Baby mine

 

I couldn't quite decide whether to post this on my main blog or my bpd blog, then I realized i didn't give a deep-fried shit and carried on typing. 

I've touched upon this topic before, but never really talked about it much. It's always been something I'd brushed off, pretended it didn't happen. But I have a lot of feelings now, so maybe I'll deal with part of it, but I probably won't. 

When I met Rob, it was through a guy that lived below him, his name was Jake. Dancing around the facts, eventually I ended up meeting his friend Olly who, unintentionally, got me pregnant. He didn't know, I didn't know, and no one found out until months later when I realized that the inexplicable bleeding I'd experienced the night after I took the morning after pill as a result of sleeping with someone else was more than just a bad period. There'd been a baby inside me. 

Now I've never wanted kids, I've always said I'd be a terrible parent, but the baby that I'd been pregnant with would have been turning 8 or 9 now. In my head, they either don't exist, or they're still a new born.  Hallucinating earlier, I thought they were in my arms and I placed what I thought was them in the back of my closet and taped the door shut, desperate to keep them safe. I still don't know how I should feel about, that's just it, I don't know what it's about. Do I say it? Do I say, child? The person I was with at the time I miscarried told me he'd kick a baby out of me if he found out I was pregnant and, at the time, I thought it was funny. Looking back, that wasn't funny, that was just an example of the kind of person he was. 

I'm tired now, and I don't really know how to feel this evening. But, whatever happens, I know that when I close my eyes I saw my baby, and when I wrapped my arms around them I wanted to keep them safe. 

xXx

Fancy a cuppa? Tea with Rasputin by Rolf Richardson

As a kid, I was obsessed with the movie Anastasia. I saw it god-knows how many times at the cinema, had all the toys I could possibly get my hands on, and even sported an Anastasia lunch box at one point. I also think that my love of the film is what spurned my all-consuming adoration of the iconic Angela Lansbury, who played the Dowager Empress Marie in the film. 

Aside from this, I have very little experience with anything even remotely Russian, unless you count the reading One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 7th grade, which I don't because I remember nothing about it. That is until I was sent Tea with Rasputin by Rolf Richardson to read last month. 

The book begins with Terry, a low-ranking member of a flight crew, being sent to locate missing pilot Gregory who disappeared along the Alaska-Russia border. Travelling to the US state, he investigates the pilots unexpected vanishing, meeting his future wife Coral along the way, and eventually discovers the pilot was killed and buried in Russia. 

Unconvinced by this explanation, Terry continues to investigate the pilot's disappearance only to find that he had faked his own death in order to start a new life in his native Russia, leaving behind his wife in the UK to whom he left a large life insurance policy. 

From then on, the novel recounts Terry's relationship with the former pilot, both personal and professional, and he and his family's own time spent living in Russia. With details about corruption in the country, Grigori as becomes known is killed by a suspected poison dart whilst attempting to flee the country for England with his children and Terry's family. 

What I liked most about the book was that I had very little experience with reading literature focused on Russian heritage. Whilst the story of Terry's life and how it became intertwined with Grigori's was the main focus of the plotline, there were also pieces of information regarding the development of Russia during the 1990s that I did not expect. Turning against the traditional form of fictional text, elements of interesting non-fiction were included to both entertain and educate the reader. It was also unlike anything I had ever read before, which is always a bonus when being sent texts to review. 

However, my understanding of such events was not always what it could have been, and a little extra information about the influencing Russian politics may have been useful as a means of expanding my understanding of the text. Plus the title had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the book unless you count the two of so pages towards the end where Grigori is found dead at an installation depicting Rasputin's meeting with the Tsar at a popular museum. I know you shouldn't judge a book by its title, but it felt very much as if the connection had been tacked on unnecessarily because the author liked the title. 

Overall, this is definitely a novel I'd recommend. Both interesting and unusual, it was unlike anything I'd ever read before and I'd happily read someone of the author's other texts. 8/10

xXx

Hell hath no fury, Dead Woman Scorned by Michael Clark

Let's talk sequels, shall we? 

When I got sent this book, I was told the first one was absolutely amazing and found it attached to the accompanying email. Normally I would have read the first novel before diving into the second, but time limitations prevented me from being able to do so and, for the most part, it was pretty easy to club together an idea of what the first text had been about. 

Dead Woman Scorned by Michael Clark could very easily be a standalone text. Slipping between time periods, it talks of a man renovating a house haunted by a murderous ghost who murdered her son, the story of how the murderous ghost came to be, and the actions of a man obsessed with the aforementioned ghost and how her appearances have affected his family. Interwoven with other days of her actions and the occult, it's one of the few texts I have encountered recently where the time-hopping was not only beneficial to my understanding and enjoyment of the text but also incredibly clear. 

The only problem I have surrounding the idea of the book being a sequel is how it prepares for what the third text in the series, that I have not and, if I'm honest, have no desire to read. The text could have ended perfectly without the inclusion of a shorter storyline involving the death of the owners of a funeral home in a drunk driving accident, and the subsequent journey her children take towards carrying on working for the company. Eventually leading to the death of their daughter, their fuck-up son has to take over the business and is inexplicably visited by the ghost of his parents when he continues to run his family's business into the ground. 

Ground, funeral home, get it? God, I'm a hoot. 

Anyway, this part of the text is included incredibly late in the narrative and leads to the novel ending rather abruptly, an attempt to encourage the reader to pick up the next book. Thing is, there was so much going on otherwise that this part felt almost pointless to me, and served no purpose other than to slightly spoil something I'd really enjoyed. The author didn't need to add this part in, it would have fitted perfectly in a book all on its own, and it seemed to me to be an almost underhand way of baiting readers into buying his future work. 

The reason this annoyed me was that the text itself is absolutely great, and unlike anything I would normally pick up. I've had mixed feelings towards some of the works I've been sent to review lately. Some of them have been great but others have either been over-the-top, miserable, or just had far too much going on. The main characters are well created and I connected with the protagonist living in the 1970s, who's dealing with the repercussions of a divorce that is leading to his ex-wife preventing him from seeing his children and altogether being a dick about visitation. 

I'm a child of separated parents, I get it

In addition to this, it was very easy to tell which time period I was reading about due to the clearly titled chapters and changes in narrative voice and tone. They also linked and flowed together well in a way that I have no seen many texts of a similar style do. If you are into books about the occult, or even if you aren't, I would definitely recommend this text. 

xXx

Hmm, how about no?

Hands up any woman who's had sex with a guy to shut them up. To stop them complaining or to keep them happy when you had absolutely no desire to. Sadly, I can guarantee that there are a few arms being raised. 

Last month I briefly dated a guy who I thought was a decent human being, only for him to ghost me. Which, of course, I blamed myself for. Pretty average in bed, he asked if I was up for sex one night and when I said no, he told me that I "wouldn't have to do anything". 

Ah yes, because there really is nothing sexier than being treated like a hand. 

To give him the smallest amount of credit, I really think that he thought what he was saying was appealing. In his head, he would be pleasuring me as well as himself which, given my lack of interest in sex at that point, would definitely not have happened. Thankfully, he didn't push it, but I really don't think I should have to be thankful for someone not pushing to have sex with me when I say I don't want to. 

Sadly, this wasn't the first time this has happened, and on many occasions, I have given in, done something I really wasn't up for just to appease them. Lying on my back in pain, because being used as a fleshlight can be incredibly painful when I really didn't want to be. I'm not blaming myself entirely, I did say yes after all, but the people in question should have taken no as my first answer. As I said in my post To the guy that drove me home, no doesn't mean try harder, it quite simply means, no. 

xXx