juliajjshields's reviews
396 reviews

3.25⭐️ same ol same old with this series where it’s all tell no show but the spice & characters make it enjoyable! I will say that if I took a shot or had a dollar every time they said a characters full name, specifically Theodra Andersen, I’d either be blackout drunk or with a wad of cash. Regardless, I love teddy’s character the best of all the women so far in this series. Didn’t love the epilogue but im glad they’re a lil family now.  this one did the job I needed it to do😌 palette successfully cleansed! I’ve been rejuvenated!

the fact this could’ve been a short story of <100 pages + the inspiration behind it all being residential schools just tanks this book bAH 

I’d heard so much about this book so unfortunately, i had high expectations that I don’t feel were met. While it was well written & engaging enough, it felt extremely repetitive. Found myself by the end saying yes! They’re just children! Yes, the world is prejudiced & fucked up! Blah blah! Hate is bad! It just felt like a ton of recycling the same paragraphs over and over using a synonym generator aka the same yet slightly different. It seems to be a sweet story at face value, but the mix of the repetitive nature & overhype made it hard to not be bummed. Then once I finished the story & dove a bit deeper, learning that it’s essentially the romanticization of an effort to assimilate indigenous children makes it even worse. 

The face value post reading the story, I was giving it 2.75✨ the deeper dive makes me give it a 1 the fuck!

palette successfully cleansed😌 this was exactly what I needed! while I still find Sage’s writing to be elementary in the sense of it’s all tell and no show, I will always devour a cowboy romance! Wes is the best of the men in these books imo so Im a bit bummed finishing his story, but glad he’ll still be around. Looking forward to the next one!!

wow!! this was so different than expected & i was just completely enthralled by it. although it’s a 500 page book, I absolutely blew through it! Moriarty writes in such an engaging & digestible way. The premise was so intriguing—though it sounds familiar & I can’t think of where I’ve heard it before—I just couldn’t stop reading. It was interesting to hop between characters on the plane & chapters switch between the death lady herself. I appreciated learning her story and the way everything came together in the end. Felt all warm reading the epilogue. Just a lovely story around mortality, grief & the ability to make meaning of your experiences. 

3.5✨ wait a witchy story about girlhood & romanticizing your life? that was essentially the gist. it was giving spooky at times but it ultimately ended in a “who needs men” vibe, besties forever, witchy women rule the world. short, fun & wonderful for the season🔮🍁

what in the lack of plot did I just read?? I’m so confused I actually said “what” aloud because wtf was going on. It was written in an engaging manner but the leaps to conclusions that somehow ended up right were just too much of a stretch for me. this whole thing was a bit of a stretch with moments of kumbaya phrases about love & life choices thrown in there. It just felt like such a mess. I see where the author was wanting to go but unfortunately we never quite got there

Kelly Bishop is truly an icon and inspiration. Hearing her narrate her life completely enthralled me and surprised me at every turn. Not only does she have an insane resume including a Tony award winning Broadway actress and dancer, but she also is such an incredible human being. + the forward by Amy Sherman-Palladino was a wonderful touch :,) 

At 80, she shares her story unapologetically, frankly & so authentically. She’s witty & warm, telling the audience everything from her relationships to her lil feuds to sparing no detail in the recounting of her journeys to some of her most famous work, Dirty Dancing & Gilmore Girls. The sheer pop culture impact and scope of this woman is wild…the ways she casually mentions being part of events that created Broadway royalty like A Chorus Line to her husband being an anchor for this new little tv network called ESPN is wild. 

The way she opened up about the losses in her life—especially her dear husband, Lee Leonard—resonated so deeply with me. She shares she’s never been religious but believes there must be more out there and found her own ways to make peace and feel connected with him. 

Audiobooking this felt like sitting down with a grandmother and a cup of tea. I absolutely devoured this and couldn’t help but feel sad as it came to an end. It’s a quick listen that will continue to reverberate in my mind for a while. I almost want to take a deep dive into all of her work including old clips of her dancing days. Shes truly just tHAT woman, that girl, that bitch. Bishop is a gem and I’m so glad she came out with a memoir. 

I deeply respect and value her generation. My grandparents were both of her time and gone now, and their stories too were something I cherished then and always. While Mamie & Papy experienced war & hardship that Bishop did not, the simple fact of a life in a time that differs so drastically from today and to live through such events & history is remarkable. It speaks volumes to me of humanity and everything we are and can endure. While again Bishop didn’t experience anything crazy, the simple details of her day to day life creating these historic moments of the industry is mind boggling. She emphasized listening to her gut and gratitude for the way things seemed to come together each time she felt they were falling apart. 

This may be getting a bit meta, but I truly just value storytelling and the interwoven individual histories that build our collective understanding and context so deeply. Kelly Bishop is one of those people that embody this in entertainment and expressed such pride in passing the torch to the next generation. I can keep going but given this review is already tremendously long, I’ll leave it at how lucky we are to hear her story and what a marvelous woman✨

—

“Aren’t we lucky that there’s such a wide variety of dreams to choose from, & so many people who choose them?…What on earth would we do without one another?” 

“I live a life I’d envy if I weren’t me.” 💌
- obsessed with this quote & is my aspiration

3.75✨ dare I say this is Sager’s best? it lost me for a second there when some possible supernatural elements started to come into play, but it got more on track for me in the the end and I can’t help but be in awe of how Sager set up the story. Just when you thought you knew what was going down, we took a different direction!! I was thrilled! Wahoo! It started out so eerie spooky that my scaredy cat self wouldn’t go downstairs without Eric lol. I also was a fan of the way everything came together in the end. It wasn’t anything shocking but it just all made sense? In a sad and tragic way. Such a spooky read for this spooky season!!

4.5✨ truly in awe & still talking about this book a few days after I finished it. I’ll stand firmly on the hill that this book should be listened to. With the narration of Riley Keough sharing her mum & her own life, Julia Roberts as Lisa Marie, and clips of Lisa Marie herself telling her own story, it’s just absolutely unmatched. My heart goes out to Keough I cannot even imagine what she has endured through the suicide of her brother and loss of her mom. this story encompasses American pop culture across time through Lisa Marie’s life and connection to icons like Elvis and Michael Jackson etc. just absolutely wild

while I could continue to rave about this work from writing to research, there were some things I didn’t love as much. Emilia’s chapters were super long…I feel they could’ve been effective broken up, but that’s personal preference. I’m not the biggest Shakespeare gal so the bits of poetry were more difficult to move through, but the connections to Emilia made it a lot more intriguing. 

I didn’t love how the Jasper side plot connected with the article of Melina’s problematic ask of Andre? I understand the motive and intended impact but idk I don’t think it needed to be elevated fo the level it was in the book. I suppose there needed to be something to “cancel” the play but it definitely took me out of the story. It was doing too much. Jasper and Melina were fun, andre and Melina arguing and Melina being called out was good, but we could’ve  gone without the whole article explosion was a lot.

Overall, this was so well done. Impressed as usual with Picoult but be prepared for some heavy shit…also as usual with Picoult :)