Review: Family - Micol Ostow

Genre: Young Adult
Format: ARC Paperback
ISBN: 9781606841556
Rating: 2/5 Stars
Read: October 2011
Published: April 2011

Please don't ask me why I read this book. I saw it on Goodreads and it looked like it had some potential and upon opening the book I saw that it was written in episodic verse which I thought was pretty cool and I also thought that it would be a quick and easy read, in which it was, but all-in-all it is just a book. Simply a book. I am not sure if I hated it or if I liked it. I know that I did not love it. The whole repetitiveness was just mind boggling and quite annoying at times.

Family is set in 1969 during the Manson Murders and everyone pretty much in the entire book are hippies and lived on free love and mind control and drugs and blah and blah. I felt sorry for many of the young girls who got caught up in the all mighty Henry. That name was mentioned so much so that I can never look at a Henry again without thinking strange things....

Oh well, I really won't recommend the book but if you must then go on but don't blame me when you are done!

Review: A Mother's Story - Gloria Venderbilt

Genre: Memoir

Pages: 190

Read: October 2011

Rating 2/5 stars

Format: Hardcover Large Print

I watch the new Anderson show and I never knew much about him and when he had his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt on his show, i was very intriged. I learned that his brother committed sucicide right in front of his mother so when I found out that she wrote a book about it I just had to read it. I read it in one day! It was such a quick read but I felt that the book is more for her than for other's. It seemed like a way for her to clear the air, so to speak. It really wasn't about Carter it was more about her and basically justifying actions and so on. When she did go on about Carter and how he came to die it was truly painful to read. I mean like, being a mom and being helpless to your child is just unbearable. How he did is just crazy! He wasn't even planning on it it was just his meds that made him do it and that is even worse. I can understand that if your life was miserable and you had to go (figuratively speaking) but just to do something because your high or because of your head not being in the right place, just hurts more. I can only imagine how much that had to suck for her.

I rating he book with 2 stars because it was simply OK. I mean, I felt that the book was her way of explaining to the world of her life and really not so much about Carter. I think she really wrote it to help herself. Get the weight lifted. But I truly felt sorry and really wished she was right and someone was going to tell her that he will be right back.