Thing I’m In The Middle Of

The Keepers

I’ve recently gotten into crime docuseries on Netflix and my oh my, I’m loving it. I started off my journey with “Sophie: A Murder in West Cork” and immediately after that, asked my friend for some recommendations and she led me to this one. I definitely will be putting up a post on my crime docuseries journey once I’ve watched a couple more but I couldn’t not talk about this one. This series is seven episodes long and I’m half way through the sixth one so I’m nearing the end. Each episode is an hour long and follows two sixty year old women investigating the murder case of their murdered high school teacher and sharing with us what they know already.

This docuseries centers around the murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik, a nun and teacher at a Catholic all girl’s school in the 1960’s. I went in completely blind and I definitely encourage you all to do that if you can unless you have trigger warnings centered around sexual abuse, rape, pedophilia, and ptsd. The level of depth we go into following certain people’s journeys in this docuseries is saddening and disgusting, and it may be hard for people to watch as they recount details on this case. The story telling in this docuseries was done so well, it’s honestly amazing. Each episode we learn a bunch of horrifying, horrible, disgusting things, and we get deeper into the case. We’re introduced to various elements of the case and different people who played a role into this murder, including some potential suspects. But at the end of each episode, the docuseries drops one tidbit of information that just usurps everything we thought we knew and leads us down a wild chase into another angle of the murder case. With the end of each episode, we find out something that makes this whole case even more appalling, which is hard to say because we already start off with something so sad, dark, and disgusting.

I highly recommend it but please, please be aware of trigger warnings because this show discusses difficult topics that can be disturbing and triggering for people.

The Last Namsara

This book has me sitting on a tough spot lol. In fact, this book is the reason why I ended up wanting to write this post even though I need to be working on posts for next week lol. After reading a ton of romance books, back to back, I wanted to pick up a book in a genre on the exact opposite end of romance, so I went for this YA Fantasy.

I’ve been absolutely loving the writing. This author has a talent for story telling which pays off well because storytelling is a huge part in this book. “The Last Namsara”, in the vaguest of explanations, follows our mc Asha, a dragon hunter, doing whatever it takes to get out of marrying the second in command of her father. Asha grows up with a connection with dragons that many people fear and she’s known as the bringer of destruction, death, and chaos, an Iskari. Even in lore, Iskari are known to be feared so Asha channels who she is to please her father and hunt dragons. The frustrating things about this book are probably meant to be frustrating. The main character, at times, is quite unlikeable because she’s so hard headed and focused on one goal and one political view point that the things that she says and does rub us, the readers, the wrong way. This fantasy world is full of warring kingdoms and people who have not only different kingdoms but vastly different interpretations of the faith/beliefs about the lore behind the dragons. There’s also a slavery system that’s justified by our mc’s kingdom and that our mc thinks is fine because that’s what she’s raised to believe and accept.

Characters around her challenge her and are the exact opposite of her in certain cases/viewpoints and so it’s quite frustrating when she doesn’t realize that her way of thinking is harmful to certain people and isn’t fair. It also doesn’t make sense that if she’s as close to her mom as the book makes her come off as, why she can’t understand why her mother’s people reacted the way they did after a certain event occurred? A lot of the book so far, she speaks about her mother’s people as “others” because they’re from a different kingdom even though she is born to a member of their kingdom, whether she likes it or not.

She also thinks that her brother is foolish for believing in something and is a dreamer for pursuing a certain traditional way of thinking that she dislikes even though her entire purpose, what she does and what she currently has to do in regards to a certain quest she’s being forced onto involves that traditional way of thinking? She just comes of hypocritical and cocky in situations like this which if I didn’t say enough already lol, is frustrating.

What are you currently watching and reading? Are you into crime docuseries as well because if so, please recommend me some!