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...

No one prepares you to walk alongside your spouse as they suffer from any sort of long-term illness. You receive an overwhelming amount of information, the stress keeps you from sleeping, and somehow, you are supposed to continue doing the day-to-day activities like you are 100% fine. Enter Armored by Dawn F. Landry. This book is the memoir of Dawn’s journey alongside her husband, Daran, as he battled (and beat) cancer and as he recovered from a massive stroke. It is a testament to their faith, their passion to encourage others during their own trials, and their resilience. In this book, caregivers will find advice on how to advocate for those in their care—how to make sure that they are supported and encouraged during their illness. There are tips for setting boundaries and providing emotional support. Best of all, there are tips for organizing all the information from the various health professionals that they deal with. (Dawn even offers free printouts for y...

          I do not have the poet's soul that Aarika has, so I was quite nervous to read this book. Shiva contacted us via email, and he struck  me as an extremely warm individual, which also makes it difficult for this critic. Aarika says I have no soul--she has also not seen me ugly cry over Old Yeller .          Shadow: Unparalleled Waves of LIFE was intended to be part of a collective effort between Shiva Vangala and his cousin, Satheesh Kotoju. They wanted to write and publish with the pen name SanthuSnehama, however this dream ended when Satheesh died unexpectedly in 2019.           The book is very short, clocking in at 16 poems. It is beautifully illustrated, and each poem has its own black and white illustration that helps to convey its meaning.          When read with the knowledge that this was to be a collected effort, you can feel a spectrum of emotion...

  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...

                This post has to come with an advisory of sorts. I’m about to talk about my very private mental health, which is uncomfortable for me, but the year 2020 is helping me feel braver. I will be talking about postpartum depression. If you have it, please seek professional help. After you do that, come back here for some amazing books that can also help you. ……… After the birth of my second child, I went through a deep depression. I didn’t say a word about it for two years, even though there were at least six months that my brain felt like it was on fire and I wanted to die. I didn’t know what it was, and, because I didn’t know what it was, I internalized it as a fundamental flaw. I convinced myself that I was the problem. I drew up schedules, I prayed to be more organized, I cried over the messes…it wasn’t pretty. Turns out, I’m not the only one who internalizes that guilt. Freed, Chan, Boger, and Tompson (2012) noted that one ...

    See Aarika? I'm shocked at the accusation  Jayna here! Aarika says I am a monster because it is rare for me to give five stars to a book. It rarely happens. Vonnegut is my favorite author, and I think I gave only one of his books a five-star rating. (That book was  Slaughterhouse-Five,  if you're wondering.)      First, I take reading very seriously. My husband will tell you that I have books stacked around the house, and each one is full of notes and highlights. I read every day because it matters to me. I enjoy the storytelling, the characters, the style, and everything that makes up a book. I want them to be perfectly executed, so I can savor the experience.       With that in mind, here are my ratings broken down to help our listeners/readers understand how my mind works:      One Star: I didn't finish the book. The grammar and spelling mistakes might have frustrated me, or the plot was too confusi...

     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...