In case you haven't heard about this upcoming release in 2019. Keep it on your radar, because I am pretty sure it is going to be the next great thing in happy-making contemporary fiction world. What book is this in case you haven't already seen the cover? It is...

Again, but Better

Release Date: May 21, 2019
416 pages

Shane has been doing college all wrong. Pre-med, stellar grades, and happy parents...sounds ideal -- but Shane's made zero friends, goes home every weekend, and romance...what's that? 

Her life has been dorm, dining hall, class, repeat. Time's a ticking, and she needs a change -- there's nothing like moving to a new country to really mix things up. Shane signs up for a semester abroad in London. She's going to right all her college mistakes: make friends, pursue boys, and find adventure! 

Easier said than done. She is soon faced with the complicated realities of living outside her bubble, and when self-doubt sneaks in, her new life starts to fall apart. 

Shane comes to find that, with the right amount of courage and determination one can conquer anything. Throw in some fate and a touch of magic - the possibilities are endless.

photo by Christine Riccio via Instagram

Beware of pickpockets they say, especially in France. I kept my cross body purse held with my hand tightly to the front of my body each time I walked the streets of Paris alone. Along the Seine was the only place that made me pause now and make me scream at myself to use my head. Still, all I can think of now is that it was a pretty good thing that at the time where I wasn’t using my head as much as I should have, high after spending a good hour or so in Shakespeare and Co., that I spoke terrible French and could understand it even more terribly.

The sun shone down on me as I walked along past street vendors and postcard sellers that sat in fold-able chairs and scrolling on their phones until a customer grabbed something off their cart. As I approached a few more to pass, a woman smiled and came up to me with a clipboard, and I think now, had I been in New York City, would I have paused?

Um, no. Definitely not.

I am the person who drags friends away from the sales people in the mall that try to get you try that new flat iron at their kiosk until you end up buying some sort of hair oil. Yet, I paused as she quickly spoke in French, pushing the clipboard towards me as if to sign a petition of some sort.

“Je…” I didn’t understand her, and held my purse tighter as after that millisecond of pause happened, I took a step or two forward. Keep walking, I needed to keep walking...and yet…



In that moment one of the two older men who were sitting in their chairs next to their carts of postcards and trinkets called out towards me and the woman who was already a few steps behind me, giving up in sort of a huff.

As I passed one of the older men, he ran a hand through his white hair and pointed after her, trying to explain. “Pickpocket,” he said.

Understanding must have shown on my face.

He continued to explain to me in slow French to just keep walking. Those who tried to get one to sign something like that usually would have swiped my purse while my hands were busy.

I nodded a merci and continued on. Thinking back on that moment now though, when I glanced down towards that clipboard that young woman was holding, it had quite a few signatures on it. I wonder how many did not simply keep walking.

A Warm Welcome

I arrived in Paris at the Orly airport to get onto the Orlyval, and then the metro. At one point, unsure if it was my stop I needed to get off at, I asked the woman across from me in the packed train if this would be my stop coming up. With creased eyebrows, she nodded. "Oui."

Getting off the train I looked around. It was most certainly not my stop. It was more certainly, an hour walking from the stop I should have waited to stopped at.

Back into the metro I went, the one ticket man there taking pity on me enough to have me purchase another new ticket to get where I was going.

Where is...Right there? Of course I knew that.

While in the Tuileries Garden walking back from my visit to the Effile Tower, I looked around and finally stopped to ask a girl who had her feet sticking in the fountain along with many others.

"Where is the Louvre?" I asked the line in my practice and re-practiced French.

Still unimpressed, she pointed over my shoulder. The Louvre was right in front of me.

Off to See the Mona Lisa

After finding the Louvre I wandered in through one of the halls and promptly got lost within the Greek marble statues. By the time I figured out how to get out and find the correct entry towards the statue of Nike, and eventually see the crowded room of the Mona Lisa, I was very dehydrated from a day walking in the sun without water. Weaving through the crowd I nearly passed out. Ultimately the six euro bottle of water was purchased.

Let this be a lesson to always stay hydrated, even when attempting to complete a very full itinerary.

Thank You, Highlighter T-Shirt Man

I got on the RER C heading out to Versailles out of the Notre Dame station. After asking multiple people who couldn't understand my terrible French, I ended up hopping on the next train. I sat by the window on the second floor of the train where it was barely even filled. The only others on the train with me were a group of men, scattered through the seats and yelling and loud French to one another. It was the loudness that back in the states I would assume also meant slightly intoxicated, even if it was only about eight in the morning.

I held my bag close and continued looking forward, hoping that I would be able to hear the muffled voice overhead that would tell me that I had made it out of Paris and into the royal city of Versailles. The voice overhead did say something and the last of the people, the men got off the train. Once they got off, they yelled back at me to do the same.

"Last stop. Last stop," they told me in broken English. And here I was hoping that I didn't look like a complete tourist of sorts.

Heart pounding I descending from the train and onto the gray cement platform, looking around where to go next. I was certainly not in Versailles. Asking a young girl waiting for her train, she knew I was supposed to be getting on the two. Where was the two? She could only shrug.

Looking around obviously more confused than I usually would let on, a large man in a bright orange t-shirt looked at me. He had a large gym bag across his chest.

"Tu vas à Versailles?"

"Oui!" I said right away, understanding as he spoke slow. I asked back, "Tu vas à Versailles?"

"Oui," he said. Pointing to the train across from us that people were finishing boarding.

I ran through the little tunnel connecting the two platforms and hopped on the train just before the doors closed. The man did behind me. "Merci." I thanked him. Oh, I still thank him whenever I think about the kindness sometimes we forget in the world around us when there are also scary loud possibly drunk French men also around us.

I See London I See France

As I walked down the street, I stepped over a sort of vent in the ground. The skirt of my purple floral dress flew up in the air, exposing whatever comfortable travel underwear I had packed before I could stop it, a true Marilyn Monroe impression. I yanked it back down to my thighs and walked that way all the way down the block until I was pretty sure whoever saw it happen wouldn't notice my reddening face.

A Fitting Flight Home

I sat in the airport, my head pounding, the back of my neck sweating as if an oncoming migraine believed that the best time to come on was while I was waiting for my last minute flight back from Paris to Marseilles. I continued to wait and want to puke as my flight was delayed...and delayed again...and again. I must have looked pretty bad considering the airport was packed and no one sat next to me while waiting if they could help it.

But I did make it back to my temporary home in Provence.

And now after plenty of these misadventures, I have come to terms more or less of getting lost. If it happens, we are going to get home eventually. Somehow.

With my class after the fantastically wonderful Carrières de Lumières, we made our way up to Baux castle in Les Baux de la Provence.

 This town I can only imagine had to have hosted a medieval film or two in its lifetime.




Then again though, I am not sure if I could have wandered as well through the ruins of the castle and lavender fields in such cumbersome day to day attire.

Ever since I read one of my favorite books, The Hating Game by Sally Thorne, I have been searching for the next romcom to make me excited to read and read and read. Honestly, I figured that I would have to wait until her next book came out, stranded in a reading desert wasteland until then, but then came along The Kiss Quotient.

Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases--a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.

It doesn't help that Stella has Asperger's and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice--with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can't afford to turn down Stella's offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan--from foreplay to more-than-missionary position...

Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but to crave all the other things he's making her feel. Soon, their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic... 

From the first page I started reading one late late night, which was a very bad bad idea, I was hooked. Right off the bat, the characters were so perfect and sweet. Our main character, Stella Lane was perfectly unique and held a voice that I had yet not heard when it comes to a perfect romance such as this as she attempts to teach herself all she needs to know about relationships and sex. Since at age 30, at this point practice is what's going to make perfect, right? Thus, brings in our heroic Michael who also happens to be the occasional escort who is propositioned to help her out.




Of course, these lessons that Stella has in mind aren't all that simple. As they begin, a friendship and love interest quickly forms between the two that felt tangible to my the moment they were introduced, and only increased from there, making me root for Stella and Michael no matter how many cringe filled moments came by. Sometimes so cringey that I had to put the book down and take a deep breath for my secondhand embarrassment to subside.

In the end though, through the cringes and the laughs and all the emotions that brought this book together in a way I absolutely needed in this point and time; this book was about love and acceptance and I loved it.

I cannot wait to see what Helen Hoang writes next. Bring on the romance and the fluff and all the goodness.

...and the sweet Michael Phans of the world.

About the Author

If there is ever a memoir to read, this might be it. For the writing, for the story...I realize now why so many people in school years ago said it was one of the only books they read out of the class library. What I don't understand is, why didn't I?

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever. Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home. 

Maybe it wasn't meant to come into my life until this moment. Maybe a lot of things I suppose, but after reading The Glass Castle, I am so very glad I was able to read this memoir that felt like a sort of real life fairy tale and nightmare all fixed into one big bowl of life.

This book no matter how beautiful though, this book is anything but a simple easy sort of story. Starting within Jeannette's childhood moments from when she was three years old and boiling hot dogs on the stove to staring up at the sky and claiming a star for her own, with the beauty came moments of rage from her drunken father who loved the family none the less and a mother who had the saying that art was worth more time than eating or getting food for the same family.

I breezed page by page of this life set before me in ink, no stopping until I reached the end.



By Jeannette's later childhood, set in Virginia where quite a bit of the book takes place near where the father grew up, along with her brother's and sisters this memoir turns into almost a survival story for a different sort of life not tangled in running from tax collectors and going hungry. Jeannette became determined to stay where she was. Determined to become successful, the kids banned together and forth even more memories and hope of a life they believed they deserved to live. I cheered them on through each step forward and back on their journey to New York City where the story continues on and on...

It is hard I think to review a memoir sometimes when you can or can't relate. It is not your life, but it is a moment to be glad you got a beautifully fractured glimpse into it.

I am glad to have gotten a glimpse into this story.





Recently a film came out based on the book. While I will admit to enjoying the memoir a whole lot better than the film, since I thought they took too romanticizing the life situations a little too much, the trailer is pretty great.