Mental Illness depicted in books

The subject of mental illness has always been fascinating to me for reasons that I still do not understand. Most specifically it's been Multiple Personality Disorder or as it's now called Dissociative Identity Disorder. Some of my favorite books about the subject are:

• Sybil

• When Rabbit Howls

• All Around The Town

• The Flock

They are all SO well written. Their DID usually came about after some trauma. Kidnapping, sexual abuse,physical and emotional abuse. My favorite has to be When Rabbit Howls BUT there are some explicit sex scenes in there that on several occasions caused me to put the book down for days. Of course Sybil is the one most known about thanks to the book and to the TV mini-series that starred Sally Field as Sybil.

All but All Around the Town are autobiographies written by one of the personalities (or in some cases several of the personalities) that experienced.Except in the case of Sybil where the book was written by someone who knew her case.

Review: The Forgotten Ones

I won the Kindle version in a book blogger giveaway (really don't ask me which blog because I don't remember) I had forgotten that I had entered this contest until I got an email saying that I had won. This was two days ago. That night I happily started reading it and Oh My God. I could barely put it down to eat let alone sleep.

Allison's sole focus is taking care of her mentally ill mother because she knows that her grandparents aren't going to be able to do it forever. She doesn't make time for herself which frustrates her cousin.Then there's Ethan who Allison has been in love with for a very long time.Everything kind of turns upside down when the father that Allison never knew appears in her small town. Very quickly Allison realizes that things aren't what they seem.

Without being able to take much of a breath,Allison is thrown into a world of people with strange names and special powers. They call themselves The Danaan. She barely has a moment to think about what this means when her mentally ill mother disappears into thin air.

Allison begins a quest to find her mother and maybe even find herself in the process. She will encounter allies and enemies during this quest.

I really liked Allison's character.She reminded me of myself in a lot of ways. Both of us having no father in our lives but having grandparents be very important to us. Her academic achievement,though hardly mentioned,also reminded me of myself. I do wish Ethan's character had been fleshed out a bit more but since this is only book 1 of a trilogy,I think I can overlook it.Now Elizabeth's character was very interesting. She appeared to be schizophrenic initially,but even that too turned out to be wrong.She was a whole different person towards the end of the book. Liam was another interesting one. I get the feeling like there is more to him than we know right now.

I absolutely adored the writing style. Not too slow or too fast. It moved along at a really nice rate.The editing was stellar which only made me happier. For her first book Laura Howard did a spectacular job. This book gets a resounding 5 stars. I have no issues with the book at all. It was basically amazing. I will be recommending it to anyone who needs a new book to read.

Review: Ultraviolet by R.J. Anderson

This was amazing. Beautifully written and the exploration into mental health was so fascinating and so well done. Alison has special powers. Powers that make her see sounds and taste words and hear colors. She is rumored to have killed a classmate but all she can remember is that Tori "disintegrated" into thin air. But that's just not possible,right? Well that is one of the many questions you'll have while reading this book.

The beginning of this book reminded me so much of Girl, Interrupted,which I loved. Michelline,Kirk & Sanjay all have their own demons to face and Alison is convinced that she is not one of them and that she doesn't belong at the treatment facility.

Until she meets Sebastian Faraday. After that,all bets are off. She begins to realize that nothing is how it seems.He makes her feel normal again.He makes her feel like she's not crazy even though her powers make her feel like she is sometimes.

I would highly recommend this book. I have no reservations about giving it 5 stars.

Go read it and let me know what you think. If you've read it already,comment on the post and let me know how you liked it.

They're here!

So finally after what seemed like months of waiting (but was really only a week) my stack of books came in!

Unfortunately this means that my Kindle reads will have to go on the back burner as I am SO psyched to read all of these books. They come very highly recommended to me by my new blogger buddies and some good friends.

Any suggestions which book I should read first?

Turning down review requests

First of all,I just need to say thank you to all of the awesome book bloggers and authors that I have begun to network with. It's an awesome feeling.

Now here comes the real point of this post. My email address is getting out there to authors & publishers and while that's great,that's also where the problems come in. See I don't have infinite amounts of time to read every single book that authors/publishers want to send me.Also getting requests to review a book that I know almost instantly that I won't want to read is tough.I don't want to seem rude or ungrateful but I've received 6 emails in less than a week and I've had to decline 1/3 of the books offered to me.

I don't do it to hurt other people's feelings. I do it either because I don't have the time or I'm just not that interested in the book that they are offering.

A few of the offers that are coming in are making me realize that I need to refine the list of books that I am not interested in.

I am already being relatively selective about the books that I choose to review.I think I just need to keep doing that and not ask for books that I really am not terribly interested in.

Review: Deceived- Part One New York

I picked this one because it was free on my Kindle and at the time I needed a book to read.I wasn't sure exactly what I was expecting from this one but it turned out to be a typical office romance. Patrick Collins was the Agency Account Director of Myer & Myer Ad Agency. Chloe Swanson was fresh out of school.Throw in a jealous older woman with a ton of money and you have a mediocre story.

I was really disappointed with this one. The erotic parts seemed to be pretty scarce and there seemed to be an actual plot which I don't associate most errotica with.I actually liked Patrick's gay best friend Ryan the best out of all of them. He seemed to be the most normal out of all of them.

So unfortunately I have to give this book 2 out of 5 stars. From an editing standpoint,it was stellar but the story itself was lacking something that would make it stand out.It is definitely not something I would read again.

Jumping in with two feet

It wasn't until I started really getting into this book blogging thing that I realized something.

I'm overzealous when it comes to entering book giveaways. It's already to the point where I have had to stop entering the giveaways.

My initial thought before I started going giveaway crazy was Oh I'll be lucky if I win just one of these giveaways. Now all I can think is oh crap,what if I win them all? Rational? No I don't think so.It fits my personality though. When I get involved in something,I go all in.

This whole marketing a blog,plus trying to get authors interested in having you review their books is exhausting.I have 4 Kindle books at various points of completion.5 books I recently bought from Amazon are on their way to me and I have my first review of a book sent to me in PDF format.I will be hosting that author on my blog in June.

So I really need to slow my butt down now before I get buried in books to the point where I can't dig myself out of the hole.

The Kindle Invasion

Since I am still excitedly waiting for my big box of hard copy books from Amazon I decided to buy a couple of books for my Kindle to tide me over.

Deceived-Part 1 New York by Eve Carter (erotica) I am 54% of the way through it.
Cloaks & Veils by J.C. Carlsen (mystery/suspense) I am 22% of the way through it.
Reckless Rescue by Rinelle Grey (Sci-Fi) I am 17% of the way through it.

Just seeing these three titles written down plus the different genres they are in shows that I have a wide variety of books that I will read & review.

Hopefully these books will be finished and the reviews will be up before my big box arrives from Amazon.

3 Reviews (or mini reviews)

Tuesday's Child, by Dale Mayer

I had such high hopes for Tuesday's Child when I started reading it. It seemed right up my alley and I was super excited. Unfortunately I quickly realized that it was not holding my interest and unfortunately it had to go in my DNF pile. I could never quite figure out why it was not holding my interest.So I can't even say much about it.

Indelible Love : Emily's Story, by D.W. Cee

Initially it started out REALLY promising but oh gosh Emily grew to be annoying. Both men had faults,which was awesome because no guy was perfect but I had SUCH an issue with how her low self esteem seemed to make her go back and forth between Jake who wanted to give her the world (but who had some controlling tendencies) and Max who only wanted her then because he couldn't have her.

It was WAY too long and it got really tedious not even halfway through.So I actually had to stop reading it because her constant back and forth was driving me insane.So that one ended up in a DNF pile (though I made it farther with this one than I did with Tuesday's Child)

The Job Offer, by Eleanor Webb

It was pretty good however I have to wonder who was editing this book? I caught several spelling mistakes and I'm sorry but if you put a book out for publication,shouldn't it be free of spelling & grammatical errors? The title really had very little to do with the actual story and I took major issue with that. Also I really didn't like the ending. I had hoped that we'd get an epilogue of some sort and yet there wasn't one.So it felt REALLY unfinished to me.

Review: If You Stay by Courtney Cole

I was urged to read this book by a very good friend of mine several months ago but really didn't have the means to buy it until recently.I had been losing faith with some books and I figured that now was just as good a time as any to read this book.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I first started this book. All I knew is that one of my very best friends had loved this book. So when it opens with a scene straight out of a really bad porn film I was super confused but almost instantly I was hooked. Pax Tate is one screwed up individual but I could tell that it was a facade almost immediately however I wasn't sure exactly what he was hiding until many chapters later. Mila Hill had her own share of lousy experiences and yet she handles things so much differently than Pax does.

Pax's way of handling things revolves around booze,cocaine & sex.Lots and lots of it. It's not until later when we discover why exactly the sex act of a blow job becomes so important.The reasoning is wrapped around a mailman,Pax's deceased mother and other unspeakable things.

Mila has her sister Madison and the Italian restaurant called The Hill that once belonged to her parents before their death. Mila also is an artist and she finds comfort in that.

The question eventually comes: Will Pax ever be able to stop the nightmares and remember the circumstances surrounding his mother's death and will Mila be there to comfort him when he does discover the horrifying truth?

I would easily give this book 5 stars as it had a little bit of everything. Sex,mystery & romance.