The Lying Game book review

The Lying Game is a series I keep listening to more out of boredom than anything else. People say that life is too short to read bad books when there are so many good ones out there but I've had trouble finding any- good ones I mean. This series is okay. Which is more than I can say for most other YA books I've tried reading or listening to lately so this one stays. Which isn't to say it doesn't make me too nauseous to listen to while running though because it does, like totally bi-otch.

I've listened to the first four books and apparently there are two more. There is probably enough interesting stuff here for one book. I know other readers felt this way about Sara Shepard's other series- Pretty Little Liars, too but to me she throws in enough interesting side stories to make that series entertaining. Here, not so much, unless you find school dances, dates, and endless conversations with her friends about which one is the bi-otch-iest entertaining.

The series is about a foster teen named Emma who discovers she has a long lost twin- Sutton. She arranges to meet her, only to find out when she arrives in her sister's town that Sutton has been murdered and the killer has orchestrated for Emma to take over her life.

It is a jarring narrative experience. It is told in the third person through the eyes of Emma who inexplicably hands off to the ghost of Sutton who talks in the first person and doesn't remember anything about her life but can somehow read Emma's mind. There is no warning when this transition is about to happen and it can take a few paragraphs to sort out who is talking. Sutton is a total bore as a ghost, mostly just whining about how Emma judges her, and mooning over dreamy guys, and then conveniently remembering pieces of her life (but omitting the most important parts) when it is convenient to the plot.

Sutton's friends are very one dimensional- they are bi-otches, as they like to say every other page or so. Even though they get a little back story as the series goes on they are really hard to relate to or like any of them. Emma has a little more depth but the depiction of all foster parents through her eyes as negligent a-holes who just use their foster kids to get government checks was off putting to say the least. I'm sure some of them are insufferable but it is a really tough job being a foster parent and there are much easier ways to get money if that's all you're after. Why is it that Emma didn't even have one foster parent that was a decent human being?

Each book centers around one “suspect” that Emma is 100% positive killed Sutton until about ¾ of the way through when -oh my gosh! they didn't kill Sutton! What a surprise!

The books would be more interesting if they focused more on the murder mystery and less on what everyone is wearing.

I kept listening because I needed something to entertain me at work and it passes, barely. Something interesting finally happened at the end of the fourth book. As in, actually interesting and unexpected. This is the kind of twist that Pretty Little Liars is full of. Is it too late to save the series though? I guess I will check out the next two books, or the last one at least. Let's just hope they don't extend the series again!

29th Life

My 29th Life

    I am alive, already. It feels like I just blinked my eyes and 999,999,999,982 years went by .I can’t pin prick the exact moment, it’s more like a growing awareness that beats with my renewed heart and spreads like blood all through my tiny body. Beat. Beat. With every beat I become more alive, I wonder when the opposite happens and every beat starts making me a little closer to dead. When I am nine or does it not until the water starts filling my lungs?
    Great, I am nine seconds old and I am already remembering. It gets earlier every time. I just want to rest, can’t I sleep in this time?
    Of course how’s this for my sense of time- 999,999,999,982 years feels like an instant to me but nine months in my mother’s womb is the closest thing I know to eternity. The closest thing I know to rest.
    I am not an ordinary baby. The only thing I don’t remember is when I was.
    I remember when I will be born- May 15th, a Wednesday at 5:16 am. My mom will name me Sam after my grandfather who will never call me that or his grandson as many time as I live. If I am alive my father has already left my mother and me- leaving behind nothing but my brown skin, brown hair and brown eyes. I will have my mother’s last name and be Sam Fredricks and never know what my father’s is- though I guess Ramirez or Cruz or Juarez.
    I remember who’s president- Bill Clinton, a man that my grandfather will throw his beer mug at on tv one summer night when I am three.
    I remember who the prettiest girl in the world is- Dominique, and that she does not remember me. I don’t know what it is like to kiss a girl but I remember that they have cooties again so I don’t mind, for now.
    I remember high school. How could I forget? I remember the beginning but not the end- I will never make it out. On the first day one of the bigger boys will give me bruises that my step father will try to match. I remember my mom pretending not to notice. I know exactly how many times this will happen- eighty seven. Eighty seven times every time.
    I remember when I die. I will hurt, I will be scared. I will see it coming because every time it is exactly the same yet I won’t do anything about it. The world will turn black and then I will end up back here.
    I remember because it just happened to me, what felt like moments, but was billions of years before I had a heart beat again and woke up inside my mother. For the twenty ninth time.

I went to a Mariner's game the other day. We used to have an agreement, the Mariners and me, if I went to their game they wouldn't lose. For twelve years in fact they won every game I went to. But apparently we don't have that agreement anymore. The Mariners were doing a lot of losing when I wasn't there for the past ten years or so though. Every time I go to a game their highlight real starts in 1995 and ends in 2001. So when I was a kid I thought they were good.

My dad was quick to tell me horror stories about the Mariners. This was not normal- he insisted, of their brief, but to me, as far back as I could remember, success. “Ok, dad,” I thought, “maybe that is how they used to be, but I am here now, now things are different. April 2001- the Mariners started their season going 20 and 5! All year they surpassed everyone but my expectations of them and ended the season with a major league baseball record for most wins in the season -116! This was not normal, my dad insisted, a once in a lifetime season. But I thought- of course the team I like is this good, of course they are. In the post season they were defeated once more by the evil, soulless Yankees. They missed their first world series bid so the imps in training could go for the forty eleventh time or whatever. I cried then- I mean there were a lot of people crying in Seattle that day- grown men as well as 15 year old girls. But I wasn't that upset then because, they would go next year. Of this I had no doubt. They would be this good again next year, or maybe even better, maybe they would 117 games! I mean, why not?

Time is supposed to heal all wounds but every year now it just gets sadder. They haven't made it to the post season since 2001 and have only had a few years finishing over .500. I now understand what my dad was saying- that they will never be that good again, that was a once in a lifetime team. And that was the Mariners once in a lifetime shot.

I hope that's wrong- but these days, it sure looks like it.

Secret Life

This first part of my new story is almost a true story!

Chapter 1

“No, not that one, that one.

No! Not that one! That one, that one! Not that one, the one behind that one, the one with the orange fin.”

“What are you talking about they all have orange fins.”

“But this one is oranger, ooh there it is!

Oh it got away.”

Larisa Ollerman, that's me, waved the net around half halfheartedly and the three hundred or so goldfish in the tank swam out of the way. All except six slow ones that I presented to my teenage girl customer.

“No, those aren't him.”

“It's a him now?”

“Yeah.”

“How can you tell?”

“I just can, I only want him.”

“Well trust me girl, the harder you chase him the faster he's going to run.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” I sighed. I'd been working at the Plantasia Pet Ranch for three months now and had yet to make a customer laugh despite my best efforts. I had been working with this particular customer for going on thirty minutes now and had so far managed to restrain myself from beating the girl's head into the fish tank. So far.

“I'm just saying,” I continued as I waved the net around.

“There he is!”

“That there are plenty of other fish in the sea, ones that would love to go home to a girl like you,” again my net inadvertently caught three unwanted fish, “why this one?”

“I just like him,” the girl shrugged.

I shook my head. This was the same reasoning my friend Shannon had used to explain why she was still with Josh Radcliffe though the boy resembled something they would sell at the Pet Ranch and was about half as intelligent. Of course Shannon hadn't made me catch Josh for her with a 9 inch net, out of a sea of gaping, bug eyed bozos, a fact I hadn't appreciated fully until now.

“Attention Pet Ranch shoppers, the time is now 8:50 and Pet Ranch will be closing in ten minutes. Please select all your final purchases and bring them to the front. For your shopping pleasure we will open again tomorrow bright eyed and bushy tailed at nine am. I won't be here, but uh you might be, thank you, thank you very much.”

I groaned. Not only that I had been chasing a stupid thirteen cent fish around a tank for the past half hour but because I could tell from that rambling chain of idioticness that Larry was closing.

“Hurry,” the girl whined.

“Oh you can't rush true love,” I sniped, which was a lot more polite than the reply I was thinking in my head which was something along the lines of; you're going to have this fish for four days before he dies and you flush him down the toilet, it doesn't matter what he looks like! It didn't help that the particular fish the girl wanted I couldn't tell apart from the other 299 fish in the cramped tank.

I glanced to the clock anxiously. It was 8:51. The girl had come in at 8:20 with a group of friends who had all got bored and left about twenty minutes ago, while I was cleaning one of the fish tanks.

“I always want what I can't have,” the girl said sagely as if that explained her behavior.

“Oh sure, you can have him,” I said, “and for the low price of 13 cents!”

The girl shifted uncomfortably. Oh please, I thought, there is no way you just now realize how ridiculous you sound. I knew customers like her- if they didn't know they weren't ever going to figure it out!

Only after I had netted out 275 of the goldfish into a smaller bucket did the girl finally shriek- “ohmygod that's him!”

I had just been about to dump the fish into the rest but I caught herself just in time and dumped it into the plastic bag that had been sitting open next to me for the last thirty four minutes.

“Well,” I said peering at it, “I sure hope it's a he, for your sake, unless you know, swing that way.” Please don't swing that way, I thought as soon as I had said it. The fish didn't look any better to me from this angle. He/ she? how could you tell really? was orange and covered with small scales, had two bubbly looking eyes sticking out from it's small head and was making gaping motions with it's mouth while it stared at her dumbly through the plastic bag. Actually, now that I thought about it- it did suit the girl perfectly.

“I hope you'll be very happy together,” I said as I handed over the bag. “For the thirty seconds that thing is going to live,” I muttered under my breath. Luckily the loudspeaker drowned me out.

“Attention Pet Ranch shoppers, the time is now 9 pm and the Pet Ranch is closed, please leave now.”

Guys in Young Adult books

Have you ever met a guy like one of the ones you read about in a young adult novel? I sure never have. I keep meeting real guys. Real guys are unlike ones in these books. They have flaws, they do things that are annoying, and they definitely don't just fall head over heels in love with me at first sight, not even once. They are one other thing though- like, interesting.

Not to name any names but I have noticed the vast number of Young adult “sci-fi” books I start to read now-a-days starting off strong, interesting and then devolving halfway through into a poorly written romance novel. I say poorly written because they are not realistic to me. The guy, usually a good looking one, who is charming, and smart, and well, perfect, actually (except for being really dull) enters the novel and approaches novel's heroine. He professes his deep love for her just because presumably she is the star of the book and he wants more lines. Said boy will follow girl around complementing her, buying her things, and saying lots of ooey gooey lovey dovey brownie bits. And apparently teen girls like this?

I say apparently because this is seeming to be the trend as of late. Maybe it is because I am not a teen anymore but I really don't like these novels. I don't like living vicariously through these girls. I find them to be b&*%$ actually. Oh look at you, you're a self proclaimed ugly loser who gets perfect guys to drop out of the sky and kiss your feet. Well screw you! I want to read a novel about someone I can relate to, not someone I want to beat to death with her own book.

I worry about girls who read these books with no outside knowledge about guys and relationships. Guys are not perfect. Girls aren't either- no one is. Humans are flawed, deeply. Falling in love can take time, it is not usually easy and there is a lot of pain involved. When I go on message boards about certain TV shows I watch usually the guys I find to be the most realistic are lambasted by posters as “jerks” and “d-bags” because they do things that are unkind occasionally or don't return every single phone call. I worry these “perfect” boys are creating unrealistic expectations in the generation that reads them.

Things people say

-World War I started with the assassination of the arch duck Franz Ferdinand.
-How do you bottle spirits?
-If I had boobs I'd put stuff in them all the time.
-Just because I'm not hungry doesn't mean I can't look at the menu.
      -Sometimes I look at the menu while I'm still eating. Do I know what you guys are talking about?
-When two people have sex 50% of the time it's the girl's faults, 25% of the time it's the guy's fault and 25% of the time it's nobody's fault, it just happens.
-I think boys are yucky. (9 yr old girl after my own heart)
-They should take a picture of them and write 'lowered expectations' on the bottom.
-I broke up with my boyfriend yesterday and I moved on today.
-There are plenty of other piranhas in the sea.
-It's a simple math problem- if 4 out of 5 guys ditch you then you just have to go on 20 dates and you'll have 4 guys.
-My friend's from Idaho and she's never even seen a potato.
-Greeners don't get married early very much, I think it's because they're smart.
     - I think it's because they're ugly.
-I don't get why they say this song is by Justin Timberlake, it's just this girl singing about how the guys don't know how to react to her sexy back.
-You're going to hell.
     -I'm Jewish, we like invented hell.

-How bad was it Bob?
     -Well, it was medium bad.

Tails

Story I wrote for a short story contest when I was 15, the prompt was- "the wind howled across the island"

The wind howled across the island. The wind is the island's breath, its voice. It hangs over me in billowing clouds like mustard gas and chills me to the bone.
"I have dreams for you," the voice says, "oh I have such dreams for you."
How dare you? Don't you think I have dreams? Dreams that may be different from your own?
If I could capture this sound I'd beat it. Your sound is fish screaming, rabbits popping in some gross mutated form.
I have such nightmares.
All the children die. They die when the scientist comes. He carries with him his favorite implements of choice destruction. The little ones live behind crossed wire, they have no choice. They live behind bars on this island. This island that claims us all. Its dreams for us are all the same.
Sometimes he shoots us and then we are still for awhile. Sometimes we get sick afterwards, occasionally they even make us healthy.
My parents they have died long ago. My sisters and brothers too. I believe I once had a large family of about thirty five or so. One by one this island of despair claims each of my friends. I believe I once had many friends.
I am twice my size, I am blue colored and red. I have cancer and aids. Everytime I eat something I get worse, everytime I drink something I get something else.
I am cradled in death, in it I find my dream, I dream only for peace. When I reach out for my dream I can leave the island and the wind will blow me down no more.
Sweet, sweet, come to me dream, take me away, I want to go. When I have gone my body will go down to the edge of the island, thrown from the shore. And as the rain falls on me and I float away the island breathes and then its breath is no more.
"Look at that rat! It gets away."