Got a secret…

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I have a confession to make.

Despite what some might call better judgement, and despite being almost 30 years old, I am pretty much obsessed with Pretty Little Liars.

There’s something about ABC Family shows. I always assume they will be silly and poorly acted and kind of stupid (Secret Life of the American Teenager, anyone?), but there are some seriously underrated gems. Luckily I am finally getting with the program(s).

During the first couple seasons, I saw more than a few ads for Pretty Little Liars and rolled my eyes and vaguely wondered how many secrets a sixteen year old could possibly have. But I finally decided to give it a chance, binge-watched two seasons in a week, and never looked back. It is so, so good. Like should be guilty pleasure good but is actually smart and well-acted so I don’t even feel bad spending so much time obsessively watching teenagers run amock.

If you haven’t seen the show at all, here’s the gist: Alison was a fifteen year old mean girl who went missing for a year. Her four closest friends have more than a few skeletons in each of their closets that only Alison knew about, and while they miss her, they’re also semi-relieved that she can’t work her mean girl blackmailing magic on them anymore. Which is why they are pretty alarmed when they each begin to receive text messages from a mysterious “A” threatening to tell all. They assume it’s Alison (because really, it’s one of the nicer things she would do), until her body is discovered. Then the messages only get worse. It’s been four seasons of lying, secrets, betrayals, and general mayhem as the girls try to figure out who A is and why he/she/they? is making their lives a living hell.

It’s seriously delightful.

Season 5 premieres tonight, and the story lines are bound to be more nonsensical and insane than ever. But man, is this show fun. A huge, huge part of the fun is following alone with the #booradleyvancullen live tweeting during each new episode. I’m not alone in this sentiment:

But my absolute favorite part of the Pretty Little Liars experience is reading the recap on After Ellen the day after a new episode airs. I briefly considered attempting to write my own recaps, but really, what’s the point? Heather Hogan is perfection. I have forbidden myself from reading them at work because of how hard they make me laugh out loud.

I know I’m probably too old to be this excited for a show about teenagers. Luckily I’m also too old to care. YOLO!

New episodes are on ABC Family on Tuesdays and you can find all four previous seasons on Netflix.

Movie Review: Short Term 12

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Short Term 12 is a film about an halfway house for troubled teens and the workers who care for them. The main protagonist is Grace, who manages day-to-day life at the facility.  At the beginning of the film, she tells a newly hired supervisor that their job is not to be a surrogate parent or friend, but to make sure that they provide a safe environment. But we see that Grace is something of a surrogate parent, friend and adviser to these kids. She can’t help it. And she’s damn good at it. We slowly learn that a big part of why she cares so much about these kids is because of her own painful history, and we realize the sad irony is that she’s so good at caring for them but pretty bad at taking care of herself and her own issues.

Grace has a boyfriend who also works at Short Term 12 and loves her unconditionally. (At one point she asks him why he is so nice to her and he tells her, “Well, it’s easy. It’s because you are the weirdest, most beautiful person that I’ve ever met in my whole entire life.” Swoon!) But he has a hard time understanding her demons and why she can’t take her own advice that she gives to the kids every day. Grace, along with other characters in the film, show us that love, both the giving and receiving of it, is not what we often think of it as. Love is something we learn, something we must practice, and love can be hard work. Self-love can be the hardest work there is. And when the people who are supposed to love you the most without question let you down or hurt you, you’re already starting from behind.

To miss the fundamental love that a child should be able to expect can sometimes mean never understanding what love really is; what it can do and how it can heal. Providing a safe environment for these kids doesn’t just mean ensuring that their basic needs for survival are met and that they can’t physically harm themselves or each other. The underlying service that Grace and the other workers provide is the kind of nurturing love that these kids have been missing.

We see this lesson in the story of Marcus, who is about to turn 18 and therefore must leave Short Term 12. He’s melancholy and apprehensive about it, and the rap he performs in the video below displays the pain he feels toward his mother and the residual affects of “living a life not knowing what a normal life’s like.”

And it’s shown again when the troubled Jayden, who reminds Grace of herself, tells a children’s story she created about an octopus and a shark that is basically a much darker telling of The Giving Tree. 

So many parts of this movie were devastatingly sad, yet it managed to keep from veering off into a depressing viewing experience. Which is pretty impressive if you consider the subject matter.

I cannot recommend this movie enough. I think it might easily be the best movie I watch this year. It’s currently available on Netflix instant.

Link Love

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Here are my favorite things I found around the internet this week:

  • I really related to this short article about parasocial interactions. It reminded me of my favorite quote from the Harry Potter series: “of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry, but why should that mean it isn’t real?”
  • This is a though-provoking video. Without even getting into the ethics of the food industry, as a recent marketing grad, I’ve never been more aware of my own reactions as I walk through a store or see an advertisement and realize how susceptible I am to tricks and techniques. It’s really obvious advice, but everyone should read labels, but then do research on products you buy (especially regularly), and use your head.
  • It’s probably weird that I had almost the exact same reaction as this little girl when we got our sweet Canelo last year.
  • Linda Holmes (of one of my favorite podcasts, Pop Culture Happy Hour) wrote a sweet piece on “Book Girls.”
  • Like many, Stephen Colbert is not exactly thrilled with Amazon these days.
  • This is a pretty great roundup of book lists if you’re looking for something to read this summer.

Happy perusing and happy weekend!

Book Review: Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

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I’ve been meaning to pick up Reconstructing Amelia since last year when everyone was calling it “the next Gone Girl.”  And while it certainly kept me on my toes and was as hard to put down as Gone Girl, I didn’t find any other similarities between the two. Plus, I completely agree with the general consensus that the ending to Gone Girl is THE WORST. And the ending to Reconstructing Amelia is only kind of disappointing.

But I’m already ahead of myself.

Here’s the description from the publisher:

A stunning debut novel in which a single mother reconstructs her teenaged daughter’s life, sifting through her emails, texts, and social media to piece together the shocking truth about the last days of her life.

Litigation lawyer and harried single mother Kate Baron is stunned when her daughter’s exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn, calls with disturbing news: her intelligent, high-achieving fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, has been caught cheating.

Kate can’t believe that Amelia, an ambitious, levelheaded girl who’s never been in trouble would do something like that. But by the time she arrives at Grace Hall, Kate’s faced with far more devastating news. Amelia is dead.

Seemingly unable to cope with what she’d done, a despondent Amelia has jumped from the school’s roof in an act of “spontaneous” suicide. At least that’s the story Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. And overwhelmed as she is by her own guilt and shattered by grief, it is the story that Kate believes until she gets the anonymous text:

She didn’t jump.

Sifting through Amelia’s emails, text messages, social media postings, and cell phone logs, Kate is determined to learn the heartbreaking truth about why Amelia was on Grace Hall’s roof that day-and why she died.

Told in alternating voices, Reconstructing Amelia is a story of secrets and lies, of love and betrayal, of trusted friends and vicious bullies. It’s about how well a parent ever really knows a child and how far one mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she could not save.

It was interesting to read this book after reading another Gillian Flynn book, Dark Places and while I still had Dare Me in the forefront of my mind. I was reminded of how much I sometimes like to read books that have similar plots one right after another. I liked Reconstrucing Ameila more than the other two though. I liked the characters, I cared about what really happened to Amelia, I sympathized with Kate, and for the most part, the plot kept me guessing. It became more and more predictable as the story went on and as I mentioned above, I was a little disappointed with the ending.

But overall, I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it. I would even recommend reading all three books in succession and toss in a viewing of Megan is Missing if you’d like to become 100% convinced that Megan Abbott was spot on when she wrote that “there’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.”

And with that delightful recommendation, I’d also suggest that you end that experience with Fangirl to remind yourself that it gets better.

Summertime To Do’s

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At the beginning of each season, I make a game plan of everything I want to do. I personally love a mixture of traditions and new experiences. And for summer, I have a tendency to overload myself with plans, lists, filled-up queues and stacks of to-do items. If I could have one wish granted, I think it would be about ten more hours in each day that I can devote to whatever I’d like, namely my Netflix queue, Feedly reader and TBR list. Alas, I usually find that my ambitions far exceed my talent when it comes to getting everything read and watched.

I blame that pesky 40 hour workweek.

June marks the beginning of summer, and I already have my summer reading list and more than 20 books checked out from the library. Now, I read often and I read pretty fast. But the reasonable part of my brain knows that it’s unlikely that I will return all of them read in three weeks time. It’s far more likely that I will renew until I can’t anymore, yet continue to add holds until I’m finally, FINALLY cut off. I don’t even know if the library cuts anyone off for unreasonable holds and repeated renewals, but I’m sure I can inspire them to try.

Still, a stack of books, a list of movies and TV seasons to binge on, longer daylight hours, a hammock to lounge in, and impending beach trips all make me so happy that I don’t even really care if I get through everything on my lists. The beautiful paradox of summer is that even though you know it will come to an end, it still seems so limitless.

So, here’s to time spent productively, however you see fit.

Here’s to a happy summer!