valentine is a lonely old woman who desperately needs company. She's happy when the new cleaning lady is willing to listen to her story - a life of adventures around the world with her husband until he disappeared without a trace. 

The book's premise ends with the guarantee that the life of these women has more in common that we might think. 

Movie - Nappily Ever After from Haifaa al-Mansour

Nappily Ever After is a 2018 movie adapted from the book series Nappily by Trisha Thomas, first published in 2000. I found it interesting that Haifaa al-Mansour, the film director, is the first woman from Saudi Arabia to become one. She has directed other movies revolving women's issues, specially in her home country.

In the beginning of the movie, we are introduced to Violet Jones (Sanaa Lathan), who was convinced by her mother (Lynn Whitfield) from a young age that her natural Afro hair was not beautiful and she had to wear it straightened at all times in order to look perfect. Due to this pressure, Violet was never able to let herself go and be a spontaneous kid like the ones around her. 

Fast-forward to the present, she lives with her boyfriend, Clint (Ricky Whittle), a doctor, has a successful job as a marketing executive and good friends. However, even as an adult, she is still obsessed with her hair and limits her life by the way it looks.

Just before her birthday, Violet sees a small box inside of a closet and thinks Clint will propose on her special day. Her mother comes to the house in the early morning to help her style her hair and look her best when the big moment comes.

When Violet's family and friends are later reunited at dinner, she learns that the little box was actually a collar for her brand new Chihuahua. Her disappointment is visible, and when she confronted her boyfriend, he tells her something that really hurt her feelings: "Being with you is like being in a two-year first date". 
Clint stated that he didn't really know Violet underneath all her self-image obsession and because of that, they weren't ready for marriage. 

This is a turning point for Violet. Angry and upset, and with Clint out of the picture, she does something on a whim after a crazy night when she had too much to drink. Something she never thought she would be able to do. But was it really impulsive or had she been preparing herself for it?

For what is worth, that decision has serious consequences in many aspects of Violet's life and she begins to understand what is really important to her. 

I found this movie very relatable and it's not just about hair - It's about women complying with society's standards by focusing on looking their best, and losing their true self in the middle of the process. It portrays the struggle of Black women to accept their natural hair in a world where the idea of beauty is long straight hair.

It's about insecurities and the fear of being who we are without thinking about who's looking. Because, in reality, no one really cares and the most important thing is learn to accept ourselves in the moments we aren't all dolled up. 

The movie has its faults as I didn't enjoy some of the acting, but overall it's a feel-good watch for a summer afternoon... or for when you're frustrated over a bad haircut.

Rate:4/5