Lies My Girlfriend Told Me - Julie Anne Peters

Angst. I have a love hate relationship with teen angst. I felt a lot of it in my teens and resented adults who didn't "understand" and now I'm an adult and just think teens should get over it already and hate myself for it. So while the angst expressed in Lies My Girlfriend Told Me made me roll my eyes at the teen characters several times, I also couldn't figure out why the parents were sometimes being real douches.

In the story, Alix wakes up on a Saturday ready to head off snowboarding with her girlfriend, only to be told by her mom that said girlfriend, Swanee, suffered a cardiac arrest while running and has died. Alix is devastated. This was her first real girlfriend, her first love. And she was planning to "go all the way" with Swanee this weekend. Begin eye roll at exclamations of never loving again and wishing she had died with Swanee. Give major eye roll to Mom who doesn't seem to understand that her daughter is genuinely grieving, even if the relationship did only last six weeks.

Well after the weird funeral service put on by Swanee's eccentric but "cool" parents, Alix finds Swan's cell phone in her room and on this cell phone are a lot of texts from "L.T." expressing love and asking where Swan has been. Ruh-roh. Turns out Swan kind of sucked. Watching Alix come to terms with this was probably the most interesting part of the book. Because at first, Alix leads L.T. on in an effort to find out who she is and who she was to Swan.

Turns out, Swanee Durbin gave a fake name (Swanelle Delaney) to another girl in a town not far away complete with a fake facebook account. But this part of the book was a little bit of a stretch for me. LT or Leonna Torres as we come to find out, is an extremely hot cheer leader and has no idea that Swan has died. Oh she saw a report on the news about Swanee Durbin, but even after not hearing from Swan for an entire week, didn't think it could possibly be the same person. Even though Swan won the high school track state championship the year before.

Did I mention Alix and Leonna meet later in the book at a track tournament where Leonna is cheering for her high school and Alix's is competing, meaning wouldn't have Leonna met Swan at some kind of even before? I know I'm reading too much into this part because we're supposed to be focused on the fact that Alix and Leonna fall in LOVE. And then Alix has to admit that she was the one who was texting her as Swan when Leonna didn't know Swan was dead.

Look, I'm happy these two ladies found love in the end. Swan sucked and they deserved it. But the narrative was a little too convenient. As introspective as Alix is, she never quite gets the lesson as deep as you expect. Swanee's parents never made her do laundry or start dinner. Ah gentle reader, this is why Swan sucked. Swanee's parents are in a poly-amorous marriage and this is why she slept around. And yes, I want to be more like Alix's parents even while realizing they are held up as a foil to Swan's parents to explain her suckage. It's probably a little unfair to people in open marriages to assume that is why they raise spoiled unfaithful children.

Anyway, this was a well constructed teen romance with a small mystery with maybe just the right amount of angst on both sides.

3.5/5

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life - Henry Cloud and John Townsend

I struggle with boundaries. There I said it. I'm not sure why except to say that I don't like rocking the boat, and therefore not maintaining boundaries seems like the better option. As I've gotten older I have realized this is not the case. And now that I have kids of my own, the consequences of not setting boundaries is a constant and very annoying reminder.

In Boundaries, Cloud and Townsend, reiterate the importance of boundaries and the far reaching effects of not setting them. While I wholeheartedly agree, I found the book repetitive in parts and long on rhetoric but short on practical application, which is what I was really after in the first place. I didn't need to be sold on the benefits, I needed strategies to implement.

I did really appreciate a couple of beneficial nuggets, including not making my children responsible for my emotional reactions and that we are not meant to overcome problems by our will alone, that's why we have Christ. But I also noted that the biblical references seemed to be shoe-horned in without much thought to nuance and context.

So I had a bit of mixed reaction to reading the book, but overall I thought I benefited from reading it.

3/5 Stars. 

Leadership and Self-Deception - The Arbinger Institute

This book is a must read. It's quick, but not painless. It's simple, but also difficult. Why? Because it forces the reader to ask some tough questions about their relationships and their behavior. While it may look like a business book (and it is), the lessons and implications inside pertain to much more than just work life. 

It's hard to just distill this down and feel like I'm doing the book justice, but essentially, we are either "in the box" or "out of the box" when it comes to dealing with others. When we are in the box we see others as objects and not as people. Once we are in the box, we harbor a lot of self-justifying beliefs in order to remain in the box, which in turn, invites others to be in the box toward us. This ends up creating a pretty bad environment all around. 

So how do we get out of the box? It's simple and it's not. Being out of the box is not a behavior but a state of mind. 

And see this all sounds confusing because you haven't read the book and you don't know what "the box" is. But read the book and you'll figure it out.

5/5 Stars