The Boyfriend and I went to visit his friend who lives in D.C. for Memorial Day weekend.
When we arrived on Friday night, we went to get food, then met another of their friends for drinks. “Drinks” turned into a three hour affair, as it is wont to do.
But here’s the thing: I’m one of those people who, when they become tired, have about a thirty minute window before they become The Grumpy. I’m also one of those people who can go to sleep in about ten seconds.
These things combined normally do not bode well for me because I’ll be like, “It’s 10:30, I’m getting pretty tired,” (I know. I’m lame. Shut it.) which should alert everyone to the fact that I need to go otherwise I’ll be like, “I’M SLEEPY. I WANT BED. SLEEP GOOD. BED BED BED. WHY NO SLEEP YET?”
And then I’ll never see that group of friends again.
But these are The Boyfriend’s friends. He doesn’t see them all that often, so I was doing my best to stick it out. But around 12:15 I was not amused anymore. The drinking had slowed down and the singer at the bar was extremely flat at this point and I was just done.
The guys were not.
So despite the fact that I was doing that thing where your eyes get all glassy and your head bobs forward because you fell asleep for ten seconds, they kept on keeping on. The poor waitress kept asking if I wanted coffee, but when I’m at that point coffee is not going to rescue me. In fact, it will make me more tired.
FINALLY, around 2 am, the guys decide to pack it up. We get a cab, which I promptly fell asleep in, and bedgrudingly wake up to get inside The Boyfriend’s friend’s apartment. Once inside, I somehow remember to change into pajamas and get under the sheet on the air mattress, which we set up in the living room.
The living room is also where The Boyfriend + Friend decided to play a sportball video game.
It was whilst playing the sportball video game that somehow The Boyfriend lost his grip on the controller.
It landed on my eye.
It woke me up. Because it effing hurt.
Somehow, I didn’t make any sort of noise when the controller hit my eye socket, so the guys had no idea it even hit me. You see, when the controller hit that bone underneath your eye (is that the cheek bone?) it bounced away from my face and onto the air mattress.
Once I had established that I still had vision in my left eye, I was concerned that perhaps all the blood vessels in my eye burst.
This happened to me in high school the week before dance team try-outs. I looked like a demon. (And, for the record, I made the dance team.)
So I was all, “Great, I’m going to have a demon eye for the rest of the weekend and into next week, the week where I’m going to potentially shake hands with Joss Whedon*.”
Finally, I say to the guys, “Are all the blood vessels in my left eye all broken?”
To which The Boyfriend responds, “No, why?”
“Because you hit me in the face with the video game controller,” I say.
The Boyfriend felt really bad and apologized profusely.
He felt worse the next morning when it was clear that I was going to have a black eye.
His friend laughed and made jokes all weekend about how I now know better than to backtalk The Boyfriend.
I’m plotting my revenge.
*I have tickets to a Q&A with Joss Whedon. I KNOW. For some reason, my first thought about having perhaps broken all of the blood vessels in my eyes was I CAN’T MEET JOSS WHEDON LIKE THAT. But let’s be honest, he’d be down with it.
Rude Awakening.
I am an asshole when I’m asleep.
I steal covers and sprawl out, often diagonally across the bed, much to the chagrin of The Boyfriend.
I roll around. When I was younger I was thrasing about so violently during a sleepover that I gave a girl a black eye.
True story.
But I like to think that as I’ve gotten older I’ve become less of an asshole when I sleep.
I found out this morning that that is incorrect.
As my alarm clock (which, btw, is on my phone.) was going off, I reached over and smacked The Boyfriend so hard in the chest that he woke up.
He was all, “What the hell?”
And I was like, “I thought you were the alarm clock?”
We’re buying a bigger bed.
Review: School Spirits
Title: School Spirits
Author: Rachel Hawkins
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: May 14, 2013
Format: eGalley
Fifteen-year-old Izzy Brannick was trained to fight monsters. For centuries, her family has hunted magical creatures. But when Izzy’s older sister vanishes without a trace while on a job, Izzy’s mom decides they need to take a break.
Izzy and her mom move to a new town, but they soon discover it’s not as normal as it appears. A series of hauntings has been plaguing the local high school, and Izzy is determined to prove her worth and investigate. But assuming the guise of an average teenager is easier said than done. For a tough girl who’s always been on her own, it’s strange to suddenly make friends and maybe even have a crush.
Can Izzy trust her new friends to help find the secret behind the hauntings before more people get hurt?—via Goodreads
Sometimes I just want to read a well-plotted book about a girl who is sort of like Buffy, you know?
Luckily Rachel Hawkins writes books.
School Spirits, a spin-off of Hawkins’s Hex Hall series centers around the youngest of the Brannick girls, Izzy who is briefly in the Hex Hall books. As the Brannick women dwindle in numbers, Izzy’s mom decides to move to a small town in Alabama (I think it’s Alabama. Could be Mississippi. But I’m pretty sure it’s Alabama). And for the first time, Izzy will go to a real school.
Enter Mary Evans High School. MEHS, y’all. I laughed out loud every time I read MEHS in this book. Hawkins, you are a funny lady and I like you.
My girl crush on the author aside, School Spirits is a lot of fun. Izzy gets to navigate the tropes of public school for the first time, including the daunting task of choosing her friends wisely, hunting a ghost, trying to decide if the boy you like likes you back, and solving a mystery. And while that might sound like something you’ve read before, I assure you that School Spirits will keep you on your toes and will have you turning the pages in an obsessive, feverish way that might make your friends and family worry for your sanity.
Your sanity is fine. You can glare at them and shush them and give off the general aura of GO AWAY until you are finished with School Spirits. Because you’ll want to read this book in one sitting. For real.
Review: Parallel
Title: Parallel
Author: Lauren Miller
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: May 14, 2013
Format: eGalley
Abby Barnes had a plan. The Plan. She’d go to Northwestern, major in journalism, and land a job at a national newspaper, all before she turned twenty-two. But one tiny choice—taking a drama class her senior year of high school—changed all that. Now, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Abby is stuck on a Hollywood movie set, miles from where she wants to be, wishing she could rewind her life. The next morning, she’s in a dorm room at Yale, with no memory of how she got there. Overnight, it’s as if her past has been rewritten.
With the help of Caitlin, her science-savvy BFF, Abby discovers that this new reality is the result of a cosmic collision of parallel universes that has Abby living an alternate version of her life. And not only that: Abby’s life changes every time her parallel self makes a new choice. Meanwhile, her parallel is living out Abby’s senior year of high school and falling for someone Abby’s never even met.
As she struggles to navigate her ever-shifting existence, forced to live out the consequences of a path she didn’t choose, Abby must let go of the Plan and learn to focus on the present, without losing sight of who she is, the boy who might just be her soul mate, and the destiny that’s finally within reach.—via Goodreads
Sometimes you read a book and you want to love it and hug it and be it’s best friend.
That’s how I feel about Parallel.
But. BUT. I have to be honest. I read this book ON ACCIDENT. (By accident? I always say “on accident” and I feel like that’s probably not grammatically correct and something I say because I grew up in the South. I don’t know.) I was supposed to lead this group discussion thing with a high school students about the book Partials. But when I went to download Partials, I couldn’t remember the exact name and was too lazy to look it up to double check, but knew it started with a “p,” and I saw Parallel and was like, “That is clearly the book.” So I read it. And loved it.
But it was the wrong book. I was the worst discussion leader ever because I would just agree with whatever the kids said because I read the wrong book.
Except it was so right.
Because Parallel, y’all. Parallel is sososo good.
It has wibbly-wobbly time and SCIENCE (We know that I love a good science book) and hot boys and college (COLLEGE!) and lots of awesomeness and WTF-ery. It can be a bit of a mind-bender and it definitely keeps the reader engaged because—get this—the things you think you know about characters and their storylines can change. Which is just so cool. So the character dynamics are constantly shifting, as is the setting, and the year. So while there’s lots going on that you do need to pay attention to, the book never feels like it’s testing you or making you do all the work to figure out the next piece of the puzzle. You just sit back and go along for the time-bending ride.
Overall, Parallel is a fresh, innovative piece of storytelling that deftly weaves parallel universes, changing character relationships, and science together in a fascinating, frustrating, fantastic way.
*Full disclosure: I work for the General Books division of HarperCollins Publishers. This review was not solicited by anyone at HarperCollins Publishers or HarperTeen, and I receive no monetary gain or any other benefit for this review. I wrote it because I loved the book and wanted to share it with others.
Review: The Downfall of a Good Girl
Title: The Downfall of a Good Girl
Author: Kimberly Lang
Publisher: Harlequin KISS
Release Date: February 2013
Format: eGalley
Southern debutante Vivienne LaBlanc can’t believe bad-boy rock star Connor Mansfield is back in town for the New Orleans annual Saints and Sinners pageant. He has a reputation as wicked as his devilish smile, and Vivi has no intention of becoming one of his latest groupies! He once crushed her high school heart, so playing the saint to Connor’s sinner should be easy. But how can Vivi get those less-than-angelic thoughts out of her head-especially when Connor’s so good at tempting her to be bad?—via Goodreads
Sometimes what you really need is solid I-hate-you-but-I-love-you love story.
The Downfall of a Good Girl falls solidly into that category and definitely doesn’t disappoint.
Though it’s a fun, flirty story about two people who knew each other when, only to be reunited after both having very public personas—Vivienne, a Miss America runner up; Connor, a rock star with a bad reputation—there is a shocking level of depth to this story. As the characters compete in the New Orleans Saints and Sinners pageant, a charity event to raise money for Hurricane Katrina clean-up in which two New Orleans natives compete to raise the most money in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras, they find themselves drawn toward each other in a way that shocks them both, but they are also facing what life brings in your late 20s. They’re both trying to come to terms with their age, and with what life means when you’re possibly considered a washed-up beauty queen and a bad boy musician whose life in the public eye might have changed the way his fans feel about his music.
As Vivienne and Connor navigate not only their charity event, their past, their personal lives, and their careers, they also find that their feelings and relationships are the aspects of their lives that have been most neglected. Luckily for them both, they’re in the mood to fix that.
Overall, this is a really fun, quick read set in New Orleans. The setting is so evocative it will have you trying to book a flight so you can have beignets at Cafe du Monde, the romance is hot, but not so porny that you’re praying no one is reading over your shoulder on the train, and story is surpremely satisfying. If you’re looking for a quick read set in the South with a rocker who wears leather, The Downfall of a Good Girl will do the trick.
Bethany Larson 