My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
From the cover:
"Sixteen-year-old Wendy Darling's life is not what she imagined it would be. The doldrums of an empty house after her brothers have gone to school, the dull parties where everyone thinks she talks too much, and the fact that her parents have decided to send her away to Ireland as a governess - it all makes her wish things could be different.
Wendy's only real escape is in writing down tales of Never Land. After nearly meeting her hero, Peter Pan, four years earlier, she still holds on to the childhood hope that his magical home truly exists. She also holds on to his shadow.
So when an opportunity to travel to Never Land via pirate ship presents itself, Wendy makes a deal with the devil. But Never Land isn't quite the place she imagined it would be. Unexpected dangers and strange foes pop up at every turn, and a little pixie named Tinker Bell seems less than willing to help.
But when Captain Hook reveals some rather permanent and evil plans for Never Land, it's up to the two of them to save Peter Pan - and his world."
In this Twisted Tale, Nana catches Peter Pan's shadow while Peter sits outside the nursery window listening to one of Wendy's stories, but Peter never returns to London to retrieve it. Wendy keeps the shadow safe for years, hoping for the day he finally does come back. While she waits, Wendy goes through the motions of life as a young lady, helping her mother keep the household running smoothly, preparing after-school tea for her brothers, and being bored to tears. Her only moments of happiness come when she scribbles stories of Never Land in her notebook.
No one understands her imagination or love of stories, and when her parents find her notebook, they are horrified. Wendy is sixteen, and according to them the tales she has spun are "not the product of a happy, normal girl." To save her from herself, they decide to send her to Ireland to become a governess. Desperate to escape being sent away and forced to leave her childhood dreams behind, Wendy does the unthinkable. She contacts Captain Hook and makes a bargain...Peter's shadow in exchange for passage to and from Never Land.
Aboard his pirate ship with Hook in possession of Peter Pan's shadow, things go downhill quickly. For starters, Wendy is not as adept at negotiating with pirates as she thought she was, and as a result, she finds herself a prisoner, forced to serve as the pirates' mother. Even worse, Captain Hook plans to use the shadow not only to capture Peter, but to bring about the destruction of all of Never Land. With the help of one of the pirates, Wendy manages to escape the ship and make it to Never Land. She finds Tinker Bell and the Lost Boys, but no one has seen Peter in ages. Will Wendy be able to free Peter's shadow and save Never Land without him?
Peter Pan is one of my favorite Disney movies, so I've really been looking forward to reading this Twisted Tale, and I was not disappointed! It got off to a slow start, and I wish they had showed Wendy in more of the awkward social situations she obviously despises rather than alluding to them or revealing them through her memories, but that's a small gripe. Once she makes it to Never Land, it's basically non-stop adventure, something Wendy notes is much more exhausting and frustrating and far less exhilarating than she always imagined.
Wendy and Tinker Bell team up to find Peter Pan, and while Wendy and Tink aren't very taken with each other in the movie version, in this world their initially unwilling partnership gradually blossoms into true friendship. Their relationship is possibly my favorite part of the book. I also dearly love how progressively snarky Wendy becomes as the book goes on, culminating in a line I never would have expected could crack me up as hard as it did - "The deuce you say." Trust me...it may not sound funny, but it is. This book was a Girl Power anthem and a testament to the magic and might of storytelling.
Friday, February 28, 2020
Friday, February 21, 2020
Anti-Diet - Christy Harrison
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
From the cover:
"If you're like most people, you've dieted at some point in your life. You've had negative thoughts about your body, carefully counted your calories, and obsessed over the ever-changing rules of "healthy eating." But studies have shown that well over 90 percent of people who manage to lose weight regain it within five years. If dieting is so ineffective, why are we so obsessed with it?
The culprit is diet culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness with health and even moral virtue, promotes weight loss as a means to attaining higher status, and demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others. It's sexist, racist, and classist, yet this approach to thinking about food and bodies is so embedded in the fabric of our society that it can be hard to identify. It masquerades as health, wellness, and fitness, and for some, it is all-consuming.
In Anti-Diet, Christy Harrison, a registered dietitian nutritionist, takes on diet culture and the multibillion-dollar industries that profit from it, exposing all the ways it robs people of their time, money, well-being, and happiness. It will turn what you believe about health and wellness upside down, as Harrison explores the history of diet culture, how it has infiltrated the world of health and wellness, all the sneaky forms it can take, and how letting go of efforts to lose weight or eat "perfectly" actually helps to improve people's health - no matter their size. Based on scientific research, Harrison's personal experience, and stories from her patients and colleagues, Anti-Diet provides a radical alternative to diet culture and will help you reclaim your body, mind, and life so you can focus on things that truly matter."
This book is life-changing. I couldn't stop underlining and taking notes as I read it, and I want to give a copy to everyone I know. As someone who has struggled since high school with disordered eating, yo-yo and bandwagon dieting, weight fluctuations, etc, every word Christy wrote resonated with me. When I reflect back on times I have lost weight, it has always been as a result of extreme dieting, it has never been sustainable, and sitting here reflecting on it, was it worth the effort and the misery of constantly being hungry, crabby, and tired? FUCK NO. Especially when I take into account that regardless of how high or low my weight was, my actual scientific measurements of health like cholesterol levels and blood pressure have been excellent and, more importantly, have never changed. If being fat or gaining weight is unhealthy, then at 30-40 pounds heavier than I was ten years ago shouldn't other indicators of health be getting worse?
From the cover:
"If you're like most people, you've dieted at some point in your life. You've had negative thoughts about your body, carefully counted your calories, and obsessed over the ever-changing rules of "healthy eating." But studies have shown that well over 90 percent of people who manage to lose weight regain it within five years. If dieting is so ineffective, why are we so obsessed with it?
The culprit is diet culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness with health and even moral virtue, promotes weight loss as a means to attaining higher status, and demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others. It's sexist, racist, and classist, yet this approach to thinking about food and bodies is so embedded in the fabric of our society that it can be hard to identify. It masquerades as health, wellness, and fitness, and for some, it is all-consuming.
In Anti-Diet, Christy Harrison, a registered dietitian nutritionist, takes on diet culture and the multibillion-dollar industries that profit from it, exposing all the ways it robs people of their time, money, well-being, and happiness. It will turn what you believe about health and wellness upside down, as Harrison explores the history of diet culture, how it has infiltrated the world of health and wellness, all the sneaky forms it can take, and how letting go of efforts to lose weight or eat "perfectly" actually helps to improve people's health - no matter their size. Based on scientific research, Harrison's personal experience, and stories from her patients and colleagues, Anti-Diet provides a radical alternative to diet culture and will help you reclaim your body, mind, and life so you can focus on things that truly matter."
This book is life-changing. I couldn't stop underlining and taking notes as I read it, and I want to give a copy to everyone I know. As someone who has struggled since high school with disordered eating, yo-yo and bandwagon dieting, weight fluctuations, etc, every word Christy wrote resonated with me. When I reflect back on times I have lost weight, it has always been as a result of extreme dieting, it has never been sustainable, and sitting here reflecting on it, was it worth the effort and the misery of constantly being hungry, crabby, and tired? FUCK NO. Especially when I take into account that regardless of how high or low my weight was, my actual scientific measurements of health like cholesterol levels and blood pressure have been excellent and, more importantly, have never changed. If being fat or gaining weight is unhealthy, then at 30-40 pounds heavier than I was ten years ago shouldn't other indicators of health be getting worse?
 |
| Things that make you go "hmmm..." |
I am so grateful that a friend of mine read this book and recommended it to me. In the last few months, I have been focusing my energy on mental health and self care, and part of that focus included tackling my body dysmorphia. What better way to untangle my issues with weight and body image that than by reading a book debunking the message fed to all of us that the only way to be healthy is to be thin and highlighting all the ways that diet culture messes with our lives while offering no real benefits? There were moments as I read that I literally wanted to yell or cheer out loud, it was so inspiring, and there were just as many moments where I was in tears because what I was reading resonated so deeply with my experience. Also, we need to talk more about how racist, classist, and misogynist diet culture is, because I had no idea, and reading about the ways in which diet culture and fatphobia try to force everyone into essentially a rich white standard of beauty, I just...if you don't walk away from this book furious at diet culture and legitimately ready to burn it to the ground, good god, what is going on with you?
One of my favorite inspiring moments is when Christy notes in chapter one that "it's hard to smash the patriarchy on an empty stomach." I mean.............yeah! It is, you guys. Can we please eat some fucking carbs and get smashing? And just think, that was chapter one. There are eleven chapters, folx, all just as empowering. Whether you have struggled with diet culture or not, read, be inspired, and share the message. Let's burn diet culture to the ground together!
Friday, February 14, 2020
Happy Valentine's Day!
I so badly wanted to have an amazing First Page Friday review for you all today, but alas, this has been A Week, and the book I wanted to review is so fantastic that it deserves more than a hastily scraped together review right before bedtime. Stay tuned next week when #FirstPageFriday returns, and in the meantime, I hope your Valentine's Day was sweet and the coming week is even sweeter!
Friday, February 7, 2020
House of Salt and Sorrows - Erin A. Craig
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
From the cover:
"Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters, their father, and stepmother. Once they were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last - the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge - and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.
Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that the deaths were no accidents. Her sisters have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn't sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who - or what - are they really dancing with?
When Annaleigh's involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it's a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family - before it claims her next."
Are the Thaumas sisters cursed, or do they just have extraordinarily terrible luck? When Annaleigh gets suspicious that someone is actually murdering her sisters, it makes sense...after all, it seems wildly coincidental that their mother and then four sisters would just happen to all die, one right after the other...but who would want them dead?
As the book progresses, things don't get much clearer. If anything, things only get more muddled. Verity, Annaleigh's youngest sister, claims to have seen the ghosts of their older sisters, and now Annaleigh has started seeing them too. With every passing day, things around Highmoor get stranger. Her father and sisters are acting oddly, her childhood best friend seems to be hiding something, and she has a feeling the young man she met recently isn't being entirely truthful either. Annaleigh no longer knows who, or what, she can trust, but she has a feeling that if she doesn't figure it out soon, it will be too late. Can she piece things together in time?
This book was nothing like I expected, and while there are a couple things I wish had been done differently, most notably that the end had been a touch longer to truly do it justice, overall I thought it was an amazing read. The world-building was incredibly vivid, the atmosphere was mysterious and chilling, and from the first page to the last I was on the edge of my seat. There were a couple times where I thought I had everything figured out, only to make it another couple chapters and have my theory smashed. Even when I did start to unravel the mystery, I never could have imagined the full scope of was actually going on.
From the cover:
"Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters, their father, and stepmother. Once they were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls' lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last - the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge - and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.
Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that the deaths were no accidents. Her sisters have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn't sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who - or what - are they really dancing with?
When Annaleigh's involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it's a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family - before it claims her next."
Are the Thaumas sisters cursed, or do they just have extraordinarily terrible luck? When Annaleigh gets suspicious that someone is actually murdering her sisters, it makes sense...after all, it seems wildly coincidental that their mother and then four sisters would just happen to all die, one right after the other...but who would want them dead?
As the book progresses, things don't get much clearer. If anything, things only get more muddled. Verity, Annaleigh's youngest sister, claims to have seen the ghosts of their older sisters, and now Annaleigh has started seeing them too. With every passing day, things around Highmoor get stranger. Her father and sisters are acting oddly, her childhood best friend seems to be hiding something, and she has a feeling the young man she met recently isn't being entirely truthful either. Annaleigh no longer knows who, or what, she can trust, but she has a feeling that if she doesn't figure it out soon, it will be too late. Can she piece things together in time?
This book was nothing like I expected, and while there are a couple things I wish had been done differently, most notably that the end had been a touch longer to truly do it justice, overall I thought it was an amazing read. The world-building was incredibly vivid, the atmosphere was mysterious and chilling, and from the first page to the last I was on the edge of my seat. There were a couple times where I thought I had everything figured out, only to make it another couple chapters and have my theory smashed. Even when I did start to unravel the mystery, I never could have imagined the full scope of was actually going on.
If you're like me and have vivid dreams, I would recommend not reading this right before bed, because my damn, it gave me some strange nightmares. Day or night, though, it's a great read.
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