The Life List

Hurrah! I finally found a movie I liked on Netflix. It's a 2025 romance called The Life List and stars Sofia Carson. I enjoyed the story, the acting, the romance, the humor, etc., and I highly recommend the movie to my readers. The premise is that Elizabeth is concerned about her daughter Alex, who seems to be just drifting through life without any goals. Unfortunately, Elizabeth is dying, so she won't have a chance to help Alex the way she would like to; instead, she found a "life list" Alex created when she was 13, and in her will Elizabeth conditions Alex's inheritance upon fulfilling her teenage dreams. Elizabeth enlisted the help of her lawyer to keep Alex focused, and each time Alex completes one of her goals, she receives another CD from him with Elizabeth giving Alex words of love and encouragement toward the next goal. It made me tear up a few times.

Do you remember any of your dreams/goals from when you were 13? I don't know if I even had any "big" goals at that age. Mine were undoubtedly immediate and superficial... welp, nothing really has changed much in that regard. LOL. I did enjoy writing fiction and poetry, but I don't think I imagined myself as a famous writer (good thing, eh?). I probably wanted to get straight A's in school, and most likely I was obsessed with solving puzzles and finishing needlework pictures. 

I was about to cancel my Hulu subscription (again) before the price jump to $9.99. It's rare that I find something on Hulu I want to watch, and the new bachelor season won't be coming up until the fall. But when I went to the Hulu website to cancel, they said what about if we only charge you the same $2.99 for another six months? I said OK. Of course, in November I will be hooked on the new Golden Bachelor season, so I'll probably be willing to pay $9.99 for a few months until it ends. After that, nah. Probably nah. The reason the next one is special is because they announced that the new Golden Oldie is the hilarious French guy from the last Golden Bachelorette, so I do have to watch. 

Recently I finished reading Five Broken Blades, a fantasy novel by Mai Corland, and gave it two stars. The first third was incredibly slow and tedious, though it did pick up toward the end. Why authors insist on writing chapters in first person present tense from different characters, I do not know. This would have been the perfect opportunity for third person narration so the reader would have had an easier time gliding from one POV to another. Corland made one character sound ignorant, so his bad grammar at least made it clear when it was his chapter, but the others blended together. Yes, she put their names at the beginning of the chapters, but the rest of the voices weren't distinct enough to keep straight. To be fair, fantasy isn't my favorite genre, but in fact the fantasy elements were pretty well done here. It was simply the lack of depth of the characters and their motivations that made the book kind of a drag to get through. Happily, it fit my 2025 Reading Challenge category of being part of a series ~ hopefully, our book club leader won't want to continue this series! 

I put Verity by Colleen Hoover on hold at my library. My in-person book club has chosen it for our June novel, and though I read it years ago (and gave it two stars), I am worried I won't remember enough of it to join in the discussion. I'm curious if my rating stays the same this round ~ also there's a brand new chapter included, so we shall see if that makes a difference. I'm definitely interested in seeing the movie next year with the great cast of Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett, and Dakota Johnson.