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I really wanted to love Girl, Wash Your Face but Rachel Hollis’ perspective is privileged on getting control of your life and hypocritical on sex.  I wouldn’t recommend this book unless you wanted to get your hopes up for some kick ass advice on taking ownership of your life and choices while taking care of yourself only to be let down.  While the book is great at hyping up readers to gain this sought-after advice and it serves to be a wonderful encouragement, it doesn’t actually deliver anything about what you can do other than positive self-talk.  

Girl, Wash Your Face would be a helpful read for any young Christian woman facing a world she is overwhelmed by. Rachel Hollis encourages women to not only take control of their life, but take care of themselves while doing it.  

The fierce determination the author demonstrates in every story of adversity she tells is a true example of womanhood, no doubt.  The medium (book) in which Hollis gives her advice is also ideal because she conveys the importance of taking your time, with yourself and your work whether that is in the home or not, which you can do with a book.  

The book is laid out in the form of lies women believe which Hollis believes holds them back.  Within those chapters, she unravels those lies within her own journey and uses them to teach other women what she has learned mostly from a Christian perspective.  

Some advice is even so obvious to me now as a 28 year old having faced her own hardship and it almost feels condescending to receive the advice she gives but then I remember, if I truly knew these lessons as well as I’d like to believe I do, I wouldn’t have felt like Hollis was saying all the things I wish I had written.  I would have just written them already.  But there are also TONS of self-help books for women out there that don’t constantly brag about how successful the author is and encourages women to stop lying to themselves, ignoring fundamental barriers women face. 

The advice on motherhood and dealing with death are really sound and reaffirming. Some people can really benefit from hearing the advice to attend counseling and get up and press on when you fail. And of course, never take no for an answer when trying for your goals.

Hollis is strictly speaking to the person who considers themselves a woman.  She asserts that her platform welcomes the everywoman and enriches them with advice, friendship and community and is what women of the 21^st century are craving in a world where we are so isolated by technology.  

As a woman with a ferocious sense of sexuality, I find it frustrating that Hollis maintains an image of a preacher’s good-girl-daughter.  I know there are women out there who want their role models to reflect themselves in a way of what they desire sexually.   

Her experience as a self-described ‘booty call’ assumes that women she’s speaking to do not have hormonal desires beyond their understanding or control… and she is, because she writes for a Christian publisher.  However, even some Christian women are for lack of a better word, horny.  She misses that.

But, explaining the hurtful way the man (who is now her spouse) treated her will prove to only help women who do not share the intentions of their partner and the manner in which she dealt with those separate intentions.  And it’s a rich lesson coming from a woman who ended up with that man who treated her hurtfully in the beginning. 

The author faces this challenge when she wrote her first book and tried to sell it to publishers.  And while she proves the point that the good girl image can sell, she feeds into the narrative that good Christian girls don’t want booty-calls which is hurtful to her self-described mission to include the everywoman.  

Hollis’ hypocritical positions on things like sex and porn are glaring and show to be a blind spot for her.  Her expressed position on pornography is clear rebuke of how her relationship with her husband began.  Her position on porn is as stated: “pornography, for example, is extremely damaging to both the consumer and people being used as objects for your lust.”  Rachel’s preaching about this comes across as insincere and much like religious preaches screams, “do as I say not as I do.”

In the end, Rachel Hollis is a wonderful role model and like any other role model, they’re human and we all can’t agree on everything.  I appreciate how reassuring her narrative can be at times, and I’ll take what advice I can from her book and I’ll leave what I don’t agree with.

You don’t even need to read any Stephen King horror novels to understand that he is a prolific author. Just the staggering amount of tales he has told (61) is hard to wrap my head around as a writer.

In Carrie, King’s descriptions set the scene like I’ve never seen before while reading. I found myself hanging on every adjective as I imagined the character’s faces, clothes and mannerisms. I’ve always had trouble imagining the descriptions I read in books but King writes in a poetic idiosyncrasy that paints a picture of the story he’s telling.

As the plot in Carrie creeps up on you, so do the characters. The elegant technique in which King draws out the storyline and the intentions of the characters] is the most skillful writing I’ve ever read.

When I told my husband I was reading Carrie, he mentioned he had heard that school libraries had been banning the book because of similarities to school shootings. I just think that if fiction is too close to reality for your comfort, maybe the book isn’t the problem.

Kaz Brekker and his crew of specialists excite the mind while working together to pull off what should be a impossible heist.

When you’re slumming it in Ketterdam, it helps if your friends are skilled in things like lock-picking, scaling Walls and shooting firearms.  

Six of Crows is a definite read for thrilling adventure seekers.  The gang known as The Dregs take the reader on shootouts, break-ins and many decisive meetings all while at each other’s throats. 

Author, Leigh Bardugo gives each character a meaningful backstory griping the reader to care about them.  Each character is developed into these rich stories within the novel and reading them is full of emotions like loss and grief. 

The exciting skill sets of each character provides a light and easy dynamic throughout challenges and trip-ups on the pages of Six of Crows.

All these factors would make this book a great standalone novel and that’s what makes it cringeworthy that the story couldn’t be wrapped up in one book.  It’s frustratingly a duology.

Authors are constantly trying to drag out what would be a great story into a bore of a second or third book.  Much like 50 Shades droned on through the second book of nonsensical wild goose chase plots.  

Still,if you’re into provoking heists… its a must read.