Sarah O'Connor

Book Review: Meet Cute – Some People are Destined to Meet – Anthology

NotSarahConnorWrites

February 20, 2021

I don’t read a lot of romance novels. It’s not that I’m opposed to love, only that the tropes of it annoy me for how unrealistic it’s portrayed. But I still read this anthology that was centered on romance, first love, and the whole “meet cute” trope. I knew what I was going into with this book and I didn’t have my hope up too high, which was good because this anthology was very meh. There are some real stinkers in here, a lot of forgettable ones, and a few that actually are wonderful. Mostly though the stories are simple and predictable, which is what I expect from most romance books.

One of my biggest pet peeves about this book was the use of second person narration. It’s a difficult style to use and when done correctly can make for a great story which the three stories that used this narration style didn’t achieve.

What I did enjoy about this anthology was the diversity of it. In terms of race and sexual orientation Meet Cute does a wonderful job of showing the different couples and I feel like the romance genre isn’t as diverse as it should be, so if you’re looking for more diverse romance you’ll enjoy this anthology just for that.

Overall this book wasn’t for me but if you like romance and “meet cutes” you’ll probably like this. Below you’ll find a mini-review of each of the stories in this anthology, so take what you will from that. Also note that my ratings for the stories may have changed from when I first rated them on Goodreads: Continue reading

Book Review: Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

February 16, 2021

“Whoever had written the note understood that by masking one’s peculiarities, one invokes authority. There is nothing as imposing as anonymity,” (Moshfegh 3).

One day while Vesta is walking her dog Charlie by the woods near her house she finds a slip of paper which reads, “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her body” but despite the note Vesta doesn’t see a body. Recently widowed and new to town Vesta doesn’t know many people and becomes shaken and obsessed with the note. She begins investigating who wrote the note, who Magda was, and who killed her. But does the note mean anything or is Vesta making it into more than it actually is?

Book Review: A Stranger in Town (Rockton #6) by Kelley Armstrong

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

February 9, 2021

Thanks to Raincoast books for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

“The gun jerks, and I yank away, but she has my wrist in an iron grip…She’s staring at me, blue eyes impossibly wide. She hisses a harsh stream of foreign language, as if she’s uttering a curse,” (Armstrong 10).

Casey Duncan is back in the sixth book of the Rockton series. For the past few months things have been surprisingly calm, there have been fewer new residents coming in but Casey’s boyfriend Sheriff Eric Dalton says that’s normal for Rockton but Casey isn’t so sure. But bigger concerns come to Casey in the form of a foreign traveler, the only survivor of a hostile attack, and while Casey and the other residents try to get around the language barrier and find out what happened to the hiker tensions get high and the situation gets dangerous. Add in a visit from a mysterious council member which only further complicates things, but luckily Casey and Dalton are on the case, and they’re determined to find out what exactly is going on. Continue reading

Blog Tour: A Stranger in Town by Kelley Armstrong – Interview

NotSarahConnorWrites

2 comments

February 6, 2021

Hello everyone! I’m so happy to have a very special guest on the blog today! The one and only Kelley Armstrong answers some question on her blog tour for the newest book in the Rockton series A Stranger in Town, which comes out next week on February 9th.

AStrangerinTown “In #1 New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong’s next Rockton book, A Stranger in Town, the biggest mystery is the fate of the town itself.

Detective Casey Duncan has noticed fewer and fewer residents coming in to the hidden town of Rockton, and no extensions being granted. Her boyfriend, Sheriff Eric Dalton, presumes it’s the natural flux of things, but Casey’s not so sure. Something bigger is happening in the small town they call home.

When an injured hiker stumbles from the woods, the sole survivor of a hostile attack, it’s all hands on deck. Even a member of the elusive Rockton council comes in to help. This council member also comes bearing news: Rockton is being shut down due to the hostile situation.

Casey and Eric must now race to save the town that has allowed residents to have a fresh start, away from the mistakes of their past, while also getting to the bottom of this latest attack. ”

INTERVIEW

Book Review: My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

January 28, 2021

CW: Sexual assault, rape.

“When Strane and I met, I was fifteen and he was forty-two, a near perfect thirty years between us. That’s how I described the difference back then – perfect. I loved the math of it, three times my age, how easy it was to imagine three of me fitting inside him: one of me curled around his brain, another around his heart, the third turned to liquid and sliding through his veins,” (Russell 5).

In 2017, the start of the #MeToo Movement, Vanessa Wye learns that the English teacher at the boarding school she briefly attended has been accused by a student of sexual abuse. Vanessa is then put in a difficult position: should she remain silent or tell the media her own experience, because when Vanessa was fifteen she was in a relationship with this same teacher, is still in contact with this man, but she never saw it as abuse. But as Vanessa looks back at her past and present she starts to come to an understanding of what happened to her all those years ago and how her teacher shaped her life in ways she wasn’t aware of. Continue reading

New Article on Sartorial Geek

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

January 26, 2021

It’s almost the end of January but I have a new article on Sartorial Geek!

Why is it important that I mention it’s almost the end of January? Because my article has to do with New Year’s Resolutions and despite what you may think it’s not too late to figure that out, especially if you’re using Disney Pixar movies as motivation!

Read it here.

Book Review: Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

January 16, 2021

“It’s a terrible story and one way to tell it is this: two girls in love and a fog of wasps cursed the place forever after,” (Danforth 5).

In 1902 at The Brookhants School for Girls Clara and Flo, two young lovers, are found dead in the Tricky Thicket having been stung by a swarm of yellow jackets, a book they loved by author Mary MacLane found by their bodies. As conspiracies and rumours of the “devilish” power of Mary’s book spreads around Brookhants, Principal Libbie Brookhants and her partner Alex Trills start to experience strange occurrences of their own. Less than five years later with three more tragic and mysterious deaths the Brookhants school closes and becomes the stuff of stories until over a century later when wunderkind author Merritt Eammons turns it into a raved-about story called The Hauntings of Brookhants. With a film adaption starting up which includes Merritt as the scriptwriter, and starring “It Girl” Harper Harper and the B-list daughter of a 1980s Scream Queen Audrey Wells, things are about to get strange. Flitting between the past and present, the protagonists are dealt with their own horrific and devilish experience at Brookhants and may just find themselves tangled up in it’s curse. Continue reading

New Article on Sartorial Geek

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

January 4, 2021

This is incredibly late but I only saw it on the website yesterday, my new article on Sartorial Geek!

Posted on Christmas Eve and perfect for the season, I shared my six favourite ghost stories that I thought would be perfect to read on Christmas Eve. But honestly, they’re good to read any old evening?

You can read my list of stories here.

Updates and Advent Calendar

NotSarahConnorWrites

no comments

December 4, 2020

Well would you look at that, it’s another post! Not regular yet but it’s here and that must count for something, right?

So let’s give some updates, shall we? I finished NaNoWriMo WAY ahead with 68,853 words which I’m super proud of and just goes to show that the Stephen King “write ten pages a day” method really does pay off. I’ve been putting off this story for quite sometime and though it’s still in incredibly rough shape I’m happy to have gotten some version of the story out of me. Now it’s just sitting in my inbox waiting for me to return to it, which I’m planning to do in January.

Back on the Stephen King method, I’ve kind of stopped doing that for this month, at least temporarily. I always put a lot of pressure on myself during NaNoWriMo and don’t want to force myself into a burnout, so even though I’ve started a new project I’ve given myself permission to take it slow. On the one hand this is great but on the other it makes me feel panicky, like I’m not doing enough. Oh the life of a Capricorn!

Another new project I’m working on is a short story advent calendar on my Instagram where I post a part of the story everyday from December 1st – December 24th. You can start checking it out here but I think I’ll make a list here for when you can click to a particular day to read it easier, in theory anyways.

Anyways that’s all I have to say, hopefully I have more updates soon!

Or not…

NotSarahConnorWrites

3 comments

November 23, 2020

Well, so much for “back to your regularly scheduled programming” I guess.

I don’t really have an excuse, it’s not that I haven’t been writing though. I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo and ended up reaching 50K early, my first time reaching the goal early. It’s not done, much like last years story which took FOREVER to finish (and still hasn’t been edited, but that’s another story, literally) but I’m curious what my word count will be by the end of the month. Maybe I’ll even write a blog post about it…if I remember to post on here. Continue reading