My Thoughts On: “Midnight Sun” by Stephenie Meyer

The year was 2008, I was in my first year of high school, at the age of 16 years old. One of my best friends and I went to the city to watch the new movie Twilight, that she had heard so much about and badly wanted to watch. We were just like everybody else: totally mesmerised by Edward. I remember walking back to the ferry in a daze. We stopped by a bookshop on the way to buy the novel, and I read it in a couple of days. I ordered the next two books to be delivered, I think, and convinced the manager of my local bookshop to order in the fourth and final book, in English, when it released. It was still the same school year when Midnight Sun, an unfinished manuscript telling the story of Twilight from Edward Cullen’s perspective rather than Bella Swan’s, was leaked. I remember my friend obsessing over it, and I tried to read some of it, but I believe I wasn’t able to read it all before it disappeared from where I was reading it.

Something like 7 years went by, I’d finished three years of high school, a gap year where I studied photography, and I was in my second year of university, getting my bachelor’s degree in English, when it was revealed that Stephenie Meyer would release a new book for the 10 year anniversary of her first novel, Twilight. Surely, this had to be the long anticipated Midnight Sun, finally, right? Wrong. What we got was a rerelease of Twilight, paired with the book Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, where most of the genders are swapped. I bought it and I read it – but I honestly don’t remember much, other than the names Beau and Edythe (Bella and Edward), Julie (Jacob), and that Charlie and Renee were still the same as in the original. I remember the ending – where Edward saved Bella by sucking James’ venom out of her and stopping her from becoming a vampire, Edythe did not do this and Beau did end up becoming a vampire, and the Cullens had to fake his death, rather than fake an accident as they did to explain Bella’s injuries. Meyer’s explanation for this is that it would have been impossible to keep the rest of the story gender-swapped, as such a big part of Bella’s story in the fourth book is her becoming pregnant by Edward and giving birth to a child that’s half human, half vampire, and this would not have been possible for Beau and Edythe as female vampires can’t get pregnant by human men (or other vampires, or any other creature). I think I remember both finding the story somewhat ridiculous as well as awkward, as some of the personality traits and actions just did not seem to work as well when gender-swapped, and I haven’t reread this story, despite reading all the Twilight books multiple times between 2008 and 2011.

Why am I writing about Life and Death in a post dedicated to Midnight Sun, you may ask? Because it’s important, for a few reasons. Firstly, there was the disappointment of getting a gender-swapped retell of a book I’d loved as a teenager, that felt like a cheap attempt at getting some attention and making some money, for the 10-year anniversary of Twilight. Secondly, because the internet has informed me that, even though this was not the book we had been waiting for, it was the book that led Meyer to actually pick up Midnight Sun again and finish writing it. I knew she’d put it on ice, that she didn’t feel like completing it after the leak back in 2008, and I doubt I was alone in thinking this story would never be completed, that we’d all be left wondering what was going through Edward’s mind when he first med Bella, possibly with a few vague memories of reading the leaked manuscript back when we were kids. Boy, was I wrong! In the year 2020, an awful year for many reasons for many people all across the world, Stephenie Meyer announced that she would finally release Midnight Sun, the companion novel to Twilight, from the perspective of Edward Cullen, later that same year! I immediately knew I wanted to read it, but I didn’t buy it straight away and kept waiting to see if there would be a paperback edition (they’re cheaper and easier to hold), but no such thing happened between August and December, when I sat down to make my Christmas wishlist. I put the book on the list, and it ended up being one of the gifts my boyfriend bought me! I was still reading a lot of different books though, however, and I didn’t feel rushed – it’s not like I could get many spoilers for a story so well-known to me, and people weren’t really talking about it either, so it just got left on my shelf for a while while I was reading other books instead. Now, however, it is July, almost a year later, and I’ve finally gotten around to reading Midnight Sun, and let me tell you: I have thoughts.

My edition of the book is 756 pages. I read that in less than 5 days (meaning I started first thing in the morning on day one, and finished it mid-afternoon on day five).

I haven’t read the original Twilight story in about a decade, although I have seen the films several times since then. I recently rewatched the first film as well, and my main issue with it is that it seems incredibly rushed – Bella basically says she’s afraid of losing Edward when they’ve barely spoken before then. I can’t remember if the book felt as rushed as the movie, but I want to believe it doesn’t. Midnight Sun (from here on known as MS) definitely didn’t feel as rushed! The rest of this post won’t exactly be a scene by scene comparison, as that would make this post ridiculously long, but there are a few scenes I do want to bring up because I found them interesting.

The book starts in the cafeteria on Bella’s first day at Forks high school, where Edward realises he can’t hear her thoughts. And the next scene, of course, is the biology classroom where he smells her scent and it nearly drives him to kill her as well as everyone else in the classroom. Of course, I knew that wouldn’t happen as I was reading the scene, but it was so well written that I almost believed Edward wouldn’t make it through – he certainly wasn’t sure of it himself! Of course we already knew Edward left town for a couple of weeks – but in MS we find out where he went: To Alaska, where Tanya and her sisters live! We also find out that Tanya wants to be with Edward (at least physically) but that he has never had that sort of an interest in her. Then again, there hardly seems to be a creature on Earth that doesn’t want to be with Edward, with the exception of Rosalie despite being created to hopefully be his mate, and Alice who already had Jasper by the time they joined the Cullen family. But I digress.

It was interesting to read all of Edward’s thoughts as he was trying to figure Bella out, since he’s not able to read her thoughts the way he can everyone else. It was also interesting to see interactions with his family, something we didn’t get as much from Bella’s point of view. Rosalie’s hatred seems even stronger in MS than it does in the original book and movie. We get to hear Emmet’s creation story, which I don’t think we had from Twilight (T). More of Carlisle’s story is told to us as well, and Edward’s “vampire childhood” is elaborated on a lot! It was a pleasure to read and get more insight into more of the family than we had before MS!

I think what I enjoyed the most were the scenes where Edward and Bella were apart. Not because I didn’t enjoy them together, but because that’s a familiar story, even though Edwards’ thoughts and feelings are elaborated on, and how he sees Bella, rather than how Bella sees him. But I really enjoyed the story lines like him tracking her down in Port Angeles after losing sight of her, before saving her from the group lead by the rapist-murderer that almost got her; Edward’s desperation was written really well here. And after that, when he told Carlisle about what had happened and how he wanted to go back and find and kill the guy – Carlisle actually comes with Edward, and when they’ve tracked him down, tells Edward to go home and that he’ll take care of it, and the guy ends up arrested! That was not something I could have predicted at all, because Bella barely watches TV and had not caught the CNN broadcast about what had happened, and Edward never told her. Another one of these apart-scenes that I enjoyed reading was after James had caught Bella’s scent and decided to hunt her, when Alice and Jasper drove her south and they were trying to lead the tracker away – Edward, Carlisle and Emmet were driving north, whilst Rosalie and Esme stayed in Forks. This chase scene was brilliantly written, and I could feel Edward’s fear and frustration here. Lastly, one of the scenes I enjoyed the most was where, after they rescued Bella, and hey were driving to the hospital, Alice was using her psychic abilities to plan out all the things they needed to do to make the story add up, such as rent a couple of rooms in a cheap hotel, then stage an accident, then phone it in from the hospital and tell the hotel staff they needed to clear it up so that no one else gets hurt! Of course Edward was narrating all of this, as he was reading Alice’s thoughts or visions, but it was really her voice coming through here, with the odd comment from Edward, and that was a really fun chapter to read!

In terms of scenes when they were together… The meadow scene where Edward reveals himself sparkling in the sun stood out immensely; it was a very long chapter and I could not put the book down while reading it (although that was me throughout the entire book, to be fair). He was so afraid Bella would find him disgusting when he “revealed himself” to her, but instead she found him beautiful, which of course we already knew. It was interesting to read about him pushing himself, testing his limits in terms of inhaling her scent to try and make it less appealing by desensitising himself to it. Him struggling, failing, needing time away from her to get himself under control… I know there’s lots of criticism that can be made here, and parallels that can be drawn in terms of him being 109 and her being 17, his attraction to her and inability to stay away… But I really don’t want to go down that road. I just want to enjoy this story for what it is; a low fantasy book about a human and a vampire who fall in love. As I mentioned earlier, it’s been a decade since I read T the last time, but I recently saw the film and thought the love story felt rushed (there are several scenes with music playing and we can see Bella and Edward talking, giving the illusion of time passing by, as well as comments like him saying he’s been watching her sleep for the last couple of months or so, but most of this happens after she’s said she’s afraid of losing him, and that’s the bit I have the most issues with, really). In MS, the love story did not feel rushed, in my opinion. Edward even states himself that there is a difference between love and attraction or infatuation (I can’t remember which word he used exactly). But the exploration of feelings, him discovering attraction, first to her blood but then to her as a living creature, discovering “human feelings” he didn’t know were still in him, as he said, and also jealousy, him getting to know Bella, and letting Bella get to know him… It all felt quite organic in MS.

I would have to reread Twilight to be sure, but I do think Edward is a better narrator than Bella was. This could be due to Meyer being a more experienced author now, as T was her first ever published work, but it could also be with Edward having lived over a century, first as a human boy and then as a vampire, whereas Bella is just a teenage girl. I don’t think I have a preference in terms of reading books with a male or female main character or narrator, but I absolutely loved reading MS and Edward’s story. I guess you can compare 28 year-old me reading MS to 16 year-old me reading T and the rest of the books for the first time; I could not put the book down, I was reading from first thing in the morning until last thing at night to get through the story as I did not want to take a break. Part of me wants to reread the original books now, to see how the experience differs with me being older myself – I’m still closer to Bella’s age, and technically Edward’s development was frozen at the age of 17 when he became a vampire, but I’m curious to see whether I’d read the books as quickly this time, and whether my opinion on them has changed. I do think that next time I read MS I’ll read it slower – that’s been my experience with rereading other works, such as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child; the first time, I read it all in one sitting, the second time it took me a few days as I was no longer as infatuated with the characters. Similarly, I loved the Chronicles of Narnia as a child, but I reread all of them a few years later and noticed things about them I had not noticed when I was a child, which made me like them slightly less the.. well, not the second time around, as I read them many times before that, but the last time I read them all, at least.

But yes, dear reader: I will definitely be rereading Midnight Sun, sometime in the future! Perhaps alongside the original book, or immediately after, or before! I do find myself wishing for the rest of the story told from Edward’s perspective… Maybe not so much New Moon, but definitely Eclipse and Breaking Dawn! Meyer has stated that she has two more books planned set in the Twilight universe, but that she’s working on something unrelated at the moment. I am hopeful that they’re the rest of the story told from Edward’s point of view… but honestly, I’m almost certain that won’t be the case. Her novella, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, actually sold better than MS in the first few days, so I can imagine her writing something similar, giving a voice to a smaller character. However, TSSLoBT was released in 2010 while the rest of the books were fairly new and the movies were still in production, so I’m not surprised it sold well then; I find it hard to believe that another novel or novella in the same style following another character would sell as well. Then again, MS was mainly made for “twihards”, people that loved the original books back then, who would still be willing to go back now, so maybe whatever she writes would sell well among fans of the original series. Then again, who am I to speak – we all know that whatever she releases set in this universe, whether it’s contemporary or a prequel or a sequel, I’ll buy and read it.

If you read the original Twilight books, have you read Midnight Sun yet, or do you think you will someday? If no, why not?

Xoxo

Julie

My Thoughts On: “Reached” by Ally Condie

I finished the series! Reached took me 6 days to read, as I’ve pretty much not done a lot more than read lately. I’ve watched some TV sometimes, and done some work, but June and July are slow months so there hasn’t been a lot of work to do, so I’ve spent a lot of time reading. So I’ve finished this book, and the series as a whole, and I have thoughts. As always, don’t read past this point if you don’t want spoilers for this book and the series as a whole.

Before I even started reading this book, I had a prediction which turned out to be true: In Reached, we also get Xander’s point of view. So we’ve got an escalation: Cassia in Matched, Ky and Cassia in Crossed, and now Xander, Cassia and Ky in Reached. Matched and Crossed weren’t all that different in size, but Reached is visibly larger. I think that’s partially why Crossed was my least favourite in the series – not a lot happened, because we were getting two perspectives of the same time frame in approximately the same amount of pages, so there was less to story to tell, it felt like. What’s funny though, is that even though Reached was the longest, I read it the quickest! Granted, as I said above, I’ve not done much else, but I also had more of a desire to keep reading this one than I did with the earlier ones, where it was more “eh, I guess I could read for a bit” and less “I don’t wanna put this book down and go to sleep, I want to keep reading, but my eyes are stinging and I can barely keep them open”! All in all, this book was a quick read, and mostly because I was always eager to get to the next chapter told from Xander’s point of view!

The reason I always wanted to get back to Xander is because we’d never got his side of anything before now. From Crossed, we knew he had a secret, and Ky knew it and Indie guessed it – Xander was already part of the Rising. Ky told us as much, that he and Xander had both been approached and asked to join back when they lived in the Society, probably because their statistics indicated they’d be likely to join, since we know that the Rising has access to all the data that the Society has, only they interpret it differently. Xander had joined, Ky had not. It’s become evident that Ky really doesn’t care that much about the rising at all, he just wants to be with Cassia! But I digress. At the start of the book we find out that Xander, now and Official and a Medic/Physic, is giving a newborn a switched tablet, that not only gives immunisation to the illnesses cured by the Society, but also to the red tablet which erases people’s memories, and to the plague that is coming!

Xander knows that he and Ky are both immune to the red tablet, because they had been given switched medication as newborns themselves, back when people were chosen for immunisation rather than everyone being given it, which has been the case for the last few years. What’s interesting to me, is that Cassia was not elected for immunisation; she also wasn’t approached and asked to be a part of the Rising when she was younger – Cassia’s data did not indicate that she’s a rebel! This really goes to show what things can affect a person, that the words said by her grandfather and the poems he left her at the start of Matched, the ones she wasn’t supposed to have, because they were not among the 100 selected for preservation, are what really drove her to want to rebel against the Society; she would not have done so without these things, which all go back to her grandfather, which again make complete sense when later we find out that his mother was, at one point, the Pilot, the leader of the Rising! It’s in her blood, but her statistics did not show this, because Society didn’t know.

It was interesting to read a book so largely centred around a plague and finding a cure, in the year 2021 when we have spent more than a year in different lockdowns due to a deadly virus that we are now being vaccinated for. It was quite surreal, actually, and at times almost uncomfortable, but I kept reminding myself that this was written years ago and has nothing to do with the state of the world today. Although that’s another interesting point – I was more prepared for war than I was a pandemic in real life, and that’s what I pictured was coming in Reached as well, but instead the Rising took over the Society so quick it didn’t even really seem noticeable; suddenly, they were just in charge. And they’d spread this virus, and they had the cure, and that’s how they took over the power! It was actually a more pleasant experience – so much young adult dystopian fiction, like the Hunger Games and Divergent and Maze Runner series, they have war and fighting in them, whereas Matched didn’t have any of that! It was quite refreshing in a way.

Another thing I found interesting is that the Rising had this disease to use as a weapon, and to take control, because they already had the cure for it – but it backfired; the virus mutated and they couldn’t find a cure for the mutation and more and more people started dying from it! Of course Cassia is the one to realise what the cure actually is though – because she’s the main main character, so to speak, as the only narrator of the first novel! We’ve been told she’s a brilliant sorter, and she knew there was something they were missing when trying to find the cure, she just couldn’t figure out what – until she realised that the one flower that was the clue to it all was known by two different names, which she had previously been unaware of! And of course Xander is the one to make the cure. And of course Ky is the first to receive it, as the only one not immune and who had gotten sick. The triangle, complete.

If I’m being honest, I was rooting for Cassia to fall back in love with Xander. I knew it wouldn’t happen, but I was still hopeful. I liked Xander as a character much more than I liked Ky. I was hopeful. But of course, once Ky is cured, Cassia and him end up together, and they go back to the city. I did enjoy the little twits at the end though, where we find out that Xander’s friend and colleague, Nea Lei, is actually “Lainey”, the girl who Ky’s now-dead friend Vick, with whom he’d escaped Society in Crossed, was in love with. I do believe Cassia figured this out, because Lei said she’d only flipped her name around, and not changed it completely, but I’m not sure if Ky and Xander found out. She seemed nice though, so at least Xander and Lei have each other, since Lei lost her soulmate to the poison by the Society, and Xander lost his Match to another man.

One thing that I was not satisfied with, was all the people that had left Society and escaped, even from Endstone village, that were supposedly in the Otherlands, including Ky’s cousin, who everyone was told was dead. The book said that a lot of the farmers and people living in Endstone were only working on the Cure because the Rising had promised to take them to the Otherlands after. But Cassia and Ky went back to live in the urban area, and Xander and Lei were out in Endstone but decided not to go, so we never found out what happened there, if the people did in fact go to the Otherlands and if Ky’s cousin was actually still alive. The novel felt a bit incomplete that way.

It also didn’t feel complete in that it ended on election day, with Cassia and Ky voting for the leader of the Farmers, rather than the leader of the Rising, or the old Society, to take control and be in charge – but we never found out who won or if anything actually changed. I’m assuming they got to be together, as it was said that all Matches that had not yet celebrated their marriage contract were dissolved. Cassia’s mum and brother were also there with them, but we don’t know anything else that happens. Perhaps Society is sneaking its way back in – that was sort of hinted at, as the reason why the Rising took over so quickly and easily; they’d let it happen because statistics indicated that the people would rebel against them at this time, which means they could probably provide the illusion of change, and then slowly take back control and people would have no more freedoms than they did before. I don’t know, just a thought…

So to sum up then, I definitely enjoyed Reached more than Crossed, but I probably liked Matched the most out of the three. I’m not sure whether I would reread the series… Although, usually, I prefer to read books twice, as there is pretty much always stuff I don’t pick up on the first time. Maybe I’ll reread them in a couple of years or something. They were okay, and I’m glad my friend suggested the series to me, but it didn’t grip me the way other dystopian YA literature has.

Love, Julie

My Thoughts On: “Crossed” by Ally Condie

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I’ve started writing this post immediately after posting my previous post about Matched. I’d started writing that post while still reading the book, but this time I’ve finished the book before writing the post. It’s been about a month and 10 days between me finishing Matched and finishing Crossed, as I’ve not been reading constantly, as well as reading some other things alongside it. As always, do not read beyond this point if you don’t want spoilers for Matched and Crossed!

Crossed was a slower book for me to read. I feel like much less happened in this book than in Matched. I do also think that the events occurred over a much smaller time span than in Matched. This book alternates between Cassia and Ky, so every other chapter is by one person and the rest are by the others. It was certainly interesting, because in Matched we only got Cassia’s point of view.

Cassia is at a work camp, and every few weeks she gets moved to a different one, it seems. Ky is in the outer provinces, where he has managed to stay alive, despite people being sent there to die – Aberrations specifically, boys only where Ky is, and they’re there to make the village look inhabited to the Enemy. He’s become friends with Vick, and the two of them have started burying their friends as they die. One day, Cassia meets Xander – on the day where the people who have been Matched typically for the first time, Xander has pointed out that usually the guy goes to visit the girl, and since Cassia and her family have been relocated, he should get to go and meet her and have a date. They go to visit a museum, where Cassia trades an artefact for a map – which is in fact a song. The artefacts are basically family heirlooms, which the Officials confiscated in Matched because they basically contribute to inequality, but Cassia was able to save a compass, which was Ky’s artefact. This is what she trades for information to try and find Ky. That’s still her mission. She decided to keep the blue tablets Xander gave her, thinking she’ll need them for the journey when she eventually knows where to go. Xander, I think, is sad that Cassia still wants to go after Ky. But he can’t do anything about it. Eventually Cassia gets a chance to go to the outer provinces herself, by sneaking onto an airship she’s not supposed to be on. Her friend, Indie, is also on this airship. She is an Aberration as well, and seeking the Rising, which is the uprising rebelling against the Society.

What I found frustrating when reading this book, is that we start from Cassia’s point of view. Then we switch to Ky. But it always felt like Cassia was always right behind Ky! Ky escapes the outer provinces with Vick and Eli, by running into the Carving, the mountain range they can see from their village. This happens as Cassia is on the airship, and she arrives there shortly after. One of the boys who survived the gunfire the night Ky escaped claims to have seen him and some others run, and he agrees to help Cassia and Indie across the plain and into the Carving. When he gets there, he tells them to go into one canyon, while he goes into the other. I feel like Cassia is like, parallel to Ky, but in the wrong canyon – I was overjoyed when the girls climbed up and into the other canyon – but then they found the boy who’d helped them dead, and not long after they climb back into the first one. Fortunately, it’s not long before Cassia and Ky are reunited in a township in the first canyon, though.

Oh and the blue pills are poison. We first hear this from Vick, who tells Ky that the blue pills make you slow down and then stop, completely immobile, until you die or the Society finds you. The blue pills were designed to stop people running away, but people were told they’re to provide you with nutrients to keep you alive if you have access to food. Cassia doesn’t know this, and at one point she takes one. She gets sick, but she keeps going. They’ve also managed to find some food, some apples, and she’s able to eat. Indie, it turns out, did know about the poison, but she didn’t see Cassia take the pill and assumed she knew too, despite Cassia offering her pills before and Indie accepting them – I feel like she should’ve known, then, that Cassia didn’t know about the poison. However, she doesn’t seem to have suffered from this, as she was able to eat and drink, so it must have diluted the blue pills. What’s more interesting is that Xander had wrapped little messages around the pills, notes from the micro card, which he must have known Cassia never read. One note stands out though, as it’s not printed like the others; Xander has written that he hopes to tell Cassia his secret when they meet again. Indie is smart, she figures out what Xander’s secret is, and Ky, it turns out, already knew. Neither of them will tell Cassia though.

Vick is killed, and a river is poisoned, just before Cassia and Ky are reunited. They meet Hunter, the last farmer in the township who did not escape with the others, and he agrees to help the group. After some back and forth to different caves gathering things, discovering things, and some drama, the group splits up – Hunter and Eli head into the mountains to try and find the rest of the farmers who escaped from the Carving. Cassia and Indie want to find the Rising and join them. Ky isn’t sure, but eventually caves. Indie and Cassia take a boat down the poisoned river while Ky runs alongside the river because the boat was only big enough for two. At the end of the river is a lake, and all three eventually meet the Rising. They’re all interviewed separately, and discover that the Rising has access to all the data about them that the Society has. This indicates that many members of the Rising are still in Society. Right near the end of the book, an Official tells Cassia that they’ve determined that, based on her data/statistics, she can best serve the Rising from inside the Society. At this point, I actually gaped at the book. All of this running and nearly getting killed several times, and she’s just gonna go back to the Society?! Indie isn’t told her placement, but Ky will learn to pilot airships and be sent to a province to that. Cassia and Ky don’t get to see each other again before she’s sent off.

So. Xander’s secret. Ky knows it, and Indie figures it out, but neither of them will tell Cassia because it is Xander’s secret to tell. That’s fair enough. However, Ky recalls some events, and us readers are informed of Xander’s secret. Some time ago, Ky was approached; this was when he lived back in the province where he grew up with Cassia and Xander. He was approached by someone asking him to join the Rising. He refused. Then Xander approaches him. And he joined! Xander has been part of the Rising for a while, probably before he was Matched with Cassia! When Cassia is being interviewed, the people of the Rising tell her that they have access to the same data about people that the Society has, but that they might interpret the data differently. This tells me that Xander and Ky were approached because they interpreted their data to mean they were likely to agree to join the Rising.

Other scraps of paper that Xander had hidden with the pills said things that he was likely to be offered work as an Official, with 99% of success, and he told Cassia that he was being relocated to Central for work – the capital, I’m interpreting this to be. When I imagine society, I’m imagining a circle. Central in the middle, provinces like Tana and Oria around it, which is where Cassia grew up, then there are the middle provinces, where Ky was born, and the outer provinces where his family was relocated to as Aberrations and where his parents died, before he was adopted and moved to Oria as well. And beyond the outer provinces, that’s where the Carving is, the Rising are somewhere out there, and there’s also this Enemy that the Society talks of, although I’m thinking this enemy might not be real, and that it is Society that is firing upon these villages and killing off the Aberrations (and probably the Anomalies, who we almost never hear about). Cassia made it all the way out to the Rising past the Carving, and she’s being sent straight back into Central. The society never changed her status, so she is still a Citizen. I’m thinking she’s still Matched with Xander then, and on track for them to get married at 21. But I have a feeling it won’t happen. The final chapter of Crossed is Cassia in Central, where she’s now got a routine – walking to work, and occasionally trading with the Archivists at the museum. She has items of value from the Carving. She also mentions a boy – saying that he got a message to her, that he is in the Rising, and she will meet him tonight after work. No name is mentioned. Could it be Ky? Or is it Xander? Initially, I thought Xander, but now I’m not sure. In writing moment, I’ve only finished Crossed today, but I’ve not started reading Reached yet. I have another book arriving soon, the sequel to one I read last year, this series only consisting of two books. I might read that first, before reading Reached, as it should be fairly quick to read.

Nevertheless, I shall be back with more thoughts on more books, definitely Reached but probably more as well, soon! Please, if you’ve read this entire series, don’t post any spoilers for Reached below, as I’ve not read it yet. Thank you.

My Thoughts On: “Matched” by Ally Condie

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I went into this book with no expectations. Zero. Nada. None. The series had been recommended to me by a friend who usually only reads books with a pretty girl on the cover. I am more of diverse reader myself; I read a variety of genres, and what book I pick up next largely depends on what mood I’m in. I decided to read Matched after struggling to finish Eragon – not because I didn’t like it, but because I just wasn’t in the mood for that kind of a story anymore by the time I had read over 400 pages of it! I was gifted this book series last Christmas, but I knew nothing of it apart from what I could read on the back of the first book. That it’s about a young girl, that she lives in a highly controlled society, and that things are about to go down. It made me think of books such as The Hunger Games and The Selection, and that was enough for me. Anyway, here are my thoughts about Matched, the first in a series of three books, so keep reading if you’re interested in a mixture of what happens and what I think about it – but stop now if you don’t want spoilers!

So we meet Cassia, our 17 year-old protagonist, on the day of her Match Banquet. Cassia lives in the Society. We don’t know where in the world this is, or what year it is, only that it is set in the future: Cassia learnt about oceans, fish, and coral reeves in school, and these were destroyed before Society reversed The Warming. In the before, weird things happened such as snow in June – this is no longer the case. The Society controls everything. We’re told that many things have improved in the Society compared to before; cancer has been eradicated, crime rate is virtually non-existent, everyone is fed and clothed and housed. But everyone is also controlled: who they love, how many children they have, where they work, when they die. This is from the blurb on the back of the book, so let me give you some further examples.

At the age of 17, people can be Matched. I say can be, because I’ve not found any evidence stating that they have to be, and there are frequent mentions of Singles, people who are not Matched. The Society stresses the importance of both Matched and Single people, and stresses that the current leader themselves is a Single, that both live full and satisfying lives, but only Matched couples can have children. Anytime in the year following your 17th birthday, you can get an invitation for your Match Banquet, where you will be Matched to another person, the person that Society has deemed is your ideal partner for life. At 21, a Matched couple sign a marriage contract, as statistically both men and women are most likely to produce the healthiest children in their early-mid 20s. The cut-off age for having children is 31, 10 years after signing the contract. I’m not sure what would happen to someone being pregnant when their 31st birthday arrive; Cassia mentions that her little brother Bram was the second child her mother didn’t think she would have, as he was born only weeks before her 31st birthday. I have two theories: 1) if you fall pregnant too close to your 31st birthday and wouldn’t give birth before that day, the Society makes you terminate the pregnancy, or 2) if your birthday passes and you’ve not given birth yet, the Society takes the child away from the parents after they are born! As I’m still reading the series, I’m not sure if we will find out what happens here (if you do know when you are reading this, please don’t post spoilers for the upcoming books in my comments!). No other important ages are mentioned until the death day – a person’s 80th birthday. Society has deemed that by the age of 80, people have lived long and satisfying lives, but they’re not yet so old that they feel useless or like a burden, or develop the depression associated with old age. So on your 80th birthday, you die. This is demonstrated through Cassia’s grandfather, who dies not long after her Match Banquet, and is the only one to whom Cassia tells her secret, with permission from an Official because of the grandfather’s age! It’s an absolutely absurd world, but as a reader I found it fascinating to learn about, and to Cassia this is all perfectly normal, of course; it is the only world she’s ever known!

I should mention that statistics is important in the Society – there is no such thing as “lucky”, only likely and unlikely, which Cassia is reminded of when she happens to get Matched with Xander, her best friend since childhood. To know her Match already, to even be Matched with someone living in the same province, is highly unlikely, and an Official corrects Cassia when she uses the word “lucky” to describe them, and states that “there is no such thing as luck in the Society”. They have statistics over and predictions for everything – from the woman at the distribution centre telling Cassia she was predicted to pick that specific green dress for her Match Banquet, to an Official telling Cassia that 78% of Matched people have a youthful fling, that she was predicted to have some of these feelings, and that by the time she is 21 there is a 95% chance that all such hot-blooded and rebellious feelings are gone. I find it interesting that the Society is so heavily statistics based. Is that how they keep people in line? Applaud them for living up to the predictions about them – such as Cassia being the second hiker to reach the top of the small hill on her first day of hiking – and comfort them when they’re being told off – like when Cassia develops feelings for Ky despite being Matched with Xander?

The pills. I forgot to write about the pills. There are 3 of them, and everyone has to carry them. When you’re a child, your parents carry them for you. As you grow older, you get to carry your own tablets, one by one. First the blue, which can keep you alive for several days as long as you have water – at least, that is what the people are told. Then the green, which calms you down when you need it – this tablet can be taken as frequently as once a week without anyone raising questions, which makes me believe it’s a sedative and almost encouraged to take, although not often enough to cause addiction. We see this pill in action, when one of Cassia’s friends has a panic attack; they give her the pill, and she calms down. The third pill is red, and no one knows what it does, you can only take it when a high ranking Official tells you to. There are rumours that it is a death pill, although Officials have laughed at this, we learn from Cassia. Since the Society has ways of keeping people alive until they reach 80 (with some very rare exceptions), and then die before midnight on their 80th birthday, I don’t quite believe that it’s a death pill myself.

So Cassia is Matched with Xander, but when she goes to view his micro card, which everyone gets about their Match at the Banquet, Ky’s face appears. She is told by an official not long after that this was a mistake, and that it doesn’t affect her Match. The official tells Cassia that Ky is an aberration because of crimes committed by his father, and therefore cannot be Matched. Aberration status is not usually known, and to most people they just appear as Singles. Anomalies, however, are removed from Society for everyone’s protection. Cassia is reassured that Xander is her Match, but she keeps developing feelings for Ky. This, to me, was quite predictable, since it’s a YA book. Towards the end, we learn that Cassia’s Matching error was no mistake at all. The official tells Cassia that they did it on purpose, as an experiment, to see if she would behave in the predicted way afterwards, which she did. However, Cassia, who is a Sorter, with a very keen eye for spotting details, deduces that the Official is lying to her, that they don’t actually know how Ky ended up being on her micro card!

The Sorting. This is an interesting concept. We don’t actually know what it means, but Cassia is trained to be a Sorter. I have a theory about the jobs in Society though, and that is that a lot of the jobs aren’t real or necessary at all. They’re made up so that people feel like they have something to do. Some have function, of course, like Ky working with food and waste disposal, and people like Cassia’s dad who are Officials, they keep people in line, control what people have access to, that sort of stuff. But then there’s people like Cassia who are Sorters. She sorts numbers on a screen once. She has a practical test where she has to sort people at the waste disposal place, basically list them in order of who is the most to least efficient. I think this is the kind of job that has no real value, that it’s just something to keep people occupied. However, we do know there are real consequences to some sorts; Cassia is basically being told that some of the people she sorts will receive a new work assignment, and with this information she places Ky, who’s been extremely average at everything always, with the people she believes will be assigned a better job. But Cassia was being lied to; Ky ends up not going to be a soldier, but to be sent to the outer provinces to basically play the role of villager in an uninhabited area, where the Enemy frequently attacks – it is basically a death sentence. Cassia was being led to believe she was sorting one thing, but she was in reality sorting something completely different.

Last but not least: the end of the book and the red tablets. Ky is removed from his home in the early hours of the morning. People run outside because they hear screaming, including Cassia and her family. Cassia realises what is happening to Ky – that he is being forcefully removed and sent to the outer provinces. Then the Officials tell everyone to take the red tablet. The red tablet, it turns out, makes everyone forget the last 12 hours. Cassia, however, drops hers and crushes in into the ground. Everyone else takes them, and she can see that they’re forgetting. But then Xander comes to visit – he says the red tablets don’t work on him! They don’t work on Ky either, Xander tells her. When Cassia asks if she’s taken it before, Xander says he thinks so. Which means that Cassia is probably not immune to the tablet. So now we know for sure what two of the tablets do, the green and the red, as we’ve seen them in action. Xander gives Cassia a packet full of blue tablets, because she wants to go after Ky and find him. This means that Xander and Cassia still believe the blue tablets give you sustenance, as she’d only need water.

At the end of the book, Cassia and her family have been relocated. Cassia’s dad trusts her and wants to help her find Ky. Therefore, he tells the officials that she has had behavioural problems, which is backed by the statistics about her personality, and that she should be removed from the home for work assignment. This is their plan, to give Cassia a chance to locate Ky somehow. It seems like a risky plan to me, but we don’t find out anything else about it in this book, because this is the last chapter.

So to sum up, Matched is set in a very interesting world. I love how I continued to learn new things about the Society throughout the book, alongside Cassia learning things as well. The characters are somewhat interesting; I didn’t dislike any of them, but they’re also not characters I grew extremely fond of. Maybe that’s because I’m not in the target audience for YA literature, at my 28 years of age, but it doesn’t really matter. I enjoyed reading the book, but my favourite thing about it was the world building. There are many little things I’ve not mentioned here, because I’d be writing all day (their summer activities, about the artefacts and the poems, further restrictions imposed upon the Citizens from the Society…), but I think I’ve covered the majority of things I wanted to talk about. In writing moment, I’ve actually just finished the sequel, Crossed, and I will be writing another post about that soon!

I’m crazy, I’m sorry

Today started out great. I had a decent night’s sleep (bar a dream about T-rexes that were trying to eat me and the people I was with). I played some Animal Crossing in bed, and was really happy about getting an upstairs and moving things around inside my house. I’ve even customised the outside and will have a new look to my house entirely tomorrow which I am excited about. I got a Facetime call from my two best friends in Norway and ended up talking with them for over an hour which was amazing.

Then I started feeling annoyed. Annoyed at Animal Crossing, hating my island and the way it looks, impatient for upgrades and houses to move, annoyed with the trees, and jealous of everyone posting pictures on twitter with these beautiful islands, both super symmetrical and random ones which both look really cute and are things I can’t do (without directly copying them anyway…). Now I’m feeling irritable and snappy with everyone and everything – people on twitter (not even interacting with them, just seeing tweets), people I live with, cats, the sun, the game, TV shows, youtubers and their let’s play series… everything is just pissing me off and I don’t know why and I wish I could stop it because I don’t want to take my mood out on anyone.

I tweeted that. Got replies that it’s cabin fever, it’s due to the lockdown and not being allowed to go anywhere. Now, I don’t really go anywhere anyway, since moving to England – I only know the people I live with, plus some people online, no one living in the village or towns nearby, I don’t go out to see people, and if I do go to town it’s usually because of a specific shop or an errand like the bank. Then I realised, at least we used to have the option of travelling, going to cities nearby or anywhere in the country really, for days out and overnight trips, and we can’t do that anymore now, and we don’t know when we’ll next be able to.

I want to go to Lincoln, to Peterborough, to London. I want to finally go visit friends I’ve known online for years. I want to visit places I’ve never been before. There’s a baker I know of further south in the country and I really want to order a giant cookie or cupcakes from her and go down there with a fork in my pocket to pick up my baked goods and eat them before travelling back home (insert gif of Joey from Friends, from the episode with the all the cheesecakes)!  Check out her Insagram feed here.

I think it’s safe to say I’m going a bit stir-crazy. And I’m sorry if I’ve ever taken my shitty mood out on you, dear reader; I promise I didn’t mean it, and I’ll work hard to prevent it from happening again.

Love, Julie

Stay. The Fuck. Inside. #stayhome

It seems that, once again, not for the first time and probably not for the last, that I’ve taken a year long hiatus from blogging. I used to love it – when I was in high school, there was a point in time where I’d blog daily, multiple times a day even, and then I just… quit. When I moved to the city and started uni and turned 20, I could no longer keep a blog that had “teenager” in the name/url and where the url couldn’t be changed. The urge to blog came back a couple of years later and I started this blog, and I’ve been using it on and off since. I suppose, with everything happening in the world right now, I’m once again in need of an outlet… Random introductory paragraph. Anyway:

The world right now is in a weird state. Bar one trip to the corner shop on a Saturday evening 4 weeks ago now, there was a time I didn’t leave the house for 14 days straight. For me, that’s a long time. I told my mother this on the phone, and she ordered me to go for a walk. Norway and the UK are at different stages with the Corona virus situation and while we here in the UK took longer to lock down, close schools, close everything that isn’t essential, we’re not only allowed out for one form of exercise per day, necessary shopping, and to take care of older/family members who have to self-isolate (a lot of these terms get mixed up, but the way I see it we should all be socially distancing ourselves, while those who are more fragile self-isolate to further reduce the chance of catching the virus, and “quarantine” is for those who have actually got the virus, might have got the virus, or live with someone who have or might have got it). I place myself in the first group – social distancing, but I don’t need to isolate myself to protect myself or my family, so I can go out for exercise and essential shopping. But I was still isolating myself. Still, I followed my mother’s orders and went for a walk that afternoon. It was incredibly nice, the weather was lovely! But it almost felt eerie, being outside, like I was risking something, or feared being caught. I wore exercise clothes and had nothing on me except for a water bottle, my phone, and headphones, so I think it was clearly visible why I was outside, but I still felt like I shouldn’t be. I’ve been on a few more walks since then… But the world feels like a weird place these days.

It’s Easter now, Good Friday was yesterday, and technically it’s a bank holiday weekend now. I’ve heard stories that British people are flocking to the beach to enjoy the nice weather – as if it’s just a regular Easter weekend. To those doing that, I would like to say this is not okay. Walking ON the beach, if you live near it, might be okay, as your daily exercise, but it is NOT OKAY to travel to the beach in your car, or bring blankets or picnic baskets, it’s not okay to sit down and enjoy time with your family on the beach, because the moment you do that you’re not exercising, you’re not doing essential shopping, you’re having a day out. I saw a news clip on twitter where someone said that although the vast majority of people are following the rules, there are still some people who aren’t, and that they need to get in line and start doing what we’re told or else they will have to ban all outdoor activity altogether, meaning we cannot go for walks or runs or bike rides, we will be confined to our homes entirely.

I’m perfectly fine sunbathing in my garden, BBQ-ing in my garden, eating a picnic in my garden, doing strength exercises on the living room floor on my yoga mat, but the one thing I cannot do at home is walk. It doesn’t take me more than 20 steps to get anywhere in my house, as we live in a small bungalow, and although I haven’t tested I doubt it takes me more than about 15-20 steps to walk across the garden each way either. I am very passive when confined to the house, there’s nowhere to walk, no stairs to take, and I basically move between the bed, the PC, the fridge, and the toilet.

YOU CAN BE OUTSIDE YOUR HOUSE, ON YOUR PROPERTY. You can do anything you go to a park or the beach to do, in your garden. But most of us cannot go for a walk around our own houses, because there isn’t anywhere to go. So please, just stay home and enjoy the weather in your garden, or on your balcony; open the doors and windows and by all means enjoy the weather – I’ve sunbathed in my bikini from inside the living room before! But please don’t leave your property for anything other than exercise and essential shopping, and of course work if you’re a key worker. For the sake of all of us. Many will suffer, mentally and physically, if confined to their house at all times, and if you can do this now, we’ll all be allowed out fully sooner, rather than later.

Happy Easter.

Love, Julie

Cosmetics Haul – Primark and Revolution ✨

Hello everybody! How are you? Well, I hope! Today I have a post coming with items and swatches from the last few days – yesterday I went to Lincoln for a day, I saw Avengers: Endgame (no spoilers but I loved it), and of course went into Primark! I didn’t buy much, but I wanted a few makeup things, and I got some other items as well. And today a box arrived from Revolution with some things I ordered last week, plus a goodie bag! I’ll put that last. The deal to get the goodie bag is still on as of right now (3pm, 1st of May), so if you want these items go spend £30 to get your £28 value bag of free goodies!! Every time they put the deal on it’s a new bag of goods compared to the previous one, and every goodie bag within the same deal will be the same, so don’t go spending £30 twice thinking you’re gonna get different stuff, you’ll just get two of the same alright, save the next purchase for the next time they put goodie bag deals on! I got this one, and I got one that I ordered at the end of January and got delivered at the start of February, but I think they’ve done one I between as well, so they do seem to do these quite often.

But without further ado, let’s get into it! We’ll start with the Primark haul!

Here’s a picture of everything I bought:

The Mentos chewing gum was because we really wanted chewing gum yesterday. And the breath spray, because I wanted to try it (it tasted delicious). I also got me some in-soles, the ones for the front of your shoes, and the ones to put behind your heel to reduce friction or to use when the shoes are too large (I have a pair of heels I plan to put these in). Then I got some “lace footies”, basically thin socks for ballerina flats. I like these lace ones, they have the anti-slip underneath, which makes them great in flats that are leather/smooth on the inside (as opposed to fabric)! So I got them in nude and white, I have nude and black already from before.

Everything else was cosmetics.

I got myself some face masks – a soothing aloe vera mask, a hydrating coconut mask, a d a brightening peel-off pomegranate mask! I haven’t tried either of these, but they were 80p each and I love face masks! Pro tip: use a flat foundation brush to apply them, much better than using your fingers, and those brushes are pretty much useless for anything else (they leave my foundation streaky so I never use them for that)!

I got me some new lip liners – I actually doubled the amount of lip liners I own with this purchase haha! This is what they look like:

This is in the same order as above. “Toast” is a brown nude, “Spice” is a darker brown nude, “Ruby” is a more bright red, and “Victoria” is on the deeper side. I expect the red ones will go nicely with the next items, and the nude ones will go nicely with some other lipsticks I have from before!

These next ones are lipsticks I first saw on Primark’s Instagram profile: the Primark x Miss Gloria lipsticks! I wanted all four, but the Primark I went to didn’t have “Everyday Goddess” or “You Do You, Babe”, so I only got “Powerful Woman” and “She Is Fearless”, both red ones.

I love the mechanism here – you push the bottom and it pops out like this, then you can pull the lid off. When you’re finished you push the bottom back in again, and the lid stays on!

“She Is Fearless” is a brighter red, and “Powerful Woman” is a darker red mauve colour, from the looks of it.

I swatched “She Is Fearless” first:

On the right I only went back and forth a couple of times, whereas on the left I went over it multiple times to see how the colour would change. As you can see, it got more intense and more bright with multiple layers.

Then I swatched “Powerful Woman”:

To be honest I expected this one to be much darker, definitely not as pink. And as I went over it multiple times… It didn’t get darker, just less opaque. I’ll still wear this, it’ll be nice for summer I’m sure, but I expected a much darker browny red.

After swatching this I went back to “She Is Fearless” to swatch it next to it, to see the difference on my skin… And the lipstick broke. It was £2.50 so not a huge loss, but I was still upset. I’m gonna try and fix it by melting the edges in the tube and “glue” it back together, well see if it works. If not, I can still use a lip brush to apply it, it’ll just be harder to bring with me when I go somewhere…

Lastly, I got a mascara. I only have two working ones at the moment and I’m not 100% happy with either. Primark isn’t exactly shy when it comes to dupes and the packaging, it’s usually pretty obvious, and this looked like a dupe for the L’Oréal flash lash wings butterfly effect mascara which I love but haven’t been able to get for a while. I don’t have high hopes but we’ll see!

That’s it for the Primark section, now let’s move on to the Revolution stuff!

Firstly – THANK YOU REVOLUTION for reducing plastic waste by limiting bubble wrap and just strapping the products to a piece of cardboard with cling film! So much easier for me to dispose of as well! The brown piece of cardboard just pulls straight out of the box and the clingfilm is easy to rip off.

Here’s everything I ordered. This was quite a highlighter heavy haul, I won’t lie. I’m kind of obsessed with it… So, what we have here are 5 single highlighters, one bronzer, a brow pomade, two contour and highlighter sticks, a setting spray, and two packs of skincare products – “never basic” , and “always extra”.

The skincare products are a fairly recent launch of Revolution’s, they made these little 5ml bottles and put them into two separate sets so people like me can try a few different once before buying the full sized bottles, it’s genius really!

I only got one picture of all six products but the “never basic” set is on the left and the “always extra” set is on the right. The following descriptions are taken from the Revolution website:

Plumping & Hydrating Solution – 2% Hyaluronic Acid
Thirsty? Drink up with our hydration hero! The ultimate ingredient for dehydrated skin, Hyaluronic Acid attracts moisture to the skin’s surface for lasting hydration that plumps up dehydrated skin – leaving your complexion looking smoother, healthier and feeling silky soft.

Fine Line Correcting Serum – 0.2% Retinol
Ideal for sensitive types or those new to Retinol, this all-round skin booster uses a low concentration of retinoid to improve the appearance of skin. A form of Vitamin A, this ingredient encourages the natural cell turnover of your skin to reveal a smoother complexion, softened appearance of fine lines and more even tone.

Blemish and Pore Refining Serum – 10% Niacinamide + 1% Zinc
Meet our skincare hero for oily skin types prone to blemishes, congestion and enlarged pores. Using two skin-friendly ingredients, Niacinamide and Zinc, this lightweight and gentle serum helps to reduce the appearance of active blemishes and prevent further congestion, whilst regulating the skin’s natural oil production and soothing the skin. (Source)

Conditioning Serum – EGF Serum
Nourish lacklustre skin with some plant-based goodness! This lightweight and versatile skin-conditioning serum is our unsung skincare hero for giving skin a fresh and healthy look while softening the appearance of fine lines.

Nourishing Oil – CBD OIL
Meet our favourite skin super ingredient! Formulated with cannabidiol (an extract from the flowers and leaves of non-drug hemp), this groundbreaking ingredient helps to calm and soothe skin prone to dryness and sensitivity with its ultra-nourishing properties and high concentration of rich fatty acids.

Rosehip Seed Oil – Gold Elixir
Rich in essential fatty acids, this ultra-nourishing oil promotes supple skin and even texture. The added subtle gold flecks instantly boost radiance for skin that’s as good as gold! (Source)

I know Revolution has many other serums and skincare items like these (here), but I’m happy I get to try a few different ones like this, and they’re only £5 each! The only one I had from before was the hyaluronic acid one, but I look forward to trying the rest! I’m especially excited for CBD Oil and Gold Elixir!

The setting spray I got is just the green tea scented fixing spray from I ❤️ Revolution, it was £6, and had good reviews, and my other revolution spray is running low so I thought I’d just try a different one this time.

I’ve never had a brow pomade in my life. I’ve had tons of different pencils, from the ones that need sharpening to the twist-up ones to the skinny twist-up ones, and also a lot of different powders, but never a brow gel or a pomade. So I thought I’d try. I got the shade medium brown, I don’t really like how it looks on my hand but I think it’s about the same as the brown pencils from Primark that I’ve been using and I think it’ll be fine once it’s on my face.

Contour sticks is another item I’ve never had before – I’ve only used powder contour and bronzing. I got Medium 1 and Medium 2, I didn’t find a light one in there, and I knew the dark one would be too dark. These looked pretty similar in colour on the website, one looked more pink and the other more yellow, but 02 is a lot darker in person than 01, but again, they were really cheap and I’m sure I’ll find uses for all four shades!

I’ve actually never bought a single bronzer shade, ever. I once got a thing that was like half bronzer/contour, half highlighter from Physicians Formula, the first contour/bronzer/highlighter product I ever bought (more on that in a post coming soon), but other than that all contour and bronzers I’ve used have been in kits/palettes alongside highlighter and/or blush. So this is my first single full-on bronzer, with a little sheen to it, too! I’ve only used matte products before, as my forehead tends to get oily, but I’m starting to like more shimmery products on my skin now that the weather is nicer and my skin has gotten less oily as I’ve gotten older. For example, I recently used shades from the “Strobe Lighting” palette to set my face, and the “Gradient highlighter: Sunlight Mood Lights” as blush (both from my last revolution haul, post here). So I really look forward to wearing this on my face sometime soon! 😁 Oh, and this is the Reloaded Bronzer in the shade “Holiday Romance”.

Last but not least, the highlighters! I have been eyeing these for a long time. And I mean like, two months. I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t too positive in my first impressions post of my last Revolution haul and the free things I got in the goodie bag then, but the Skin Kiss highlighter in “Ice Kiss” grew on me quickly once I started putting it on my face. It’s glittery! And so pretty. Many of my old favourite highlighters seem dull by comparison now… I quickly started watching reviews, especially Sophdoesnails’ videos (here and here) about the skin kiss ones, and the “Frozen Kiss” caught my eye quickly – she described it as a more silvery one than “Ice Kiss”. So I decided to get it! I also considered “Star Kiss”, but reviews said it was more blue in person and I already have a blue-toned single highlighter, I don’t need another.

Now, the highlighter section of Revolution’s website is a bit of a maze. There are a lot of products on there. I prefer powder highlighters, especially when I wear a full face of makeup – creme ones are better for when I just wear some concealer and eyebrows and mascara maybe. Anywhoo… I noticed the Reloaded highlighters and the Strobe highlighters the most. And I noticed a lot of shades seemed really similar. So I did some more research, watched some more videos. More of Soph, and this person and this person…

And in the end I narrowed it down to two highlighters from each range: “Set The Tone” and “Just My Type” from the Reloaded highlighters, and “Magnitude” and “Supernova” from the Strobe highlight range. Plus “Frozen Kiss” of course.

From left to right on my hand, you see “Frozen Kiss “, “Set The Tone “, “Supernova “, “Magnitude “, and “Just My Type”. I included two full-sized pictures here so you can see them up close and from two different angles – especially the one on the right by my knuckles looks quite different in the two photos, I think.

From the pictures below I’ve flipped the pans around so you can see the names on the back of each one.

“Frozen Kiss” is a silvery white, and quite glittery. I expected nothing less, as “Ice Kiss” is very glittery as well (which is why I think I hit pan in about one month of using it, that it’s very glittery and also has a bit of kickback). I look forward to using it on my face a lot, although I think it’ll be more of a wintery shade for me.

“Set The Tone” is almost completely white. If I had to pick one, I’d say it leans more towards silver than gold, but really it’s right in the middle and not particularly either one of them. It’s just so very white. And beautiful! Shiny, but not glittery.

The two Strobe highlight shades were the most exciting ones for me. Looking at them in the pans, I struggle to tell the difference. There was also a chance they’d not be very shiny. Remember the “Strobe highlighting palette” I got for free last time (link here, so you don’t have to scroll)? The white-green duo-chrome was bright and beautiful, but the pink and gold ones were so matte I’ve been using them to set my foundation with lately! Fortunately, that was not the case with the two I got, they’re both very shiny and bright and beautiful. “Magnitude” is a pale yellow gold, perfect for my pale skin. “Supernova” is more of a white gold to me, it’s not silver the way “Frozen Kiss ” and “Set The Tone” are, on my hand anyway. But definitely not as gold-gold, or yellow-gold as “Magnitude”.

The last Reloaded highlighter, “Just My Type”, looked like it was gonna be a darker gold, something I could use in the summer. To my surprise, it has rosy undertones, it’s more of a rose gold colour on me! I’m not really into pink highlighters at the moment, but I’m really excited to try this on my face! It’s more peach than straight up pink, but in other lights it looks more gold, which I find super exciting!

To sum up the highlighters, the Skin Kiss one is more glittery than the Reloaded and Strobe highlighters. And just because a shade looks similar to another shade, it might not actually be. There was another strobe one I considered – “Northern Lights” it’s called. But the reviews I found said it has a green shift to it, and from what I saw it looks pretty much identical to the white one in the “Strobe Lighting” palette, and I don’t need another green toned highlighter anytime soon if I’m being honest. I’ll still use it but I don’t need a duplicate!

Alright, that’s all the things I bought which came to a total of £41, and therefore I got a free goodie bag! Let’s have a look at that:

As before, the goodie bag items game in a separate package (in the same box), all black and bubble wrapped on the inside, and it contained 4 items this time too, which were as follows:

I ❤️ Revolution “Mermaid’s Heart” eyeshadow palette

I ❤️ Makeup Unicorn Tears Silicone Sponges

I ❤️ Makeup Lip Lava liquid lipstick in the shade “Shockwave”

I ❤️ Makeup “Parental Advisory Explicit Content” eyeshadow palette

I have never tried a silicone makeup sponge before. I saw it in ads on Facebook a long time ago, and then I watched Tati Westbrook try one and fail (here), while others have loved them, so I’m not quite sure what to think. I’ve never bothered buying one to try. But now I’ve got three free ones and I look forward to seeing how I get on with these! Maybe they’ll work with face masks too.

This lip product… Probably won’t get much use with me, to be honest. It is HOT PINK. It is more like a gloss than a lipstick though, so maybe… We’ll see. I have to try it with a neutral eye look someday and see what it looks like. It has vitamin e in it, which is good. First impression not great, but who knows!

The eyeshadow palettes was what I was most excited about. I’ve seen the “Mermaid’s Heart” one along with unicorn and dragon palettes before so I had an idea what to expect, even if I didn’t remember exactly, I knew it was very… Oceany. I knew nothing regarding the “Parental Advisory” palette at all, and even so, I did not expect this:

IT IS HUGE. 36 shadows. THIRTY SIX SHADOWS. And 12 in the “Mermaid” palette. I’ve just got 48 eyeshadows FOR FREE. How mad is that?! And I just got 7 new blue/turquoise shades which I’ve been craving lately, but I was hesitant about buying a palette like the blue donut or the “Deep Dive” Reloaded palette because realistically, how much would I really use them? But look at them… How gorgeous are they?! Let’s have some swatches:

Look at how beautiful these are… With each shade, I swirled my finger in the pan, went back and forth over the shadow twice, and then repeated. Absolutely stunning. A beautiful mix of mattes and shimmers, even distribution actually. I can’t wait to play with this palette! I even feel like the two palettes compliment each other nicely too, don’t you think?

Next I have some swatches of the “Parental Advisory” palette, now because there are so many shades I actually had to divide it in two, and I did the top two rows first, then the bottom two rows:

I’ve kept the pictures full size here so you’ll be able to really see what’s in each row clearly and appreciate the colours because wow I am amazed!

Not all of these shades were super pigmented but I think there is a ton of super stunning shades in this one! There are several highlighting shades inn here, one or two that’d be possible to use in my eyebrows, and other than that, many stunning shadow and liner colours! I see some shades I’m sure I have in other palettes, but also a lot of unique ones.

And, is anyone else getting Urban Decay Naked palettes vibes from this? I see a lot of Naked and Naked2 in the neutrals here, also a few shades from Naked Reloaded, and some from Naked Smoky – tell me I’m not crazy?!

That is all for today! This was a long post, but I had so much fun trying all of these products and I hope you enjoyed seeing and reading about them!

Xoxo

Julie

PS: I started writing this entry at 3.15pm, it is now 7.05pm… (it’s taken me about an hour to fix the pictures (arrange into mosaic tiles etc, so not actually taking the pics, I did that before I started writing), edit, add abut 5000 tags… and before that I was writing everything out on my phone! But still. That’s a lot of time spent on a blog post, holy sheet…).

Urban Decay ‘Game of Thrones’ Collection

It is finally here! The makeup collection that Urban Decay has been teasing for months on their Instagram page – the Game of Thrones collection! To view the full collection, this link will take you to their UK website where you can see the eyeshadow palette, highlighter palette, lipsticks, eyeliners, lip & cheek stain, and the full vault of everything including two eyeshadow brushes shaped like Longclaw and Needle (Jon and Arya’s swords).

As soon as I found out about it (which was later than a lot of people, I’m sure, as I tend to kinda live under a rock when it comes to a lot of things), I knew I’d want it. Maybe not all of it, but definitely some of it. They revealed the whole collection on their website weeks before the launch, and included a countdown, giving everyone plenty of time to look at the items and decide what they wanted. For me, it quickly became clear that the only product I really really wanted, was the eyeshadow palette. Had I had £198 to spend on the vault I probably would have gotten it, but living on a budget with very few splurges at this point in my life, I decided I could get one thing and one thing only, and my choice was an easy one to make: I don’t use eyeliner pencils. I just don’t like using them. The colours were cool, but I don’t use them normally so why would I use these? None of the lipsticks REALLY spoke to me. I have a lot of lip products (as you will see in a later post, I am working on a makeup inventory one as well), and I struggle to get through them enough as it is. Plus, they are expensive for just one lipstick! I most likely wouldn’t be able to use any of the highlighters. I adore the packaging, but I don’t really like pink highlighter and both of the gold ones looked way too dark to work for me as well. The lip and cheek stain was intriguing, but again, I have a lot of lip products, and I struggle enough to use up the powder blushes I already have (seriously, I’ve had MAC “peaches” since 2014 and there’s only a slight dent in it, doesn’t look like I’m close to hitting pan even). The brushes, had I been able to purchase them individually, would’ve been cool to have as collector’s items, but I couldn’t, and no doubt they’d’ve been really pricey as well. So what’s left, is the eyeshadow palette. £45 for 20 eyeshadows really isn’t that bad, and I know I like the formula of my other UD eyeshadow palettes. Plus, it really seemed like the highlight of the whole collection!!

I was up before 8am on Sunday the 14th, release day, to be ready to order at 8. By 8.06 I was checked out. I received it at mid day on the 18th. The following pictures were taken as I unboxed the item:

We’ll get to swatches and the actual eyeshadows in a second, but first I want to talk a bit about the packaging, and the names. Please keep in mind that these are just my opinions, they are subjective, and you’re certainly free to disagree. Also remember that for the following 8 paragraphs I am not talking about the eyeshadows specifically, nothing to do with the formula or shades, but pure packaging, colour story, and name choices.

First thing first: I love this product. As a collection item, it’s magnificent. It’s a big box, big mirror, an actual iron throne, a couple of quotes, one of which is one of my favourites in the whole show. As a makeup item, the packaging isn’t exactly the most practical. It is huge. It takes up a lot of space, I actually have it sitting on my desk because shoving it in my drawer will mess up the order of everything else. There is a lot of stuff here I don’t need. Or at least, that I wish was optional. My only real wish for change, packaging wise, is that the pull-out drawer of eyeshadows had a lid itself, something like the original Naked palette, just a small magnetic one. so that I could store the eyeshadows in my drawer and put the throne on a shelf for show. I’ve seen people complain that the palette itself doesn’t have a mirror so you have to put it down to pick up a mirror, but that’s not really an issue for me, as I’m used to that with a lot of the items I have anyway.

Now let’s have a look at the colour story and names for this palette. I’ve inserted pictures below so you can see them more clearly, apologies if they are a little blurry, my phone camera tends to only want to focus on one thing, I guess I should really use an actual camera where I can change the aperture and do macro photography for this, really…

The palette is divided into four sections. You can refer to them as locations: North of The Wall/Hardhome, Winterfell, Kings Landing, and Bay of Dragons (Dany’s new name for Slaver’s Bay which she liberated one city after another before departing Essos for Westeros). Or you can refer to them by names: White Walkers/Freefolk, Stark, Lannister, Targaryen. Personally I prefer the latter, and to use Freefolk for the top one. There really is no rule to how you choose to refer to each section of this palette. But I do like that they’ve sectioned it off. Now that so many of the major houses and families are gone, these really are the main players left – the White Walkers, the Freefolk, the Starks, the Lannisters, and the Targaryens, and those loyal to them (such as the Ironborn, the Bear Islanders, and others). But I guess if you really think about it, they were the major players from the start as well, weren’t they, and the other houses pledged their allegiance… but enough show analysis! Let’s get to my thoughts on the colours and names.

There are a lot of different shades here, practically the whole colour wheel! Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet… And black, and silver, and gold, lots of gold! With these shades, you can create practically any look you want.

In the top/first section, I feel like the icy blue shade really should have been titled “White Walker”, for the colour of their eyes, while a more icy, snowy, cold white or silver could have been called “Frozen North”. “Take the Black” is a fitting name for a black shade so I have no issues with that. “Free Folk”, though a stunning shade, could probably have been some sort of different colour, maybe a cool toned matte transition shade of some sort, I don’t know. It is beautiful! “Hardhome”… I have no specific feelings about, really!

In the second section, I have more issues with the names… None of the dire wolves were orangy brown, so why is that first shade named “Nymeria”? And wouldn’t “Winter is Coming” be a more fitting name for a brassy brown shade, rather than “Winter is Here”, what with being both the words for the Stark house and relating it to the fact that none of the Stark children had seen winter until now? “Weirwood Leaves” is fine, and I guess I have no issues with “The Sight”, although I don’t associate any kind of green with those words, but I do like the woodsy green colour in this section a lot! Now that I think of it, maybe it has some connection to the Children of the Forest, their green eyes, the foresty green of this shade… Hm. Maybe it’s not that badly named at all. My issues are not with the shades, I love the colour story, it’s the names of the shades I don’t particularly like (not for all of the shades though, some are quite fitting”.  And while gold goes really well with the other colours in this section, it’s not really what I associate with Winterfell, and there’s so much more gold to come in this palette, they could perhaps have chosen a different colour here, maybe something more silvery (but don’t get me wrong this shade is stunning, as you’ll see a bit later!). The shade “Free Folk” here, maybe, and then a cool toned matte in “Free Folk”s place in the top section would’ve been lovely, I think!

For the third section, “Red Keep”, “Casterly Rock”, and “Lannister Red” are all perfectly named shades in my opinion; the colours and the names go well together, even though “Lannister Red” is maybe just a slight bit too brown – although for me that makes it more wearable. What confuses me here is why a peachy pink shade has been called “House Lannister” – surely something more red and gold would go better here? Peach is definitely not a colour I associate with the Lannisters, The Rock, or Kings Landing… Speaking of Kings Landing, the shade with the same name is beautiful and glowy and regal, but I almost feel like “Winterfell” would’ve fitted more in this section, due to it being the capital city and where the royal family lives, and “Winterfell” is more of a regal colour to me. That being said, “Kings Landing” wouldn’t’ve fitted anywhere else either, to me, as a shade, unless perhaps in the last section, which we’ll come to next.

The fourth section, consists of two purples, two golds, and a pink. I reiterate, I absolutely love the shades themselves. I used all five of these in a look I did a couple of days ago, and I loved the look more than I thought I would (I don’t really wear purple eyeshadow). The two purples are different, and the two golds are different, but I feel that gold especially has already been covered, and perhaps it wasn’t necessary to have another two of them in this palette. “Stormborn” is indeed a stormy colour, it has dark undertones and I feel it’s appropriately named, given that Daenerys was born during a storm, and the Targaryens are known for their purple eyes. What I don’t associate with the family, is the gold shade named “House Targaryen”, given that their sigil is red and black, and their words are “fire and blood”. I would’ve thought something more dragon-like, or a purple shade here maybe. “Dothraki” I can see being a greeny gold colour, given that they roam Essos, there’s desert and the great grass sea… So I don’t really have any issues with that. But a colour called “Bend the Knee”? It should’ve been more powerful, not the summery lilac that it is (but again, stunning). Perhaps “Bend the Knee” and “House Targaryen” should’ve switched names? And lastly, “Bay of Dragons”… Another gorgeous shade, but I don’t really see the connection between the colour and the name, again. Thinking about the Bay of Dragons, the colour “Kings Landing” feels closer, more appropriate, than the pink in the last section, to me. It just feels a bit misplaced, I don’t associate pink with anything in the Game of Thrones universe, really. So while I love all the colours, I feel like this one had the most distance between the colours of the shades and the shade names.

Now. Let’s have a look at the colours themselves, some swatches, formula, texture… All the fun stuff! But this time, let’s go from the bottom and up! Keep in mind – these are all swatches done with my fingers, on the back of my bare hand, so they’ll most likely look different when applied on a primed eyelid with a brush. These swatches are a couple of layers each, they can be blended out into almost nothing, but I wanted to pack them on to see the colours properly.

Targaryen – Bay of Dragons

Earlier, I said that the bottom section has two purples, two golds, and a pink. And that’s true. But as you can see, they’re two very different purples, and two very different golds. “Stormborn” reminds me of a storm, you know those summer thunderstorms where everything goes dark really quickly but it’s not because it’s dark outside, it’s just the clouds? That kind of dark. It’s a beautiful shimmery purple with dark undertones. “Bend the Knee” however, is light and lilac, it almost looks pink from some angles. “House Targaryen” is a more sandy gold, more towards rose gold than yellow gold, whereas “Dothraki” is a yellow gold leaning towards green, and it’s brighter. “Bay of Dragons” is a rosy pink, a bit sheerer and more crumbly than the others even though they are all shimmers. Some have referred to the round shades as transformer shades, others as eyeshadow toppers, so that might explain the different texture.

In writing moment, these are the only shadows I’ve used on my eyes, as I haven’t worn makeup other than that one day since receiving the palette. They applied beautifully, but I think the colours faded a little over time, although it’s hard to tell, as I applied the shadows in daylight and it was dark by the time I went to remove my makeup. There was definitely shimmer fallout throughout the day though, I know that for a fact, as I applied my eye makeup first and my base after, but after a few hours I saw glitter on my cheeks that definitely wasn’t but there on purpose.

Lannister – Kings Landing

 

“Red Keep” is a beautiful copper red shimmer shade, exactly what I expected from the name, it really does remind me of the building in the show. “Casterly Rock”, another shimmer, is more brassy bronze, also stunning. As I wrote above, I don’t think “House Lannister” really suits its name, but it is nonetheless a beautiful peachy pink matte, great transition shade that goes with many of the colours in the palette. “Lannister Red” is an absolutely gorgeous matte shade as well, it’s a bit rusty, which I think makes it more wearable, and I can’t wait to wear it on my eyes! The topper/transformer shade is “Kings Landing”, a pale gold, almost looks like a highlighter from some angles on me. I bet it would look gorgeous on top of “Lannister Red”…

Stark – Winterfell

Along with the Lannister section, this is one that’s way up my alley when it comes to colour. First, “Nymeria” is a matte orangey brown, great transition shade. “Winter is Here” is a brassy brown again, slightly darker than “Casterly Rock”, but less shimmery, it’s got more of a satin finish I think. “Weirwood Leaves” has the same sort of finish, and it’s a beautiful burgundy red. “The Sight” has more shimmer to it than the previous two, and it’s a gorgeous forest green. “Winterfell” is the real gem in this section, it is like straight up glitter, except that it doesn’t require glue to stick down! It’s chunkier than the others, but it is a transformer/topper shade, supposedly, although with how pigmented it is I expect anything underneath it would actually be covered up!

Free Folk – White Walkers – Hardhome – Beyond the Wall

This is actually the section I struggled to name the most, haha. And I wanted to save the best for last, especially when it comes to that blue shade. Have you ever seen anything so gorgeous in your life?! But let’s do them in the same order as before, starting with “Take the Black”. This one, to me, was probably the least pigmented shade in the whole palette. To get it to that intensity you see on my hand, I went over it about 7 times with my finger to try and put more colour down (swirl my finger in the pan, go back and forth, swirl my finger in the pan, go back and forth… seven times.).  All the other shades I did the same thing twice with. Nevertheless, once I built it up, it is a stunning black with micro glitter in it – the black itself is matte. Second up is “White Walker”, a shimmery duochrome white blue shade, very frosty, very cold. To be honest, I’m surprised this isn’t the topper/transformer shade in this section. The highlight of the palette: “Frozen North”. I ONLY DIPPED AND SWIPED ONCE BACK AND FORTH WITH THIS SHADE! It’s definitely the most pigmented of all the shades in the palette. A beautiful shimmer! The next shade is “Free Folk”, a cool silver shimmer. And lastly, “Hardhome” is actually leaning towards pink, a pinky white colour, and warmer than the other colours in this section. This one I can also see being used as a highlighter, actually.

Now, I’m no expert when it comes to eyeshadow finishes. I can tell if a shade is matte or shimmery or in between (so, more satin or sheen), or straight up glitter, but I can’t really look at one and say that’s frost or metallic, not shimmer, or anything like that. So I’ve judged these shades to the best of my abilities, but I’m no expert. I did come across this post by Temptalia, which describes all the shades quite detailed, if you want to have a look. This post also lists all the dupes for this shade, how close of a match they are, and what the main difference is, so if you’re interested in any shades specifically, I’d definitely go check that out!

That’s it for this post on my thoughts of the Urban Decay Game of Thrones eyeshadow palette with my own swatches! There are already a ton of videos about this palette on youtube, the only one I watched before receiving the palette was this one by ThatGirlShaeXo, it was really the only video at the time I looked. Sophdoesnails did her own video (here) that I watched after receiving my palette but before trying out the colours. I think it might be fun to do another post about this sometime soon, where I try the shades with and without the topper/transformation shade, so I can see them next to each other, sort of like, topper on one side, shadow on the other, and shadow with the topper on top in the middle, just to see what the toppers do to the shades!

What do you think of this collection? Too much over the top? Had so much potential? Overrated, didn’t live up to the expectations? Exactly what you wanted? Let me know in the comments! ❤

Xoxo

Julie

Quick Update

Good Monday, dear readers!

It is Monday the 22nd of April, Earth Day, Easter Monday, and a bank holiday. It has been nearly two weeks since my last blog post, two weeks minus two days, as the week before last I posted both on Monday and on Wednesday. Last Monday, I didn’t have a post prepared, and I was in no mental state to write one. The last two or three Mondays for me have been… hard. Bad mental health days. Why Mondays? I have no idea. It could have something to do with me being rejected for literally every job I have applied for in the last few months, a feeling I am unfamiliar with up until this point (I’ve had a few jobs, but I was also in school and uni and not technically in need of them, and I’ve only been rejected from two – one I group interviewed for, and one I never heard back from after applying). It’s exhausting…

I spent much of the weekend before last playing the open beta of Anno 1800, re-familiarising myself with the game, as the closed beta in February was my first time playing any Anno game (read my post about that here). The game released in full on Tuesday last week. I spent a lot of the week playing it, trying and failing, trying different settings, with and without pirates, trying different building styles… I’ve gotten to the point where I have some of each population class now. But my single player save is kind of a mess at this point. I really just wanted to get to the end, but it turns out I’m having a lot of issues with my trade routes and I need more engineers and investors to get further in the game but I also cannot upgrade my artisans to engineers or my engineers to investors because I’m unable to cover their basic needs, and I get riots because I cannot satisfy their happiness. Hopefully I can salvage this, I might actually go back in and downgrade so that I don’t have as many different population classes to try to satisfy at once. I could just start over, but that feels like giving up on an island I was actually very happy with up until this point, so I’ll probably try to fix it.

The weather’s been nice. Yesterday, I actually sat on the step in front of the house eating my breakfast outside. It reminded me of my grandmother, the one that’s passed away. When I was little and spending summers there, the sun was at the front of their house during the day, and she’d often say let’s eat on the stairs in front of the house! It was a new and exciting experience for me, not something we did at home. But she’d make me a sandwich and a glass of milk or juice and we’d sit on the steps eating breakfast in the sun. It’s something I’ve done in recent years at my parents house before work in the summer too, bring my coffee and my food outside and sit in the sun! Another thing I did yesterday was clear out the garage. I started at around 11-11.30, it was 3.30 when I finished, I didn’t realise how long I’d been at it for and it completely exhausted me for the rest of the day. It felt very good to have done it though! I spent the rest of the day lying in bed, cuddling a cat or two, and rewatching Reign on Netflix. I watched this show about two years ago, summer of 2017. I couldn’t remember all the things that happened in season 1, I thought for sure some of those incidents came later! And now that I’m approaching the end of season 2… There’s so much I didn’t remember. Despite the many, many flaws and historical inaccuracies (women’s hair and clothing to mention a couple), I do really like this show, I think the actors are brilliant, and a lot of the story pains me, which of course makes me like it because it has an affect on me. Today, my back is aching from the hard work of yesterday, but it’s a good ache. At least I’m not having another Monday infested by depression and anxiety…

I am writing this post at mid day on Monday. This will not be my only post for today though! I have another, which I’ve been working on over the last few days, which, providing my pictures being good, will be up tonight at my “normal” posting time. It is about the Urban Decay Game of Thrones makeup collection, which launched just over a week ago, on the same Sunday as the new and final season premiered! I’ve watched the first two episodes now. What do we think? I’ve heard some people refer to them as fillers, but I don’t agree – fillers are empty and play no part in the upcoming events, I think everything we’ve seen so far is definitely important for upcoming events. They’re builders, if anything. With a few bits and pieces to satisfy the audience (Arya in episode 2, I won’t say anything else, but you can’t deny that fans have been begging for it for years!).

By the way – the Easter egg arrived, and I put it in the back of a kitchen cupboard for a week. Then I got the two little packs of mini eggs out and had them last weekend. I didn’t get the actual egg from the kitchen until Wednesday night last week, and I’ve been eating a little bit every day. Since I count today as the last day of Easter, I will have the bit that remains today, probably tonight. All in all, things went well. The egg is so chocolatey that I feel ill if I have too much at once, which is actually a good thing, because it’s made it last!

I know I don’t have many people who read my posts, and I hardly ever actually get people talking to me in the comments, but I wanted to write this little update for my own sake. I’ve been so good at posting every Monday since the start of the year, last Monday was the first I missed, so to make up for it I’m posting two posts this Monday, and at least my post count is still up to date! Talk to me in the comments, tell me something good ❤

Xoxo

Julie

Living With Eating Disorders

A person who is an alcoholic, or a drug addict, can stay sober for 30 years, but that doesn’t mean they’re cured. They can’t just casually have a drink with everyone else, they can relapse at any moment in time, even though they’re sober and have been for a long time. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it illustrates the point.

Easter is coming up. Not yet, but soon. We do shopping once a week, and I was told to pick out which Easter Egg I want, it’ll be here tomorrow along with food for the next week. I have a hard time believing I’ll be able to leave it until Easter… Maybe that’s not a big deal to some, some people probably get a lot of eggs while they’re in shops and eats them like other sweets. But when I was young, we had a week off school, starting Friday before Good Friday, lasting through Easter Monday, and my brother and I wouldn’t usually get our Easter Eggs until the following weekend, because that’s when it really is Easter, not just Easter holiday from school. So I was brought up to enjoy my Easter egg during actual Easter, and I only got a small/medium sized one too.

You might think I’m overthinking this. That’s it’s not a big deal if I eat my egg before Easter, or that I can just leave it until Easter to eat it. I wish it were that simple.

I have super self-control when walking through a shop looking at all the good things. I have no issues walking down the candy aisle and smell all the chocolate in the air, I can just walk through and buy my things and leave, no biggie. But the moment I buy something, I have a really hard time not eating it once I get home. I’m just not wired to have a “snack drawer” or shelf or cupboard or whatever. It was fine when I was a child and my parents were in charge of handing out sweets to us (Saturday nights with TV, birthdays, Christmas, and Easter). But when I was, maybe around 10, my Mum started working away from home, that’s when the problems started.

I was fully aware of where to find cookies, sweets, and the chocolate spreads. And I was struggling in school, not with the material but with the social aspect. I’d come home and make myself two slices of bread with chocolate spread, a glass of chocolate milk, and a few pieces of chocolate, and watch 7th Heaven on TV while home alone. I was comfort eating. It made me feel better. This went on for several years.

The summer before I turned 15, I stopped eating meat. That’s a story for another time, if I haven’t already talked about it before, I actually don’t remember. My grandmother made a comment that I was gonna become skinny because of it. The same grandmother had earlier made comments on me being on the bigger side and asked whether I was the only one in my year in school who was. It stayed in my head. I’d already started working out a couple of years earlier, because my MP3 player broke, and my dad said he’d buy me a new one if I kept up my grades for summer term and started to exercise (he got me the 2nd generation iPod Nano, 2GB, which was a lot back then!). At some point, I started to notice the weight loss, and it drove me to keep going. I ate less and less. I exercised more and more. At the worst, I was down to one tiny bowl of cereal for breakfast, and a small portion of dinner that I couldn’t always finish, and I had dance class on Monday, PE on Tuesday and Thursday, aerobics on Wednesday, and I’d go running and biking on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I did strength exercises too, every evening before bed, which was what I’d started doing back when I wanted my MP3 player replaced (I still remember the first time: 10 push-ups, and 10 crunches, and I was aching a lot the next day. By the end I had a full hour’s worth of different exercises for my core, legs, and arms). I wasn’t healthy. I had headaches every day. I drank only water, and juice with dinner when the others had soda. I never ate sweets or crisps.

But here’s the thing. I never looked like someone with eating disorders. There weren’t any teachers or classmates who were worried about me. One teacher made a remark once, he’d seen me out running after school, said something about me being into jogging, when I rejected a Twist (which are like Celebrations) he offered me once (nothing creepy, I had to stop by school for a signature on something I’d forgotten, and he was in the teacher’s room). I never saw a doctor, I was never hospitalised or treated in any way. My parents knew something wasn’t right, I think, but we’ve never actually talked about it. Once when I’d been out jogging around mid-day on a weekend, and came home, I told my mum I wanted to go for a bike ride and she said absolutely not. And for several years after I got better, whenever I’d talk to my dad on the phone (when I’d just started uni), he’d ask me what I’ve eaten today. At this point, I was able to tell him the truth. A few years earlier (my first year of high school/upper secondary), I’d make up something about using my pocket money to buy something from the school cafeteria. That happened maybe twice during the year (other than ice coffee before science tests, which became a sort of ritual for me and a friend). So my parents were worried. But no one else had any reason to be. One girl made a comment on me becoming fit when high school started, but we were 15-16, a lot of people’s bodies changed over summer, she asked if I’d been working out and I said yes, but asked nothing further. I didn’t look like someone with eating disorders. But I had them. First one way, then the other.

eating disorder

noun

plural noun: eating disorders

1. any of a range of psychological disorders characterized by abnormal or disturbed eating habits

I’m well now. Mostly. I’ve been mostly well for several years. I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, most days. Sometimes I skip lunch, if I have a late breakfast and don’t want to have a late dinner. I don’t like eating late at night. I don’t like snacking, much. I try to eat mostly healthy. I still haven’t eaten meat since I stopped in the summer of 2007. The thing is, I know how easy it would be for me to relapse. With being unemployed, and away from my family and friends, with being located to mainly just one room in a small house, my mental health isn’t always doing so good. And a lot of the time I want to eat things I know I shouldn’t. Like yesterday, we had takeout pizza. We’re having Easter eggs being delivered tomorrow. And I’ve been craving sweets for hours, mainly due to talking about them with someone on twitter (really lovely conversation though!). I am able to not eat anything because I don’t have anything. I don’t even have cereal. But food is being delivered tomorrow, and I might go make tea in a bit, my hands are quite cold and I have a sleepy time tea. Sleep is another tool I use to control cravings and overeating; in writing moment it’s nearly 10pm and like I said earlier, I don’t like eating late, so I will have some water and/or some tea, and go to sleep, and breakfast will taste all the much better in the morning.

So you see which way I’m leaning at the moment. I want all the things I know I shouldn’t have. But then some days, I don’t want anything. Or I’ll be really healthy, those are the best days. But sometimes I feel like not eating anything at all, especially following a time of me eating things I know I shouldn’t. And I know I need to eat, and I do, and I have people around me who care about me and want me to stay healthy and well, who make sure I do, or at least that I don’t skip meals multiple days in a row, that’s really the danger I am in sometimes.

I’ve been mainly well for about 9 years now. Or at least 7, maybe 8. I started to get better around 9 years ago, but that too was a process that took some time. It took me more than 2 years to get back into eating lunch on a regular basis. And it’s always a process, it’s always going to be a process, it’s never going to end, I don’t think. And that’s really the point I wanted to get across here. I may never have been in any physical danger, or maybe I would have been if things hadn’t happened to change the course I was on, I don’t know. But I was never hospitalised or in danger of dying, and I never developed diabetes due to how I was living and eating. But even though I’m, for the most part, stable, for now, that doesn’t mean I couldn’t still spin one way or the other, it doesn’t mean I won’t relapse into comfort-eating or not eating at all. Every day, I work at making sure it doesn’t happen, by eating my meals, and getting the nutrients my body needs, but there are times when I feel bad and I eat a whole pack of Jaffa cakes, and there are days when I feel so bad about my weight or the shape of my body that I want to go on a water diet for a week, there’s no denying that. But for now, I’m fine, for the most part. Let’s hope this stupid Easter egg (that I cannot wait to eat, I got a Cadbury mini eggs one!!) doesn’t ruin any of that…

If you’ve made it this far, this is the end! Thank you so much for reading, I know this was a long piece; this is something that’s really personal to me, and that I haven’t really opened up about in the past. Please feel free to talk to me in the comments – but if you’re gonna be nasty, I’ll just delete you, so let’s keep it civil okay 🙂

Xoxo

Julie