Search

Search only in certain items:

Beauty and the Greek Billionaire
Beauty and the Greek Billionaire
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Marianna is crossing things off her bucket list and one of those things is to lose her virginity finally. While in Greece with her brother she thinks now is the perfect time to explore the possibility. She makes up a fake name and goes in search of a one night stand. Never would she imagine her ideal man would be a purse snatcher (of sorts).

Nico has his eye on the beautiful sister of the man trying to lure him into investing in his company. She was leaving the café with her brother when a purse thief grabbed at her bag. Nico leaned in to help and got a nose full of her fist, in the scuffle she realized she had struck the wrong man and invited him for drinks. Introducing herself in a different name than he’d known her by he wondered what her game was. Did her brother send her in to spy on him?

Marianna has no idea Nico knows exactly who she is but she sleeps with him all the same. When he kicks her out of his house at the end of a beautiful day she is more confused than ever. She goes back to Australia broken but not beaten until about 2 months later when she fails a test.

Nico doesn’t let anyone in, not into his life, heart or house and yet somehow Marianna got into all 3 quickly. He feels bad for sending her away and when she returns he thinks it is a sign to try and make it work for the sake of parenting anyway. He is a jerk, cold, stubborn and rude but he takes care of what he feels he should without question.

Marianna and Nico struggle through getting to know one another while trying to make their brief relationship look lengthy. Nico does not bend to the give and take relationships take however and fights every step forward Marianna tries to take. In the end she leaves him because he doesn’t trust her. Nico has to make the ultimate choice of what means more to him, Marianna and his future or the past and their mistakes.

I enjoyed the traveling porcelain cat and what it symbolized. I received a copy without expectation for review, any and all opinions expressed are my own. While this didn't grab me fully, I still enjoyed the bones of the story. 3 3/4 stars for this read.
  
40x40

Laura Doe (1350 KP) rated Saving Missy in Books

Mar 12, 2021  
Saving Missy
Saving Missy
Beth Morrey | 2020 | Fiction & Poetry, Humor & Comedy, Romance
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Wow, I don’t even know what I can say about this book.
I began the book by not particularly liking the main character – Millicent or Missy for short. But throughout the book I grew to love her, all of he, including her imperfections.
She starts off by being the lonely old woman who’s family have all left her that I’m sure we all dread to become. Through a chance meeting she meets Sylvie who becomes such a massive part of Missy’s life and in turn introduces her to the brash Angela and her adorable son Otis. To begin with, it seemed like Angela wasn’t interested in a friendship with Missy but more to take advantage of this poor, lonely old woman. But half way through the book it becomes evident that Angela really has come to love Missy and wants to spend time with her.
Through Angela, Missy inadvertently becomes a dog owner when she’s asked to do her a favour. Missy had no interest in looking after a dog, but something happens that convinces her to try it. Because of this, she opens herself up to a whole world of new friends – the dog walkers in her local park. A whole host of characters that make you feel all warm inside with how much they care about Missy.
Although most stories that are told with a little, old lady as the main character wouldn’t focus on any imperfections, this book explores them and we frequently flashback to situations and conversations which do not paint Missy in the best light. There is one situation that is referred to multiple times in the first half of the book, but it’s not until much later on that we discover what exactly happened. We also see Missy trying to apologise to certain people for some of her faults, through writing letters to the people she now realises she should have been more supportive of or more loving towards.
We also learn a lot about Missy’s marriage to her husband, Leo. This was obviously not a perfect marriage, as most aren’t, but it also sometimes made me feel that Leo didn’t really care about her as much as she cared about him. It’s only when she finds a letter from him hidden in a book that it shows how much he really has cared about her all those years and admits his own imperfections.
Thank you Pigeonhole and Beth Morrey for letting me read and review this, and I will definitely be investing in a hard copy to read again!
  
Here Come the Warm Jets by Brian Eno
Here Come the Warm Jets by Brian Eno
1974 | Rock
9.0 (4 Ratings)
Album Favorite

Blank Frank by Brian Eno

(0 Ratings)

Track

"Blank Frank’ is a song that manages to be super-modern and futuristic even though it’s about forty years old now. It’s from Here Come The Warm Jets, which is one of my favourite records of all time and I got into it when I was about fourteen or fifteen. It was very challenging, it was quite arty and some of it’s abrasive, but because I loved Roxy Music I was into investing some time in it and forty odd years later it’s definitely a Desert Island Disc for me. It’s partly because it’s so full of ideas, but also because it could only have come out of the UK. “I think all great art represents its environment; Jasper Johns is an obvious one because he used a flag, but if you look at the Pop Art movement it feels like Manhattan in the 60s’, the LA 60s’ art scene doesn’t look anything like the East Coast art scene. You could say exactly the same thing for Hip Hop, I think anything that’s informed by its environment is interesting and is usually pretty good. “Here Come The Warm Jets would be really quite an interesting record if it came out now, the vocals are very, very British. You know the word ‘arch’? I think arch is something that Americans don’t really do and I’m not saying that with any sense of nationalism, I think that for good and bad arch is a particularly British trait, it’s kind of intellectual, it’s remote and it’s not earnest. People often think that’s a bad thing and that music - and singing in particular - has got to be from the heart, or else it’s not authentic. “The X-Factor and talent shows have done so much damage to singing and the art of songwriting, because the basic premise is the more emotive a thing is the more quality it’s got and that’s complete nonsense. Siouxsie Sioux isn’t about that and ‘Blank Frank’ totally exemplifies it, it’s still a great rocking track but its arch and arty, it’s quite intellectual but it’s still engaging. “One of the reasons I picked a lot of these songs is because they were part of my formative years and a theme running through this is the UK in the 70s’. The idea of it being this sea of beige and brown with terrible haircuts and power cuts was a little part of it, but when you put all these records together, particularly Brian Eno and Roxy Music, it tells a completely different story."

Source
  
The Goonies (1985)
The Goonies (1985)
1985 | Adventure, Comedy
Classic
Contains spoilers, click to show
I first watched this seminal 80's classic in 1988, when it first appeared on TV and I was blown away by it. I was 10, roughly the same age as the lads and here was a film with a raucous sense of humour, strong child characters and large-scale plot which has made this film a multi-generational classic, with our parents, us as parents and our children all investing in the spirit of adventure of The Goonies.

Named after the Goon Docks of which they inhabit, a group of kids, after finding a treasure map, decide that this is their last chance to save the town, which is to knocked down in favour of a Country Club. This leads them on an adventure through the booby-trapped underground catacombs of the town, as they follow the map to One Eyed Willie's treasure.

They get mixed up with the Fratelli's, a matriarchal crime family who get wind of the treasure and follows them into the caves.

The first ting that struck me about this, is after all these years what that it was still fun, enjoyable and even though I might not bother watching by myself, I would defiantly enjoy seeing again with the right audience. The raucous nature of a group of children together in a room is captured so expertly here, with a young Sean Austin, now famous for his portrayal of Samwise Gamgee in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, holding the pack together; but the chaos is portrayed perfectly.

The language is good here too, with casual swearing amongst the kids, meaning that this must be one of the rare family films to truly capture the interplay between tweenage and teenage kids. Overall, this is a classic for all the right reasons, with the story by Steven Spielberg with only goes to further reinforce his status as one of Hollywood's greatest visionaries and a sharp, tight screenplay by Chris Columbus, who penned Gremlins the previous year and went on to direct the first two, but the weakest two Harry Potter movies.

There is also the questionable issue of the way that the Fratelli's treat Chunk. When you think about it he is threatened with torture after being kidnapped and spending time with the murdered corpse of two 'Feds' who have been shot in the head, murdered in cold blood.

I love this, treating the horror in a mature way, allowing it to used as humour but in a way to playfully scare kids, which it does. It is fun, but I do wonder where the PC brigade would let some of these plot points go in to a child friendly romp in 2011? I hope so, as it is the combination of elements that made this film what it is today.
  
How Hard Can It Be?
How Hard Can It Be?
Allison Pearson | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry
8
7.0 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
It's all fun and games until someone posts a belfie.

Kate Reddy is back. And her daughters backSIDE is causing some trouble. We jump right into our favorite bad-a$$, anxiety-ridden, take-charge heroine Kate's life as she is approaching 50 and it seems the hilarity and struggles of parenting, working, wife-ing, friendship and everything else in Kate's life is just as amusing as ever.

Kate's daughter Emily has taken a pic of her butt and the crazy life of Kate's we all know and love, just cannot seem to get any more complicated - until it does. She's been out of the workforce, and looking to get back in, She's not having much of any sort of pleasant relations with husband Richard (yes, surprisingly, still married). She's having a mini mid-life crisis trying to accept she's almost 50, her parents are aging, and her kids are now teenagers and the struggles to communicate with these digital-age micro-adults is almost as difficult as communicating with Russian Investors.

As Kate tries to make her way back into the world of investing she once was so good at, she has some pretty cringeworthy experiences, and struggles to find a way in that world as an "aging" woman. We find several comparisons to the past, when just being a mother was the wall between her and success. She finds herself lying to herself and others, trying her best to tiptoe through a marriage in crisis and lack of communication with her children, and praying the looming milestone birthday isn't going to be the demise of any semblance of the woman that she knows she is, and desperately wants to find again. Oh, and did I mention Jack is BACK?!

The book is classic Allison Pearson: witty, entertaining and full of laughs. I didn't realize how much I missed Kate (I totally still picture SJP in every situation...) and I settled into a familiar routine of rooting for her to find her stride and finally be happy with who she is, who she's becoming, and where she might be headed next.

The story is nostalgic of I Don't Know How She Does It, but reads well as a standalone with snippets of backstory that are well-placed and don't interfere. Avoiding any spoilers, I'll just say that I'm pretty sure readers and fans of Kate Reddy will be pleased at how it all turns out. How Hard Can It Be? was refreshing but familiar and it felt like an old friend was back in my life.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the Advanced Copy and opportunity to review this book.
  
    StockRadars

    StockRadars

    Finance, Utilities and Stickers

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    App

    * Winner, Financial Industry Software, Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards 2014 (APICTA 2014) * Winner,...