Ti | Book Chatter

After a hellish week of illness, I am back to normal. Well, almost. I am about 95% back but I feel so much better. Thanks for all your well wishes. They worked!

Part of getting back to a normal routine meant me going to the market (two of them actually) to stock-up on all the stuff we ran out of while I was sick. I hate the market! I hate spending all of that money but what can you do? The kids have to eat. If it were just me, I could live on grilled cheese and salad but the kids, they want (and need) a bit more. I got yelled at by cranky people though because all they had were two EXPRESS lanes open and there I was, with like…1000 items. I hate to be THAT person but it wasn’t my fault. I let someone in front of me but I couldn’t let everyone in front of me, or I’d be there all day.

All that food translated to a full day of cooking. I made tacos for tonight, and chicken tortilla soup for tomorrow night when my son and I will be standing in line to get tickets for the show my kids are in. The show is not until February, but to get the best seats, you literally have to camp out. Last time, we got there at 2pm and the box office opened at 5:30pm. This time, I can’t get their that early so we’ll see what kind of seats we get. Since they both have rehearsal as well, the soup will come in handy once they get home.

Some updates:

Winter Formal 2012 — Winter Formal: Will you go with me??

The Boy got asked to the winter formal so all is good. I was on pins and needles! This “girl ask boy” thing is always a bit nerve-wracking. She gave him boxes full of candy with cute sayings inside. Oh, to be young again.

The Boy had his cross-country banquet last week and now he is heading into track. This is new to us as well but with a lot of the same people in track, I am thinking it’s going to be another great experience.

The Girl opted NOT to attend cheerleading camp. Say what?? She has been bugging me for over a year but she took one look at the brochure and changed her mind. Apparently, the girl doing splits in the air was not inspiring to her. I could tell she was freaking herself out, but I didn’t want to push her. Instead, she wants me to take her to a cheer/tumbling class first so she can see first hand what she’ll be expected to do. Sounds reasonable to me.

Well, I’ve said enough for today. I hope you are enjoying what’s left of Sunday. Tonight, my son is playing “waiter” at a holiday dinner show so we are going to try to capture a pic for the Christmas card before he leaves. Wish us luck. Hoping that the Otter Pup is a bit more discreet with her privates this year. Last year I had to photoshop them out which made her look very strange.

Oh, and in case you want to know what I am reading…I am still reading The Twelve. I read tiny bits here and there but I am almost done with it. I am also reading The Round House and This Cake is for the Party. What are reading?

Cold Light
By Jenn Ashworth
(William Morrow & Company, Paperback, 9780062076038, October 2012, 352pp.)

The Short of It:

As the title suggests, the light that falls upon these characters is a harsh, unrelenting light. It seeps in where it’s not welcome and leaves its chilling aftermath behind.

The Rest of It:

It has taken me WEEKS to write this review. Not to actually write it, but to ponder WHAT I’d actually write about once I finally sat down to do it. It’s not that it was a difficult book to read. It wasn’t. It’s not that I couldn’t get into the characters, because I did. I think it had to do with the fact that when I finished it, I was like…”Hmmm. Interesting.” Then a week later, I was like…”Hmmm. It was so dark!” Then each day after that, I continued to think about it and it dawned on me, that what I thought was a book that fell into the YA category, really wasn’t that at all.

That made me ponder it some more.

There are no likable characters to speak of. No one in the book would ever be my friend. Lola is like any other fourteen-year-old in that she wants to fit in and when she hooks up with Chloe, she finds that niche, that “in” if you will. Chloe is pretty and popular and really, very into herself. She is the classic bad girl. She drinks and smokes and steals things and she gets Lola to do the same. But it’s obvious from the beginning that Lola has a lot going on in her head. Her family is dysfunctional and her dad, although too smart for his britches has some issues, as well as her mother.

After Chloe hooks up with a real loser of a guy, things begin to go downhill for Lola. She’s not Chloe’s center anymore and often takes a backseat to Chloe’s boyfriend but when something happens to Chloe and her boyfriend, the town paints a very different picture of the girl Lola knew.

Ten years later, when the town decides to build a monument in Chloe’s honor, Lola finds herself revisiting her past and what really happened that fateful night.

Cold Light is a quiet mystery that hits you over the head long after you’ve closed the book. It took awhile for me to digest the ending but after much thought, the ending was perfect and quite fitting given what I knew about the characters. I know that getting hit over the head does not sound like a good thing but for me, it was. It was a departure from what I expected it to be and I am always impressed when a book surprises me in some way.

Ashworth does a beautiful job of capturing just how obsessive teenage friendships can be without preaching about the dangers of mixing with the wrong crowd. It’s suspenseful and well-paced and not necessarily for the YA crowd although I can see them reading it as well.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher via Edelweiss.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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