I have never watched an episode of “Keeping up with the Kardashians”, so I wasn’t sure of what I would find within the cover of Kris Jenner’s memoir. I really just wanted to read about her relationship with Nicole Brown Simpson (yes, I was being nosy). The memoir starts in her childhood and helping in the family candle store. Ventures into her meeting with Robert Kardashian at the Horse Races, their courtship, then marriage, kids and affairs, divorce and remarriage.

Too be honest with you, I found half of the content of this book unbelievable. I’m not sure if Kris Jenner is a drama queen or wont let the truth get in the way of a good story, but I’m afraid this left me feeling sad for her. Kris Jenner is a self confessed control freak and it is extremely evident that she needs to be each individual child’s (from her womb) manager. Kris needs to make all the arrangements for her kids and husband, needs to know where they are and what they are doing at all times. Bruce Jenner (her husband) doesn’t get a say in most decisions, but seems like a “enjoy the ride” type of bloke. I know the title is …and all things Kardashian but there is NO mention of her step children – Bruce Jenners’ kids in the book. Makes me ask, are they in the show? Why aren’t they in the book? Is she so obsessed with her own flesh and blood that they don’t get a look in? Does Bruce spend time with his kids?

When it came to the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, Kris made out as if they had been BFF’s and that Nicole wanted to show Kris something on the day before her murder. The way it was written, I had my eyebrow raised in doubt so I went to my good friend Google to see if I could find any information on the facts of this.. I came across this:

“Kris Jenner IS pathetic,” Denise Brown, 54, told the National Enquirer in an exclusive interview. In the book, Kris writes that the day after Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman were murdered in June 1994, Denise called her and asked about some photos Nicole kept hidden in a secret safety deposit box. “Nicole had been beaten up by O.J., and she had been keeping this physical proof in the form of photographs and, it would turn out, other evidence, in which she had documented seven years of abuse,” Kris divulged in the book. “Nicole really wanted someone close to her to know what was going on, so that somebody – namely me – could be a witness.” But Denise strongly denies calling Kris, 56, to ask about the photos during those heartbreaking days. “I had just found out my sister was murdered,” Denise recalled. “The last thing on my mind was whether or not Nicole showed anyone any pictures she had in a safety deposit box. In fact, I didn’t even know my sister HAD a safety deposit box with pictures of her abuse until the beginning of O.J.’s trial – months after she was murdered.”

I wouldn’t recommend this book, also since reading I haven’t had any desire to watch any of the shows. I would however, love to hear from you. Do you watch the show? What are your thoughts? Have you read this memoir, did it meet your expectations?

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Review by Sarah-Jayne Baker

Review copy supplied by NetGalley. Thank you very much.
Stephanie and Diana are having a hard time adjusting to life as new stepsisters. The girls “pretend” to like each other, but it’s pretty hard considering they are complete opposites. When their new family takes their first-ever vacation to a horse ranch in North Carolina, not even long horse-back rides in the forest can tame their tempers. Diana’s anger issues and Stephanie’s fear of everything prove disastrous, until Diana discovers the caged wolves in the deep woods. She vows to free them, and surprisingly, Stephanie agrees to help. But their actions have unforeseen consequences, and if there’s any chance to make things right, Stephanie and Diana must put their differences aside.

Sarah-Jayne’s thoughts

Being a teenager is hard at the best of times, especially when you find yourself with a new step-sister. One who is the exact opposite of you. In Summer of the Wolves, Lisa Williams Kline shares with us a beautiful story about two step-sisters who although are so very different, manage to find something in common when they find a cage deep in the woods containing wild wolves. They work together to free them, but now have to deal with the consequences of their actions. Can their new experiences together bring them closer? Is it possible that Stephanie and Diana may become not just step-sisters, but friends also? You’ll have to read Summer of the Wolves to find out.

More about Lisa Williams Kline

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Review by Sarah-Jayne Baker

Review copy supplied by NetGalley. Thank you.
America has enemies — ruthless people that the police, the FBI, even the military can’t stop. That’s when the U.S. government calls on Will Robie, a stone-cold hitman who never questions orders and always nails his target.

But Will Robie may have just made the first — and last — mistake of his career.

It begins with a hit gone wrong. Robie is dispatched to eliminate a target unusually close to home in Washington, D.C. But something about this mission doesn’t seem right to Robbie, and he does the unthinkable. He refuses to kill. Now, Robie becomes a target himself and must escape from his own people.

Fleeing the scene, Robie crosses paths with a wayward teenage girl, a fourteen-year-old runaway from a foster home. But she isn’t an ordinary runaway — her parents were murdered, and her own life is in danger. Against all of his professional habits, Robie rescues her and finds he can’t walk away. He needs to help her.

Even worse, the more Robie learns about the girl, the more he’s convinced she is at the center of a vast cover-up, one that may explain her parents’ deaths and stretch to unimaginable levels of power.

Now, Robie may have to step out of the shadows in order to save this girl’s life . . . and perhaps his own. Read the rest of this entry

Review by Sarah-Jayne Baker

Review copy supplied by NetGalley. Thank you.
Twelve O’Clock Tales is a collection of 13 short stories written by Felice Picano. Each story is very different from the last.

From the publishers Bold Strokes’ website, we are given the following description:

Twelve O’Clock Tales is the fourth collection of short fiction by legendary novelist and memoirist, Felice Picano (The Lure, Like People in History, True Stories). A personal homage to the storytellers of his youth, Edgar Allen Poe, E.F. Benson, and H. P. Lovecraft, as well as his acquaintances, Arthur C. Clarke and Harlan Ellison. Thirteen dark tales, eerie, bizarre, and dreamlike, the tales will thrill and disturb, discomfort and titillate, enthrall and leave you wondering. Picano ranges across time and space, from tribal West Africa to the American heartland, to a lab in Venezuela, and a California Highway fifteen years from now. His characters range from a teen accident survivor with a secret, to a far-future scholar forced to travel to a galactic backwater, to a retired L.A. cop who dabbles in astrology, and a peasant girl in B.C.E. Israel encountering the strangest of strangers. The thirteen tales include brand new stories and acknowledged Picano masterworks collected here for the first time. Read the rest of this entry

Review by Sarah-Jayne Baker

Review copy supplied by NetGalley. Thank you.
Clare Moorhouse, the American wife of a high-ranking diplomat in Paris, is arranging an official dinner crucial to her husband’s career. As she shops for fresh stalks of asparagus and works out the menu and seating arrangements, her day is complicated by the unexpected arrival of her son and a random encounter with a Turkish man, whom she discovers is a suspected terrorist.

The events in this book all take place within a 24 hour period. As there was a (suspected) terrorist mentioned in the blurb, I was expecting this story to be somewhat fast paced with a bit of action, but this wasn’t to be the case. The book is very slow paced with lots of description about the events in Clare’s day.

This is going to be one of those books that you either love or don’t. For me, I didn’t enjoy reading it. I have to admit, I actually skipped a fair bit of this book. The pace is frustratingly slow, and it took me a while to finish because I would read a bit, then get bored and put it down and read another book. If there was one thing I could tell the main character, Clare Moorehouse, it would be to let go of the past. Yes, sometimes things that happened long ago can come back to bite us, but more often than not, we build the events up in our mind to be something that it is not. Clare’s story is one like this.
Give An Unexpected Guest a read. Let me know what you thought.

More about Anne Korkeakivi

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