A Purple Life

THIS BOOK MADE MY HEAD EXPLODE. Apparently I had an incorrect understanding of the US federal deficit and it's a misunderstanding that is perpetuated by our politicians on both sides of the aisle.

I was thinking that the federal government had to manage its spending like a household when it most assuredly does not since, unlike a household, it issues its own currency.

If you haven't read this book and are interested in how money works you should read it ASAP. I'm going to go stare into the abyss. My brain feels broken in the best of ways

This was a wonderful book. It goes into the history of what they call the Laziness Lie, this American belief that your worth it tied to your output as a worker and that ever not giving 110% (even when your body is screaming for you to do so) is lazy and a sin.

In addition to taking us down memory lane to discover where this stupid lie came from (cough puritan religious beliefs and the need to convince slaves to work when they are not paid to do so cough), but it also provides some great examples of people who bought into this lie and what happened to them, their health and their relationships (Spoiler: It's not good).

The book also provide steps you can take to combat this lie and examples of how you can care for yourself and others to avoid the inevitable burnout that this kind of thinking leads to eventually. Overall an absolutely fabulous book!

I received an ARC from the author and this is my honest review

Surprisingly I did not enjoy this book and I'm really sad about that because I was so excited to read it. Every piece of the premise is up my alley, but I just couldn't get into the overall execution. My rating of the book unfortunately dropped more with each section I read.

The set up was entertaining and I enjoyed getting to know the characters, but once the smut starts at 30% it doesn't even pause until 60%. And more importantly that section doesn't add basically anything to the character development or the plot and that made this boring for me to read and it made the romance unbelievable. And I know Reign can write great romance and great smut that advances the plot and the characters, but that barely happened here and I was not invested as a result.

I also found a fair bit of the language used in this book to be cringe-y, which has never been the case with me reading this author or subject matter before. And all the ‘drama' seemed to come out of nowhere and seemed manufactured just to have drama in the book without it being justified. So I don't know what happened here, but I'm sad I didn't enjoy this book and I hope it's just a me problem.

I received an ARC from the author and this is my honest review

I really enjoyed this book! The characters were well fleshed out, lovely and hilarious (even the side characters), which I very much appreciated. I also thought that there were great descriptions of complex emotions in this book that are usually difficult to articulate.

Chris and Remy were so cute. I rarely enjoy Second Chance romance, but I really liked this one and the fact that the book got its points across well and quickly about their relationship in the past and then focused on the present. I read this book in one sitting and I'll be thinking about these two for a while.

I received an ARC from the author and this is my honest review

I enjoyed this book, which is what a 3/5 rating means to me. The mystery intrigued me enough that I read it in one sitting. However, there was something about the very flowery prose that didn't sit well with me in this book for some reason. This very well could be a me issue, but I didn't fully buy these two characters. I liked them, but wasn't fully convinced which made the flowery language feel a bit awkward to me.

However, I still obviously enjoyed this book enough to finish it in a day and the reveal at the end was masterfully done. I guessed some of what would happen, but not all of it and was genuinely surprised and pleased with how the entire ending played out. This was an enjoyable read and I'm excited to see what Jesse writes next.