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lauraleafromthelibrary's reviews
169 reviews

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Muse of Maiden Lane by Mimi Matthews

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hopeful inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

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dark reflective fast-paced

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

3.0

3 ⭐️

Chapter One:
- Present time: set in 1977.
- Lydia is found drowned.

Chapter Two:
- We jump to the past; 1950s
- Marilyn (the mother) falling for the professor James (the father); 1957.
- Their complex relationship.
Page 48: “He was afraid to tell Marilyn these things, afraid that once he admitted them, she would see him as he had always seen himself: a scrawny outcast, feeding on scraps, reciting his lines and trying to pass. An imposter. He was afraid she would never see him any other way.”
- Being from an immigrant family; the outsider. His parents both dead.
- The Marilyn’s mother is so racist, she never sees her again after her wedding day.

Chapter Three:
- The funeral for Lydia.
- James sleeps with Louisa, his graduate assistant. 😔

Chapter Four:
- He tells Marilyn no to going back to work; she misses using her degree — major red flag. 🚩
- Marilyn’s mother dies in 1966; changes her whole perspective on life.
  - That Betty Crocker cookbook man. 🤬
- Page 85-86: “It struck her then, as if someone had said it aloud: her mother was dead, and the only thing worth remembering about her, in the end, was that she had cooked. Marilyn thought uneasily of her own life, of hours spent making breakfasts, serving dinners, packing lunches into neat paper bags. How was it possible to spend so many hours spreading peanut butter across bread? How was it possible to spend so many hours cooking eggs? Sunny-side up for James. Hard-boiled for Nath. Scrambled for Lydia. It behooves a good wife to know how to make an egg behave in six basic ways. Was she sad? Yes. She was sad. About the eggs. About everything.”
  - Page 86: “Never, she promised herself. I will never end up like that.”
- Marilyn leaves.

Chapter Five:
- Page 120: “She drops both, as if she has found a snake, and pushes the book bag out of her lap with a thud. They must belong to someone else, she thinks; they could not be Lydia’s. Her Lydia did not smoke. As for the condoms —“
  - I guess parents will remain naive forever. Every generation.
  - Her Lydia — like she ever asked her daughter how she really felt. I think the ily’s are genuine but she lives her own life too.

Chapter Six:
- Page 136-137: “What mother doesn’t love to cook with her little girl? And what little girl doesn’t love learning with Mom?” 😳
  - Sadness + grief + horror wrapped into one.
- Page 137: “If her mother ever came home and told her to finish her milk, she thought, the page wavering to a blur, she would finish her milk. She would brush her teeth without being asked and stop crying when the doctor gave her shots. She would go to sleep the second her mother turned out the light. She would never get sick again. She would do everything her mother told her. Everything her mother wanted.”
  - Parents fuck up their kids so hard. This is why some people should not have kids.
- Marilyn becomes pregnant with Hannah; that’s why she gives up her dream.
- Page 147: “She buried her nose in Lydia’s hair and made silent promises. Never to tell her to sit up straight, to find a husband, to keep a house. Never to suggest that there were jobs or lives or worlds not meant for her; never to let her hear doctor and think only man. To encourage her, for the rest of her life, to do more than her mother had.”
  - Her endeavour becomes obsession.
  - She pins all her hopes and dreams on her daughter instead of herself.
  - She completely ignores Nath.
    - He pushes Lydia into the water.
- James becomes more and more abusive to Nath; not physically but verbally + mentally. It’s disgusting.

Chapter Seven:
- 1976; we learn Lydia is friendless, isolated, failing her classes; Nath is her only true saving grace.
- Th centre of her parents universe for all the wrong reasons.
- Lydia finds solace in Jack.

Chapter Eight:
- The police rule Lydia’s death a suicide; page 201: “They don’t know her. Someone must have taken her out there. Lured her. She wouldn’t have gone out there by herself. Do you think I don’t know my own daughter?”
  - Yes, yes I do.
- The sentence Children of Mixed Backgrounds Often Struggle to Find Their Place — I think in this case, the parents were the real problem; Lydia would have grown up much different if her life didn’t revolve around her parents wants + dreams.
- OMG — Jack is gay; page 211: “But the moment flashed lightening-bright to Hannah. Years of yearning had made her sensitive, the way a starving dog twitches its nostrils at the faintest scent of food. She could not mistake it. She recognized it at once: love, one-way deep adoration that bounced off and did not bounce back; careful, quiet love that didn’t care and went on anyway.” 😳

Chapter Nine:
- Page 219-220: “When she had her license, Lydia thought, she could go anywhere. She could drive across town, across Ohio, all the way to California, if she wanted to. Even with Nath gone — her mind shied from the thought — she would not be trapped alone with her parents; she could escape anytime she chose. Just thinking about it made her legs twitch, as if itching to run.”
  - Tell me her life isn’t a prison?
- Her parents gaslighting her: “After you get your license,” her father said, “we’ll let you take the car out on Friday nights with your friends.” “If you keep your grades up,” her mother would add, if she was around.
  - I want to take people hostage. 🤬
- This got me thinking too; page 225: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. One went up and the other went down. One gained and the other lost. One escaped, the other was trapped, forever.”
  - This idea could really sum up the entire novel.
- James is always concerned with what everyone else wants, what everyone thinks.
  - He tells Lydia friendship + love are more important than school; having friends is the most important. Again, his traumatic childhood is being suffocated onto her.
- On Lydia’s 16th birthday, she realizes her father is cheating with Louisa — or the suspicion of.

Chapter Ten:
- Marilyn — she had longed for different: in her life, in herself.
  - James can’t comprehend how wrong he was; she wanted to embrace being different, she wanted things for her life; James wanted to be anything BUT different.

Chapter Eleven:
- Page 260: “Every time you look at this, she heard her father say, just remember what really matters. Being sociable. Being popular. Blending in. You don’t feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.”
  - Lydia’s response to Hannah wearing the necklace: rips it off; “You don’t want that” — “Don’t ever smile if you don’t want to.”

Chapter Twelve:
- Page 290: “He can guess, but he won’t ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she’d never told him. Whether she thought he’d failed her, or whether she wanted him to let her go. This, more than anything, makes him feel that she is gone.” 💔

Content Warnings

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

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informative slow-paced

3.0

3 ⭐️

Girl, delete your twitter account.
There are a lot of ignorant Americans; disinformation is rampant. Absolute lack of education.
Social media is a dumpster fire; fuelling conspiracy theories.
Politics are frustrating: I really don’t care about political science; if you care about politics, maybe you’ll enjoy this book. I care about democracy and voting but I will not waste my time with ignorant people.
The ending of this book was much better than the beginning. It needed to be edited down — it felt like an academic paper; a very, very long academic paper.

Introduction: Off-Brand Me —
- Page 4: “In June 2021, as this project began to truly spiral out of my control, a strange new weather event dubbed a ‘heat dome’ descended on the southern coast of British Columbia, the part of Canada where I now live with my family. The thick air felt like a snarling, invasive entity with malevolent intent.”

Part One: Double Life (Performance) —Chapter 1: Occupied —
- Page 21: “I went back and took a closer look at the articles about her evening-wear arrest, and a line in The Guardian jumped out at me: ‘Her partner, the film producer Avram Ludwig, was also arrested.’ I read the sentence to my partner, the film director and producer Avram Lewis (who goes by Avi). ‘What the actual fuck?’ he asked. ‘I know,’ I said, ‘It’s a goddamned conspiracy.’ Then we both burst out laughing.’”

Page 27: October 2019 poem — “If the Naomi be Klein, you’re doing just fine. If the Naomi be Wolf, oh buddy. Oooooof.” 😆

Not Me
- Page 30: “I instantly knew that Twitter was going to be bad for me — and yet, like so many of us, I could not stop looking. So perhaps if there is a message I should have taken from the destabilizing appearance of my doppelgänger, this is it: once and for all, stop eavesdropping on strangers talking about you in this crowded and filthy global toilet known as social media. I might have heeded the message, too. If COVID hadn’t intervened.”

Chapter 2: Enter COVID, the Threat Multiplier —
- COVID vaccine shedding
- Dear GOD
- It’s in the Code:
  - Page 39: “Beyond what I consider to be our different approaches to facts and research, there are plenty of other differences between us. She grew up in the United States, I in Canada. She is a liberal who reverentially references the founding fathers, fetishizes a highly individualistic version of ‘liberty,’ and wrote an entire book addressed to a ‘young patriot’. I am a third-generation leftist who believes freedom is won collectively and gets itchy around flags. She went to private universities in the United States and the United Kingdom; I dropped out of a public one in Canada. Her eyes are blue; mine are brown.”
- Klein is an associate professor at UBC — yet didn’t finish her degree?

Chapter 3: My failed Brand, Or Call Me By Her Name —
- The digital doppelgängers.
- Personal branding on social media.
- May 2019: Wolf gets a viral death for publishing a book without getting her facts straight.
  - Reminds me of the power of social media — a viral attack; Blake Lively v Justin Baldoni

Part Two: Mirror World (Projection):
- Chapter 5: They Know About Cell Phones
  - Naomi Wolf attacking the COVID passport; this is why I don’t watch the news.
  - She is absolutely NUTS in this chapter.
  - FOX News should be taken off the air for misinformation.
  - Everything she says is literally conspiracy theory. Why do people even slightly believe it?? This makes me think that there are just a lot of ignorant ass North Americans.
  - Page 88: “Everyone who is online today knows at least some of this. Knows that where we go, who we love, what we believe, and how our bodies behave is out there in ether, beyond our control. And yet the response to this extraordinary reality has so far been strangely muted, with much of it sublimated into ironic humor, like ‘Wait until they hear about cell phones’”.
    - Digital surveillance; who actually cares about this.
    - Why does it matter?
    - Is this a generational worry?
    - Is Naomi Klein also a problem, by creating commentary on the digital age and how it makes us less anonymous: she talked about her friends growing up and writing graffiti in a bathroom stall that only they would know about.
      - Page 90: She says “the world was indifferent to us, and we had no idea how lucky we were.”
      - Nostalgia?
      - Why does it matter?
      - I hate it here.

Page 109: it’s mentioned that Elon Musk welcomes Wolf back to twitter in 2022; a crazy guy welcomes back the crazies.

The Mirror World — America. 😵‍💫
- Chapter 9: the far right meets the far-out — maybe the Mirror World is creeping into Canada.
- I enjoyed reading chapter 9; talked about fitness.

Page 173: body doubling — “For the person dedicating themselves to transformation through diet and fitness, there is you as you are now, and — ever present — there is you as you imagine you could be, with enough self-denial and self-discipline, enough hunger and enough reps. A better, different you, always just out of reach.”
- I liked this mini-chapter on fitness.
- Fitness can get out-of-hand; to its extremes.
- It was a little wild that gyms were forced to close but restaurants could stay open during COVID. What’s essential?

Page 190: “Vancouver is the third most expensive city in North America, ahead of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is also at the epicentre of the poisoned drug crisis.”
- Talking about how Vancouver is changing politically to the far right due to yoga money from people like Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon. 😔
  - Don’t support him or the far-right but I still like his clothes.

Page 241: the fantasy of justice — “There is the persistent liberal dream that Donald Trump will finally be held legally accountable for one or more of his crimes while in or out of office. But beyond that, who is actively calling for our living war criminals to be brought before the International Criminal Court? What is the plan for seizing the assets of the companies fuelling the climate crisis?” 🤬

The Fuck Trudeau trucker convoy — I almost forgot about them. I had no idea about the convoy for Every Child Matters either.

The two Naomi’s agree on the genocide in Palestine.
- I enjoyed reading chapter 14: The Unshakeable Ethnic Double.

Page 336: “When I try to understand Other Naomi, I see something similar. She, too, is both that and this. As a young writer, she helped inspire countless women to become feminists. In middle age, she took stands that required real moral courage — as when she walked out of that synagogue or shared her platform with people being pounded by missiles. She has also, especially lately, done a great many things that are extremely harmful, and I think many of the reasons behind them are pretty uninteresting: a desire for attention, for ego gratification, for cash; perhaps a drive to prove that she was right and that every person who ever attacked her was wrong.”

Page 348: “If there is anything this journey has taught me, it’s that identity is not fixed. Not mine. Not Wolf’s. Not even the barrier between our two identities. It’s all fluid, shifting around and doubling constantly. Negotiating that doubling — between our younger selves and our older selves, between our public selves and our private selves, between our living selves and our dying selves — is a part of what it means to be human. A bigger part of being human, though, and certainly of living a good life, is not about how we make ourselves in those shifting sands of self. It’s about what we make together. ♥️

Servant of Earth by Sarah Hawley

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adventurous dark emotional fast-paced

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

5.0

When the first book of the year is 5⭐️ — that’s got to be a good sign.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

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challenging dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

4 ⭐️

A large part is set at Christmas (the last quarter) — not your typical Christmas story. 😆
“Disorder is the condition of the mind’s fertility.” — quote from Donna Tartt’s office wall; love this.
My favourite character is Boris.

Chapter 1: boy with a skull
- Boy, 13 — Theodore Decker
- Mom, Audrey — dies in NY, April 10 from a bomb explosion in a museum; 14 years ago.
  - Writing a memoir?
  - First person perspective.

Chapter 2: the anatomy lesson
- We learn the father leaves them; he’s a total dumpster fire. He’s an alcoholic too.
- The terror of being alone; the moments after the bomb felt so real. I loved the writing — it made me feel anxious.

Chapter 3: park avenue
- The Barbour’s; their park avenue apartment is like a morgue, dark but also magnificent.
- Page 88: “Everything was lost, I had fallen off the map: the disorientation of being in the wrong apartment, with the wrong family, was wearing me down, so I felt groggy and punch-drunk, weepy almost, like an interrogated prisoner prevented from sleeping for days. Over and over, I kept thinking I’ve got to go home and then, for the millionth time, I can’t.”
  - I’ve had this same feeling — it describes grief or loss so well.
- The Decker grandparents are absolute trash.

Chapter 4: morphine lollipop
- The ring; Hobie + Welty
- Pippa; the beautiful girl
- Page 146: “Are you done your hunger strike?” lol Toddy, what a menace
- The morphine lollipop kiss.
- I kinda love Andy.
- Hobie’s workshop is chef’s kiss.
  - Theo likes old things.
  - He makes me see why.
- Theo’s dad Larry + Xandra OMG 😳 what a nightmare; a perfect disaster.

Chapter 5: badr al-dine
- They left a dog alone in the Vegas heat.
- I hate that Theo has to deal with his father’s anger problem, like he’s responsible for his own parent.
- Introduction of Boris; interesting guy.
- The mention of Alberta + the CBC.
- I thought Larry was bad but man, Boris’s dad takes the cake.

Chapter 6: wind, sand, and stars
- The savings — his dad stealing from his own kid; getting a line of credit with his social security number. Dear GOD. 😳
- Page 339: his dad dies from drunk driving.
- I’m so glad he takes Popper with him; literally saved that dog’s life.
- The whole time he wants to go back to the Barbour’s I’m literally screaming GO FIND HOBIE. I’m glad he had some sense.
- Xandra’s parting words hit hard; I really hope Theo turns out better than his fucked up dad

Chapter 7: the-shop-behind-the-shop
- Theo sick in bed and Pippa caring for him; its opposite. He’s still in love with her too.
- Page 403: “‘Really disturbing, said Hobie — ‘Wounded people everywhere, people bleeding to death, and here’s this fellow snatching painting off the walls. Carrying them around outside in the rain.’”
  - We’ve never got the full story of why he took the painting at this point? He has SO much anxiety about it but he still keeps it.

Chapter 8: the-shop-behind-the-shop, continued
- He gets into early college; starts acting like a normal human being again — despite the anxiety.
- He’s lost contact with Boris at this point.
- Finally puts the painting in storage.
- His old apartment is torn down; another link to his past destroyed.

Chapter 9: everything of possibility
- 8 years have passed.
- Andy + his father have died; boating accident. Mr. Barbour was bipolar.
- Theo sells furniture from the shop with Hobie.
- Everett, the music librarian; Pippa’s new BF. The disgust.
- And, Theo becomes addicted to pain medication during these years.
- Page 473: “But at this point, in the spring of my twenty-sixth year, I had not been more than three days clean in a row in over three years.”
  - He’s become a bit of his father. Addictive tendencies.
- Page 500: “All this time, I’d known it was a mistake, keeping the painting, and still I’d kept it. No good could come of keeping it. It wasn’t even as if it had done me any good or given me any pleasure. Back in Las Vegas, I’d been able to look at it whenever I wanted, when I was sick or sleepy or sad, early morning and the middle of the night, autumn, summer, changing with weather and sun. It was one thing to see a painting in a museum but to see it in all those lights and moods and seasons was to see it a thousand different ways and to keep it shut in the dark — a thing made of light, that only lived in light — was wrong in more ways than I knew how to explain. More than wrong: it was crazy.”

Chapter 10: the idiot
- Kitsey + Theo are getting married.
  - Talk about opposites.
  - Page 515: “All the power and melancholy of wealth.”
- Page 527: “Apparently I’d inherited it from him and, who knew, maybe Grandpa Decker as well, this violent procreative disgust buzzing loudly in my bloodstream; it felt inborn, wired-in, genetic.”
  - Absolutely can relate. That’s me.
- Boris is alive and still doing shady things.
  - Page 552: “‘I switched it. Yes. It was me. I thought you knew.’” OMGGGG
- Page 559: “How could I have believed myself a better person, a wiser person, a more elevated and valuable and worthy-of-living person on the basis of my secret uptown? Yet I had. The painting had made me feel less mortal, less ordinary. It was support and vindication; it was sustenance and sum. It was the keystone that had held the whole cathedral up. And it was awful to learn, by having it so suddenly vanish from under me, that all my adult life I’d been privately sustained by that great, hidden, savage joy: the conviction that my whole life was balanced atop a secret that might at any moment blow it apart.”
  - THIS. Finally, an answer.
  - My favourite passage.
  - The answer and the curse.
- Kitsey is cheating with Tom Cable; a boy who bullied Andy.
  - They’re still getting married? Yuck.

Chapter 11: the gentleman’s canal
- Page 672: “‘Still wishing you had phoned the art cops, eh?’ he said, slinging his arm around my shoulder with his head close to mine, exactly as when we were boys. ‘We can still phone them,’ said Gyuri, with a shout of laughter, punching me on the other arm.”
  - This seems like foreshadowing.
  - All that work to get the painting back seems absurd.
  - He should have done the right thing from the start or let it go entirely.
- Boris gets shot.
- Theo kills Martin.
- Some guy steals the painting.
- Boris was actually so funny driving with the gunshot; babbling mess — I laughed out loud multiple times. I’m actually worried for that guy.

Chapter 12: the rendezvous point
- Theo’s losses his passport.
- The anxiety + paranoia are eating at him; the dark descent into madness + despair.
- Being in a hotel room at Christmas; alone; feeling trapped.
- Page 727: “Pippa wasn’t fooled by who I was. I had nothing to offer her. I was illness, instability, everything she wanted to get away from. Jail would only confirm what she knew. The best thing I could do was break off contact. If my father had really loved my mother — really loved her the way he said he had, once upon a time — wouldn’t he have done the same?”
  - We’ve come full circle.
- Page 745: “‘Maybe sometimes — the wrong way is the right way? You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be? Or, spin it another way, sometimes you can do everything wrong and it still turns out to be right?’”
  - The painting is recovered; Boris is a genius.
  - Reward money + everything set to right. Sascha goes to jail.
- Page 771: “That life — and whatever else it is — is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That nature (meaning death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open.” 🫶🏻

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.0

3 ⭐️

Set in Cape Cod (NY + England)
Two timelines — the present (24 hour timeline) + past multi-generational storytelling (50 years)
Secrets are at the heart of this story.
Main Characters:
- Elle + Peter
  - Jack + Maddy + Finn
- Jonas the BFF + Gina
- The grandmother, Wallace
- Anna, the cranky sister
Story Outline:
- Book One: Elle
- Book Two: Jonas
- Book Three: Peter
- Book Four: This Summer
- Book Five: Today 6:30PM to 6:30AM

Page 24: “On the outside, the cabins are solid — watertight saltboxes that have withstood endless harsh winters, nor’easters, and generations of squabbling families. But my grandfather was running low on funds, so he built the interior walls and ceilings out of pressed paperboard, Homasote, cheap and utilitarian, and nicknamed the camp the Paper Palace.”

Page 25-26: “The odd thing is, my mother lost her respect for women but not for men. Her stepfather’s perversion was a hard truth, but it was her mother’s weak-willed betrayal that made her go cold. In my mother’s world, the men are given the respect. She believes in the glass ceiling. Peter can do no wrong.”

Page 64: “In my mother’s family, divorce is just a seven-letter word. Letters that could easily be replaced with I’m bored or bad luck. Both of her parents married three times.”
- The book has an interesting discussion on marriage.
- Generational trauma.
- “Wives moved in and out, but the pond remained his.” — the grandfather
- The cabin has stood the test of time but the marriages, have not.
- Is this a metaphor?

The third base scene on the beach page 88; both of their sex scenes so far have been in public — the second more than the first but both times they could have been caught. The risk is worth the reward; or is it? Elle is obviously having a crisis of some sort.

Page 114: “I picture my stomach cavity filled to the brim with little pieces of bitten fingernails. A lifetime’s worth of pain that never got digested. When they cut me open, that’s what they will find. Strange deposits, sharp and brittle.”
- A lifetime’s worth of trauma.
- Grotesque language; she doesn’t shy away from writing very descriptive, realistic things. It’s very honest. Although it vulgar, It’s kind of refreshing.
- Elle panicking over Jonas.

Page 166: Conrad, the step-brother sexual abuses Elle — “Everyone in my family would be stuck with that disgusting image in their heads. I would be tainted forever — an object of pity. So, I will carry the weight of this shame rather than tell on him. I know my silence protects him. But it also protects me: Conrad is terrified of getting caught — exposed to his father, rejected forever. That is the one power I have.”
- So tough to read that scene.
- She carries that weight her whole life.
- Page 171: “I want to tell her the truth, beg her to save me, but I can’t do that to her. It would break her heart, destroy her marriage. She’s so happy with Leo, and I am stronger than she is — strong enough to carry this. It is my responsibility. I love we nice to Conrad, I let him in the door. ‘It’s your funeral,’ Anna had said that poison ivy night. And she was right.” — the victim feeling like it’s their fault, the guilt of it.

Page 181: “I hold my book to my face, sniff the pages. I love the way library books smell: more important than regular books, a grand olden-days smell, like the steps of a marble palace, or a senator.” LOVE this 🫶🏻

1. I’m so glad Jonas knows the truth.
2. I felt relief for Elle when Conrad dies but also sadness for the guilt she will carry with her forever.

Page 225: “I close my eyes and put the book to my nose, breathe in the smell of Jack’s fingerprints, his innermost thoughts, his longings. He would never know. But I would. Knowledge can be power, but it can also be poison. I put the book back where I found it, push the bed against the wall, and unmake the covers. I do not want the weight of any more secrets.” Sigh. True true.

Chapter 20: Wallace finds out about the rape; assumes it is Leo not Conrad.
- Elle doesn’t correct her.

The strip search on Christmas Eve for weed lol; what a dysfunctional family. It honestly feels like my own. 😂😂
- Wallace is her usual narcissistic, chauvinistic self.
- Her father is re-marrying — for the third time; Elle calls him pathetic and he is pathetic. He lets all the women in his life boss him around.
- Yet, he never chooses his daughters.
- He lets his mother die alone.

Page 254: when she meets Jonas in NY on New Years — “‘I was breaking up with my father. He lives around the corner. He nods. ‘That was always kind of in the cards.’”
- He doesn’t push her, he doesn’t ask her to make up with him, he just accepts it because that’s the good person he is.
- He’s like a true BFF.

Anna dies of Ovarian cancer. 💔

Page 339: “I tell him about the prices I’ve paid, hoping it will count for something, though I know the burden of carrying a secret is nothing compared to the burden of earth he carries. I tell him about Peter, about the kids. And, for the first time in almost thirty-five years, I cry for him.”
- Not sure how I feel about this.
- Page 343: he also raped his actual sister, Rosemary — I kinda suspected this earlier in the novel.

Page 350 — Wallace: “I just don’t believe in psychiatry. As far as I can tell, the only thing it’s good for is making children blame their parents for everything that’s ever gone wrong in their lives.”
- The irony.