Two Bluestockings

Public Domain Photo courtesy of George Hodan In honor of Valentine's Day, the girls sat down and wrote out their top fictional crushes. Aarika: Jayna, I think we should have a long talk about how my sex-capades are MY business and not yours. But, because I am a team player, I will share my literary fantasies with the world. Because I am the biggest team player. So, without further ado…who would I do?  1: I am going to have my Queen get the first credit. I love Sarah J Maas, Queen Maas from here on out. Bow to our queen! Okay, enough fangirling. Our man Rowan from her Throne of Glass series. I do not know why I have a thing for guys who would not put up with any of my nonsense, but I do. My husband (Hi, I love you. Jayna told me this was my homework!) He literally puts up with none of Aelin’s shenanigans but trusts her to no end when she comes up with her chaotic plans. That is true love. So, I would have to ride that wave if I were her. But I am married so I would never. I married ...

               Reyna Favis plunges us into the mind of our narrator, Fia, as she flees from a seven-year-old ghost boy. Just as she is about to make her escape, the ghost boy grabs her hand. Trying not to cause alarm in the man with her—who can’t see the boy—Fia tries to shake him off. When the boy refuses to let go, she attempts to blast him with her mental powers. Enter Zackie, a psychopomp who has taken the shape of a search dog. (Don’t know what a psychopomp is? I didn’t either. It’s a mythical creature who ferries the dead to the next life.) **Spoiler alert, psychopomps don’t like it when you fight their babies.**             Favis is laying the groundwork for a series in this book. Her characters are fleshed out well, so you don’t feel like they’re lacking. However, there are allusions to pasts that aren’t fully revealed. Fia doesn’t know who her parents are, and her foster par...

This book came to me during an incredibly busy week. I opened it up, scanned the first few pages, and said, "This is not for me." It had a lot of references to men feeling emasculated if their wives worked and women being fake to keep the peace. I almost put it down, but I'm glad I didn't. (First, you should know that my specialty is researching women's mental health, which is why I react so strongly to these implications.) Thankfully Lomazoff-Marron is also not a fan of such things either, because her women not only rose from the ashes of their lives, they came back stronger and more authentic. The book begins with Jonathan and Meredith Perkins. Jonathan is painted as the hard worker with "business acumen," whose business is booming. Meredith is the art history major turned housewife, who attempts to find contentment in decorating her house. Enter federal agents, who arrest Jonathan for fraud and embezzling. The Perkins' world crumbles, and Meredith...

Okay, so I have a confession. I love books like this. Not only are the titles confusing and fun, I make a movie up in my head of what the plot is before I start the book. I don’t even read the back of the book, I make my own Hallmark version in my mind, then dive in. For better or for worse. Because, let’s be honest for a minute, sometimes these books are train wrecks that you just have to look at because you are stuck in traffic, and you left the real book in your other bag. I can happily say that this book is not one of those. This book is cute and funny and more on the realistic side than other books in this category. (The only thing I will mention is the criminology aspect had some incorrect procedures, but I will leave my college education on the party killer side of my brain). I enjoyed the characters. They are all loveable, honest and reminded me of my own family. We are loud, we love each other to a fault, and we meddle by accident because most of us are fixers. So we fix. Whic...

This is one of those things we all do. If you read a lot of books, you have come across a book you just could not finish. And let me tell you, I loathe this. I wish I was one of those people who could power through a book that doesn’t grab them, but I am not. These are five books that I could not finish, no matter how hard I tried. 1: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is the most recent I was unable to finish. And I tried, believe me. Jayna gave it high praise and Jane Eyre , by Emily's sister Charlotte, was great. So I gave it a go. I made it 10 pages in and HAD TO STOP. It felt like my brain was coming out of my nose, and I needed the feeling to cease and desist. I apologize to anyone who loves this book. Classics are just not for me. They are too formal. Why do you have to talk to me like I am your grandmother you only see on holidays because you want the inheritance? 2: Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King is one I hate to say. I love Mr. King’s book, but this book does no...

  Cory Cowley is on her way to great things. Even though her review fell to Aarika, and Aarika has had the majority of contact with her through her review process, I have found Cory to be a very interesting person. She seems to be such a queen of darkness on her Instagram, so I will admit that I chuckled to find that she is really a giant nerd. I don’t know what I expected. The Queen of the Night? Maleficent, the dark fairy from Sleeping Beauty ?  We reached out to her with some interview questions, because she is fast accumulating a cult following. She’s breaking into Amazon’s top 100 Horror books as well, which is no surprise if you read over the reviews, which reinforce Aarika’s glowing review. (My favorite: “Heaven and hell have similar addresses.”) Someday, I’ll write up a transcript of what Aarika said during the week we did this review. It looked a lot like: “Jayna. Jayna. JAYNA! OMG! THIS BOOK!”  With the introduction out of the way...I present to you the exclusiv...

When I opened Bending Reality by Cory Cowley, I was not sure what to expect. The cover of the book gives you heavy Clive Barker vibes, and the description of the book does as well. This book is brutal, poetic, and leaves you feeling like you are being covered in the proverbial slime and sulfur the book wants to expel. This book is one of those that will stay with you even when you close your page to go on about your day, making you come back again and again to find the next demon, the next leap into the unknown. This book does need to come with trigger warning for those who are easily impacted. There are descriptive scenes of torture, self-inflicted acts, violent sexual encounters, and sexual thoughts of the main character, as well as abusive relationships and drug use. This is right on par with Barker, so if you love his books, or read to fill that perverse curiosity, this book is for you. Ratings: Language: 5 out of 5. I would not be able to share a picture of this book without mul...

Aarika and Jayna sent Maureen some questions to get to know her better. They are included here for your entertainment and in hopes that you will be further encouraged to check out Maureen's book Woven. The Two Bluestockings' review for that book can be found here !  Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want? I think writing is an art, and so I try to be true to myself when I write. I learned a lot about writing when working on Woven, my first novel. I learned about the difference between commercial fiction and literary fiction, after some well-meaning people tried to rework my book to make it fit a formula: intro characters, intro a problem, try to solve the problem and fail several times in spectacular fashion, solve the problem and live happily ever after. That did not work for this book and for a while I thought maybe I could not write a novel after all. But then I started to think about art and how an art dealer might have said to Picasso, “Yo...

I had the pleasure of reading this book in one sitting! I honestly had no idea what to expect, but I can stay without a doubt that this book delivered whatever I was missing. This book was such an easy read, the language was easy to follow and is one of those books you can’t help but curl up with after a long day. This story is easy to follow, but has an interesting concept you can’t help but stay with until you have concluded the story. When you are finished reading, you can close the book, take out your headphones, or just close out the app on your phone satisfied. Ratings: Language: 2 out of 5. There is some strong language throughout the book, but it is not overbearing and easily overlooked if you prefer less language in your books. The language is not used unnecessarily, but more in relation to the characters.  Sexual content: 2 out of 5. There is some talk of sexual situations, insinuations of sexual relations between characters, and conversations about exploring the chemis...

     Maureen Morrissey is the author of Woven: Six Stories, One Epic Journey . In this novel, you watch the history of a family unfold from the great-grandparents to the fourth generation. Morrissey says in the author's note that this was her 2020 project that she wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic.      Morrissey obviously is a history buff. I learned some things about World War Two that I didn't know like: a group of nurses crashed in the mountains and had to hike nine weeks to reach their destination and the Japanese actually put together prison camps that were equally as horrible as some of the camps in Germany.      The book is divided into two parts: his and hers. The "His" stands for Cam's story and the "Hers" stands for Tessa's story. The story begins with Cam's great-grandfather who fled to the United States to escape the Irish potato famine and threads down through the generations to Cam's grandfather who was the first in his family...

    T he Venom Protocols  by John Murray McKay is a fast-paced novel about a female assassin. From his work, you can see that McKay is influenced by Marvel Comics, which he says that he loves in his GoodReads profile.       Charlotte Corday is hiding out in Hawaii, running from her past as a hitwoman for the mafia in New York. When a well-dressed man shows up to demand that she complete one last mission, the reader drops into her disorienting past. From her first (albeit involuntary kill) to her attempt to flee from the wicked men trying to control her, Charlie checks every box for a badass heroine. She's funny. She's dangerous. (Basically, she's as if Venom--from the Marvel movie--mixed with Jason Bourne. It's a wild but fascinating combo.)      My first gripe with the book is that McKay calls cookies biscuits. Or at least, that's what I assumed--and Aarika confirmed. One character bakes these "biscuits" badly, which is a running joke i...