Caroline Moss

The moment I fell in love with The Toast as my internet home started with the words "Hey Ladies."
The moment that I had second thoughts about going into pediatrics also started with "Hey Ladies!" In fact, in my previous life as a computer scientist, no one would ever have referred to a professional group as "ladies," for gender reasons alone. But, as a senior medical student, all of my peers considering pediatrics were women, as was the altogether too cheery chief resident standing in front of us, gathering our professional attention with her false-friendly greeting: "hey, ladies!"

And, yeah, honestly, I love being a pediatrician, but my professional life is one where gender performance is scrupulously policed, and semi-social professional interactions are full of gender declarations, passive aggressive behavior and subtle status cues. So the way that Markowitz and Moss really capture a way in which women of a certain demographic interact with each other, and the nuance captured in a signature really spoke to me. (Normal conversations I have with my husband include lines like: "We can't hang out with her after she was so mean." Him: "When was she mean?" Me: "In that e-mail you just read? Did you not see her punctuation marks??") And no, it's not me and it's not my day-to-day life, but it completely captures where my professional and social life intersect. Perhaps because I am mostly an outsider, cleverly camouflaged to make my way onto these e-mail threads, I find seeing them exposed, dissected and ultimately lampooned hilarious.

But? I thought the blog entries were funnier. I think the pacing was better spread out over months (I binge read the book in two one hour sittings over two days) and that limiting the e-mails to one year lost some of the nuance that, for instance the Jen/Brad relationship took on in the blogs.… (más)

Work It, Girl: Michelle Obama is one seriously motivational tale that I'd highly recommend for young middle grade and teen readers.

Michelle Obama is a girl's girl. She is seriously cool, wickedly smart and super talented. If there's going to be an inspiring little biography of a woman, she's definitely the woman you'd want to pick! Michelle's story isn't simple and easy, but it shows that hard work can pay off. She went to law school, worked hard, and got things done! At times her life was tough, but she got through it and proved (and still proves) that women are absolutely strong and amazing! Her tale is honestly inspiring.

There's so many incredible pieces of art and so many motivational quotes in this book it's unbelievable. I would have ate this book up as a kid! It's reassuring to know there's some really powerful and strong women that kids can look up to.

The art style really stood out to me. There's lots of colours and a unique cut-out style look. I'm truly impressed by that. It stands out really well. Mix it in with the amazing quotes they outline, and it's perfect.

I can't really see any faults to this book. It is not many pages (under one hundred) but it does have a lot of words. I wouldn't recommend it for very young readers, but middle grade would be the youngest.

I'd highly recommend this book. I honestly think it's fantastic. My socks are blown off! No surprise - Michelle's the boss.

Five out of five stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group - Frances Lincoln Children's Books for this amazing opportunity to review this book.… (más)

Let me say that I am the target audience for this book. I am the exact same age as the character, a newlywed, literally, this book was written for me. And yet, I absolutely, unabashedly hated it with just about every fiber of my book loving soul. The crap these women pulled is akin to that of women in their early 20s. It rang eerily similar to my experiences as a bridesmaid at 21 and 22. And I’m no longer friends with the brides of those weddings because of behaviors they exhibited that were oddly similar to those of the characters in this book. Women approaching 30 don’t have time for that crap in our lives – we cultivated and culled our friend lost years ago to eliminate the toxicity of such relationships. It’s not realistic.

You can tell me I’m not a trustafundarian in NYC but I can promise you my sister-in-law is, as are a decent number of my friends and they would certainly no longer be friends with these women. Not a single one of the characters is sympathetic or relatable to the modern millennial woman. I read the whole book because I was hoping, against hope, that maybe, just maybe, we would see some semblance of character growth, but alas, it was not to be.

Last but not least, I’m personally sick of gimmicky books – books written entirely in Gen Z (not millennial) language makes me a bit nuts. Stop with the overuse of acronyms and short handed language. If someone writes a book about my generation, whether the be members of it or not, I expect some semblance of relatable characters. This book fails on that count.… (más)