milk and honey

milk and honey by rupi kaur     204 pages

milk and honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. It is about the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. It is split into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose, deals with a different pain, heals a different heartache. milk and honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.

Though I'm sure this would be categorized under confessional poetry, to me a lot of it read like motivational poster captions or something inspirational someone would probably tattoo on their forearm.  Though I have read enough poetry to know that almost anything can be considered poetry, it doesn't mean I have to agree. I would consider Kaur's writing as more of a diary/memoir of her reflections on her life, particularly the most traumatic moments and how she was able to get past them. I can see how this work is inspirational to some, and Kaur definitely deserves to be called brave because she does not hide the fact that this is a work of deeply personal emotions and experiences. I just can't get past how simplistic most of it seems. But then, a lot of people might really need someone to tell them, "You matter," or "Love yourself first," and I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. This is definitely something I would give to someone I knew was going through a rough patch and really needs some advice on self-care. That being said, I did not enjoy the majority of this book. A handful of "poems" stuck out to me, but most of it seemed derivative of works or quotes I'd seen or heard before. I'm very picky when it comes to poetry and none of these poems really spoke to me or made my skin prickle or caused me to feel a rise of emotion. Perhaps I'm not the intended audience, I'm not sure. Either way, for me, this was mostly just an "eh" book and I probably won't read it again. If you got something out of it, great. I think Kaur is justified in sharing this piece of herself because there are lots of people out there who need to hear the things she's stated in this book.

One to Go

 

One to Go by Mike Pace  365 pages

Tom Booker is in a hurry to pick up his daughter from her mother’s. Not only has he promised to take her to the Air and Space Museum, but if he doesn’t show up reasonably soon, he will catch seven kinds of grief from his ex-wife.

As he is crossing Memorial Bridge, he is texting his ex-wife. His car drifts into on-coming traffic and as it crashes into a mini-van, he realizes that his daughter, three of her friends, and his ex-sister-in-law are the van’s occupants.  When he awakens, the crash site has frozen in time. A young, yuppie couple approach Tom to make a deal. They will rewind time and let his daughter live, but he must agree to provide five souls, one every two weeks, in exchange for the van’s occupants to live. 

Tom quickly agrees, not fully understanding what he has committed to do. When he awakes again, he feels what happened was a hallucination. Only when his ex-sister-in-law is brutally murdered does he realize what he has done. He isn’t a killer and doesn’t even know how to go about planning a murder, much less four more.

Tom’s moral quagmire is at the heart of this fast-paced, absorbing novel. I was on the edge of my seat from the opening scene to the last page. Author Pace could have gotten away with having only four occupants in the as by the time the fourth soul was delivered to Satan’s representatives, Tom’s quandaries were starting to get a bit predictable. Some nice twists at the end involving a priest made for a satisfying ending.

I do have two things to criticize. First is the cover. The dust jacket gives the appearance that the book is to a legal thriller, but that’s far from the case. If I had seen the book in a bookstore, I probably would have passed. Yeah, I judge a book by its cover. Second is the genre. The dust jacket is lists the genre as thriller but it’s more paranormal suspense or supernatural than thriller.

Still, One to Go was a heart-stopping read, that I would give six out of five star, if I could. Highly recommend it.