Everything You Ever Wanted: A Florence Welch Between Two Books Pick

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In the opening pages of Luiza Sauma’s second novel, Iris Cohen reflects on the choice she made to abandon Earth and its soulless grind for life in another solar system. This life-changing Audible Original features a powerful mix of one-on-one life-coaching sessions and a personal narrative with vital take-aways that you can start using immediately. Luiza Sauma’s second novel puts a science-fiction spin on a well-worn narrative of early midlife crisis. When she leaves Earth, she’s hoping that her mother, Eleanor, will ask her to stay, but Eleanor has kept her own counsel ever since her husband killed himself when Iris was five – a factor, it’s implied, in Iris’s teenage experience of suicidal depression, after she was tricked into giving a friend’s boyfriend a blowjob on camera at a party.

She cites having a higher and more noble purpose to her life as a reason for going, and yet we never truly see the depths and details of that desire. She even begins to crave the very things she despised so much on Earth, such as social media and starts to see all the positive attributes of things she previously labelled as bland and void of meaning. The next day you stay in bed, scrolling through your social media feeds and wondering why everyone else seems to be achieving so much. We can roll our eyes and state "no one would be crazy enough to do that", but some are so maddened by their dull day-to-day existence that I strongly believe some would love the opportunity and woud at least consider it. I think (and hope) that the author’s intent was to show that he was more than that on the inside but that no one gets to know him well enough to figure that out.While emotional connections with characters are usually important for enjoyment of a novel, in my opinion the fact that the characters are so blase added to the overall hollowness that haunts the narrative's themes. This part of the book seems to focus more on the characters themselves than what is happening within the story.

If Nyx’s missold utopia serves up a careful-what-you-wish-for rebuttal of digital luddism, with the planet’s dubious allure symbolising the disappointments of millennial womanhood, the novel ultimately seems more interested in the aftershocks of bereavement. I think referring to certain things that appear very appealing onto the surface, and having them slowly become annoying or burdensome, was a very effective literary device by the author to show this is not the reality we (or Iris) truly want. Disclaimer: As a child my one ambition was to gain passage on a space shuttle heading to colonize Mars. Puncturing the dark existentialist tone of the story with little moments of real humour was a wise move that pays off in full (I especially adored the extended joke about people who shit at work). Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original.Sylvie must decide between maintaining her outwardly perfect life --the family estate outside Philadelphia inherited from her grandfather, the school, the reputation --and the son who she feels wants nothing to do with her. In the absolutely packed Act II, the dark fantasy resumes and the Sandman expands into the French Revolution, ancient Rome, 19th-century San Francisco, eighth-century Baghdad, and beyond. Sara Shepard is also the author of the Pretty Little Liars series which I haven’t read but gather must be quite popular since it’s been made into a TV series.