aislinghelen's reviews
984 reviews

A few paragraphs felt like they were dragging on. Overall, it was a really interesting commentary and it became a "life imitates art” kind of thing. I hope one day this book won’t be relevant to the present.

I could not put this down. The only reason I marked it down was because I found some parts a bit slow and long. A few paragraphs felt like they were dragging on. Overall, it was a really interesting commentary and it became a "life imitates art” kind of thing. I hope one day this book won’t be relevant to the present.

TERF rhetoric, a bunch of stuff that screamed “crunchy to alt-right pipeline”, and a whole lot of privilege that she is unable/unwilling to acknowledge. Just no.

She mentioned that she was interested in the experiences of trans/non-binary people and how they fit into things but said she didn’t have much knowledge about it. All good. But then she goes on to defend a TERF (Kathleen Stock), spout gender and biological essentialism, and basically says, “Well, both sides are bad”.

She also inserts a story about her doctor friend and how medicine is bad (?). That story also held a lot of unpacked privilege. Basically, her friend went through menopause and wanted to move back to nature and away from medicine and doing things that she disagreed with and knew were wrong, and so she moved to a farm. Great. There was more to the wording that specifically bothered me, but I was listening to the audiobook (because that's what my library had), and I don't want to try and go back and search it out.

There is another point where she is talking about a large rock being washed away. Specifically, one that she had decided was the bed of a mythical old woman figure from local legend. After she left the island it got washed away into the sea. She says (paraphrased), “I used to believe in science and be a sceptic, and that could be possible naturally, but no, it actually couldn’t”. I’m all for spirituality and belief in myth and legend, but that really gave crunch to alt-right. If you don’t know, it basically is the link between the “no chemicals, natural life, original”, aka crunchy lifestyle and becoming conservative and alt-right.

That is another reason that her ignorance of her privilege and willingness to spew transphobic rhetoric bugged me. This is kind of giving alt-right covered up a bit. Kind of like white supremacist obsession with Viking and Celtic symbols. I am not saying that she is a white supremacist, I am saying she should reflect as to why she sounds like them.

Overall, I would not recommend this. While it does have some good stories about women and some good ideas about how to embrace ageing, it is also concerning and leaning toward dangerous ideas.

this was very fun

This was really good. It did take a bit for me to get into though. I really didnt like him at first and was close to DNFing but I loved Out on a Limb so much that I had to keep going. It was worth it, once they both started talking to each other I loved them. I loved Luke too, his younger brother who he has custody of. The whole story was really sweet and satisfying even when it was tense/sad. I highly recommend it.

The vibes were very off

They are both so disrespectful of each other, him more so than her. They both want each other back and expect too much. However, he is also the ‘fun’ parent who refuses to deal with his issues and blames her for everything until he realises that his daughter is copying him. 

He is also clearly still in love with her but starts dating someone else. Then he brings said woman to his ex wife’s house to hang out with their kids, WITHOUT ASKING or even telling Jasmin that their dating. Gross, and disrespectful. He also has a lot of issues with therapy that kind of disgust me. 

I am rooting against them getting together, so I just cant keep reading.

This was not great. There were a lot of different plots that all kind of bugged me and felt unresolved at the end.

One of the guys was married, and it's not addressed until way too close to the end. Her 13 year old sister is pregnant? The whole sex-addict thing?? And her trauma is not covered nearly as much as it should.

 

It was also crazy long. Why have all the books I've been reading lately been so long? Anyway, there was so much filler. Way too much of the book just dragged on. I ended up skimming parts by accident. I would have DNFed if I hadn’t been 70% in by the time I got really bored.