Review: Unraveling Oliver

Unraveling Oliver by Liz Nugent
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and Liz Nugent for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.


Rating 4.5 stars
Wow! I could not put this down!!! It is a short read but so much is jam packed. Don’t worry, it flows beautifully and the mystery unravels (haha) slowly. Very well written with characters that are so delicious that you want to eat them up and go back for seconds! Hmm I might have been reading this under the table while at a family dinner. Sorry folks, but I just had to finish - the suspense was killing me.

First, you have to enjoy novels that tell a story by having each chapter set up as a different character’s point of view. I notice in some reviews people have a hard time with that. I personally love it. Liz Nugent does a really good job so you still might want to give this one a try. I will admit to going back and reading some of the pov’s over again because as I started to put a little more of the story together, I wanted to go back and see how it all tied together. Because it isn’t a thousand pages, I could easily do this without losing the momentum of the story in real time. There was one piece of the mystery that was left hanging and I couldn’t find the answer anywhere. Oliver mentions that his pseudonym was an homage and I couldn’t figure out what he meant. Did anyone figure out what he meant?

So, what’s it all about. Well Oliver, obviously! It starts out with the main event. Oliver hits his wife - POW - and knocks her out cold. Well, to be fair, he beats the crap out of her and she never regains consciousness. We never hear from Alice and can only glean what she is thinking and feeling from other characters. No one really knows Oliver either. His past is shrouded in mystery and he reveals almost nothing about himself. To be fair, most psychopaths don’t. They love to shape themselves into some fantasy of who they think they should be. Oliver doesn’t let anyone in, even the reader. The most emotion Oliver reveals is right in the beginning when he loses control and beats Alice. He is a dark character and finding out how he ticks, why he did what he did is a fascinating tale.


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Review: The Visitors

The Visitors by Catherine Burns
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for receiving an ARC in exchange for an honest review.


The Visitor, by Catherine Burns, is the best kind of horror book. This is the kind that doesn’t shed one drop of blood, no gory heads being chopped off or eyeballs gooping out of their sockets. No, this is the kind that manages to scare your pants off, give you the creeps down into the depths of your soul, and is so disturbing that it makes your toes curl. It is one of those stories that will stay with you long after you read it and if you want to sleep, maybe don’t finish it before bed.

Meet Marion, the timid, bullied, overweight woman who is a real pushover. With a mother who constantly criticized her and a brother who bullied and shamed her, Marion never had a chance at a normal life. She is completely isolated, never having had any friends growing up, and at 50 seems almost stunted in maturity, still sleeping with stuffed animals. She lives with her brother John in their parental home which has fallen into disarray. She is dependent on John and waits on him hand and foot, subject to his whims, mood swings and verbal abuse. But she knows he is older and wiser and he wouldn’t get that way if only she was smarter and could do more for him. John has friends, lady friends. He sometimes makes her get in the car and go for a ride to meet them. He brings them to the house and then she never sees them again. But there are strange noises that come from the basement. Sometimes there is such a foul smell she wonders why everyone doesn’t notice it. But Marion doesn’t like to think of unpleasant things. It upsets her and she would rather just watch her TV shows or sleep it off. It’s best to let John handle everything. Until one day he can’t. He has a heart attack and it is up to Marion to deal with what is in the basement.


I loved every bit of this book. Catherine Burns is an excellent writer. The characters are so well drawn and the tension and excitement build from seeing how Marion goes from almost childlike into, well, read for yourself and decide. John is so evil and repulsive from his physical characteristics to his actions. It is a true thriller but what happens is horrifying. It reminds me of the Twilight Zone except that there are no fantasy or magical elements in this novel. It really could be describing those weird neighbours down the street, or when you hear a news story of a serial killer that everyone is so shocked about because people will say that they seemed so normal and never bothered anyone. I mean, come on, the definition of a good neighbour or what!

I give this a 4.5 stars. A great read!

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Beauty Day


So while I was away in Florida I was able to purchase some beauty products that I had been wanting for a long time. There were products that were either not available in Canada or difficult to get. Remember, we don't only pay the exchange but there are the shipping charges which are quite costly as well as the duty and custom taxes. It usually makes the products not very affordable.

 Now I am not a girl that that has invested a lot of time or money in beauty products. I don't spend time in the morning or evenings applying lotion, or night creams and eye gels. But I am getting older and don't love getting wrinkles. Mostly, since cancer, my skin has really changed. I developed keratosis pilaris. If you don't know what that is a nickname is "chicken skin". You get these little red bumps all over your arms. Your skin is super dry (think chicken skin), wrinkly, bumpy and totally gross. It does run in my family, both my sisters have it, and I have to say I never really appreciated my smooth arms. So when I lost all my hair, and these bumps appeared, I was hoping it was just the hair regrowing and that maybe the hair was just getting clogged. I had hoped once the hair was through the bumps would go away. But no such luck, once you get keratosis pilaris there is no way to get rid of it. Both my sisters are doctors and I knew they hated having red bumpy arms, so if there was some medication, cream, whatever they would have cured themselves.

But enough about my bumpy skin. I will talk about the ways I am dealing with it on another beauty blog post. Suffice it to say, a lot of issues came up after having cancer that I didn't have to deal with before, hence the interest in beauty products. So I bought a bunch of stuff and decided that I will use them, one at a time, and see what works, what doesn't, what is worth spending mucho dollars on and what are the cheap options, when available.

So you already know that I lost all of my hair. Well, when it regrew, I only got about half back. Yes, some cancer survivors get new, luscious thicker hair than they had before and some are left much worse. So I am happy to have my hair and not have to wear a wig all of the time. The pro is that I barely have to shave anymore and the con, of course, is that I have thin hair on my head. Now, thinning hair is also in my family genetics, so I probably didn't have much hope anyway. What I didn't expect is that my eyelashes and eyebrows wouldn't fully grow in.

That brings me to my first beauty test product. I purchased RapidLash for eyebrows and eyelashes.





I had heard a lot about the product, mostly great things. People were very happy with the results saying that their eyelashes were so big and full they were like fake ones. So I am giving it a shot.

First things I have very sensitive skin. Second, I am prone to allergic reactions.  So before trying anything new, especially something that is going on my eye, I need to give it the old 24 skin test. I applied a small amount of product to the edge of my eyebrow. There were probably a bunch of better places to test it, but I wanted it on my face to make sure that skin wouldn't react.

So I will report to you tomorrow and let you know if this is a product that I will be able to use.

here's hoping...