Book of the Month Club: After Perfect by Christina McDowell

After Perfect by Christina McDowell
Publisher: Gallery Books. June 2015.
Pages: 320
Genre: Memoir
Source: Book of the Month



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Christina McDowell was born Christina Prousalis. She had to change her name to be legally extricated from the trail of chaos her father, Tom Prousalis, left in the wake of his arrest and subsequent imprisonment as one of the guilty players sucked into the collateral fallout of Jordan Belfort (the “Wolf of Wall Street”). Christina worshipped her father and the seemingly perfect life they lived…a life she finds out was built on lies. Christina’s family, as is typically the case, had no idea what was going on. Nineteen-year-old Christina drove her father to jail while her mother dissolved in denial.

Since then, Christina’s life has been decimated. As her family floundered in rehab, depression, homelessness, and loss, Christina succumbed to the grip of alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity before finding catharsis in the most unlikely of places. From the bucolic affluence of suburban Washington, DC, to the A-list clubs and seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, this provocative memoir unflinchingly describes the harsh realities of a fall from grace. - Goodreads

So I was recently introduced to something called Book of the Month. Yes, it's the same one as like the big deal Book of the Month Club from back in the day. But it's officially relaunching this month! Now judges (such as Emily St. John Mandel and Liberty Hardy) pick five books and you have the opportunity to choose one that will be sent to you in an adorable box. Even cooler, there are online discussions on their site now.

I wasn't super interested in any of the picks offered to me in August, so I decided to go for a memoir. After Perfect is about the daughter of a man who worked with Jordan Belfort (Wolf of Wallstreet guy). There was a lot of promise for downward spirals, family drama, discussion of privilege, and redemption. And it's not that these things weren't present, but that it felt like a shallow representation of each.

"And that was it. He turned around and walked through the automatic sliding glass doors, carrying nothing but a plane ticket. I studied him as he entered the concourse, looked left, then right, and then left again. He was figuring out which way to go. It was the first time I had ever seen him look uncertain."

Obviously Christina has gone through a whole hell of a lot, and I don't want to critique her story as it's a reality for her. There are some really devastating moments. I definitely gasped when the extent of her father's deception and betrayal is revealed. I just wasn't blown away by the writing or how deep it went. And there was a whole lot of name dropping that made me roll my eyes instead of get deeper into the story.

One of the best parts of reading this book was doing it with Book of the Month, because Christina McDowell actually did a Q&A on the site for members. The interactivity of that was cool and I'm definitely curious about what's next for Book of the Month. If you're interested, there are 3 more days to sign up and get a September book. It sounds like I was paid to say this, but I really wasn't. I just think it's a fun idea.



HOW OUTLANDISH WAS IT?

2/10 - The family betrayal was minorly outlandish. But like humans are pretty awful, so it wasn't the surprising.

Review: The Troop by Nick Cutter

The Troop by Nick Cutter
Publisher: Gallery Books
Pages: 358
Genre: Horror
Source: Publisher
First Line: EAT EAT EAT EAT


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If you want to openly gasp and cringe in front of strangers, read this book on the subway. I had been looking for contemporary, traditional horror that didn't feel like it verged on the side of cartoonish, and I'm glad that I found this. The Troop is a creeping, disturbing book about a boy scout troop that goes to do boy scout things on an uninhabited island. What could go wrong, right? Well, let me tell you. Someone else shows up. Someone who is very, very hungry. Are you interested yet?

This visitor shakes up the previously solid dynamic between Scoutmaster Tim and the five young teen boys in the troop. Something is wrong with the intruder, and nobody is sure what to do about it. Even the adult. And that's where the problem lies for the boys. Tim accidentally exposes them to the bioengineered monstrosity inside of the starving stranger, putting all of them in grave danger. Each of the characters are trying desperately to survive when they realize they're not getting off of the island any time soon, and some are driven to horrifying extremes.

The book switches back and forth between what's happening on the island and various articles/reports/interviews before and after about the thing that has made it to the island. I thought the latter was intriguing, but could have been fleshed out a little more. I most enjoyed the Lord of the Flies-esque tensions between the young boys when they were out on the island on their own, because all of the characters were thought out pretty well and interesting to learn about. Though a few of them (the jock, the nerd) had more stereotypical stories, their personalities still felt fresh and it was fun to see them interact with each other. When and how certain characters cracked kept me from putting this book down. There is some incredibly devious manipulation that goes down that had me nearly covering my eyes and squeaking (making it much harder to read).

The bioengineered worm (as they soon find out) takes its victims fully, sucking all of the life out of them, eating voraciously for them, as well as infecting the brain and telling them how to think. The hunger that consumes the infected characters lead them to eat anything and everything, while they waste away as the host. And it is very easy to get infected. The worm overtaking various characters was gruesome and monstrous, but it never felt like it was being gory just for the sake of being gory. The descriptions left me squirming and feeling sort of...itchy. And maybe a little...hungry.

This is a horrifying story of survival that kept me reading to see who was going to make it out alive, and at what cost.


Some Quotes:

"No parent harboring the hope for a sensitive, artistic child names that child Kent."

"This wasn't a bear or a shark or a psycho axe murderer; those things were bad, sure, but you could get away from them. Hide. How could you hide from a murderer who lived under your skin?"


Outlandishness Rating: 7/10

The descriptions of the worm taking hold of people were pretty gruesome and weird, transforming characters in shocking ways that I didn't expect even after seeing previous characters go through it.