GIRLS By Joshua and Jonathan Luna

Girls

By Joshua and Jonathan Luna

Category: Adult Graphic Novel, Sci Fi, Drama

Vivid artwork, engrossing characters and a suspenseful plot bring Girls around like the best of horror stories. In the sleepy little Pennystown a mystery is becoming unearthed. A gorgeous and dazed naked woman comes darting out of the woods in front of average guy Ethan.  But when strange eggs appear and savage attacks occur, everyone in Pennystown is left scrambling to understand and survive.

The visually striking graphics make this novel feel more like a movie playing out. The deep, bright colors often contrast the brutality of the egg-women. The dialogue is realistic, each character believable. It’s a horror story with blurry edges. The egg-women at times appear docile, at times murderous. Are they all the same or is the first one that Ethan found different? With the town’s population shrinking and everyone suffering various degrees of insanity, any and everything can happen.

I was completely spellbound by this book. It got my curiosity from the cover alone and devoured me within a few pages. Very adult themes and gore aplenty, this one is not for the faint of heart. If you’d like to savor a chilling tale of epic proportions, this might be your next read!

A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY By Libba Bray

A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY

By Libba Bray

Categories:  Fantasy, young adult

Victorian boarding school set in a Gothic mansion seems like a great story to fold into 16 year old Gemma Doyle, who is still reeling from the death of her mother. But add premonitions, magic and other worlds to the mix and you get A Great and Terrible Beauty. Inexplicably drawn to the unusual, Gemma foresees the untimely death of her mother while living in India. After this loss, she is sent to Spence, a girl’s boarding school in London. Here she meets new faces and is drawn to something she can’t quite explain. The mystery of her visions is explained more when she and her new friends from Spence explore the other realms where magic is used to keep and maintain power by a group of ancient women called the Order.

There’s quite a bit of intrigue and suspense in this novel, and I enjoyed the detective agency feel to what the girls were getting into. I actually listened to this book on audio CD. It was easy to listen to, and I was pleased to find this book had become a trilogy. It was a good read with a lot of pretty imagery described, and I would suggest it to fantasy fans. If it keeps your interest, the second book is called Rebel Angels.  

DRINKING & TWEETING AND OTHER BRANDI BLUNDERS By Brandi Glanville with Leslie Bruce

DRINKING & TWEETING AND OTHER BRANDI BLUNDERS By Brandi Glanville with Leslie Bruce

Categories: Non-fiction, rag-mag

First of all, I’m not entirely sure why I’m doing a review on a book that could have been an article in People/Us Magazine. I don’t watch “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”, I’m not a fan of LeAnn Rimes’s music, and I don’t subscribe to or pore over gossip magazines.

That being said, this book follows the story of Brandi Glanville. She was married to an actor who had small roles in soap operas, etc. They had two small children in 2009 when her husband Edward Cibrian starred in a made for TV movie with former (current?) country singer LeAnn Rimes. The two ‘stars’ began an affair and Brandi, who was apparently in deep denial over the cheating ways of her beloved, eventually divorced Eddie, who then married LeAnn. Following so far? I recall it being something of a tabloid scandal and since then Brandi has dealt with cyber-stalking and co-parenting. This lead to her getting a role on a reality TV show called “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” (which must be a loosely interpreted title, since Brandi is not a housewife, not entirely “real” thanks to plastic surgery, and by her own admission does not make enough money to live in Beverly Hills).

If I’m honest, the first couple chapters were interesting because Brandi is very candid about what happened between her and her ex-husband. It was cheeky and honest. Like when she goes on a double date (before the scandal happens)with Eddie and LeAnn and her husband while they are filming that TV movie, Brandi overhears LeAnn asking Eddie if he wanted to lick cake frosting off her chest. Brandi confronts them immediately and asks “What the fuck do you two have going on?” Which is more mature then I would have approached things. There would probably be chipped teeth and bruises involved.

After the first few chapters though, this book does get repetitive and rehash the same concepts that get introduced in the beginning of the book. Brandi hates her ex-husband, hates his new wife, and hates her kids getting attached to their “bonus parent”. We get it. She doesn’t have any skills to find work so she considers the reality TV show a big break-though.  Due to the legal proceedings of her divorce, she is not able to actually speak about  how things turned out for her monetary-wise.

Here's this Brandi:

And the ex plus home wrecker:

I can’t criticize too harshly though,  No one forced me to google who these people were after finishing the book (there were no pictures provided). No one made me read it at all. If I could go back in time and decide to stop reading after the first couple chapters, well I’d be a millionaire with time travel so I much of what I’d do would be more captivating than going back to report about a story lagging moral.