Book Review: Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult

I have never read a Jodi Picoult book before. I saw My Sister's Keeper in theaters shortly after losing my Big sister to cancer in college. It destroyed me, so I pretty much never wanted to deal with anything Picoult ever again.Then, I had a lot of them donated to my classroom and since I like to read books before I give them out so I can talk to kids about them, I picked up Harvesting the Heart for fun over spring break.

This was Picoult's second novel and it told the story of a creative young woman who falls into love at an early age and finds herself a reluctant mother. Overall, it's very much a coming of age story, but it also delves into women's issues like abortion and young motherhood. I liked how the story flipped between Paige's and Nicholas's perspectives to show the all-around version of the same story.

It was a relatively quick read that I finished it in two days while I was on vacation. I appreciated it for encompassing so much in only 460 pages. From Paige's turmoil in her first love relationship, her subsequent abortion and the story of unyielding love she found with her heart surgeon husband and their son. You saw this character grow up as the novel progressed and in it heal not only herself, her relationship with her mother, but also her father and her parent's own relationship with each other.

The novel was written in 1993, so it was also nice to read a more modern book without all of the complications of cell phones and facebook.

Final score: 4/5 stars
Book Information: Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult with ISBN 0140230270 was originally published by Penguin Books on April 1, 1995.

Our 2nd Anniversary & the Power of the Universe

I had this dream the other night about Bad Love. Up until that point, I couldn't even tell you the last time I had thought about him let alone had a dream about him. It was very strange. We met at what I think was a cafe and he sat in front of me and told me how he wanted to make it work out. All I kept saying was, "what about Phil?" He eventually starts getting frustrated with this answer and stops talking. It's one of those heavy, awkward silences that's almost painful. I get his attention again and I go, "You know what? I don't need you anymore."

And just like that, he got up and left. Then, I woke up.

"Been around the world so many times,I'm of the air, I'm of the sky. I wonder what my feet need the ground for, no one sing lullabies no more."

Fast forward to last night when my friend Catie and I were working on editing my latest manuscript because I promised myself that this was the year I was going to publish as much as I could. It's another manuscript that I had written and worked on and off on for several years...I would just always get nervous having people read my stuff. Which is really stupid when I think about how much of my stuff is out there for people to read. Anyway, this leads to discussion of Bad Love and the dream I had.

And then...it happened. When Bad Love and I were dating, he drew a picture of the Eiffel Tower for me. I so loved it. It was beautiful and it was my favorite place-- PARIS! It was the one thing I kept from that relationship over the years. It lived in a book case and it matched two more drawings I had acquired from a thrift store of the Arc de Triomphe and Sacre Coeur. Phil came into the room holding the broken frame and apologizing that it was the strangest thing, it just toppled out of and off the bookcase, breaking into four different pieces. Every other picture that's in there is still there, including the one that was in front of the drawing. Phil also had no idea what I was talking about to Catie at that moment because we were facebook messaging.

How creepy is that? The universe is very clearly wrapping up a brief chapter of my life that I turned into an extremely long chapter by using Bad Love as an excuse to date tool bag wannabe band boys.

Today also marks the two year anniversary of when Phil and I sat in an Applebee's drinking and eating hamburgers and playing never have I ever with a napkin. We were "official" by the end of that date and I think that was really only our 3rd or 4th date overall. We pretty much met and that was it, the rest were just formalities. Two years later, having backpacked across Europe together, gone to Disney World, adopted a dog and bought a house-- I can say that we have definitely been busy :0).

We spent the day today shoveling out from the monster blizzard we had and recuperating. I actually took a nap today that how run down and tired I feel with all that's going on. I'm thankful to have a snow day tomorrow and I'm also thankful that I got to be snowed in on my anniversary with the man I love, our dopey dog and our silly cats. It was definitely one of those super awesome weekends where you didn't have much of anything to do and you just got to be with your person.

Getting to watch Molly almost somersault backwards because she got stuck in a snow drift on our deck was also pretty priceless.  

Coming January 22, 2016

In these last ten years in Boston, Lorelei Winston has achieved everything she ever wanted, and has finally left the past behind. With a fabulous apartment, a well-known fiancé, and a successful art career, the last thing on her mind is a return to her hometown. Then comes the phone call that changes everything. Lorelei's childhood friend, Cole, has killed himself, and his family asks her to return for his funeral. As Lorelei makes her way to New Jersey, Cole begins to appear to her, describing the last decade of his life. Is it all in her mind? Or is it something supernatural-- and perhaps even sinister?

 

The reason why I haven't been posting and why I still owe Disney World an entire post, is this. It comes out in two weeks. I can't tell you how I have wrote, re-wrote, questioned...all of it...so much. The end result may be a little dramatic and my main lady really does go through a lot, but I think it will be appreciated for the chick litty, dark romance that it is. 

 

That said, any book blogs want a review copy? E-mail me if you'd like a copy to review: katherine [at] katherinekb [dot] com  .

Every Girl & Her 3 Big Loves

There's this theory that every woman has three big loves of her life. This theory was largely perpetuated by one of my all time favorite shows, Sex and the City, wherein Charlotte inadvertently insults Carrie by saying every woman gets three. Carrie then takes it the wrong way when she realizes that that would mean she was done and at the time single.

I was reminded of that episode today. For some reason, perhaps it's the change of the seasons or all the change that's happening in my life right now, but today, two people closest to me where bringing up the big loves of my life. Note: This means I've had my big three (maybe three and a half).

And at almost 30, about to move in with my longterm boyfriend into the house we just bought, I am okay with that. However, it did get me thinking and it reminded me how each woman in my life had picked a different love for me to wind up with.

Christmas 2014.

There was my high school into college sweetheart who was my first everything. We drifted apart our senior year of college for a variety of reasons, but I think the big one was that he is very happy living a life in the town that he grew up in and I have always had my sights set on bigger things. That year, I had lived abroad for the first time and my wanderlust thirst was only beginning. We're still friends and talk on occasion. Most importantly, we're both happy too. My dad always thought that this love would be the one I married.

Then came the big one, my first relationship after my high school sweetheart. I was just out of college and trying to figure myself out. I hadn't found a job yet. He was four years older and the exact opposite of my ex-boyfriend. He knew how to woo a girl-- flowers, phone calls until all hours of the night, cute little things...it didn't take long for me to fall hard. And then, for it to all fall apart rather quickly. We were young. He still had a lot of jerky boy crap to go through and he had to live out his college days. It was devastating though and it hurt me for a long time. This love plunged me into moving around, taking big risks, dating really stupid guys and just not caring. Years later, we would try to be friends but somewhere in him saying something stupid to me on Facebook and then asking me for advice about a girl he was dating....it just didn't last long. Before it got to that point though, my mom thought that this was the love that I would marry.

Now here's the half. And no, no one thought I would marry this one. This was the broken guy, the emotionally unavailable guy that liked having me around, but God forbid he ever commit and seriously, how dare I even think about dating other men. Being with him was like a drug and it became a really bad addiction. The drama and the constant up and down with him was at times exhilarating especially when there were times where I felt like I "won." Won what, I am not sure, but at the time if something went my way or filled a want, then I had won and it made me want to keep going. When he did finally half-ass commit, it was short lived. I had a date set that I was going to dump him, he beat me to it though and for some reason that hurt more than anything else he had done. Later on, we tried the friendship thing. Also, short lived. I call this my half because looking back now, I think I was more addicted to the chase of it than I was in love with this person. He was pretty crappy to me...a lot...but it was really like a drug. One that I was happy to finally have kicked and after him? Well, I called every guy out on their bs the moment I found it in dating. No one thought this was the love I would marry, but this was the love that changed me and made me harder to get.

Which leads me to Phil, my last love. The kind of love that wrote me a poem on our third date, and came with me on my grand European backpacking tour, who brings me diet soda and rubs my feet (with lotion) and tucks me int bed at night. The kind of love that washes my hair and brings me flowers because it's Thursday and he wanted to. The kind of love that makes up the worst songs and sings them to me when we cuddle. The kind of love that I can see being the father of my children and growing old with him. The kind of love that lets me be myself, even if that means I make ASMR videos on school vacations just for fun. The kind of love that I know I'll marry. 

Grief, Not Guilt by Jeanann Verlee

I wish you a tongue scalded by tea.
A hangover. Burnt toast. Stubbed toes. A lost job.
I wish you weeping in the shower. Salt in the sugar bowl.
A wishlist of sorrows. Grief, not guilt.
"Hole in your favorite coat. Stain on the good suit.
Arthritis for your joints. A broken guitar string at every show.
I wish each breath a little harder. Each workday
an hour longer. I wish your heart a thousand breaks.
All your sports teams, bottom rank. I wish your friends
go quiet. The leaves brown above your head.
A thunderstorm every morning. Nothing but pearls
when you shop for her diamond. I wish you bad knees,
a sore back. Empty sheets. A ghost to haunt your house.
A tub brimming with mud. Closet stuffed with too-small shoes.
Flat beer. Sour milk. Weak coffee. I wish you
flat tires, soggy pasta, a tax audit to fail.
Bent forks, dull knives. A hangnail for every finger.
I wish you a room wallpapered with my photographs.
A chamber filled with empty bassinets."

Pretty much, pretty much. 

The Search for Mr. Fabulous: What I Don't Get About Guys

And probably never will, but it just gets me.

I had a friend that has her own band boy. When she talks about it I just go UGH can't they both just become BFF, form a jerk club and run off into the sunset together? All the while vowing to never again try to date another girl because they're just going to do the same to her.

It won't happen, but one can dream.

So, the thing that gets me and I will never understand? Ok. Ready? Ready.

I will never understand the kind of guys that play a big game. I mean the type that say that they want a relationship with you, tell you that they love you and that they want to have a life with you, but then one day, usually very soon after they profess all that go, oh wait, never mind, he no longer has those feelings, but I still want to talk to you everyday and be your BFF because I do love you.

Wait. What?

I've had it happen to me twice. The first was Matt, my first real "adult" relationship after college. He literally called me up one day after our first strained part of our relationship and goes, "I thought I love you, but I don't. It stopped growing."

My response? "Well, then this is done." Followed by a long bloated silence. To which I finally say, "hello?"

"I can't believe you just said that to me," he responds.

Er. Didn't you just after a year of dating me  and talks of me moving and taking a new job and you wanting to live together CALL ME to tell me that you didn't love me? "What do you expect? I'm done with this game."

"Well can't we still be friends?! I want to talk to you! I have to talk to you!"

"No." Click.

And I hang up. And I mourn for a long time because he was the first person that really broke my heart and my trust in people. I didn't talk to him for three years and even then that "friendship" lasted a summer, if that because he couldn't take responsibility for what he had done. He admitted it was a screwed up thing, but never said it was him or his fault or that he shouldn't have played the love game if that wasn't what he felt. He had started all of that talk, not me and I felt like if you don't feel that way then don't say it because it builds up the other person, it helps build up their feelings and their hopes and its just cruel because eventually you're going to leave them, so why make them think that they are loved and that you won't?

Four years later, band boy enters my life and we share a lot. Like pretty much every dirty detail of, everything. I open up about this whole thing that happened with Matt. And he tells me how cruel that is and how it was done to him too.

And a year later? Turns around and does the same exact thing. In a text message. And then wants to be friends and BFF and text me all day long and call me as if everything that happened didn't and like it was all okay. Like he did nothing wrong.

Gets me because guys like that really think they did nothing wrong and in turn try to manipulate me into feeling bad because to them *I'M* the one making them the "bad guy," but the reality is they are the bad guy. They were selfish, careless and totally disregarded how their actions were going to make you feel. And just thought that it was all okay because in the end they didn't get hurt and could walk away without a thought in the world. That "we just dated and it didn't work." Really, dude?

I can be friends with people I have "just dated" and even ones I had relationships with that didn't work out. My high school sweetheart and I would have been together 10 years yesterday. We reminded each other of it like we always do, talked and wished each other well deciding that since I was spending it doing work for my masters and he was going to a music fest that it was pretty much on point of how it should be.

That's one thing I admire about my relationship with him. Neither one of us ever took our love away or demeaned the other's feelings or thoughts or the promises we made, but after years of trying, realized it just wasn't it for either of us and found a lifelong friendship instead.

Because when you truly do love someone, it doesn't go away, but sometimes it just evolves into something else all together. But to demean someone, their value or their feelings or to lie to them and play them and then act like its no biggie is just so...you know what? It's so Don Draper.

And really, who wants to be in love with friends with Don Draper?

The Search for Mr. Fabulous: A Generation of Women That "Wait"

Following my breakup which was really a year in the making, probably from the point that I had first met him, my girlfriends and family had all rallied around me. And I needed that. When I had been in that "relationship," I pretty much got alienated from my life and usually your boyfriend fills in those spots for the friends that don't want to stick around, don't like who you're with or who are just off doing their thing while you do yours, but mine never did. He stayed distant and separate all the time.

And my friends picked up on that and I tried to hide it because I didn't want my friends to not like him, but it's sort of a hard thing to hide when people ask you to do things at times that they expect you to you know, be with your boyfriend and you're only all too happy to accept. Or, you call them when you had plans with your boyfriend to then make plans with them because you got cancelled on again and well, sitting home stewing is just not time you want to waste.

I had become one of those women that waits - waits for it to get better, wait for them to get better, wait for them to realize...

During the first few months oh did I vent. I let it all out because I had been holding everything in for so long. I dwelled heavily on how he always treated me like an option not a priority and then when I got to the breakup part of my never ending band boy novel, I just unloaded about how nasty he became when I didn't want to do his "let's take a break, but still be BFF and it's all good."

No, thanks.

Then my friends I guess in a way to make me feel better over the saga that I had lived in, in the land of the gray band boy area for a year, would then tell me about someone they knew. Another friend or a friend of a friend or whatever.

"He sounds very immature, and seriously needs to grow up, but maybe that just means you're not meant to be together now, but one day when he's ready, you will be!"

Face. Palm. "Oh...you mean when he realizes?"

"No really, I have this friend and she dated this guy and he jerked her around for weeks, months, years, etc., but then one day he realized!"

"Oh so he made a commitment to her? They're planning to get married?"

"Well...no, but they're moving in together! And she's leaving her life, job, friends, etc. and she's just so happy."

Really? How is that any different? You're going to sell yourself out after however long he jerked you around to then have the pleasure of having his name on a lease with you? A lease. You are giving up everything...for a lease.

Since when did the lease become some big commitment? A lease is nothing. It's a piece of paper carrying bigger consequences for when he once again gets scared/decides it's not what he really wants/decides to play the jerk around game again. I don't get it. If you want a wife, make a commitment. This whole thing of my generation where it's you date for a period of time and then move in together before getting married is just stupid to me. You know if you want a life with someone and you figure that out pretty quickly, why do you need to play house as some "big step" towards an actual commitment? If you want to live with it, ya gotta put a ring on it.

And for what? Just to have your time waste when you could be out there single, enjoying your life your way and setting yourself up to meet the person that is not going to jerk you around or treat you any less than you deserve!

So ladies, you ready? STOP WAITING! Ditch that loser who does not realize the fabulousness that is you. And move on because the guy that will marry you, who will make a real, honest commitment to you is not the guy that strung you along for months, a year, years, etc. but will from the moment that meets you treat you with the respect and dignity that your feelings deserve.