Author: Chassati Thiele

Laura Dave killed it with this one. It wasn’t too long and drawn out, which I appreciate. I love the suspense and the plot twists, but I despise when authors drawwwwwwww it out. The pace was perfect for my taste. I listened to it via Audiobooks, and the narrator was okay. I wouldn’t recommend her alone, but it would be hard to screw up this book. I really loved it, and the characters. Hannah and Bailey become closer and an important part of each other’s world and heart by the conclusion. This book pulls on the heart strings and also is a definite page turner.

From Amazon:

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BLOCKBUSTER * REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK * NOW AN APPLE TV+ LIMITED SERIES STARRING JENNIFER GARNER * MORE THAN 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD

The “page-turning, exhilarating” (PopSugar) and “heartfelt thriller” (Real Simple) about a woman who thinks she’s found the love of her life—until he disappears.

Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey, who lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey, who wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.

As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a US marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

Hannah and Bailey set out to discover the truth. But as they start putting together the pieces of Owen’s past, they soon realize they’re also building a new future—one neither of them could have anticipated.

With its breakneck pacing, dizzying plot twists, and evocative family drama, The Last Thing He Told Me is a “page-turning, exhilarating, and unforgettable” (PopSugar) suspense novel.

Y’all know book reviews aren’t my thing, so I lean on Amazon for that. Click above to purchase.

I am SUCH a Stephen King fan. I highly recommend the Audible version. Let me know if you’d like a copy, and I will gift it to you. Frances Sternhagen is an incredible narrator, and the perfect choice for this role. THe character of Dolores is based on King’s own mother, Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King, who raised King and his brothers after her husband abandoned them. In Danse Macabre, King writes, “After my father took off, my mother landed on her feet scrambling. My brother and I didn’t see a great deal of her over the next nine years.” Loved, loved, loved this one.

“An unforgettable, unflinching glimpse into a mind driven to murder” (San Francisco Chronicle) – the number-one national best seller from Stephen King about a housekeeper with a long-hidden secret from her past…one that tests her own will to survive.

Dolores Claiborne is suspected of killing Vera Donovan, her wealthy employer, and when the police question her, she tells the story of her life, harkening back to her disintegrating marriage and the suspicious death of her violent husband 30 years earlier. Dolores also tells of Vera’s physical and mental decline and how she became emotionally demanding in recent years.

Given a voice as compelling as any in contemporary fiction, the strange intimacy between Dolores and Vera – and the link that binds them – unfolds in Dolores’ account. Dolores Claiborne is “a literary triumph. The finest of King novels…a plot of enormous energy…. Read this book.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

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©1993 Stephen King (P)1992 Penguin Highbridge Audio

To check this one out on Amazon, click here.

Ohmygoodness. I absolutely love this book and all of the incredibly developed characters. All of them, but especially Billy. We need more Billys.

Master storyteller Stephen King, whose “restless imagination is a power that cannot be contained” (The New York Times Book Review), presents an unforgettable and relentless #1 New York Times bestseller about a good guy in a bad job.

Chances are, if you’re a target of Billy Summers, two immutable truths apply: You’ll never even know what hit you, and you’re really getting what you deserve. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business—but he’ll do the job only if the assignment is a truly bad person. But now, time is catching up with him, and Billy wants out. Before he can do that though, there’s one last hit, which promises a generous payday at the end of the line even as things don’t seem quite on the level here. Given that Billy is among the most talented snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, and a virtual Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done, what could possibly go wrong? How about everything.

Part war story and part love letter to small-town America and the people who live there, this spectacular thriller of luck, fate, and love will grip readers with its electrifying narrative, as a complex antihero with one last shot at redemption must avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. You won’t ever forget this stunning novel from master storyteller Stephen King…and you will never forget Billy.

To check this one out on Amazon, click here.

I’m not even gonna play. I don’t have time or energy to write my own summary, so I am ripping this one off of the one on Amazon… I do highly recommend this one. It came highly recommended to me by a reader I highly respect. She wasn’t wrong. I felt it was a slow start, and I actually put it down around chapter three and finished a whole other book before I picked it back up, but I’m glad I pushed through. I’m going to read anything and everything by Taylor Jenkins Reid, so I knew I was going to finish it before I even put it down to pick up something else. Very good read, and it ends like I wanted it to, which if you know me personally, you know that’s selfishly important to me.

2018 Audie Award Finalist for Multi-Voiced Performance

From Taylor Jenkins Reid, “a genius when it comes to stories about life and love” (Redbook), comes an unforgettable and sweeping novel about one classic film actress’ relentless rise to the top – the risks she took, the loves she lost, and the long-held secrets the public could never imagine.

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one in the journalism community is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? 

Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband, David, has left her, and her career has stagnated. Regardless of why Evelyn has chosen her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jump-start her career. 

Summoned to Evelyn’s Upper East Side apartment, Monique listens as Evelyn unfurls her story: from making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the late ’80s and, of course, the seven husbands along the way. As Evelyn’s life unfolds – revealing a ruthless ambition, an unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love – Monique begins to feel a very a real connection to the actress. But as Evelyn’s story catches up with the present, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways. 

Written with Reid’s signature talent for “creating complex, likable characters” (Real Simple), this is a fascinating journey through the splendor of Old Hollywood into the harsh realities of the present day as two women struggle with what it means – and what it takes – to face the truth. 

©2017 Rabbit Reid, Inc. All rights reserved. (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

To purchase on Amazon, click here.

Barbies we’re THE thing when I was a little Baptist girl growing up in the very red, conservative Bible Belt. I had quite a collection, provided exclusively by my Nannie, and she was one of two favorite and willing and only Barbie cohorts I had. She and my bestie from birth, Jerilyn, would play for endless hours, vicariously living through these socially immaculate little plastic constructs. At some point at least once every other weekend, I would strip mine naked and shove them in bed together. Jerilyn would get upset, threaten to collect her Barbies and go home. I would reluctantly redress my dolls and return them to their red, conservative daily activities devoid of sex, and we would agree that their babies were all adopted, so as to avoid any further nakedness.

In the late 80s and early 90s, ideal American life was wealthy, white, nuclear family-oriented, male-dominated, and we were required to fall in place and love it, or fake it until we did. Growing up, I was taught to care about what other people thought above all else, including my own mental and emotional health. Those Barbies and Kens were what was to be achieved, and we were expected to spend our whole life trying. Thigh gaps were the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Silicone was making a mainstream presence, and it was digging in its heels to stay. We needed the Barbie house, and the Barbie car, and the Barbie measurements, and the Barbie sex life, without actually getting naked and committing the act, of course. We were all set up for failure, and our predecessors knew it in their hearts and souls. It was just impolite and shameful to say as much. So there we all went… trudging off into some impossibly achieved sunset, hoping beyond all hope that the pot of gold really was at the end of the rainbow and that we really could have Carmen Electra’s boobs if we wanted it badly enough (… or maybe that was just me…).

I didn’t witness a lot of successful partnerships in my developmental years, and definitely not ones I wanted to emulate. My conceptions of “healthy,” “desirable” relationships were formed solely from romance novels I shouldn’t have been allowed to read and watching Cinemax after my dad fell asleep in the recliner sometimes at my grandma’s. So what was a fat, Baptist, introverted, intelligent, confused little white girl from the Bible Belt looking for in the holy grail of a forever mate? He must be tall, dark (but white, of course), and handsome (according to society’s standards and not my own of course). Six pack abs and an ass you could bounce a quarter off of were absolutely necessary. He also needed to be rich and build a huge house, pay all the bills, and take his adoring wife on frequent, elaborate vacations. He must be able to expertly repair anything in the house that ever broke, and look amazing doing it. Nice dinners at Ruth’s Chris were a must (… my only frame of reference to a ‘nice dinner’ growing up…). He must be Baptist, from Texas (yankees, meaning anyone originating north of Wichita Falls, was unacceptable), have at least two college degrees, have an incredible, influential job – but also be home every night early enough to sufficiently cater to the needs of his June Cleaver wife and his precious, well-behaved children (exactly two years apart, of course). My perfect future husband and I would craft and garden the weekends away, making plans for our next get-away and smiling lovingly at the mere sight of our wildly intelligent, gorgeous children who got his lean build and my blue eyes…

The only truth that ever came out of my uniformed fantasies were the wildly intelligent, gorgeous children – which is what it is but not even close to the point here. My description of the perfect forever mate was shared by pretty much everyone in my social circle, except for my one close black friend, whose parents made it very clear that she was absolutely not allowed to marry outside of her race. Everything else was consistent for her, as well. We were sitting ducks, waiting for bad decisions and trauma to litter the next several decades of our lives. The next several decades of my life absolutely fell into line and presented more opportunity for bad decisions and trauma than I will ever be able to effectively process before I’m cold, dead and six feet under.

According to AARP, the overall American divorce rate has steadily decreased from its 1981 peak, but has doubled for people older than 50 and tripled for people over 65. In other words, it has decreased for those married couples actively raising kids and doubled and tripled for those couples not actively raising kids. So they question arises: Why divorce after raising kids together and being together for over half of a lifetime? BECAUSE NOW THEY CAN.

Several sources (who knows how reliable… but several) report that over 50% of marriages stay together for the kids. And of course they do. This shit is HARD. It’s hard enough with two active parents and plenty of money and time. But with one active parent who is responsible for multiple kids, the house, the yard, the dishes, grocery shopping and cooking, laundry (ALL the uniforms…), all finances, all bill paying, all cleaning up poop and puke and remembering three people’s medications and when to take them and when to refill them, and… you get the point.

I’ll tell you a dirty secret I won’t post on social media (… and Surprise! Social media is part of the problem here…). I despise the memes that say some variation of the following:

Click on the pic to see the whole thing…

So its about what generation we are from? We just throw people away instead of fix them? Relationships aren’t one-sided. They aren’t designed to be. If the other party just loses their ever-loving mind and gives up, you are responsible for fixing it? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but… listen to the following if you never listen to anything I ever say again… it actually isn’t possible to “fix” or “control” anyone. Regardless if you married them, slept with them, gave birth to them or they gave birth to you, you cannot single-handedly fix or control any aspect of another human being. You can beat them into submission emotionally, spiritually, mentally, or physically… which is what is confused with fixing and controlling most of the time… but you can’t permanently alter another part of them ever at all. I do not personally know one human that has entered into a marriage and thought, “Well, if this doesn’t work, I’ll just scrap it.” I wasn’t given a choice. I had to leave and we had to morph into a family of three almost overnight. I’ve never dealt with the grief and loss of my life, hopes and dreams because… well, kids. We still have to get up, make breakfast, listen to them complain about breakfast, get them dressed, listen to them complain about getting dressed, take them to school… and listen to them complain about that. Not half a damn second to stop my head from spinning and heal for a minute. Just go, go, go. Birthday parties, picture money, my week to bring snacks for the team, orthodontists, physical therapy, creative financing (triaging bills). You get the drift. It’s a complete shit show at best.

I live like this. This is my life, and if the truth be known, I’d rather be alone with my children than have someone demonize their perception of a father, husband and man. I’ve been at this for a long time, y’all. Over a decay of trying to just catch a breath and, before I can, being slapped in the face with a fresh wave of overwhelming financial, emotional, spiritual, and physical responsibility.

So while I am rambling more than usual, my point is – we weren’t equipped for this and we are doing the best we can. No single mom asked to be that way in the beginning. We believed in love and happily ever after and fairytales, too, like the ones some of you are living. That just wasn’t our path. We are raising kids alone – kids we created in love and so much hope for the future… only to see it all implode before our very eyes. We don’t have help. No one cares about our crappy day at work or how the kid’s ARD meeting went. Family is lovey but just really wants us to visit a few times a year and generally puts no effort into a relationship. Everyone is focused on themselves because it’s human nature. No shots fired – that just the way it shakes out. From the meager perception of a fat, Baptist, introverted, intelligent, confused little white grown ass woman from the Bible Belt, everything society has fed us is manure. Straight turds. Barbie is bullshit. Putting your emotional health second to someone else’s is bullshit. SO. MUCH. POO.

So what is true and valid and real? Dance parties in my living room. Road trips with just the three of us. Movie nights at home. Pool days with friends. Wine and confessions and straight magic. Venting and crying and talking to Jesus. That’s what. That’s what we have.

One day at a time. Morning by morning, new mercies I see…