Walk the Edge: Book Review


Book: Walk the Edge (Thunder Road #2)

Author: Katie McGarry



One moment of recklessness will change their worlds.




My thoughts:

Katie McGarry writes awesome romance. If there was any way to describe YA Romance as gritty, Katie McGarry’s books would be it. She does an amazing job taking people from very different backgrounds, concerns, economic statuses, social statuses, experiences,etc. She does a a great job making these people relate to each other and an even better job giving them chemistry.

“This is heartbreaking and consuming and addictive. It’s terrifying and peaceful, crazy and serene. It’s a million things in one brief moment and it’s something I don’t understand and never want to live without.”

Like Breanna and Razor, I initially had a hard time seeing the similarities between the two.  There’s a line where Breanna tells Razor that he’s the anti-Breanna. It’s kind of true. She comes from a large family, he comes from one that’s too small. She’s into English and the humanities; he’s a math whiz. But in a lot of important ways, they are similar. They’re both surrounded by people with stronger personalities and louder mouths. They both feel trapped by their family. They’re loyal to their friends and they both want something more out of life. If that isn’t enough to fuel a teen-romance, then what is?

Internet bullying. It’s a theme that’s sadly relevant to today’s world and McGarry portrays the pain, the humiliation and the worry that being blackmailed evokes. Like Jennifer Brown’s Thousand Words, Walk the Edge tackles the very scary topic of being judged for a leaked photo.


For people who are expecting a hardcore motorcycle-club story, you’re looking at the wrong place.Though the motorcycle club setting is an important part of the story, it doesn’t overwhelm it. And it’s not as dark or violent as you might expect. For me, that made it better instead of worse.

You should read this book if you’re looking for a sweet but satisfying YA romance.

Overall Rating: 3/5


Kick Push: A Book Review


Book: Kick Push

Author: Jay McLean

Kick Push (Kick Push, #1)


There’s a single defining moment within every skater.
It lasts only a second. Two if you’re good.
Three if you’re really good.
It’s the feeling of being airborne.

Then at seventeen, I had my son.

Seventeen. Single. Dad.
That’s what my life became.
Or at least I convinced myself I did.
But I lied—to myself and to everyone around me.

You know what sucks about being in the air?
Coming down from the high.
Sometimes you land on the board and nail the trick.
Then kick, push, and coast away.
Other times you fall.
You fall hard.
Especially when the girl with the emerald eyes becomes your drug…
And you become her poison.

My thoughts:












Overall Rating: 3/5


Circles: Freewrite


Every day, circles loop infinitely in my head.

I know circular reasoning with it’s strange ability to tangle your head like endless, knotted string. I empathize with the philosopher who wanted to know which came first: the chicken or the egg because I am equally puzzled. My question is is whether I created stories or  became Image result for ouroborosa voracious reader first.

As I ponder this strange matter, I’ve felt my mind turn in an ouroboros, my own logic eating me from the inside out. Do I love reading because I am addicted to seeing a character be built, piece by piece until they’ve turned into someone that can almost breathe, eat and dream?  Do I write stories because I revel in smashing together the plots of the 40 books I read in the last month, watching the weird chunks fall away and my favorite parts meld?  Do I like writing short stories and poetry because they’re echoes of the bookImage result for circless I’ve read and loved and just a more active, involved form of reading? I see the sense in both theories but no way of verifying an answer. So, in the mean-time  I am content to read and write and accept both as equal loves.

I appreciate the irony of coming full circle. It’s when you go so far, travel so long- only to end right where you began. The path between California and India is my mobius strip. At age 8, I moved to the Californian bay area and then at 10, I moved halfway around the world to India. 7 years hence, I am back exactly 19 miles from where I started, eager to fling myself off the mobius strip.

Image result for circles

In my head, I hear my own question what’s the point of this strange exercise? Why circles? Why are you looking at it from so many different perspectives when it’s essentially the same? Somewhere in me there’s an answer, but it’s hard to explain exactly how a circle is essentially multiple points equidistant from one important point.


Because you could say the same for life, couldn’t you? Everyone’s life is almost uniformly similar, revolving around an individual who thinks they are the center of their universe. There’s birth, there’s childhood, there’s adulthood and creating new children and then there is death. But something in me recoils from describing life this way. Of courImage result for circlesse, this is life, but like any circle, it has some intangible quality which somehow, miraculously makes it more. The circle of life is almost sacrosanct.

Within my self-absorbed life too, I draw circles. There’s a tiny circle around me- I guess you could
call it a bubble. Then there are circles of varying radii. My friends and family in my inner circle.  My past and my future in separate circles which flow into each other. The jogger who I’ve never seen before but who just ran past me, wearing a yellow top and in time to some beat I can’t hear — she’s in a distant, distant circle of mine too, isn’t she? From my perspective, the only unifying bond in this wacky Venn diagram is me.

I’d say life is circles. But somehow that doesn’t seem encompassing enough. Because even though I haven’t experienced death or inanimation yet, I’m sure they’re circles of their own too. Circles are crazy thoughts and they ring around me almost tauntingly. Circles are the beautiful brain-child of a sentinent being far more advanced than me. Circles are infinite and circles are limited. They are contradictory, but they are oh so simple. 

And yet, when’s the last time you drew a perfect circle freehand?