chaosisafriend's reviews
961 reviews

The House of My Mother by Shari Franke

emotional sad tense medium-paced

4.5

 

Shari Franke is the oldest child of Ruby Franke, a mommy vlogger whose YouTube channel 8 Passengers had more than two million followers at its peak. 

Ruby, who has six kids in total, filmed almost every moment of their lives for content, editing videos in such a way to make her look like a great mom with a happy family. In reality, she was a cold and distant mom who emotionally abused her children. 

Once Ruby met Jodi Hildebrant, things became even worse. Jodi was basically a one-woman cult, touting herself as an expert family counselor, even though her license had been revoked. She charged her clients exorbitant fees for her services and lived in a mansion complete with a safe room. 

Ruby soon bought Jodi’s bs hook, line and sinker. Her children’s lives became hell, to the point that her YouTube fans were concerned. She filmed a video about not bringing her small child her forgotten lunch at school and telling the teacher not to give her any food at all so that she would be hungry. In another one, her oldest son Chad let it slip that he was forced to sleep on a bean bag for seven months. 

Eventually, she and Jodi started torturing her two youngest children. They were found out when one of them escaped from being chained up in Jodi’s house. 

Shari is fiercely protective of her four youngest siblings and does not name them or go into any specifics about what the police found when they raided Jodi’s house. All of that it easily found on the Internet, and I think Shari assumes that anyone reading this book has heard the story on the news and has the details. She does name Chad because he is over 18 now. 

Because of her respect her four youngest sibling privacy, this book is entirely her story. She went to college around the time Ruby met Jodi, but she was still severely emotionally abused by Ruby as a child and then later by both Ruby and Jodi. Her father did not actually abuse her, but he toed the line and didn’t go against Ruby or Jodi to protect his children. 

I went down a Ruby Franke rabbit hole while I was reading this book. If you’re interested in learning more after reading this book – or before for that matter, you can find the 911 call from when her son escaped, as well as body cam footage of Ruby’s arrest. It’s chilling, she shows no emotion at all. There are also several documentaries about Ruby, Jodi and the Franke family

This was a hard book to read but it was very well-done. Shari is unflinchingly honest about her life and what she shares. I chose this book because I wanted more insight into how a popular mommy vlogger could turn into a monster and my curiosity was satisfied.
 

Recommended. 

Good Time Girl by Heather Gay

funny lighthearted medium-paced

4.0

 

Good Time Girl is Heather Gay’s follow up to her first book, Bad Mormon. I haven’t read that book yet so I can’t say how they compare. Heather is a cast member on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. In the first season, her castmate Lisa Barlow told some of the other women that she heard Heather was known as a “good-time girl” at BYU. At the time, Heather was pissed but she reclaimed the label for her book. 

Good Time Girl is a collection of times that Heather was a good time girl, which is usually ironic. She thought at the time she was being wild because of her strict Mormon upbringing but what she did was not that bad. Or in some cases it was really embarrassing. I had major secondhand embarrassment when she tried to hit on her college professor. 

The last section of the book is about the fourth season of RHOSL and Monica. If you’ve watched the show, you know who I’m talking about. If you haven’t, you’re probably not going to read this book anyway! Heather goes through a way more thorough.

 timeline of Monica’s craziness than what was shown on TV. Monica is basically a sociopath who stalked Jen for years, to the point of installing secret security cameras in Jen’s house to spy on her. She was obsessed with getting cast on RHOSL. 

The book as a whole is good, but it is a MUST for fans of RHOSL, simply for the section on what happened with Monica. You will not be disappointed! 

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

 

Beth, a teenager who lives in a small country town, is taking a walk when Gabriel sees her and tells her to get off his land. Even though Gabriel, a rich boy home from college, is extremely rude to Beth at that first meeting, they soon start up a passionate love affair. They try to keep it going after Gabriel goes back to college but eventually Gabriel breaks Beth’s heart. 

Fast forward to present day, which in Broken Country is the late 1960s, and Beth, her husband Frank and her brother in-law Jimmy are tending sheep when a dog runs up and starts killing the lambs. Jimmy shoots and kills the dog to save anymore sheep from being slaughtered. The dog belongs to Gabriel, who is back in town after several years away. This shot starts a series of events that no one could have imagined. 

I loved Broken Country even though I didn’t necessarily love Beth all the time. She made some very bad decisions. At the beginning of the book, I thought I knew where the story was going but I was totally surprised and completely wrong. I don’t want to say anymore and risk spoiling it. Broken Country kept me up until 3am because once I got to a certain point, I couldn’t tear myself away from it. 

Highly recommended. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Child death

And They Had a Great Fall by Shelby Saville

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 

Jack and Kat hooked up during the pandemic when they were the part of the same pod. Kat lives next door to Jake’s parents and he came home to shelter in place with them. Jack is a famous 25 year-old movie star and Kat is a high-powered corporate executive and a single mom in her thirties. More than a year after they last spoke, Jack calls Kat from Copenhagen, where he is shooting on location. Things are not going well with the movie and he wants Kat to come there and help him cope with the pressure. She happens to have work for her corporation she could attend to while she’s there, so she joins him. She also needs help, although she doesn’t realize it. She’s still grieving the loss of her husband, who died of cancer five years ago when their daughter was a baby. 

Jake and Kat rekindle their affair once Kat arrives in Copenhagen, but Kat insists that they keep their relationship a secret. She fears that if she and Jake go public, the leadership at her company will see her as a frivolous woman for dating a movie star. She’s also worried about her daughter’s safety if she’s in the public eye. Is it possible to keep things a secret and what will they do if they can’t? 

And They Had a Great Fall deals with some serious issues in an authentic way. I liked that it wasn’t afraid to deviate a bit from the traditional romance formula in order to tackle those issues. This book would be a great beach read this summer. 

Kinda Korean: Stories from an American Life by Joan Sung

emotional

4.5

 

 Kinda Korean is Joan Sung's memoir of growing up the daughter of Korean immigrants and navigating her identity as both Korean and American. Her mom was a domineering Tiger Mom who held on to the ways of Korea and did not want to assimilate into American culture. She didn't learn to speak English very well and Sung didn't speak Korean very well, adding to their disconnect. Sung is unflinchingly honest about her traumatic childhood, both inside and outside of her home.

She's faced microaggressions throughout her life. After she joined the Air Force, the intersectionality of being Asian and a woman made her time in the service especially hard. Throughout the book, she dispels the myth of the model minority and how it not helpful and actually hurts Asian Americans. Asian women are also fetishized by white men because of they believe Asian women are exotic and submissive. Asian hate has grown exponentially since the COVID-19 pandemic. She writes about the presumption of many people that Asians aren't doing anything to fight against this when in actuality they are.

I enjoyed Sung's memoir and how she weaved what is going on in society as a whole into her own personal experience as a first generation Korean American. Her bravery in telling her story was amazing. Highly recommended. 

The Sable Cloak by Gail Milissa Grant

emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

 

The Sable Cloak is an autobiographical novel based closely on the author’s family history. It follows two upper-middle class Black families. Jordan Sable runs a well-known funeral home in St. Louis. Jordan is also a powerful political boss, controlling the Black vote in St. Louis. The Franklin family are landowners in South Carolina. The also a successful store called Madame Sarah’s Emporium. 

When Jordan comes to South Carolina looking for a safe haven to escape his enemies, he meets and marries, Sarah, the youngest of the Franklin daughters. When they move back to St. Louis, Jordan is even more powerful with his wife by his side. When a horrible tragedy happens, the families must join together to find a solution. 

I enjoyed The Sable Cloak. It’s not often that I come across historical fiction centering around upper middle class Black people and their community. One of the characters goes off to college at Northwestern and faces discrimination of the kind she never has before because the Black community she grew up kept her insulated. She had hardly ever even been around white people. The author spends quite a bit of time on the background of the two families and what their communities were like before the tragic event happened, which I appreciated. 

Grant has a memoir that was published in 2008 called At the Elbows of My Elders that I’d like to read. She writes in the author’s note that The Sable Cloak was born from that book. Unfortunately, she passed away before the publication of The Sable Cloak. 

Recommended. 

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Signature Performance by Elijah Wood by Mark Twain

adventurous

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 

I think most everyone knows generally what The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is about even if they haven’t read it. Huck runs away to get away from his abusive, alcoholic father. He encounters Jim, a slave who escapes when he overhears his owner talking about possibly selling him. They team up and have many adventures trying to get to freedom. I wanted to read Huck Finn first before I read James by Percival Everett, which is a retelling of the story from Jim’s side. 

I can’t decide if this book is racist or not. From what I read about the book after I finished it, I’m not the only one. As the book goes on, Huck starts to rethink the morality of slavery, but he doesn’t go as far to outright condemn it. Jim is portrayed as not very smart and the way Twain writes his speech is almost incomprehensible. That’s one of the reasons I switched to the audio book – I couldn’t understand most of Jim’s dialogue. I have a hard time believing slaves really spoke that way but of course, I didn’t live way back then. I can see that Huck’s views on slavery were probably progressive for that time period, but they aren’t by today’s standards. 

I’m glad I read Huck Finn because I think it enhanced my experience reading James. (Review to come soon.) I would recommend reading it if you plan to read James, although it’s not strictly necessary. If you plan on reading it, I highly recommend the audiobook version that’s narrated by Elijah Woods. 

You Never Know: A Memoir by Tom Selleck

informative slow-paced

3.0

 

I think most everyone is familiar with Tom Selleck’s work. He’s most known for playing Magnum on Magnum PI. His memoir starts with a brief overview of his early years. He played basketball for USC, which I didn’t know. Then he was in a couple of Westerns and a lot of failed pilots before he was finally offered Magnum PI, which he calls Magnum because he thinks the PI part is dumb and fought against it being part of the title. 

He then goes into agonizing detail about what seemed like every episode of Magnum PI. I slogged through that, eager to get to the part where he discusses playing Monica’s boyfriend on Friends. It never came! There is a little bit about Three Men and a Baby, which he filmed during his time on Magnum and then it jumps ahead to the epilogue, which is about him working on his ranch and briefly mentions Blue Bloods, his current show, which has been on for 14 seasons. Thank God he didn’t go into an episode-by-episode recap of that. 

He’s a very private person and there is almost nothing about his personal life in the book, which is okay. I love tell-alls but I’m happy to read about the entertainment industry and how it works. Which is why I wanted know what it was like when he was on Friends! 

I would only recommend this book to a die-hard Magnum PI fan. If you’re not, this book is a little tedious and boring. Sorry Tom! 

After Life by Gayle Forman

emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 

Amber rides her bike home from school everyday but today when she arrives home, her mother sees her and screams. Why? Seven years ago, Amber died in a hit and run accident while riding the very bike she rode home today. 

Amber doesn’t know how or why she has returned from the dead and neither does anyone else. In coming back, Amber is able to see how both her life and her death impacted her loved ones. Even people she’s never met are affected. Everyone is grieving her death in their own way. Some are managing better than others. 

After Life is about grief, regrets, family and sisterhood. It jumps around in time from the events leading up to Amber’s return, going back as far as when her parents met. The central relationship is Amber and her younger sister Missy. I love books where the story unravels in such a way that seemly unconnected people and events actually do connect, and this is one of those books. 

After Life is a YA novel intended for high schoolers, but adults will enjoy it as well. It’s a quick read with good pacing and can easily be read in day. Recommended. 

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

 

The Weight of Blood is Tiffany D. Jackson’s homage to Stephen King’s Carrie. As such, I thought it was masterfully written. Our main character is Maddy, a biracial girl whose father is forcing her to pass as white. He diligently straightens her hair with a hot comb to keep up the ruse. Maddy is careful to avoid water, because getting her hair wet would expose her. One day, she is outside during PE class and it suddenly starts raining. Her secret is out. 

Maddy has always been the weird girl, and this just adds fuel to the fire. Her classmates immediately start bullying her. A video of the bullying goes viral online. Maddy’s classmate Wendy, a popular white girl, convinces her friends to help her organize an integrated prom to make the school look better. Yes, this school, in 2014 has separate prom’s for Black and white students. Wendy convinces her Black football star boyfriend to invite Maddy to the “everyone prom” in an attempt to atone for her part in how Maddy has been treated. Not everyone is happy to have an integrated prom, and this is where the trouble really starts. 

I was impressed with how Jackson was able to tell an insightful story about racism, both overt and systemic, while still keeping the fundamental essence of Carrie. Her creativity is amazing. Halfway through reading this book, I learned that it’s a YA novel. I never would have guessed although it is a book that teenagers absolutely should read. It’s highly entertaining while also making important points.
 

Highly, highly recommended.