Read & Breathe

"The first rule of fight club is don't talk about fight club. The second rule of fight club is don't talk about fight club."

The narrator starts out as a middle aged completely average guy. He has a decent job, unmarried, nice condo, and hates his life. The only thing that is different is that he has a horrible case of insomnia. The only thing that helps him is to go to different types of support groups, pretending that he has the affliction of every support group he attends. The story starts when he meets Marla, another woman that is also pretending and both know it because they go to several of the same support groups. Marla goes because Marla feels alive when she goes to meetings all about the dying. The narrator ends up meeting Tyler and the two of them become friends and move in together after the narrator's place blows up. The two start a fight club to feel alive, with Tyler as the face of fight club. Most of the book is about the fight club and the change that the narrator goes through because of Tyler, Marla, and fighter. 

I loved the book. I didn't see the twist at the end coming. It starts at the end and goes back through the story until it ends at where it started. The book is violent and is kind of graphic. It describes the different injuries that occur during fight club. Easy to read and keeps your attention. 

It is exactly what you should expect from a Katie McGarry novel. It is super cute and cliched and if you aren't looking for something sweet enough to get a cavity then this isn't the book for you. Emily was adopted by her stepdad years before. She barely sees her bio dad and doesn't like him that much.  She goes to see her dad when there is a mix up and it looks like her grandmother, that she has never met, died. There she meets Oz, whose father is in the motorcycle club with Emily's bio dad. Oz wants into the motorcycle club and is basically Emily's babysitter when there is a threat to Emily. Oz and Emily hate each other at first and then they become friends who have crushes on each other, and then they fall in love with each other. (I know right, I had no idea that this was going to be the outcome.) Very cliched but it is also super cute and a light read if you are looking for something quick and cute.This is one of the anthologies series that she does, where each book is focused on a different character, one that you meet in the previous books. 

I had to read this book for school two years ago and was not able to get through it because of how bad it was and I didn't have enough time to push myself to finish it. I decided to retry it now because I figured it could not be as bad as I remembered. It was not, it was even worse.  Holden is the most pretentious, annoying, ungrateful protagonist that I have ever had the displeasure of reading. He spent the entire novel complaining about phonies and pretentious a**holes, while he is the biggest one of all. For some reason, his reckless and stupid actions bugged me even more than his hypocrisy. Don't put yourself through the painful experience of reading it if you don't have to. I certainly won't ever again. 

I was recommended to read this book because I really liked Gone Girl. I get why I was suggested for this book but I did not really like it. The story is told from three different point of views.

The first is Rachel's point of view, she is the main point of view. Rachel is a drunk and is disgusting. She is the girl on the train and basically she makes up stories to go with this one couple she passes. But the woman vanishes and then she gets caught up in the investigation because she was around the area the night she was disappeared because her ex and his new wife live there. The next is Megan from a year previously and is the woman that is missing in the story.She is married to a controlling man who is suspicious of her cheating on him.  This is pretty accurate because she has at least two affairs during the book. The last is Anna, she lives down the street from Megan and is Rachel's ex-husband's new wife.She was extremely naive and bitchy. She was sleeping with Rachel's husband while they were married and blamed Rachel for all of it. She looked down on her husbands ex-wife because Anna was sleeping with him while Rachel and him were married. I love it when there are different point of views but for this book I disliked it because none of the three characters were likable.

But the real reason I disliked the book was I could tell who it was from a fourth of the way into the book. I had to force myself to finish the book after that because there were several scenes that were just so telling that I knew who the villain of the story was. 

I came across this book in September and it caught my interest from the beginning. I loved the idea of this crazy town kidnapping the three characters. I was so excited about it and maybe that is why I was so disappointed in the book. I expected to see the people in this town be nuts. Instead most of the book focused on Dee, the MC,  interacting with the mayor of crazy town's son, Joseph, and mayor of crazy town himself. Have no doubt, this town is a religious, fanatical cult. But, I wanted to see more of this town. 

The story starts out with Dee(MC) and  Luke( her boyfriend)going to a concert and then having a special weekend for their one year anniversary. Unfortunately, Luke's brother Mike tagged along as payment for him to get lie to Luke and his parents about what Luke was doing this weekend. They run out of gas because apparently none of them even thought about it, despite Luke being basically a genius. Okay so they hike into this town that has sirens going off and go to the gas station. It's all locked up and no one around. Anywhere. they find these houses and go into one of them and when they see no one is there, they decide to spend the night, despite the creepiness of this town. While in the house, they find a book on how to beat your kid to save him from the devils of imagination and fun. They leave in the early hours of the morning and runs into a kid(Joseph, crazy mayor's son) their age that basically tells them that his father wont let them leave and that he needs their help to get him and his sister out of the town. they refuse and are attacked. fast forwards hours later, Dee wakes up and she is being bled by Joseph and then passes out again. When she wakes up next she meets the crazy mayor, Elijah. he tells her she is now Rebekah and is his new bride, because he killed his wife recently. The rest of the story is her either talking with Joseph on how to escape and blaming him for this situation or her being with Elijah and him threatening Mike and Luke's lives if she isn't a good bride. So at one point she gets to spend time with Mike and Joseph helps them leave, only to find Luke is dead. After much crying and screaming, Mike, Dee, and Joseph are able to leave and go to a town, miles away. When Dee wakes up, Mike informs her that their is no proof of their story, Joseph disappeared, and that everyone thinks they  got in car accident and Luke died. 

I thought the entire book was disappointing because it didn't really show the town and the ending was just bad. It was too clean and neat. I was just extremely disappointed. 

I was confused during parts of this book simply because there as so much symbolizing in the book it felt like you were being beaten with it. The book is an attack on imperialism and does it really well. i think that if you understand symbolism the book is definitely worth reading becaise as awful as the topic of the book and the pictures it depicts, it was one of those books that stay with you after you read it. If you are looking for a book that has a HEA than this is not the book for you. But it sicks with you and makes some points that are hard to disagree with, even in our own current society.