Three Lives To Live (Nostalgic Read from the 1990s)
So I am really excited to introduce this book to you all, and no, surprisingly enough it is not due to its outstanding plot 😅 The reason that I chose this book was because of the amazing cover art -- when my eyes stumbled upon it, I immediately fell in love 😍🥰... It reminded me of a saying that I had heard long ago...
"They say to never judge a book by its cover, but if you hadn't judged it, then you wouldn't have picked this book!!"
Such was the case with this novel 😄 As a kid from the 90s, this cover art is extremely nostalgic for me... During this era, there was a very specific type of cover style that went along with the books, a type of hyper-realistic art. Extremely human, yet still undeniably fictional. Romance novels were great examples of this! 🤣 There was also the Fear Street series, Goosebumps, and Apple Paperbacks.
(Source: https://storyarcblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/30/all-62-classic-goosebumps-covers-ranked/)
(Source: http://www.kathryns-inbox.com/2016/02/1990s-nostalgia-scholastic-apple.html?m=1)
So, my novel happened to capture my attention for 1 of 3 reasons...
- Girl falling down some kind of chute -- what's up with that?? 🤷♀️
- Absolutely adore the peach frilly dress and the hair tied with a bow.
- Girl in bathtub with a book is sucha vibe, honestly...
Needless to say, there was a lot to unpack there! 😅 But again, just sucha 90s vibe from the artwork, a bunch of chaotic things all crammed into one picture.
As for the story itself, uhhhhh, pretty boring! 😅 It basically begins with the protagonist, from the cover, reading in the basement in the tub, when her "twin" suddenly comes falling down the laundry chute! And "twin" is in quotations because she doesn't have a twin! 😱 It turns out that all three characters in the book (protagonist, her grandmother, and her "twin") are all the same person!! They are all different lives of the grandmother, who happened to fall down the ✨️ magical laundry chute ✨️, a chute that transports the user 50 years ahead of their time!!
So, it was a pretty lame book 😄 But there is one thing that I could appreciate: the ruthlessness! 😱 "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I hope that you choke and die!~ 🥰" Gawd, back when it was a completely normal thing to wish misfortune on one's enemies, instead of this stupid *"Kill them with kindness~" narrative that we've adopted.
Here are some of my personal favorites from the book, bearing in mind that this is all from the internal monologue of a 13-year-old girl:
"'You can marry Staci's brother ... He'll rip your bodice off three times a day.'"
"I could have killed her. I began to explain that I was setting a mood ... A suspenseful mood, not a horsey one."
"Someday soon I may kill Daisy. How could anyone deliberately hurt a person as nice as Grandma?"
"The eighth-grader sitting next to me gets something wrapped in silver paper. I hope its chocolate and she chokes on them."