A GIRL CALLED MURDER - Review

Title: A Girl Called Murder

Author: Kennedy Cannon

Goodreads Link

Rating: 5*

"They called us a murder, as in crows."

As a reader, I've read some bizarre books, some incredible ones, some questionable ones, and there are different ones. I've never figured out what makes them different but I always identify the feeling. No matter the subject, no matter the genre or theme, the writing always instils an overall calm feeling as I read it. As someone who suffers with anxiety, sometimes books can trigger an anxious response relating to my own anxious points. There were some points touched on in this book yet the calming effect chased away that and left me with this stillness to read. That's what happened when I read just the first page of A GIRL CALLED MURDER, and I knew I was in for one of the best reads of 2019--and was not disappointed.

I feel like if VE Schwab and Maggie Stiefvater had a lovechild book, you would get this book. It had all the dark, questionable aspects I've previously loved in a VE Schwab book, and all the there-ness of a Stiefvater book. (In the sense of when something bizarre happens, it's just there, it's normal, no explanation needed.) Tannyn Carter can grasp and wield fears, creating nightmares for anyone who antagonises her. It's portrayed as a quality she just has and often accidentally uses. There's never a reason as to why or how she can do this; she just does, and I really liked that about the story. It's magical realism at it's best: normalising this girl with a weird and fascinating thing about her.

Tannyn is surrounded by her "murder of crows", her four best friends: Jack, West, Theodore, and Eve--until Eve is brutally murdered--the irony, of course, is not lost. Each of the "crows" has a nickname, or a distinguishable feature. Tannyn has her nightmares, Theodore can bring his sister Eve back to life time and time again, Eve has her blonde hair and fearsome nature, West is the ever-present boy who is always there, and Jack is has the biggest heart of them all. After Eve's death, the murder of crows are at a loss, going through one faint motion to the next, stumbling through different parties just to take their minds off the death.

(Spoiler part) Until Theodore confesses his secret, and, therefore, his sister, Eve's reappearance. Through her return, the crows try to find her murderer--which turns into an incredible plot twist you never see coming. (Well, I didn't.) (End of spoiler)

There are two things that jumped out at me in this book: LGBTQ+ representation, and discernible smells of characters. That's how Tannyn sees the world: through their fears, and often those fears came with smells: smoke, chardonnay, hospitals, sugar, thunder storms, whiskey. Often those thoughts came paired with some sort of visual, to add depth to the fear Tannyn could wield, if she chose. Along with smells came subtle representation; as in, it wasn't made a "big deal" like others like to do when they think they're presenting the LGBTQ+ Community with something. In A GIRL WITH MURDER, there were at least six characters (four in the main circle of protagonists, the other two in a cannon relationship) shown in general terms of identifying. West was mentioned as having a chest binder, which I took to mean he was transgender; I felt like Jack was hinted at being bisexual due to several scenes, as well as Tannyn and Eve; and then there was the actual cannon gay relationship between Tannyn's older brother and his boyfriend. There was no stigma; just people, as it should be.

The way Kennedy Cannon has wound her book into this intricate, dark story was clever. It was a read I thoroughly enjoyed, and would happily reread over and over, just to spot more tiny details. The symbolism was wonderful and the meanings behind that was fun to read. The group of five friends was a comforting dynamic to learn and read about, making me yearn for the ups and downs of the Raven Boys, and the romance plaited into the bigger story left me always wanting more. It was the sort of push-pull romance that had me wanting them to just get together, whilst loving the teasing nature of it not being official.


A GIRL WITH MURDER is dark, twisty, and a very intense story, and you all should basically read it.

What They Didn't Say

They never asked
what I wanted,
or how I felt going this place or that place.
They never asked
why my grades were slipping,
dragging a future down with them.

They asked weighted questions with fear in their eyes
and when they never understood my words
they turned to other things:
my phone was taken off me,
pictures were taken of my legs,
privacy: invaded.

I stuffed so much of the truth down my throat
because I hated the anger, the questions
rather than the softness I needed after the hardships.
I dragged myself back up but tumbled right back down
into a pit I couldn't even name.

Then I dragged and I cried and I punched pillows,
until one day I could say,
I've been one whole year clean
and for someone who had barely gone an hour without the desire
coursing through their entire being
It was a triumph.

I spent that summer working, revising, learning how to function without this need in me--learning how to live with it without caving to it.
I got my grades, I got my certificate, I moved to college.
The sun cracked through: I laughed, I went out, I saw a future right there laid out.
My hardships had ended.

Or so I thought.
It crashed around me sometime three years ago, yanked away before I could blink.
Another thing took root, a thing that had a voice and a face in my mind.

It told that if I left my house the world would end.
It told me that if I tried I would regret it.
It whispered anxiety through my body, spiders crawling over my skin.
It breathed panic into my lungs.

I swallowed my words, met with offense when I talked about it.
So I stayed,
and I hid,
and I'd never hated myself so much as I did watching my life slip away and feeling so helpless.

My friends, leaving one by one, when i couldn't see them.
The voice told me they were bad to me, anyway.
My prospects, dwindling.
The voice told me the pressure was now off.
Until all I had was nothing.

Just me
at a desk
in my room
alone.

And nobody,
not one person said

I see you, I haven't forgotten you. I understand the darkness and I'll be here when you're ready.

Not one person saw my loneliness and said

Please let me come to see you, talk it out with me.

Everything was me: trying, crying, desperately holding on to whatever shred of life I still had.

Issues collided, I spiralled, until all that was left was an empty phone,
an empty life
and the words, you'll send me to an early grave was all I heard.

Let me take your hand
and tell you

I'll be okay

because after all this
I still believe I will.


I'll write and I'll dance and I'll laugh and I'll find genuine happiness;
but I'll remember those who left me and those who weren't there when I needed them,
those who let me slip away when I was trying to hold on.

And at the end of the day I'll smile;
That's all what will matter.

Where I'm At With Writing

Each time I make a post like this I feel like I've only just done one. Recently I've been torn up over what my purpose in life is. I'm watching my sister be successful, plan a future family; she'll graduate university. I'm watching my friends plan good futures in current jobs or using impending degrees. As I'm currently not working nor in education, my mind constantly begs the question. What is going on in my life? What's my purpose? What mark do I want to make?

My best friend reminded me the other day that I don't sit at my laptop for hours a day, writing line after line, chapter after chapter, forming manuscripts, to wonder what my purpose is. Writing, I think, is my purpose. Whilst I have some technicality issues, I'm a good writer. In this current age of society, there's so much pressure on going out to work 40+ hours a week, maintaining a thriving social life as well as family life. That's the norm. Not for me. I thought it was. For a while it started to be.

I might not go to work for 40+ hours a week but I sit at my desk and I write for potentially more hours. I work towards each book goal, setting my own checkpoints. My purpose is to write books that will change people. My purpose is to create stories that make people feel more seen, a little less alone, to accept who they are no matter the fights they go through.

So where am I at with writing?

A few months ago, I didn't shut up about self-publishing. I talked about a book called SAVING PAIGES. I got a book cover draft, hired an editor, wrote like hell, and submitted the manuscript. I chose this because I needed something to happen for me in my life in the direction of my dream career. I wanted a book out in the world, no matter the means. I was naive, though. I largely underestimated how much work would be required to self-publish. After that first submission, I rewrote SAVING PAIGES, then I completely scrapped that storyline, came up with something new and called it WHO WE ARE. That also had to be tweaked. In January, I went to Ambleside, the home town of my main character in WHO WE ARE. I explored, I laughed, I felt peaceful. I found a new angle to tell the story from.

In February, on a whim, I queried an agent with another story. For the first time in five years of querying with different manuscripts, I got a full manuscript request. Except I hadn't expected anything to come of my querying--wrong. I wrote a 56,000 word story in two weeks, then edited, then submitted. Now, in April, after working on yet another manuscript, I think I'm ready to return to WHO WE ARE.

For me, each manuscript comes from a different headspace. WHO WE ARE was born from a bad headspace in regards to an old friend, then expanded into a healthier headspace. The story I submitted to the agent mentioned above came from another headspace. Trying to switch back is hard. It takes work; it means accepting going back into the past to reclaim where I was at that point, remembering why I wanted to write that particular story at that particular time. I'm not completely closing myself off to self-publishing; I want all the opportunities I can get. Traditional publishing is a hard industry to break into. You never know what agents specifically want; the market constantly changes, switching to appease a constantly-changing society. I'm still considering every angle but sometimes it comes down to this: after the past few months I've realised a lot of support isn't there where I thought it would be. People are quick to offer support when they don't have to do anything. When it involves them needing to pay money to buy my future book to give me that support, they disappear. It makes me feel audacious to even ask anyone to buy any book I may have in the future because when I've needed support these past few weeks/months, my friends are sparse.

I don't know where I'll go from here but I'll keep writing, keep believing, keep hoping that one day I'll have my own book in my hands.

Agoraphobia

Lazy.

Disappointment.

Failure.

Quitter.

If you're an agoraphobic, these words might have already been associated with you. They certainly have been for me. They've come from people who didn't understand my phobia; they've come from people who I've explained my agoraphobia to. People see a twenty-year-old who has no job, no social life and very few friends, who barely leaves their house and thinks: what the f***? Adults worry; they tell me to just go for it! You'll be fine! Others my age call me lazy because that's how I look. If I go somewhere, I need literally dropping right off at that location, even if it's five minutes down the road.

So what's it like being an agoraphobic?

When I was fifteen-seventeen, I had a good life. I went to college three days a week; the other four days were spent with various friends, a book club, outings with my family, plans made without a second thought. In June 2016, I finished college already deciding not to go to university. I was content with my educational level--I was done. Little did I know that "done" feeling was going to be very final. A lot more final than I'd ever realise.

On a sunny day in August 2016, I woke up feeling normal, good, happy. I rode the bus to meet my best friend. I had some clothes to take back to the shop and that's when it began. I remember looking at a sunglasses stand, listening to my friend, and then it started. The dizziness, the hot flashes, the pounding heart, the feeling of Oh God, I am going to vomit. I shoved the clothes back into the bag without returning them, muttered something to my friend and high-tailed it right out of the shop. In the city centre, I sat on a bench and inhaled in and out deeply. Shakily, I followed my friend into a convenience shop to find me some sugary drink, thinking maybe I was just suffering from low blood sugar even though I'd eaten and drank already. The shakiness didn't subside, the worry of vomiting was in the back of my mind, so when my friend suggested we go to McDonald's for some high-calorie food, I agreed, thinking I was just hungry. There, the world spun and my body went heavy until my head rested on the table, my eyelids drooping heavily. After the previous episodes I'd recovered within an hour but this feeling hadn't shifted for over two hours at that point. I felt sick, rushing to the bathroom where I kept blacking out. Fair, but I was on the verge of fully passing out. Somehow, I made it home on the bus only to have a lecture about stress and not eating--which, again, didn't apply to this situation.

I thought it was another puzzling one-off until it happened in a restaurant several days later, the night before I was due to fly out to Spain at six am on a family holiday. Those two days combined was the start of my anxiety and, what I realise now, agoraphobia. I feared town because that's where the first episode happened. I feared restaurants because that's where the second one happened. My anxiety worsened over the months. In 2017, my agoraphobia firmly settled in me. Where I'd once had a high social life, I stopped going out. I purposefully fell out with friends just so they wouldn't ask me to make plans. I couldn't walk twelve minutes down the road to a restaurant for lunches with a friend. I couldn't travel on a bus. I could no longer even visit my grandad without my mum coming with me. In 2018, I somehow managed to get a job and never worked full-time because I couldn't mentally commit or cope with it. In November 2018, I quit that job.

Now it's March 2019, I've recently been put on medication for my agoraphobia; I've been told I need counselling to work through the issues. I have all this wasted potential because I can't go anywhere, I can't live freely, I can't do anything with my life. I can't get a good job with good future prospects; I can't consider university or going back to college because the bottom line is I am terrified of anything that requires me to commit to leaving my house. I constantly have people say, "Remember when you used to be able to do.... " and I hate myself so much to reflect on when my life was better, when I wasn't ruined by agoraphobia. Sometimes I can brave town as long as I'm with my sister or mum; even then I suffer mad anxiety over it. I've lost so many friends, fallen out with the ones who've actually stayed, passed by opportunities to live a normal life of a twenty-year-old. Adults constantly say how it's not normal, how they're worried. And whenever I get told I'm lazy, that I suck because I can't do something I feel restricted to do, I spiral into this horrible, deep self-hatred. I'm not lazy; just the thought of walking somewhere longer than I feel able, or riding a bus, or going to a restaurant makes me dizzy and sick. Every time someone suggests doing something I get this pinch of anxiety that worsens and worsens the more I think about it. I could reject the plan and I'll still feel panicked. I've told lies to cover myself up but I'm tired of lying.

I want to be able to say I can't do something because I have agoraphobia and that's okay and have support for that. The more I suppress it or pretend that's not the issue the worse my phobia will get. Agoraphobia is real. It's not a synonym for "laziness" or being a deadbeat. Yes, I can do things; yes there are situations I feel more comfortable in. Yes, I walk my dog every day because that's the only thing I feel 100% comfortable to do but add in someone wanting to meet me on that walk and I'm a mess. I don't know why. Agoraphobia has taken so much of me away, so much of life, until sometimes I look around myself and think, "What do I have left?" I've had pressure from different people to just do something, to stop keeping my friends waiting for me, that they won't wait forever. That puts so much heavy pressure on me. Suddenly it feels like everyone is yelling at me to be better but I can't. Not until I get the help I need.

And if you're a family member or friend who hasn't ever put me down for this, I thank you so much. It's thanks to people like you that I have support, that I know I can recover. More awareness needs to be raised on agoraphobia and not have someone say, "You can't have it because you went out last weekend, or you did that..." I want to acknowledged, helped. I want to live a life I want to again.

GIRL IN PIECES (Slightly Spoiler-y) Review

Author: Kathleen Glasgow

Rating: 5*

Goodreads Link

CW/TW: self-harm, drug abuse, alcoholism


First off, this book was hard to read. This book was raw; it was real. It was the unflinching truth about self-destruction, self-harm, and the darkest, ugliest sides of ourselves when we face it. However, it wasn't all dark. GIRL IN PIECES celebrates your thing. That bubbling passion in someone struggling, that very thing that anchors them in the dark, how everything comes out. If you can't talk, you do that.

After Charlie becomes homeless, attacked, and loses her best friend, she tries to kill herself by going just that little bit deeper. She fails and her friends from the street drop her off at a hospital to be cared for. In a psychiatric hospital, Charlie finds her people: the cutters, the burners, the pinners. Everyone with skin likes hers, she finds them. She finds solace in them. She finds hope and recovery and a voice with them. Once discharged after several weeks, she moves to another part of the country with the help of her friend, Mikey. There, she starts finding a new life, a better way of living, coping, and looking after herself. Yet starting a new job brings a different start to Charlie: a start that she's well-acquainted with. Meeting Riley sends Charlie into another dark spiral. Together, they navigate bad coping mechanisms, drugs, alcohol, and when Charlie starts to fall in love with him--and, I believe, Riley loved her as well, in some way he was capable--disaster starts. He gets her to do drug runs, she lets him get away with being constantly high or drunk, to a destructive point. Reading about their relationship had my chest tight and tears streaming. I hurt for Charlie, I felt for Riley, I was angry at and addicted to the whole dynamic. When that blows up in Charlie's face and she attempts suicide again, she's saved by people she never thought were looking out for her.

Reading this book made me feel seen. GIRL IN PIECES took my hand, saw the deepest, ugliest parts of myself that made me feel ashamed to confess and said, "It's okay. I see you, I see your hurt, your ways. Be you. Find who you are." In the story, Charlie falls into art. She vents through art, lets out every bad thought, feeling, urge. The author encourages the reader to find their thing. Their passion, their vent. The way I see it is like this: you're standing at a crossroads, at the edge of another urge/breakdown/episode, and you see two signs; one directs to self-harm, the other directs to your passion. The self-harm way might make you feel better but it's destructive, temporary. Now, the passion one is honest, emotional, and is what might drain that bad feeling bit by bit. Kathleen Glasgow has given me a particular gift with this book: as a writer, I don't want to be afraid to write the hard things anymore. I've started writing a new manuscript based off so many feelings I've never felt able to get out. GIRL IN PIECES has given me the gift of acceptance: not everything is rosy and shiny and so why should my passion be? Sometimes YA has a way of romanticising mental health to make a story out of it; this isn't the case with this story. It shows the ugly side most authors can't write about. As someone who has gone through self-harm over and over, got addicted to it, to a point where just going half an hour without hurting myself was an achievement, I needed this story. I needed to know there were others like there who hurt like me and who didn't try to make it into a fancy Tumblr post. At the end of the book, the author leaves a note with self-harm statistics and it made me feel a little less alone, even though I've never had the opportunity to fully talk to others in length about this.

So thank you, Kathleen Glasgow, for writing this book. Thank you for introducing Charlie to the world so I can read her story and know that there is always hope, even when you can't find it right in front of you.

Friends.

Friend is a weighty word for me right now, and it seems to be everywhere.

Friend, used by people I don't consider a friend, or consider more than a friend.

Friend, in terms of seeing posts about my friend's other friends but being excluded.

Friend, like, "Can we just be friends?"

Friends, as in the Cameron Philip song. (Go check him out, he's God-tier.)

***

For me, suffering with BPD and having friends is like walking through a landmine. I never know when I'll step on the wrong thing and everything will blow up. Throughout my life I've "picked and honed" as my household knows it. This means that in any given situation, I'll find someone, mold my entire life around them, get a little too over in my head, before ultimately having my heart broken by friendship. There have been four main people this has happened with and all four of them destroyed me at some point because I didn't have the ability to step back. Little did I know that this has been a BPD thing all my life. At each stage in my life I've found my favourite person without realising until it was too late to stop being toxic. A branch off BPD is a thing called "Chameleon", where you fashion yourself off your favourite person. It takes a lot, a lot of mental space, tears, and self-hatred to wrench yourself away from this habit, which is something I've been through many, many times. It's a toxic dynamic but it's one I've never seemed to be able to lose, hence why most of my friendships are short-lived. And the ones that somehow last for years turn out to be simple, distant, and healthy.

So what does a friend mean to me?

In the past two years, a fear called agoraphobia has taken root in me. It's the fear of leaving my house, thinking the worst things ever will happen and I won't have a quick escape plan. It's taken away 90% of my social life, restricted me concerning a working life, as well as put the breaks on any potential dating life. It's a terrible thing and even happy memories make me angry and upset because they're not happy anymore, they're reminders that I'm not anything like the person who used to go out, attend concerts, get a bus to college without any second thoughts. I had this amazing best friend Elle, who was there for me through thick and thin, who saw the darkest parts of me and never made fun, or laughed, or scorned. We used to meet up every weekend, I'd skip the occasional college class in favour of hanging out with her. Out of all my friendships, ours was the most affected when my agoraphobia took root. This led to the friendship breaking down; not because Elle turned me away. No, I turned myself away, unable to endure the guilt that came with me knowing I was constantly cancelling plans and crying alone in my room. All fun and games.

Recently, I've had the opportunity to reconnect with her; I've had the opportunity to reconnect with a lot of friends in an attempt to repair what my agoraphobic self has damaged. This morning, I continued reading Justine Winan's manuscript, and there's a paragraph that says, "all friends are good. As long as they care about you, it doesn’t matter if you see them twice a day or twice a year." And that hit me massively because not even once a year do I see my best friend who lives a twenty minute drive from me. A friend merely five minutes over the road from me is someone I see maybe once/twice a month. But they've stayed, for whatever reason, they have stayed. I've been given this complex that nothing is worth anything if it doesn't happen outside my house. So I always turned bitter when I wondered why my friends would settle for a virtual persona of me. I've struggled with writing being enough to say I've been busy because it doesn't require me going outside.

Friends are the people who stay, no matter how hard the times can get. Friends will know you, and if they truly know you, they'll believe in you and be proud of any inch of effort you make. They'll recognise how much you try, no matter how small that trying is. Friends might not always think to include you, knowing it could be too much that you'll decline again, but they see and they know. They love and care.

And whether you see them every week or not even once a year, a friend can always be there.

Book of the Month - January

Title: One Of Us is Lying

Author: Karen M. McManus

Rating: 5*

Goodreads Link!

Firstly, January was a great month for reading! I read four books and have already uploaded blog posts for two of them. My January book is ONE OF US IS LYING, a Breakfast Club inspired novel where four students are thrown into the whirlwind mystery of a boy's death.

When Addie, Nate, Cooper, and Bronwyn are the last to see classmate Simon alive in detention, they all become murder suspects. Each with secrets of their own that Simon planned on revealing, they all have contemplative motives. Under questioning by police whilst dealing with their own ruining lives, the four find their lives irreversibly changed by one boy on the biggest revenge trip of high school stories. The murder investigation shakes each of their worlds, pulling them apart, only to knit them back together again with new lives and ambitions.

With each page, this book has you guessing a new suspect. Weaving attraction, secrets, betrayal and social hierarchy into one intricately thought out story, McManus' book has people guessing the suspect before they're revealed, before changing their minds. This book turned me into some sort of distant Sherlock, texting out detailed theories for each new person it could have been to my friend, who'd previously read this book. I'm sure she watched with amused content as I scrambled for the answer and the how.

This book was an entirely new kind of read for me. Usually I can't take to mystery. I can be an impatient reader so to have something lengthy and guessing for that entire time sounded sure to irritate me. What I found was myself being pleasantly surprised. ONE OF US IS LYING has so many plot twists--and what you find out in the end is that, really, they're all lying. To each other, to themselves, to their parents, and not everything is about Simon.

Given from each students' POV, this book offers all sides of the investigation--and the devastation that follows when wrongly questioned for a crime and having every secret held closely unravelled so calculatingly. This book is quite possibly for fans of GOODBYE PERFECT, (in terms of thinking you know people well but you actually don't and police playing a massive part in the puzzle) and, well, those who liked the dynamic of THE BREAKFAST CLUB in terms of character profiles.