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iStatVball 2 (Combined)

Sports and Productivity

(0 Ratings) Rate It

App

'iStatVball 2 iPad Edition' is an extremely powerful, yet easy to use, sports statistics engine for...

Sarah (7800 KP) rated The Unexpected Joy of Being Single in Books

Nov 22, 2019

The Unexpected Joy of Being Single

Catherine Gray | 2018 | Contemporary, Humor & Comedy

8.4

(5 Ratings)

Book Rating

Positive and uplifting

I really wish that I had read this book a lot sooner. I’ve been struggling with being on my own for the past year and its been difficult because everyone else I know is coupled up or married, and being single in your thirties is a pretty daunting experience. Whilst I’ve been feeling a lot better within myself recently, this book is truly a wonderfully uplifting read.

Catherine Gray is a great writer. She really knows how to talk to her audience, and fill her writing with an equal balance of humour and seriousness. She knows what she’s talking about to, and it’s nice to read about someone’s view on this topic without it being preachy or smug. Not once does Gray come across as condescending to her readers. You can tell every word is from her personal experience, and throughout this entire book I could match this to my own personal experiences. It’s a wonderful thing to read a book and feel that the author truly and entirely understands what you’ve been feeling and thinking. The book itself is full of personal stories, anecdotes and also a tonne of meaningful quotes and statistics. And it’s all put forward in such a positive and happy way, yet without really slandering those who are coupled or married. This has really reinforced my current way of thinking and whilst not actually a self help book, this has done wonders to help and make me realise I’m not in the wrong for how I feel and think. This has made me the happiest I’ve felt in a long time. I wish I could give this to my coupled and married friends to them rethink how they treat their single mates, but sadly they’d probably get offended!

I highly recommend that anyone single read this, especially if you’re approaching or over 30 and in need of a positive outlook - you can’t get a better one than this.

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Kristy H (1252 KP) rated You Are Not Alone in Books

Mar 19, 2020

You Are Not Alone

Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen | 2020 | Contemporary, Thriller

7.6

(5 Ratings)

Book Rating

A few seconds change Shay Miller's life forever. It's almost ironic, as Shay, 31, and a market researcher, is obsessed with data. She's been keeping data books since age eleven, listing statistics and facts the way other girls write in diaries. Shay's recently lost her job, and her roommate and best friend, Sean, spends more time with his girlfriend than her. She feels hopeless and isolated. Then everything changes, and Shay finds herself swept up in the glamorous world of the Moore sisters, Cassandra and Jane. They have a way of making Shay feel different. They also seem to be everywhere, shaping Shay's life in strange ways.

I've learned by now when I pick up a book by the Hendricks-Pekkanen duo that I need to just suspend disbelief for a bit and go with it. If I can do that and enjoy the ride, then the book is a fun little escape mechanism. When looked at via this prism, You Are Not Alone was very successful.

The book is told from different points of view that often stray into various time periods, and it took me a while to keep all the characters straight. Cassandra and Jane have a host of friends, and I had to bookmark the page that introduced them all so I could remember who was who for a while. There seem to be unreliable narrators galore for a while--can we trust Shay? The sisters? Their friends?

I don't want to get too much into the plot and give anything away. It's a crazy story and again, not really probable (I hope). However, it's highly addictive, and I found the book to be compulsively readable. I also really grew to like Shay, even if I was suspicious about her.

There are some great twists and turns in this thriller, which I really enjoyed. I liked how this one kept me guessing, even if there was an eye roll or two in there too. It was definitely wild! 4 stars.