Books

Out Of My Mind – Cathy Penman [BOOK REVIEW]

Cathy Penman messaged me through my blog, and asked me if I would like to read her book. I said yes – of course, and now I know – I made a very good decision that day!

Out Of My Mind is a book unlike any other that I have read. It is a fantasy book, with a huge sum of reality and psychological thoughts.

We follow the adventures of Laura, who is a woman with a special ability – to get out of her own body, and let her mind flow around in the air. She decides to keep her ability secret, because of all the risks she is under.

While her body is motionless, her mind can go places, see things and hear everything, but she can’t interfere with anything. She is just an invisible watcher.

The book is written with a lovely pace, and it made me unable to put the book down. It involves a lot of Points of View, from many different people, and even though for a moment I would lose track with all their adventures, they always connect to Laura’s story.

This book is amazing for so many amazing reasons, and I am so glad I got the chance to read it!

Check out her website here and order Out of My Mind below:

Postcards

Incoming Postcard Happiness

The amazing community of lovely people always brightens up my day!

Special thank you for these four postcards/cards! I love them all dearly!

reddit postcard art card blog

Thank you to:

  • /u/stockman1984 , for the universe postcard (top left). I loved the quote you included inside! It is truly amazing!
  • /u/MaeveTheBrave , for the lovely donut card (top right).
    Amazing ”did you know” – Vermont’s capital city, Montpelier, is the smallest state capital in the USA – population wise! Less than 9000 people live there! I had no clue about this – and thank you for teaching me a fact or two 🙂
  • /u/bubs57  ,  for the YESSS! card (bottom left) and the amazing Nutella recipe! I haven’t tried it yet, but most certainly will soon!
    P.S: If anyone wants the recipe, please let me know 🙂
  • /u/gigi700gigi , for the amazing Morning Sun Postcard (bottom right). You have a lovely handwriting, Gina! I loved the postcard and I would love to visit Califonia some day!

Books

Quietus – David Sellars [BOOK REVIEW]

Sometimes, we don’t search for a particular book to read. It just finds us. That happened to me with “Quietus”. One of the best books I’ve read this year.

I connected to Nick immediately, and the story was appealing, so it was a struggle to close the book. This is one of the books that you read in one breath. I could connect with all the characters, with Nick, with Carrie, even with Sophie. The description about them made me like them in a different way, all of them, yes, even Sophie.

All Nick ever wanted, was to be accepted – to fit into society, to be noticed by his parents, and to fall irrevocably in love.
One out of three wasn’t bad. And Sophie: beautiful; passionate; impulsive Sophie; said she loved him too … up until the day she killed herself.
Wracked by grief and desperate to abscond, he moves to Jersey where he meets Carrie in the woods that surround his new home. She challenges Nick to confront his nightmare, and in doing so, risk insanity as he is besieged with deeper, darker, more sinister revelations about the girl he thought he knew.
He can run away from his girlfriend’s suicide but can he ever escape Sophie? Or the fact that her death … was his fault?

The author describes not only the physical part, but also their thoughts and how their mind works, and before you even realize it, you have this strong bond with every single one of them. The personality of Sophie is so well described, that’s it’s almost unbelievable. All the sociopathic characteristics, the whole building of this character is so appealing to read, it makes you want to know what’s wrong and how it can be fixed, and it is told by Nick, by someone who has affection towards this person and it tells both sides of the story, how a person can make you like them and make you hate them at the same time. The scenes are so realistic, that I felt like I was there. Each chapter is left unfinished, and it only makes you want to read more and more.

The whole death-life thing made this book special to me. It made me think way deeper than just how the scenes are put. Maybe I didn’t get the point of the story… I just wonder now. It will bother me for days, that’s for sure. It will haunt me and make me think again and again, deeper and deeper about what was the character’s purpose in this book. Why they were exactly where they were, and why did Nick went to Jersey right after his death in the first place. All in all, this indeed was a story that has a deep meaning behind her, that reaches into people’s minds and hearts and certainly stays there for a while, like I’m certain it will stay in mine too.

It is a story that makes us realize things about life, and then ask ourselves if what we believed in up until now is really true. It made me think how sometimes dead people can influence us, like Carrie influenced Nick, and Nick influenced Sophie. It makes me think how, in fact, it isn’t the dead people that influence us, but just us ourselves. When you think about it deeper, you’ll realize we don’t change because someone is influencing, but we change because someone woke up some thoughts in us, and it’s us that realize it all and then change.

Did Sophie kill herself, or they were actually there, because the whole trip was their imagination. Did they influence her, or it was only Sophie herself? I guess I’ll never answer some of those questions, but I still do think sometimes it’s us ourselves that realize some things, even though Nick and Carrie’s deaths had a purpose too. If there wasn’t a Carrie, there wouldn’t be an imaginary trip to Sophie’s hospital. And if there wasn’t a Nick, we’d never realize that she’s a sociopath.

Find out more about this book by clicking the image above or by visiting the author’s website.

Postcards

Summer is here!

I just want to show you the ice-creams I made, and you can all get one if you want with supporting me on my Patreon site! It’s never too late – I start sending them in July! Hurry up. 😀

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Postcards

Do you like ice-cream?

This month I’m announcing the start of summer. In England it doesn’t really seem like summer yet, so I’ll be drawing a lot of ice-creams for you guys.
And the best thing is – you get to color them yourselves!

How cool is that, eh?

You can get one ice-cream card yourself here.

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