2017 - Maegan Mariee | Thoughts & Lifestyle

beauty

Rimmel London STAY MATTE Primer | Review

8/12/2017
By Maegan Mariee
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lifestyle

Write Now.

8/07/2017
By Maegan Mariee
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beauty

Zoella Beauty | Jelly and Gelato

7/25/2017
By Maegan Mariee
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books

Blogger's Note: Hi guys! This is my first official ARC review. Which means I was sent an advanced, lightly edited copy of this book by the publisher. I'm going to be posting my review on Netgalley and Goodreads, but they will be edited for language. If you're reading my review here, please note that I use... excessive profanity.

Anyway, let's get on with this review.

What if you could wish for anything - and get it?

That is precisely what happens to this small town in the Mojave Desert. It is a secret only to their town of Madison, no one in the 'outside world' knows of this special little quirk you get for living here. Can I move there?

Also, I would 10,000% wish for money. Get out. Don't act like you wouldn't even consider it. At least financial stability, let's be real.

I noticed in the first couple of chapters, that our main character Eldon, is a giant prick. If he's not angst-ing away over his wish, which is 95% of the book, he's being a jerk to other people over their own wishes. Plus there's this whole thing of being a twat to his ex and some girl who doesn't even like him, though he's so egotistical that he believes she does. He whines over his loss in popularity, (other people have wished to be popular, so someone has to go down, naturally), he's mean to what friends he does seem to have, has very little thought to strangers just passing through the town, and he just generally has a bad friggen mindset.

The only thing that could possibly save him as a character is his grief over his sister, who suffered a tragic accident. But throughout the book, Eldon DOES NOT change. Let me say this again, THERE IS NO CHARACTER GROWTH. He has some serious issues, knows about them, but does nothing to try and fix them.

A lot of the characters that have been placed in this town are all kind of jerky, now that I think back on it. They are all so obsessed with wishes that it seems to have consumed them. The only character that I think has any type of interest for me is Norie, whose wish it is to never be able to return to Madison once she leaves after graduation. She wants to make something of herself in the world outside of their small town and not come back with her head hung low. I can see why. People claim to hate the town and want to leave, but they just make their wish, have a family, and the cycle starts all over again.

I feel particularly bad for Eldon's father, Harmon. He was wished into the life he has now because of his wife, who wished for him to love her. Forever. Not only did she completely manipulate his free will, she eventually fell out of love with him, as you do. But he can never fall out of love with her. I'll give her credit, she hasn't divorced him and is living with her punishment of being in a relationship she no longer wants to be in. And I think it only fair that she's miserable after what she did. But it's definitely hard to read the scenes between the two, because he only wants to make her happy and she wants nothing to do with him.

A scene that pissed me off in this book, so much so that I RED FLAGGED the fucker. It's the first 'official' time we see Eldon and Merrill go to the hot springs, which is the hot spot for all the teens to hang out, apparently. Which I think is kind of ridiculous since one of the only ways to get there is to rope climb up a friggen cliff. Anyway, so they're there, walking around and greeting people. When Penelope comes over, (a rather sweet character that we do meet early on), and greets Eldon, super drunk. It's at this point Eldon looks to Merrill and basically says with a look, I could so score with her right now. BECAUSE SHE'S DRUNK. Fuck you.

A little nitpicky thing that I have with the writing... well, maybe not so much the writing, but there's this one phrase that the author uses a lot that just irritates me. She writes a sentence just like this and adds yeah? at the end of it. This might be overkill, but I'm going to share with you JUST HOW MUCH SHE DOES THIS.

Examples;
Chapter 1: No one likes being bored, yeah?
Chapter 2: ...and be done with it, yeah?
Chapter 4: ...it's not just her looks, yeah?
Chapter 5: ...more beautiful always comes along, yeah?
Chapter 6: ...if it was only football, yeah?
Chapter 8: ...saying he's a serial killer, yeah?
Chapter 8: -brain-eating parasites, yeah?
Chapter 14: ...be a pretty open-minded place, yeah?
Chapter 15: The wishes are listed, yeah?
Chapter 16: That should make me happy, yeah?
Chapter 16: I'm a dick, yeah?
Chapter 17: ...have a sense of foreboding, yeah?
Chapter 17: I guess it's morbid, yeah?
Chapter 19: ...doesn't have that much power, yeah?
Chapter 20: ...can't help but admire that, yeah?
Chapter 21: ...amount to more than that, yeah?
Chapter 23: But I'm pretty shaken up, yeah?
Chapter 25: ...that big of a deal, yeah?
Chapter 27: ...is a lot more appealing, yeah?
Chapter 27: Talk can be therapeutic, yeah?
Chapter 28: ...me into the wish cave, yeah?
Chapter 28: ...seem like a brilliant idea, yeah?
Chapter 30: It happens, yeah?
Chapter 32: ...can't help but run wild, yeah?
Chapter 32: It's all very dramatic, yeah?
Chapter 39: ...loves getting their ass kicked, yeah?

The word 'yeah' is probably used about 100+ times in this book. Now that's overkill.

Side Note; I do actually really like the premise of this book. Make a wish just because you live in this small town? Yes, please! There is so much potential with this kind of plot, and sadly, we don't see it executed in the best way possible. IMO. Also, with a title such as this, I was a little disappointed that there wasn't even one single hint at the Princess Bride. No character named Westley... missed opportunity!

As You Wish by Chelsea Sedoti will be published in January 2018.

♥

books

Something About Books | Currently Reading

7/06/2017
By Maegan Mariee
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Hello Lovelies!

It's been a while since I properly sat down and went through my current reads. Or at least it feels that way. I've upped the count on my reading goal for the year, so I've been spending as much spare time as I can reading.

One book series that I really want to talk about with you is the Matthew Shardlake mysteries. It's based in, what else, Tudor England. Henry's reign, to be precise. I found this series on a whim and while I can't say I was ever really into murder mysteries before, these sucked me right in. And the best thing about it is that the series was completed so I didn't have to wait around for new additions to come out!

I recently just finished the fourth installation, Revelation. It's set in 1543, while Henry is preparing to woo and marry his last wife, Catherine Parr. Our main character though, Matthew Shardlake, is working on a case about a teenage boy who seems to have lost his mind. In the middle of all of this, a good friend of his is horrifically murdered, and the murder is involved in a series of murders that Archbishop Cranmer is trying to solve before the King gets word of it. So everything is very hush, hush. This was bigger than the previous books, but there was also a lot of twists and turns, all very exciting.

I'm just now getting into the fifth book, Heartstone. This one is set in 1545, while Henry is at war with France. This next mystery will pull him back into the political world at court, a place that he really doesn't like.

I also delved into some biographies. Both on Mary Boleyn. There is so much I could tell you about Anne, but I couldn't really even skim the surface with Mary. As it turns out, there isn't much to tell, as she seemed to live as far away from her sister as possible. There were a lot of issues that Mary went through, both with her family and the Crown. Though we can all say that she was the luckiest of the sisters, since she was able to keep her head. If you're interested, I've linked all the books below on Goodreads, so you can take a look.

Mary Boleyn: The True Story of Henry VIII's Favourite Mistress
Mary Boleyn: The Mistress of Kings

Coming Up;
Lamentation by C.J. Sansom
The Selection by Kiera Cass

♥

lifestyle

Pretty Little Liars Finale!

6/29/2017
By Maegan Mariee
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Hello Lovelies!

I know I'm not the only one that has been watching this show since it started. Hands up if you started with the books!🙋 So it seems only fitting that I make a post about it, because this has been my life for the last seven plus years. And we need to talk about it.

From this point I'll be mentioning spoilers, so if you haven't seen the finale (which I think you have, honestly), stop reading here!

Firstly, I need to mention that I'm so ready to start binging from season one all over again. From the very beginning, I have been in love with Aria and Ezra. Ezria ♡ I even have a shirt that says as much! Consistently, she has been my favorite liar. The crazy clothes, the writer, the lover of art. Aria is a girl after my own heart. Having wanted her and Ezra to get married after seven seasons and finally having it happen? THANK YOU. That's all I've ever wanted! I don't even care who AD is!

And then there's Spencer. My second favorite, the crazy smart girl with some obsessive issues when it comes to wanting to figure everything out. I have loved watching Spencer flesh out. From the beginning, to me, it seemed like she was just going to be the smarty pants, which she was. But she brought something incredible to the show. All the twists and turns that she took as a character when she found out all of the secrets her family had was crazy to watch. And I absolutely love her and Toby together. Hopefully, they become something again, though I'm sure that was insinuated.

Can we talk about that accent though? I know that she practiced to get the best accent she could but... I don't know. I'm not British, but I know a lot of them were like... wtf was that? I can't say that I liked it, but seeing as how Alex Drake pretty much grew up on the streets on London, she probably developed a very harsh accent. At least, that's the only way I can live with it.
And last but not least, the whole twin thing. I kind of had a feeling that they were going to stick with that. After all, it was in the books. Though it was Ali's twin and not Spencer's. Though I'd have to reread the books to see if there was so much intermingling between family's. I'm looking at you, Peter Hastings. I kind of wish, for the show, they would have chosen someone else. Perhaps Melissa? And the ending... I could have done without the whole thing with Addison. Instead, wouldn't it have been such a legendary finale to have it end with the group talking about how the town will always talk about them and what happened, and then Alison saying this?

Also... poor Wren! 😭

What did you think of the finale? Were you happy with the ending, or disappointed?
♥

Personal

how i learned about money management too late.

6/27/2017
By Maegan Mariee
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I think the title says it all here...

Hi. My name is Maegan Mariee, I'm 26 years old, and I'm just learning how to properly manage my money.

'What?', you may question. Well, it's true. I was never really taught to put money aside into a savings account or to watch what I spent. Honestly, as long as I had enough to pay my bills and put gas in the car, I was fine. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Eventually, those bills added up and kept on coming. Suddenly, I was out of school and had a car and an apartment. And with that apartment came rent, electricity, emergency money for emergencies. I was working two jobs and still not making enough to get by.

It seems like it should be common sense that you need to save money, to put something aside so you have it for the future. But school never taught me that. They didn't offer basic math skills, by which I mean they didn't teach you how to do your taxes or manage your accounts. My mother would mention it here and there, but it never really stuck until I was thrown right into the storm of it.

Yikes.

This post isn't going to be informational. I don't have spreadsheets or hacks to help you save or become rich in seconds. Think of this as someone telling you to think about your money situation and be smart about how you approach it.

I do have a spreadsheet in excel that I use every two weeks, budgeting myself until my next paycheck. I know what I've paid and how much I have left to spend and put into savings. It's helped, though there are so many other things that I could be utilizing. I won't lie about that. If you're looking to save more money, Pinterest has some great options.

And if you get married, make sure you're honest with one another about debt and bills! It has been so much easier knowing what one another owes so we're not caught by surprise if something comes in the mail. Learning how to manage money shouldn't be hard, but sometimes getting there can be. I always feel like I'm struggling with money and I just want to be secure and be comfortable with what I have.

Worrying is the worst part and I'm a serious worrier. Make a plan and stick to it!

Do you have any suggestions on how to manage money, save, and get out of debt?

♥

*This post is not sponsored and all opinions are mine, as always. Photo credit to William Iven*