All the Living and the Dead

I don't know about you guys, but I'm obsessed with the macabre.

 

When I saw a book titled All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work, I immediately pre-ordered a copy.

 

Hayley Campbell threw herself straight into a world filled with life's darkest moments. Nothing was off limits. The first chapter has her holding hands with a dead man while the mortuary workers change his clothes. She meets with everyone from funeral home directors to embalmers, executioners to crime scene cleaners, death mask sculptors, crematorium operators, gravediggers, even bereavement midwives.

It's gruesome and intriguing to read about the people who often go unnoticed until a tragedy strikes. It seems the one thing they have in common is wanting to ease the pain of the families still living. Each person has their own limits when it comes to what they can handle. The author had a traumatic experience while writing this book and can't seem to shake the image from her head. Even I have chapters that I know are going to stick with me. Like I said, nothing is off limits in this book. There are cancer diagnoses, suicides, child deaths, every kind of death is mentioned in this book and it goes into immense detail.

One thing the author set out to do was ease the idea of death. For many of us, myself included, the fear of the unknown or the beyond is worrisome. But I'll say, reading about the way these people treat the dead makes all the difference. Their jobs are only needed during the worst parts of our lives. They know families need closure in different ways and most of them are fully prepared to ease your pain without a second thought.

You Will Get Through This Night

Chances are if you're looking up reviews for mental health books, you're probably not in the best head space. But that's okay.

I found this book when I needed it the most.

I've spent nearly a month combing through the pages, highlighting, dog-earring, and force feeding it into my brain. I went back and forth about how honest I want to be in this review, but I've decided complete honesty might help someone going through the same things as me.

I've struggled with my anxiety for a very long time. It's not just an anxious feeling, but a spiraling thought. It's something that gets stuck in my head and I just can't stop thinking about it, even if nothing has happened. Anxiety is the reason why I have insomnia. I've always said the reason I can't fall asleep is because my brain won't turn off. I would stay awake until 3, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning just thinking. Then the panic attacks started. My doctor said, "Oh, it's just heart palpitations. Most people don't even feel them." And then she sent me home.

The way my concerns were just discredited really made me believe I had to just handle it on my own. I mean I have a psychology degree. I know how to help someone in my exact shoes. But let me tell you, that just wasn't enough.

I am very proud to say that while reading this book, I sought out therapy and started taking medication to help balance out my thoughts. The stigma behind mental health is slowly fading and that's a big part of why I wanted to share my story with you guys.

If you're not ready to take the next step of seeking out professional help, at least get this book. You Will Get Through This Night by Daniel Howell is broken up into three parts: This Night, Tomorrow, and The Days After That. Each section is filled with personal stories from Dan, along with exercises to help you better understand your emotions without discrediting them.

This Night is for immediate help. It has information on breathing exercises, how to ground yourself during a panic attack, and even how to process your immediate feelings. Tomorrow is for learning how to positively change your environment. It breaks down how your environment, eating habits, friendships, and even sleep affect your day to day life. Why fill those spaces with negativity? The Days After That is for understanding and becoming your best self. It's about being your genuine self. I've started using this book in my every day life. Each section has brought me peace and I know that sounds absurd, but it's true. I personally have found that focusing on my breathing, acknowledging my thoughts, and not discrediting the way I'm feeling is the best way for me to ground myself. Sometimes it's okay not to be okay. It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to feel.

 

I hope that by sharing my personal story, it encourages others to share theirs too.

People Person

I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed this book.

People Person follows the lives of 5 half-siblings whose lives are thrust together following a freak accident. They had only met once before, when their absentee father picked them all up for a visit to the park. He left them with one piece of fatherly advice....."This is so none of you ever buck up with each other on the road and fall in love or have sex or any of dem tings. Because that, my children, would be illegal."

Throughout the years, the siblings ran into each other without ever really knowing them. But when Dimple calls Nikisha for help, the whole lot of them show up. In a weird way, this helped Nikisha, Danny, Dimple, Lizzie, and Prynce all find their way back to each other. I wouldn't same the theme of the book is dark, it's just filled with secrets. It's more about the dysfunctional, yet unbreakable, family bond. It felt believable, the emotions were raw and genuine without making me roll my eyes. It's about friendship and family, about finding yourself while uncovering your past.

I haven't read Candice Carty-Williams debut novel, Queenie yet but after reading this I definitely want to find a copy.

Huge thanks to Simon & Schuster and Scout Press for sending me an advanced copy!

 

People Person is out now!

Babysitter

I reallllllllly wanted to like this book.

I don't know what it is about Joyce Carol Oates, but damn she's wordy. All throughout this book she just continuously repeats herself, not just a line here or there but whole passages. It's almost like she thinks we've forgotten something from two chapters ago.

Babysitter was described as a "a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, set against a backdrop of child murders in the affluent suburbs of Detroit." 

 

That description drew me in, child murders in the 70s in Detroit? Yeah, sounds like something I'd pick up. But apparently that loosely translates to "40 year old, wannabe socialite has an affair." The main character, Hannah, starts an affair that goes on for literally the entire book. I mean it's a central part of the story and it's BORING.

I just really don't have a lot of good things to say about this book. There's a lot of masochism mixed with sexual assault, racism and police brutality, and a weird mix of religious undertones. It just wasn't something that I enjoyed.

 

Looking for other books by Joyce Carol Oates?

Blonde

One Hundred Saturdays

This cover is gorgeous.

All the illustrations throughout the book are even more incredible to look at.

But I am 100% not the target audience for this book.

One Hundred Saturdays chronicles the life of Stella Levi. This woman is well into her 90s, and she has lived an absolutely remarkable life. She been through it, back, and through it again. But somehow she never lost hope. Stella's story is much bigger than the numbers that were once tattooed on her skin.

Michael Frank spent nearly six years with Stella while writing this book. They spent a hundred Saturday's together, where she told him her entire life story. Beginning to end. Starting her story as a young girl in Rhodes, navigating friendships and romances. Then, onto her time in the camps and dealing with the aftermath of losing most of her family. Of course, Stella couldn't leave out finding her way in America and inevitably her way back to Rhodes.

Those few sentences I just wrote will never encapsulate the stories Stella shared with Michael. I wish I enjoyed this book more, but like I said I'm not the intended audience for this book, at all. It's a great story that is written very well. But without knowing the history of where Stella grew up, it was hard for me to envision. This book is for History Readers. Entwining the rich cultures while also discussing a traumatic event definitely helped move the story along, but all in all, I didn't love it.

Huge thanks to Simon and Schuster and Avid Reader Press for sending me an advanced copy!

One Hundred Saturdays: In Search of a Lost World by Michael Frank hits shelves September 6, 2022!

The Menendez Murders

A few months ago I became infatuated with the Menendez Murders.

For years, I had heard about the boys who had killed their parents. But that's kind of all I knew about it and I wanted more. I started watching documentaries and reading articles about their two trials. I couldn't believe what I was reading.

I've never understood why we allow men and women to be held to different standards when it comes to abuse. It's hard for me to understand how people can view abuse of a man different from abuse of a woman. Abuse is abuse. As for these boys, (and yes I'm going to be calling them boys because they were younger than my 26 years of age when this happened), they believed after years of abuse their parents were conspiring to kill them. The sexual and physical abuse from their father continued throughout their childhoods up to the point of Jose's death. Not to mention the constant verbal abuse from their mother. I've seen the trial, I've seen the transcripts, I don't believe they did this with malicious intent. 

It's interesting to me that we can support a woman killing her husband, claiming self defense under the assumption of battered wife syndrome, but we can't apply that same scenario to two sons whose parents were abusing them.

As for this book, Robert Rand makes it apparent very early on that he supports both the Menendez Brothers. That being said, the views portrayed in the book are very biased, aside from the trial transcripts included throughout the text. I was completely unaware of his stance before picking up this book, but it is similar to my own.

 

I don't believe we will ever truly understand what happened that fateful night in August 1989.

I'm Glad My Mom Died

THAT TITLE, MAN.

Honestly, I love Jennette McCurdy. When I first saw her on iCarly, I wanted to be her. I wanted to be the unapologetic girl who wears converse and hates everything. I even wanted her clothes, which makes me cringe so hard because when I rewatched iCarly earlier this year...... let's just say I'm pretty sure we had the same pair of plaid bermuda shorts.

So obviously, I pre-ordered this book as soon as she announced it. I know the title feels like a sucker punch, but she has every single right to feel this way. It made me sad to be reading about a girl who was only a few years older than me. A girl who was going through some of the same shit, just for different reasons. A girl whose childhood revolved around pleasing the people around her, specifically her mother. It's not my place to detail the things she went through, but trust me when I say you can feel the emotions behind her words.

 

 

So many celebrities write memoirs about their public persona, or their personal lives, or where they came. I've never read a book that morphs those topics so drastically. Her story felt so raw yet incredibly relatable. This book is not a Nickelodeon tell all, it's not even about exposing her secrets. This book was about healing, growing, and becoming who she wants to be. It's phenomenal.