Hipso Likes Books

Recently, American Mensa polled its members about banned books. Here's a Pinterest board we made to showcase their top ten:

1. 1984
2. To Kill a Mockingbird
3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
4. On the Origin of Species
5. Catcher in the Rye
6. Of Mice and Men
7. The Lord of the Flies
8. The Lord of the Rings
9. Slaughterhouse-Five
10. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

In honor of Halloween, we put together a Pinterest board with awesome pictures of bookish pumpkins! 

From Jillyn:

Katharine Pearce doesn't know who she is anymore after going through a rather jagged break up with the man that she once intended on marrying. She moves into a London flat, and meets a mysterious, alluring cast of people that make her nights more interesting. There's the man that she can see in the flat across from her, stirring new fantasies within her searching soul. There's the painting come to life, a beautiful woman who works at a perfumery. Each character pieces together Katharine in a new, bolder, more sexually daring way, and by the time that she returns to the United States, she'll have only a ghostly memory of the tame woman she had once been.

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I am very impressed with this book, my first piece that I've read by the pseudonym-ed "Anna Piaff." I hope that this won't be the last thing I read from her.

+The thing that I love most about this book is the gorgeous attention to detail. Things from paintings on the wall to the displays on store shelves are described in such precision that one could lose themselves in the setting completely. Nothing was overly described, nor was such accuracy and imagery boring. It was almost hypnotizing. 

+Part of that hypnotism stems from the seductive tones that follow Katharine's journey from the start of the first page to the very last word. Blink Twice reads like a sexy dessert- tempting, sweet, drizzling, and so warm that you cannot help but to be lured in.

+Blink Twice is written to a man in particular, almost in a letter-like format. I haven't read many books narrated in this format before, and I've got to say that in this particular book, it really worked well with the story that the main character wanted to get across.

The only real critique that I have for this book is that I like my heat a bit more spicy. The erotic scenes within these pages are very tastefully done, but I found them a little too tasteful. It left a lot to the imagination, playing into the mystery motif that underscores the book and highlights the choice of a mask on the cover. But for me personally, I enjoy my erotic rendezvous to be more blunt. 

I would recommend this book to fans of Fifty Shades of Grey and the various other BDSM romances that FSG inspired. Be warned, this book contains scenes of bondage, voyeurism, and LGBT nature. If any of the aforementioned bother you, or if you don't enjoy slowly sizzling romance, than this may not be for you.

Thank you to the author, Anna Piaff, and Daniel Cohen of Hipso Media for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This review can also be found on my quaint little blog, Bitches n Prose.

From Angela at Goodreads:

Digame. Tell me. About your life, about my life, about everything.

In Marisol Murano’s second novel, Valentina Goldman’s Immaculate Confusion, the reader is thrust into a non-linear narrative told from the first-person point-of-view of Valentina, a Venezuelan immigrant, daughter of two psychologists, sister of a workaholic magazine editor in Caracas, wife of Max Goldman and stepmother of Emily Goldman, to whom the narrative is directed.

The story is held together with the unanswered question of what happened to Max Goldman and Valentina’s unfolding account of her childhood in Venezuela and her adulthood in the United States and abroad. Told with the boldness of South American magic realism and the straightforwardness of North American humor, Murano achieves an engaging account of the inescapable journey of the human heart.

South American stories of children being abducted in the mall and uncles playing volleyball with a yellow frog and fathers treating roosters with more respect than their wives are interspersed with North American tales of being the wife of a Frenchman in New Orleans and the quest to be a Jackie O impersonator for the Museum of Modern Art and the realization that one can never escape from one’s self no matter how many times one may change careers, names, or spouses. 

An entertaining story told in English though flavored with phrases in Spanish and French, Valentina’s Immaculate Confusion ultimately isn’t immaculate or confusing but refreshingly messy with all of its truthfulness.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher for an unbiased review.