Not Sarah Connor Writes

Book Review: The Night Country by Melissa Albert

NotSarahConnorWrites

April 8, 2020

“If you ever have chance to bear witness to a dying world, don’t,” (Albert 115).

It’s been two years since I read Melissa Albert’s debut The Hazel Wood and for the most part I enjoyed it. I’m a sucker for fairy tales, the darker the better and Albert was able to keep the tropes and darkness of fairy tales while also turning them into something completely new. Something with blood and teeth, something that sticks inside your brain, that beckons you forward into the dark. I’m also a sucker for books where characters travel into the fictional stories they’re reading, and it was one of my main criticisms for the book. So when I heard about The Night Country I was hesitant to read it because of that disappointment. But with more and more reviews coming out praising The Night Country I knew I had to read it for myself. Continue reading

The Weekend of Sarah (Postponed)

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April 5, 2020

Many months ago (okay, it was January, but it seems like longer than that right?) I joked that last weekend was going to be the “weekend of Sarah.” I rarely put attention on myself, but last weekend was supposed to be the HamilTEN Festival when The End of July was supposed to premiere as well as a small kick-off for the GritLit Festival where I was going to read an excerpt of my story What Happened to Natalie? in front of people. Hence the weekend nickname, which I was very excited for. Both events were happening at the same venue which I thought was an amazing coincidence and I was excited to have such a busy artistic weekend. Continue reading

Book Review: Bunny by Mona Awad

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March 21, 2020

“‘I love you, Bunny.’
I quietly prayed for the hug implosion all year last year. That their ardent squeezing might cause the flesh to ooze from the sleeves, neckholes, and A-line hems of their cupcake dresses like so much inane frosting…That they would choke on each other’s blandly grassy perfume.”

Bunny has been on my TBR list for a long while and after my last few disappointing reads I’m happy to say that Bunny was worth the wait. Following MFA scholarship student Samantha Heather Mackey, she is an outsider as outsider can be at the elusive Warren University. From her dark stories and darker imagination, she can’t stand the other girls in her fiction course, the Bunnies until one night she is invited into their secretive Smut Salon. Abandoning her only friend Ava for the sweet and sinister world of the Bunnies, Samantha travels down a rabbit hole where fiction and reality blur and Samantha must come to terms with her own creative process and herself as a person. Continue reading

Journaling in Isolation

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March 20, 2020

Well a lot has fucking happened in a week huh? I’m still drifting though now it’s more of a numbness edged with anxiety, something that flutters somewhere in my belly like some dying thing that my numbness smothers every so often. Not to death, just to sleep before it awakens again. Continue reading

Drifting

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March 14, 2020

It’s a weird time right now. Big events and venues are closing and everyone just kind of seems to be drifting, or at least that’s how I’m feeling right now. Like a current is slowly dragging me along, not out to sea or anywhere dangerous, I don’t know exactly where it wants me to go. I guess it’s more like a lazy river, being pulled along and following the path before me, though I don’t know what that path is, none of us do. Continue reading

Book Review: The Grief Keeper by Alexandra Villasante

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March 7, 2020

I was incredibly excited to read The Grief Keeper after learning a big part of the story was an immigrant girl allowing herself to be experimented on by the U.S. Government so that they could gain asylum into the country sounded amazing and not exactly fictional. Of course I have no idea if the U.S. Government experiments on immigrants in exchange for asylum, but it’s one of those horrifying ideas so scary that it sounds like it could be true. The idea of it horrified me and I was intrigued at where the story would go with that plot but was unfortunately left disappointed. Continue reading

Next Steps

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March 6, 2020

From November 1st 2019 to February 21st 2020 I’ve been finish my NaNoWriMo project. This isn’t exactly the traditional way to do NaNo, when you reach your 50,000 words by the end of the month it’s also supposed to mark the end of your novel. My issue was that once I reached the NaNoWriMo word count I realized I still had much more story to tell and was far from finished, so I decided to finish it. I enjoyed the story; it wasn’t finished and I wanted to finish it. I had hoped to finish it by the end of 2019, then the end of January, and then finally I did finish it by February. Continue reading

Book Review: The Majesties by Tiffany Tsao

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February 21, 2020

“When your sister murders three hundred people, you can’t help but wonder why – especially if you were one of the intended victims – though I do forgive her, if you can believe it. I tried my best to deny the strength of family ties when everyone was still alive, but now I realize the truth of the cliche: Blood does run thick. Even if poison trumps all,” (Tsao 1)

A strong start to Tiffany Tsao’s newest book The Majesties which follows the comatose Gwendolyn, the only survivor after her sister Estella has poisoned their entire family at their Opa’s birthday celebration, as she struggles to wake up as she sorts through her and Estella’s life and what led to her sister doing such a thing. Continue reading

Book Review: Followers by Megan Angelo

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February 19, 2020

“There are eight million people people here, and all of them want something as bad as I want what I want, as bad as you want what you want. We’re not all going to get it. It’s just not possible, that all these people could have their dreams come true in the same time, same place. It’s not enough it be talented. It’s not enough to work hard. You need to be disciplined, and you need to be ruthless. You have to do anything, everything, and you need to forget about doing the right thing,” (Angelo 47)

This is my favourite quote from the book and probably the smartest thing Floss says in the entirety of it, and at its heart it’s what motivates our characters and Angelo’s story. Megan Angelo’s debut novel is filled with great insights into our relationship with technology, being seen, and what we’ll do to be noticed. Continue reading

Jellicles Come to the Jellicle Ball!

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February 17, 2020

I love Cats the musical. I’ve already written about this but it’s worth mentioning again because I also saw the CGI nightmare that is Cats the movie, and I didn’t hate it.

I saw it awhile back when it first came out, and while I definitely had some issues with it like the CGI (which isn’t the special effect workers fault they were just doing what they were told) and the serious miscasting (why were Rebel Wilson and Taylor Swift in this movie? But I will say, Ian McKellen went FULL CAT for his role as Gus), but someone would have to do A LOT for me to dislike Cats, and Tom Hooper didn’t fully achieve that. Continue reading