Tag: addiction

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#BookReview: No Place Like Home by Barbara O’Neal

Twenty Year Old Book Holds Up Well. First off, to be clear: This new (2024) edition is an updated and revised (with apparently *some* new content) version of a book originally released over 20 years ago. So some of you may have already own/ have read this, and I know there are at least some out there who “only read new releases”. But for everyone *else*… this is still a damn good story, 20 years later.

In at least some ways, it is actually a callback to a different era, the era of RENT when friends dying of AIDS was still a major zeitgeist moment and a reality for many, particularly many in urban areas. (I say this because growing up in the exurbs of Atlanta in the era the book was originally published, this just wasn’t a reality that was seen much in my area.) This plotline provides both some of the gravitas of the book – addiction being the primary other source – and the meetcute – the male lead is the brother of the friend dying of AIDS.

The romance side of the book is also well done, granted with a lot of lust and pent up sexual frustration as its start and with quite a bit of bedroom action (not always in the bedroom) throughout – once things get going there. Which, again, will be a turn off for some and a selling point for others.

Ultimately, this is a story of a lot of flawed individuals making their way through life as best they can in the situations they find themselves, and this is where the story particularly shines.

Very much recommended.

This review of No Place Like Home by Barbara O’Neal was originally written on April 13, 2024.

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#BookReview: Secrets In The Mirror by Leslie Kain

Come For The Twin / Mental Illness / Addiction / Mob Story. Stay For The Badass Twin Tattoo. This story is some interesting/ weird melding of a twin study and most any mob-based story. The driving focus is a pair of mirror twins and one of the twins’ mental illness and descent into addiction, and this slow burn story – taking place over roughly a decade of their lives – does a great job of showing the havoc it can wreak. And yet, the story never actually feels preachy, and Kain even manages to convey just how giving the one twin is and how menacing the other twin can be. Along the way we even get elements of The Hundred Foot Journey, which was an interesting addition to the overall tale. A strong work for a promising debut author, and very much recommended.

This review of Secrets In The Mirror by Leslie Kain was originally written on September 10, 2022.

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#BlogTour: Her Silent Husband by Sam Vickery

For this blog tour, we’re looking at a solid tale of a not-often-told side of one well-known issue. For this blog tour, we’re looking at Her Silent Husband by Sam Vickery.

Visceral Look At The Underbelly Of Trying To Keep Up. This is one of those books that is largely depressing and frustrating – 75% or so of the book is all about a couple’s fights, the wife/ mother’s struggles with her kids, or the aunt’s own demons. But even through here, while depressing, it is also very *real* – and that fact alone should be celebrated at times. Yes, many of us read to escape reality. But sometimes you need to see “reality” in fiction to get a degree of catharsis about your own situation, and this is one of those books that could actually help there. The flip in the last quarter or so is a bit abrupt, particularly given the characterizations to that point, and the almost Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King style check-in-with-every-major-character multiple epilogues was a bit hit or miss, but otherwise this was a solid story, one that discusses a lot of important concepts like male depression, a man’s drive to provide for his family, a wife/ mother’s drive to do the best by her kids, suicide, drug addiction (heroin specifically is particularly well done here), and a teenage boy’s struggles to do the right thing even when “the right thing” isn’t so crystal clear. Very much recommended.

Below the jump, the “publisher details”, including the book description, author bio, and a link directly to Amazon to buy the book.
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#BookReview: Trejo by Danny Trejo

A Hell Of A Life. Danny Trejo didn’t start acting – professionally – until he was almost 40 years old. Mostly because a large part of the rest of that time, he was high and/ or in prison, including some of California’s most notorious. Today, Trejo is known as one of the more prolific and high profile actors out there, with over 400 acting credits to his name + his line of Trejo’s Tacos restaurants.

Here, we see at least pieces of pretty much all of his 70+ years, from his early childhood as the only male in a house full of women and girls to his first time using various substances to his first robbery and the time he was worried he was about to face capital charges after a prison riot. Much of the front half of the story in particular focuses on his times in and around prisons during the first 2-3 decades of his life, and we see how he gained his “tough guy” persona. He lived it. It was either be tough or be dead.

Which actually makes the discussions of his confrontations with none other than (then *recent*) Oscar nominee Edward James Olmos over the movie American Me even more epic.

And yes, the back quarter ish is primarily about Trejo’s life in Hollywood and how that impacted him and his family. It is here that we see some of the things that will cause many of us to go “I remember that movie!” and “Oh Trejo was [insert opinion here] in that one!”.

In between, we get to see what Trejo was doing in between – which aside from a lot of personal mistakes, was saving a lot of lives and helping a lot of people recover from drug addiction – a passion he pursues to this day.

Serious yet hilarious throughout, this book doesn’t pull any punches. Trejo, an ex-con, openly admits to many things in this book that many would probably try to hide, including things that weren’t known world wide before now (at least to casual observers). And yet we also get to see behind the scenes of just how much good Trejo has been able to accomplish throughout his life.

Truly a remarkable man, and a memoir well written and told. Very much recommended.

This review of Trejo by Danny Trejo was originally written on June 30, 2021.

PS: Special thank you to the publicist at Simon & Schuster – they know who they are – who sent me the *hardback* version of this book! First one of those I’ve read in at *least* 2-3 years!

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#BookReview: The Secrets of Lost Stones by Melissa Payne

Loose Threads Come Together Quickly. And Explosively. The front half of this book is very much setup for the back half, but it is intriguing in a very mysterious way in its own right. But then at around the halfway point, Payne inserts a “Holy Hell!!!” moment that explosively changes everything and sets in motion the back half of the book – with some explosive revelations of its own, up to almost literally the last page of the tale. Truly excellent book, and I’ll very much be looking for future books from this new author. Very much recommended.

This review of The Secrets of Lost Stones by Melissa Payne was originally written on August 27, 2019.

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Featured New Release of the Week: The Same Blood by M. Azmitia

This week we’re branching out further than I knew when I picked up this book from NetGalley due to its release date and the fact that it sounded interesting. Today, we look at The Same Blood by M. Azmitia, releasing on August 1, 2018.

I went into this book expecting a novel about a girl who is struggling with the death of her twin sister and subsequent revelations about herself. And I was highly surprised to find not a novel, but a long form narrative poem – a type of literature I hadn’t read since college, when I had to read Beowulf for a world lit class. In 2001.

Even with the unexpected writing device though, this book offers a strong tail of a young teen’s struggles – perhaps made more effective due to its writing and printing style, though I still believe that a stronger tale could have been told in a more traditional novel form. Overall, its examination of mental health, guilt, addiction, longing for home, and the struggles of Puerto Ricans generally and specifically after Hurricane Irma destroyed large swaths of the island last year are strong and worthy of considerable thought – which seems to be the overall goal of the author.

My only complaint this week is of a more technical issue – apparently the publisher only made a certain file type available via NetGalley, and that forced me to get creative to actually be able to read and review this book. Instead of reading it on my Kindle Oasis, as normal, I had to download the Overdrive app to my laptop and read this book on my dual monitor setup there. The book itself was perfectly fine for what it was, and a very recommended read – if for no other reason than a bit of diversity in story format.

And the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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