Killing Monica - Candace Bushnell

The lovely people at Hachette NZ sent me another book to delve into, Killing Monica* by Candace Bushnell.  The book is by the same author as Sex and the City as well as the Carrie Diaries so I was excited to see what the book had to offer.

 

Book Summary

The story is kinda similar to Sex and the City in that is focus's on Pandy, a successful author who is living in New York City.  The story delves into her life and her love/hate relationship with Monica, the character she created which has taken over her life.

 

All is not well in Pandy's world however with her ex-husband sinking his teeth into her earnings, her loyal agent Hentry is losing patience and her soul sister, sidekick and saviour - actress SondraBeth Schnowzer who plays Monica - has betrayed her.  It begins to look like the only way out for Pandy is killing Monica - even if it kills her too (Blurb at the back of the book).

 

Review

I read this book over a long period of time so it kind of felt like the story dragged on for a while and only got interesting and also strange at the end.  There are flashback chapters which shows Pandy meeting SondraBeth, their relationship, how it fell apart as well as with her husband.

 

Like I mentioned the last part of the book was strange and it almost felt like a different book. However I did like it as the story picked up and becoming more interesting.  With any story a good one surprises you and I definitely got a surprise at the end in relation to Pandy's mysterious sister. For a while afterwards I was like what? Did that really happen? It also made me want to read the book again with that knowledge.

 

Overall I really enjoyed the book, Pandy was an interesting character. She's a forty something year old writer but at times while reading you could mistake her for a twenty something year old by the way she acts and talks.

 

 

                                                                  *This book was sent to me but the review was all my own opinions

 

Hope you all enjoyed this post xx

Beauty Sale 2015

Hello everyone! This week was the first week of semester two so I am done with my placement, handed in my dissertation draft and my catalogue assignment. Hopefully I can start to make time for the blog as it needs some love.

 

So about a month ago my aunt brought me along to a pretty big cosmetics clearance sale.  She took me to the same one pretty much the same day a year ago which I blogged about here.

 

 

As you can see I pretty much got the exact same things I bought last year.  This time however I knew how amazing the Elizabeth Arden Makeup Remover is so I bought two bottles which were only $10 each.  One is already open because I couldn't just not wear mascara.

 

I kinda described the scents of the perfumes in last year's post so check that out; I pretty much copied and pasted the 'official' description. I'm horrible at describing scents, all I know is that they smell amazing.

 

I also bought a bigger bottle of the Juicy Couture for my Mum as it's her favourite perfume and she ran out.

 

Hope you all enjoyed this post! xx

 

P.S: Why has it taken me so long to think of using my bookshelf as a photography set for blog photos.  The idea pretty much occurred to me last night.

Life Update

Sooo I haven't been blogging, sorry. I kind of underestimated 1. How much 60hrs is, which is the amount of time I have to do for my placement and 2. How I'm a serial procrastinator and basically didn't do any work on my dissertation for the first half of the break.  I'm really bad at this.

I thought I would do a little life update post as it's something different and someone might find it interesting.

As I mentioned I'm doing a placement as part of my course throughout the semester break.  I am a 'Heritage & Research intern' at the Auckland Central Library and I've really been enjoying it.

As part of the placement I've been writing blog posts and editing Wikipedia pages.  With the Wikipedia pages I have just been copying information from previous blog posts on the Library's blog and adding it in and linking back to the library.  The blog posts are really interesting, I blog about items in the Sir George Grey Special Collections. There are a lot of cool stuff in there that you can look at.  I've done two blog posts; one on the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the Rossdhu Book of Hours.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica 

 



It was amazing to physically see and handle these books.  The library has a first edition of 'Through the Looking Glass and what Alice saw there' as well as a copy of the original story before it became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

 

Looking at the Rossdhu Book of Hours was really amazing. I had studied Books of Hours at uni and to actually see a book from the 15th century with my own eyes was surreal.  The books typically have actual gold leaf to decorate the pages which makes them sparkle in the light. 

 

So along with that I'm trying to get myself to write the draft of my dissertation. It's not going well, procrastination is something I can't fight *sigh*.  I also have a catalogue assignment to do as well and there's so much reading. I actually can't wait for the start of semester when I can be done with it.

 

Hope you all enjoyed this post! xx

Makeup.co.nz #002

So I think blogging will only be once a week kinda thing for a while.  During the semester break I'm doing a placement for one of my papers and I have to do 60 hrs.  So I'm going in three times a week and the rest of the time is made up of me combating procrastination and trying to get my dissertation done (the draft is due at the end of break eeeeek). So yeah that's pretty much my life these days.

 

I do however always seem to make time for some online shopping. When I saw Makeup.co.nz had free shipping on all orders I had to have a look. Never one to turn down a great shopping opportunity I found a couple of things and made my way through checkout.

 

 

As you can see my love for anything red or berry coloured is still strong and I got these two.

 

Maybelline Colour Drama Intense Velvet Lip Pencil

I've been hearing many people rave about these pencils so I headed straight for the Maybelline section.  The colour is in 510 Red Essential (of course) and oh my god it's amazing.  It's like a lipstick but it's a pencil which kinda blows my mind.  First of all it smells amazing, like lollies, part of why I love it is because of that.  With it being a pencil you would expect to be quite drying but it's actually very moisturising. It goes on easy and doesn't dry on your lips which is a major plus for me.

 

Australis Velourlips

I've been wanting one of these for ages so I had to pick one up.  The colour is in Doo-Bai and is a dark berry shade which I love.  It's very similar to the Lime Crime Velvetines in that it dries instantly when you apply it.  It's great in that it doesn't smudge and lasts pretty long.  I also love the applicator as well, it's easy to outline your lips and then just fill them in.

 

Australis on the left and Maybelline on the right

 

One thing I've noticed with the swatches is that while Velourlips dries instantly the Maybelline Lip Pencil doesn't. Like I said it's very moisturising and at the moment it has smudged off my hand while the Velourlips has stayed put.

 

Hope you all enjoyed this post! Makeup.co.nz also now have the Jeffree Star Liquid Lipsticks which I have also heard are amazing so maybe that will be my next haul.