Meg Reads

I love Dolly Parton. For so many reasons, including that she's a badass feminist with a massive heart of gold who has contributed to kid's literacy among other charitable causes, including contributing to funding of the Moderna vaccine. Oh, and her incredible musical catalogue, of course. But this story only about Dolly peripherally. Recently, Dolly did an interview with the NY Times , and she mentioned that she's been reading a book called The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll have heard of this book as it's on all the lists this year. It's about a 35 year old woman called Nora Seed whose life is just not working out the way she hoped it would — in any area at all. She decides it's time to end things, and after she tries to do so, she finds herself in a place between life and death called The Midnight Library where her childhood library explains that she can try on different versions of her life to see what w...

  I haven't been so utterly besotted with a character as I was with Aisling in a very, very long time. I also think this audiobook may have broken some records on the number of times it made me snort laugh out loud with the endless Irish-isms, and the genuine hilarious earnestness of our dear Aisling.  It's no secret that I love/am fairly obsessed with any and everything Irish. I'm Canadian as can be, but my paternal grandmother has roots in Ireland (and shared many of the cultural perspectives that came up in this book for the country folk, it turns out), and my mother's grandmother had family from Northern Ireland, I think. Anyway, like I said, I'm Canadian af, and so are my parents and their parents, so I'm certainly not claiming citizenship here or something. But I do think some very old family traits and traditions have made it down the line to the things we still find ourselves doing today. Additionally, many of my fond memories are due to a tiny, spritel...

What better thing is there to do during a pandemic than bury yourself in the animated films of your early childhood? This is what I've found myself doing lately as the weather has turned darker and wetter, and I've turned more bitter and dismal as well. There's something so light, inspirational, and glorious about revisiting these old Disney movies that left me with an endless sense of wonder, as well as some ill-advised ideas about gender roles and relationships. Ahem, anyway. It recently came to my attention that some of the aspects of the old Disney films I loved most — things like bold colour and style of backgrounds or scenery like in Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, or Cinderella — were all either Mary Blair 's concept design or colour styling. And if it wasn't a Disney film she actually touched herself, it's a safe bet she influenced it.  A short rundown on Mary Blair according to wikipedia : she was an American artist who started her animation career at M...

  The year is winding down, and I've been thinking a lot lately about my spending. Unsurprisingly, with the pandemic that shall not be named, I haven't exactly been what one might call "frugal". Boredom and depressing doldrums of life being stuck indoors away from other people haven't made it easy to say no to whatever cute thing Instagram serves up while I doom-scroll the internet for the bajillionth time.  I typically never feel truly bad about buying new books, though I've come to a point where I've realized that the sheer number of books I have on hand would take me years to finish. And hey perhaps it's worth stopping for a second and taking a closer look at those before I dive into yet another Kindle deal. Plus, for me a physical paperback is worlds more enjoyable to read than a screen. I also feel like I may be missing out on a few big hits from a couple years back from a cultural standpoint. As someone inclined to the FOMO in general, I should ...

I first heard about Tana French back in 2014, and started with In the Woods, the first in her Dublin Murder Squad series. I was quickly hooked, as is to be expected when you're dealing with a writer as talented with atmospheric world building and complex, nuanced characters. As I'm wont to do, I rushed into her other books, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, and eventually The Likeness. The Secret Place I didn't have until January 2015, and then after that it was The Trespasser, and finally The Witch Elm as they came out.  In my early rush to consume everything she'd written, I found myself a little disappointed with Broken Harbor— the 4th in the Dublin Murder Squad series. Admittedly, having read it so long ago, and so quickly, there's a lot of the story that I no longer even remember.  Our main crime happens in a small real estate development a ways outside of Dublin, which has been hit hard by the recession of 2008. It's half built and abandoned, except for those...

Busy Philipps is a sparkly force of nature. I started this one on Kindle, and eventually switched over to audiobook to listen on my commute, and WHOA am I ever glad I did. Busy does so many fantastic impressions of the people she's writing about on the audiobook, and she nails it every time. Her Michelle Williams is spot on. Even the two lines she says as Katie Holmes: perfection. And I'm sure her mother sounds exactly the way Busy does on that recording as well. You get the picture. Busy isn't someone I knew much about, but remembered as a fixture kind of background character from a lot of things, like Dawson's Creek. Now that I go back and watch things she's done— she's completely right, she is sparkly and entertaining to watch. I found this book to be so well-written, human, open and vulnerable. She didn't hold back on what she really thinks of certain people *cough* I did not find James Franco's d-bagness to be shocking to say the least *cough* and...

Comes out today! Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the advance digital copy in exchange for an honest review. Behind the Red Door starts with social worker Fern who is planning to return home to help her neglectful father pack up his home to move to Florida. Ted, her father, is a now retired university professor, obsessed with fear, who created various "Experiments" which were really more like pranks on Fern as a child to document her fear and response in the name of science. Not a great parent, to say the least. Fern has accepted his limitations (and those of her mom as well, who's off on a cruise somewhere, always having been emotionally detached from Fern), and has come to help because her father expressed that he needed her, which was basically like emotional catnip. Fern's been dealing with some reactions to some new medication her psychiatrist has prescribed, and as she's making the journey back to her hometown, we get the sense that maybe she's...

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK, One More Chapter for this ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.  This was a riveting read, with a multi-narrative style, similar to Into the Water by Paula Hawkins. This style can be tricky to navigate, as often in having a variety of perspectives, there’s some compromising on how deep of a sense you can get for any one character in the story.  This centered primarily around Helen, an architect working on a redevelopment of an abandoned, derelict psychiatric asylum in Lancaster. Her teenage daughter Zoe goes missing, and there’s a race against the clock to save her before it’s too late. The atmosphere with the asylum is eerie, but could have been fleshed out further to great effect. There are simultaneous stories here: one is about a historical serial killer who imitates someone to pin their killings on that person, another is about the dark history of a serial killer who lived in the asylum after its closure, yet another is a...

Wendy Clarke has done well with the twists and turns in this one— I didn’t see almost any of them coming, and they kept me extremely engaged in the story.  The Bride  is about a woman called Alice who has just broken up with her fiancé, is out of work, and is generally having a tough time of things. An old friend, Joanna, gets in touch out of nowhere, and invites Alice to her apartment to reconnect and meet her new partner. Alice is delighted and sets off on her way, only to arrive and find that Joanna isn’t there— just her fiancé Mark. And he hasn’t seen Joanna since the night before. Where on earth is Joanna? I loved the sense of atmosphere of the docks and Joanna & Mark’s apartment building— it added a great layer of creepiness to the whole thing. This book was unputdownable, and fast-paced, and you’ll be kept guessing until the very end. If you’d like a change of pace and an unpredictable thriller, give this one a read. Thanks NetGalley and Bookouture   for an ARC...

Arden Maynor was only six when she went missing while sleepwalking during a huge rainstorm. She was found three days later, miraculously alive in a storm drain. The media went wild about it (think: the Baby Jessica rescue back in the early ‘90s) and Arden and her mother ended up on the talk show circuit, receiving loads of donations, her mother even wrote a book. Arden, on the other hand, can’t really remember anything about that horrific incident. 20 years later, Arden’s changed her name to Olivia, and has abandoned her old life altogether. She’s trying to live a normal life in privacy. She has a house in a small town, she’s working in medical administration, and takes care to keep her history completely secret from everyone she knows. All is fine and well until she discovers herself sleepwalking again one night— something she hasn’t done since the accident. It rattles her, especially after another night of sleepwalking, she finds herself standing over a body in her backyard, hands co...

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for a digital ARC in return for an honest review. Our Little Cruelties  is a beautifully written story about some dreadful characters. Set in Ireland, it’s about the three Drumm brothers and the awful things they do to people (primarily to each other). The opening of the novel starts in the present day where one of the brothers has died, but it’s unclear as to which one. The story then dives into the perspective of the eldest Will, the golden boy in his mother’s eyes but a really nasty piece of work in terms of how he treats women. Then it’s on to the youngest Luke, hated by their mother, who battles mental health and substance abuse issues in his adulthood as a pop star. Rounding out the trio is Brian, the middle brother, whose stinginess and manipulation of Luke and others for his own benefit don’t leave much sympathy for him either. These sections run through their stories from when they were kids, flipping back and forth in time, ove...