Sadie by Courtney Summers

Sadie by Courtney Summers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher, and I might not have picked up otherwise. I have no familiarity with the author, and I often find myself disappointed with YA because I can be a bit of a snob, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Sadie.
Anyone with familiarity with true crime can tell you that there any many cases that don't receive a lot of police attention because of the victim's race, prior history, or sheer lack of resources. For that reason, I think it was very smart for Summers to have this as a split narrative between Sadie and radio/podcast host West McCray. At first, it felt a little gimmicky, but I progressed in the book, it started to feel much smoother. McCray gives us more background on Sadie, her town, and the places she stops. It's not simply supplementary - it's a narrative of it's own, and you see him pick up the pieces. You have questions about how reliable Sadie is as a narrator or is everyone she runs into massively sketchy?
I had issues with Sadie as a character, because I had trouble believing that her entire life revolved around her sister to the point where she had no friends or acquaintances. Summers explains that Sadie was bullied for her stutter, and she felt like she had to step up and take care of Mattie, but I'm supposed to believe there are no other weird kids in this town that have literally no one else to eat lunch with? That she was never friendly with anyone at her job? I understand wanting to keep a tight narrative and not introduce a character who will never be present again, but there are ways to work around that. I got stuck on that, even if the point is that Mattie was all Sadie had, and now Sadie has nothing.
The ending felt believable to me, and that's why I'm stuck on it. In the interest of not giving spoilers for a book that hasn't been formally released at the time of this review, I grew attached to Sadie. I felt bad for this girl who never had a chance her whole life. I wanted her to be happy, or at the very least, at peace. The ambiguity of the ending lays heavy, like one dead girl and another missing.

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The Internet Of Things

I have been surrounded with growing and changing technology my whole life. I remember upgrading from the Gameboy Advance to the Gameboy Advance SP as a child; but these are nothing compared the Nintendo DS. I remember the bulky monitor screens of old family computers, and I know that I could theoretically fit my current laptop inside of one. Like these things the internet has also evolved, but to me it still feels very familiar.

Some of the first things I used the internet recreationally for where ‘research’ on shows I was interested in and socialization. I was introduced to Coke Music by a friend in the early 2000s. It didn’t seem like a convenient way for Coca-Cola to casually advertise, because it was just how I talked to my friends after school. At least, until we briefly migrated to more direct instant messengers, like AOL’s AIM. Then, like everyone else, we made and maintained MySpace pages, until Facebook came along.

The Facebook I first joined is not the Facebook I still use. The option to poke users is gone, but, there’s functioning IM system and sharing photos has never been easier; because I can link it with my Instagram. If I lived a less tame life, I might have cause for concern because Facebook is now something that employers and prospective employers look at.

I live and work in the state of New Jersey. As a legal assistant, I’m very fortunate that documents presented in a case are available online. Because of this, it’s very easy for me to save all the files and I need and update our clients through their websites. If I worked in our Pennsylvania office, I wouldn’t have this luxury, as not all counties have electronic records.

It’s through my job at the law firm that I’ve become aware of how differently I and other people view security. I believe while there are certain programs that can help, an individual plays a large part in keeping their personal data safe. I’ve learned that there is a reason Google Survey’s tell people not to submit passwords through forms, that people need to be told not to keep personal login information on sticky notes, and that some people don’t understand the importance of a good antivirus software. I believe that a number of these issues could be dealt with through education, but, there are plenty of people who did everything right and they were still affected by the Equifax Data Breach.

This is the beauty of my generation. We grew up and with this technology. For better or for worse, it’s a part of us, and now that we’re entering the job market, we’re prepared to start working with it more and perhaps shaping it to be a better, or at least more secure place for us, because of how much it impacts everything we do. I recently spoke with the librarian from a local elementary school about my desire to pursue a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science. She advised me that her job – and many other library jobs - used to be a lot simpler before the internet came along. Maybe it’s harder for her, but for someone with internet background, I am already prepared to adapt and master changes in the field.

A Life In Parts

A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My family and I listened to this in audiobook on our car ride to and around New England. We best know Cranston as Hal, the lovable father in Malcolm in The Middle. My mom has watched Breaking Bad. A brother has seen Godzilla and was able to point him out.

I'm very skeptical of celebrity memoirs. It's easy enough to pay someone to sit with you for a while, and then ghost write, but as Cranston talked about shooting scenes from the perspective of Walter White, what he learned on Loving, and his personal standards on what projects he tasked, you get a real sense of Cranston. (And this isn't even talking about his big road trip with his brother.)

We where all very entertained.

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The Girl In The Flammable Skirt and Other Short Stories

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I originally read the short story The Girl in The Flammable Skirt in my first creative writing class. It was a strange story, but after we unpacked the symbolism it became something beautiful. Years later, I've gotten around to reading the other stories, and unfortunately I didn't find any of them as poignant as the title piece. Like Drunken Mimi and Legacy, some of them where just a little too odd to make sense of.
I enjoyed Fugue and the way Bender wove the stories together, along with the symbolism in that piece. The Girl In The Flammable Skirt holds up after all these years.

View all my reviews Besides this anthology, I'm currently also reading Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling, and I'm finding it delightful. As the name implies, the purpose of this collection is to showcase stories where the author takes a well-known trope, and flips it around. Some of these are obvious, and some of them are not. For example, The Refridgerator in the Girlfriend by Adam-Troy Castro seems to be a nod to a comic book trope that involves violence against women to further the male protagonist journey. It's not uncommon for fans to refer to their favorite female characters as being 'fridged' when they are depowered, unjustly killed off, or put in ridiculous scenarios (ex. Powergirl is depowered, magically impregnated, made vulnerable to unprocessed natural materials... like sharp sticks). Despite the long history of dead women shoved in fridges, this made me think more of the Sexy Lamp Test. To quote the immortal words of Kelly Sue DeConnick, "If you can take out a female character and replace her with a sexy lamp, you're a fucking hack." When the protagonist girlfriend in The Refridgerator in the Girlfriend has a refridgerator installed in her body (apparently a normal and safe thing in this story's universe), she does come close to being more of a thing than a person to her lover. Delilah S. Dawson seemed to pick menstruation as her trope, and my Goodreads comment on the story reads something like, "Loving The First Blood of Poppy Dupree. A wonderful mix of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and 'Are you there God? It's me, Margaret.'" I'm definitely going to come back and read that again. There's enough to unpack there for a whole blog post.

A Head Full of Ghost

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was upset that I had picked up another book where either everything was a result of mental illness or supernatural interference. Lately, I've been running into quite a few of those, and they just aren't my thing. While demonic possession and mental illness both have the same root fear of not being in control of one's self, I'm not looking for metaphors about inner demons. I want actual demons.
While I don't feel that Tremblay picked a side, there are a lot of other things that I think he did right. I liked how he approached the story from different perspectives (Merry's retelling vs. Merry's blog post), because that was very interesting. I loved that there was a reality TV show about Marjorie's possession, and that was such a great way to flesh out and further explore the Barrett family. By the end of the novel, you do feel like you know them, and your head is full of ghost.

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99 Brief Scenes From The End Of The World

99 Brief Scenes From The End Of The World by T.W. Grim
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

After hearing about this on the nosleep podcast, I really wanted to like this story and at first I did. For some readers the changing perspectives kept everything fresh and interesting. For me it made things a bit confusing, especially because I didn't read this in one sitting. I like to think I can balance multiple storylines, but Grim was overambitious with everything that he wanted to do and trying to fit it all into one story. I feel that it fell through in many places.

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Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dumplin' focuses on sixteen year old Willowdean Dixon. Willowdean lives with her mother (a former Miss Teen Blue Bonnet), she has a job at the local fast food joint where she works with her crush, Bo. For whatever reason, Will can't bring herself to tell her best friend, Ellen, about the growing relationship between her and Bo, even as the two begin a sort of summer romance.

Thankfully, the novel isn't completely focused on Will and Bo. The protagonist deals with the loss of her aunt, her mom's repeated involvement (and the town's fixation) on The Miss Blue Bonnet pageant, her changing relationship with her best friend, and body image. A combination of these pushes Will to enter the local pageant, and surprisingly, that's a small percent of the book. Considering how much of the marketing is 'fat girl enters a beauty pageant!', I really assumed Will would be getting into it much earlier in the book and that it would play a bigger part. I'm grateful that this wasn't a book about a social reject showing everyone that she was beautiful on the inside, or winning the love of a conventionally attractive boy. I really think that Julie Murphy made Will a believable teenage girl. Sometimes it frustrated me, but that's a good thing. I think more often than not stories about fat girls make us into people who have the singular fault of not being conventionally attractive. Julie Murphy told it like it is, making this a wonderful and refreshing read.

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