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The Burning Girls
The Burning Girls
C. J. Tudor | 2021 | Horror, Mystery, Thriller
9
9.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
111 of 235
Book
The Burning Girls
By C.J. Tudor
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

When Rev Jack Brooks and teenage daughter Flo move to Chapel Croft, they're far from welcome.

The closed-off community, deeply suspicious of outsiders, is watching them carefully.

Yet Jack has more frightening concerns.

Rumours of the town's secrets are spreading like wildfire, while strange happenings haunt Jack and Flo's every move.

The past is catching up with Chapel Croft - and with Jack - and it's darker than anyone could have feared . . .

This was really really good almost 5⭐️ something just held me back and I’m not sure what! Well this had a few unexpected turns at the end that I didn’t see coming and reading as a mother it can be quite chilling. Highly recommend this is the first time I’ve read C.J. Tudor it won’t be the last!
  
Mother Daughter Widow Wife
Mother Daughter Widow Wife
Robin Wasserman | 2020 | Fiction & Poetry
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Wendy Doe is found in Philadelphia without an ID and no memory of who she is. She becomes a patient at Dr. Benjamin Strauss' Meadowlark Institute--basically her only alternative for being cast out on the streets. Dr. Strauss and his young student, Lizzie, study Wendy, fascinated by her fugue diagnosis. Meanwhile, years later, Wendy's daughter Alice is looking for her mother, who has disappeared again. Wondering if her mother's past disappearance--which she never knew about--could be tied to the current one--Alice searches out Benjamin Strauss and Lizzie. She discovers Lizzie is now a young widow and begins a journey into both her mother's past, and Lizzie's.


"Every daughter became a mother, every mistress a wife--every wife a widow."


This is a hard book for me to rate, even several weeks after finishing it. Is it a brilliant work examining womanhood and love or a frustrating tale that leaves you feeling unresolved? This is certainly a complex book that features complex science, emotions, and feelings. Wasserman has done her research, and there are pages and pages devoted to the science of dissociative fugue, amnesia, and more. I won't lie: it's a lot. There were times I found myself just skimming those sections, because it was a bit much for me.

I didn't care much for the character of Alice, and I'm not entirely sure why, because her mother is missing (presumed dead by suicide by everyone except Alice), and she's worried. But there's something about Alice that just didn't make her particularly sympathetic to me. As for Lizzie, even though she didn't make the best of choices, I liked her more. Maybe I identified better with her. We get to see Lizzie in the past and present, and Wasserman does a good job of capturing the yearning of loving someone who doesn't deserve you and the idea of becoming someone else for love. Even Wendy is hard to care about sometimes, because she just doesn't seem care herself. To her, her memory is a thing she's lost, but because she can't remember, she doesn't seem too concerned.


"'You don't get it: I don't not want it back, and I don't want it back. There is no it. You can't miss what never happened.'"


What was so hard with this book is that there were just so many words. Oh the words. Words about science, words about feelings, words, words, words. It just felt long. I wasn't entirely invested in the story, but I did want to find Alice's mother, but then everything just felt sort of eh and unresolved, and yeah. I don't know. So much thinking, not much happening. I think this novel probably presents some brilliant ideas and representations, but they went over my head. 2.75 stars, rounded to 3 here.
  
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)
2018 | Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Looks great (0 more)
It's Victorian London, Christmas time, and a family mourning the recent loss of their mother is preparing to go to a Christmas party. Their father hands out some gifts left to them by their mother and eldest daughter Clara (Mackenzie Foy) receives an egg shaped box, locked and with the keys whereabouts unknown. Disappointed, they head off to the lavish Christmas party hosted by Claras godfather (Morgan Freeman) and while there, Clara discovers a hidden world consisting of four realms. War is brewing and in the absence of her mother, who discovered this world and became its queen, it's up to Clara to bring everyone together once more.

First things first, this movie is just beautiful to look at. Such attention to detail, with vibrant sets and costumes throughout. Mackenzie Foy is wonderful as Clara, dealing with grief while coming to terms with trying to live up to her mothers legacy. Keira Knightley is good, if a little annoying at times, and Helen Mirren is also reliably interesting. And Morgan Freeman is just.... Morgan Freeman!

It's all very Alice in Wonderland or The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. Despite their faults though, the Narnia movies always seemed to explore the vast world introduced to us, taking the time to meet many of it's inhabitants. While this movie introduces us briefly to the realms as part of a wonderful ballet sequence, only to not show any of it again for the rest of the movie. Instead, the plot all seems very contained and all over far too quickly. I liked what I saw, it just didn't really leave much of a lasting impression at all. Nor did it leave me feeling very magical or festive.