Madison's Updates en-US Wed, 30 Apr 2025 21:02:29 -0700 60 Madison's Updates 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg UserStatus1055200709 Wed, 30 Apr 2025 21:02:29 -0700 <![CDATA[ Madison is on page 49 of 400 of The Vanishing Stair ]]> The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson Madison is on page 49 of 400 of <a href="/book/show/43931400-the-vanishing-stair">The Vanishing Stair</a>. ]]> ReadStatus9372628690 Wed, 30 Apr 2025 21:02:22 -0700 <![CDATA[Madison started reading 'The Vanishing Stair']]> /review/show/7329698073 The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson Madison started reading The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson
]]> Rating852738653 Wed, 30 Apr 2025 10:25:58 -0700 <![CDATA[Madison Seggebruch liked a userstatus]]> /
Madison liked Lily &#x1f349;'s status update
Lily &#x1f349;
Lily &#x1f349; is 29% done with Beach Read
]]> Rating852738609 Wed, 30 Apr 2025 10:25:50 -0700 <![CDATA[Madison Seggebruch liked a userstatus]]> /
Madison liked Abigail Cruzan's status update
Abigail Cruzan
Abigail Cruzan is on page 50 of 432 of Great Big Beautiful Life
]]> Rating852738592 Wed, 30 Apr 2025 10:25:46 -0700 <![CDATA[Madison Seggebruch liked a review]]> /
Madison liked Kenz's review of Great Big Beautiful Life:
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
]]> Review6836427403 Tue, 29 Apr 2025 20:55:00 -0700 <![CDATA[Madison added 'Great Big Beautiful Life']]> /review/show/6836427403 Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry Madison gave 4 stars to Great Big Beautiful Life (Hardcover) by Emily Henry
Did I once again cry at the parent plot in ms Henry’s book? Yes as always
Did I think the Margaret plot line was fun? Very much so yes
Did I also think there wasn’t quite enough early development between the two leads before they were like obsessed with each other ? Also yes but I did still like and enjoy them and I understand my personal taste I normally just have a hard time with the two characters falling in love in under a month for all romance books so that’s just a personal issue.
Overall enjoyed this one, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting and the yearning didn’t quite hit the mark for me but I enjoyed a lot of the little moments throughout and the underlying story about love romantic and familial ]]> UserStatus1054051271 Mon, 28 Apr 2025 21:17:27 -0700 <![CDATA[ Madison is on page 350 of 432 of Great Big Beautiful Life ]]> Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry Madison is on page 350 of 432 of <a href="/book/show/218559595-great-big-beautiful-life">Great Big Beautiful Life</a>.
Madison wrote: Mention of long hair and then suddenly a buzz cut…suspicious ]]> Review7216985228 Thu, 24 Apr 2025 11:27:22 -0700 <![CDATA[Madison added 'Everything I Never Told You']]> /review/show/7216985228 Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng Madison gave 4 stars to Everything I Never Told You (Paperback) by Celeste Ng
3.5
This would be a book I would love to discuss in an English class.
For being just shy of 300 pages this book and its story have several themes weaved into its pages.
We are first introduced with the family not being aware that their middle child Lydia is not simply late for breakfast but missing and dead. What a way to draw in an audience.
Throughout the book we see flashbacks of all the family members, parents Marilyn and James and their upbringing/parents/challenges they faced in their lives before meeting each other.
James� character really focuses in on him growing up as a child of immigrants and how he experienced racism at a young age and throughout his life. He desperately wants to just belong, not stand out at all. On several instances we see one of his main concerns in life is fitting in, he wants his children to fit in but knows they are bound to stand out being the only Asian family in this small Ohioan town. He wants to fit in so badly he fails to see that his wife has always wanted something different and out of the box of a cookie cutter life and this is where they clash but both of them don’t realize this early on. His experience with hiding things from his family members, autopsy,etc and how he deals with his grief by having an affair with one of the only other Asian women in town was very interesting. Would I say I liked James? No but his intentions and actions do make sense given how he was raised and how he experienced life at a young age.
Marilyn is also complex in her characterization, she is a classic I didn’t get what I wanted so I’m going to force this on my child (Lydia) and not realize my kid really doesn’t share the same dream as me but does not want to disappoint me. Her favoritism towards Lydia and blatant ignorance of Nath and Hannah was also compelling, especially since we see in all 3 kids povs that they know Lydia is the favorite child and that she is kinda of treated like the sun they all orbit around. Marilyn wanted to be a doctor and live a life different than her mother but wasn’t successful in this, the fact that her mother prioritized asking her about her romance prospects while she was in college over her academics is something realistic for the time period this is set in 1950s-1970s range. Mother daughter relationships are a big theme in this book we see several different depictions in Marilyn/her mother, Marilyn/Lydia, and Marilyn/Hannah. They all are vastly different. But what we see in Marilyn’s regret in her children taking her away from her education is hard, we see she does love her children and she pushes Lydia so much because she wants the best for her but it ultimately becomes Lydia’s demise.
Lydia we don’t see too much of in the grand scheme of things but her struggles with trying to be the perfect kid is a reality many kids deals with. She is doted on and doesn’t quite realize she is a little spoiled but not quite spoiled in an affectionate way. Most of the things we see Marilyn and James do for her/get for her stem from what they wish they had growing up instead of trying to get to know their own daughter or letting her develop her own sense of self. I think part of this is what leads Lydia to lead such a lonely life school/friends wise, obviously she also faces similar issues to her father with racism that her white mother does not truly understand but her upbringing and the family not really branching out and having family friends definitely probably impacted her ability to make friends. I’m glad we do find out how she died but it is just so sad to see how determined she was in her final moments.
Nath and his storyline with being jealous of his sister and being ignored or belittled by his parents is also sad. I love that Nath and Lydia seem to have a stronger sibling relationship where they both know their family is odd and have inside joke type of things but it makes their relationship with Hannah even more sad as she is pretty much cast aside by everybody. I also found Naths one sided feud with Jack stemming from a childhood interaction intriguing. I was not expecting the LGBTQ slight mention within this book but I didn’t dislike it. Nath realizing college could be his fresh start is something many kids realize with their first taste of freedom and it was interesting that he didn’t seem to understand why Lydia was acting out about him leaving if they were both under an understanding that their family home isn’t always the most ideal place to be. Was his anger with her justified for her hiding his mail etc? Yes. Should he have pushed her in the lake as a young child? No, but at least he immediately recognized the wrong in his behavior at that point and fixed it.
Hannah’s character made me just so sad, when I started to come to the realization that Marilyn was going to return home from running away to college because she was pregnant with Hannah I knew this poor kid was not going to be treated well. Her collecting little things from her family members that they wouldn’t notice was a detail that was small but spoke at a lot about how observant and careful she was. This baby was basically ignored by all of her family members at most of the times in her life even when she was trying to help the others. Her sneaking around and hiding under the tables/ on the stairs to overhear conversations so she could have an understanding of what was happening since no one talked to her really again was just so sad but realistic.
I’m just going to list the themes/topics I saw here for when I reread this review in a year or two.

Family communication and upraising creating insecurities and problems
Racism in small towns and how micro aggressions can affect the mentality of a child throughout their life
Parental pressure to succeed
Favoritism dynamics
Sacrifices a mother makes for her children
The concept of fitting in vs standing out and which one you desire for yourself
Perfectionism
People pleasing
Dealing with Grief in different ways
Communication amongst siblings
Doing something out of societal norms
Women’s education
Jealousy
The desire to be around people similar to you that “understand/get� you

Long ramble mainly done, I feel like I should talk to my siblings more after reading this and check in with them. Feeling bad about when I was a teen and didn’t want to hang out with my little brother.

I did enjoy this overall and while I loved that it touched on many topics I felt the writing style changing povs suddenly was a little confusing and felt like there were lots of stories that were trying to be fleshed out in a short amount of time and a few weren’t executed with too many details leaving me feeling it either wasn’t super necessary or it needed more. ]]> ReadStatus9345765857 Wed, 23 Apr 2025 21:28:51 -0700 <![CDATA[Madison started reading 'Great Big Beautiful Life']]> /review/show/6836427403 Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry Madison started reading Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
]]> Review7216985228 Tue, 22 Apr 2025 20:44:00 -0700 <![CDATA[Madison added 'Everything I Never Told You']]> /review/show/7216985228 Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng Madison gave 4 stars to Everything I Never Told You (Paperback) by Celeste Ng
3.5
This would be a book I would love to discuss in an English class.
For being just shy of 300 pages this book and its story have several themes weaved into its pages.
We are first introduced with the family not being aware that their middle child Lydia is not simply late for breakfast but missing and dead. What a way to draw in an audience.
Throughout the book we see flashbacks of all the family members, parents Marilyn and James and their upbringing/parents/challenges they faced in their lives before meeting each other.
James� character really focuses in on him growing up as a child of immigrants and how he experienced racism at a young age and throughout his life. He desperately wants to just belong, not stand out at all. On several instances we see one of his main concerns in life is fitting in, he wants his children to fit in but knows they are bound to stand out being the only Asian family in this small Ohioan town. He wants to fit in so badly he fails to see that his wife has always wanted something different and out of the box of a cookie cutter life and this is where they clash but both of them don’t realize this early on. His experience with hiding things from his family members, autopsy,etc and how he deals with his grief by having an affair with one of the only other Asian women in town was very interesting. Would I say I liked James? No but his intentions and actions do make sense given how he was raised and how he experienced life at a young age.
Marilyn is also complex in her characterization, she is a classic I didn’t get what I wanted so I’m going to force this on my child (Lydia) and not realize my kid really doesn’t share the same dream as me but does not want to disappoint me. Her favoritism towards Lydia and blatant ignorance of Nath and Hannah was also compelling, especially since we see in all 3 kids povs that they know Lydia is the favorite child and that she is kinda of treated like the sun they all orbit around. Marilyn wanted to be a doctor and live a life different than her mother but wasn’t successful in this, the fact that her mother prioritized asking her about her romance prospects while she was in college over her academics is something realistic for the time period this is set in 1950s-1970s range. Mother daughter relationships are a big theme in this book we see several different depictions in Marilyn/her mother, Marilyn/Lydia, and Marilyn/Hannah. They all are vastly different. But what we see in Marilyn’s regret in her children taking her away from her education is hard, we see she does love her children and she pushes Lydia so much because she wants the best for her but it ultimately becomes Lydia’s demise.
Lydia we don’t see too much of in the grand scheme of things but her struggles with trying to be the perfect kid is a reality many kids deals with. She is doted on and doesn’t quite realize she is a little spoiled but not quite spoiled in an affectionate way. Most of the things we see Marilyn and James do for her/get for her stem from what they wish they had growing up instead of trying to get to know their own daughter or letting her develop her own sense of self. I think part of this is what leads Lydia to lead such a lonely life school/friends wise, obviously she also faces similar issues to her father with racism that her white mother does not truly understand but her upbringing and the family not really branching out and having family friends definitely probably impacted her ability to make friends. I’m glad we do find out how she died but it is just so sad to see how determined she was in her final moments.
Nath and his storyline with being jealous of his sister and being ignored or belittled by his parents is also sad. I love that Nath and Lydia seem to have a stronger sibling relationship where they both know their family is odd and have inside joke type of things but it makes their relationship with Hannah even more sad as she is pretty much cast aside by everybody. I also found Naths one sided feud with Jack stemming from a childhood interaction intriguing. I was not expecting the LGBTQ slight mention within this book but I didn’t dislike it. Nath realizing college could be his fresh start is something many kids realize with their first taste of freedom and it was interesting that he didn’t seem to understand why Lydia was acting out about him leaving if they were both under an understanding that their family home isn’t always the most ideal place to be. Was his anger with her justified for her hiding his mail etc? Yes. Should he have pushed her in the lake as a young child? No, but at least he immediately recognized the wrong in his behavior at that point and fixed it.
Hannah’s character made me just so sad, when I started to come to the realization that Marilyn was going to return home from running away to college because she was pregnant with Hannah I knew this poor kid was not going to be treated well. Her collecting little things from her family members that they wouldn’t notice was a detail that was small but spoke at a lot about how observant and careful she was. This baby was basically ignored by all of her family members at most of the times in her life even when she was trying to help the others. Her sneaking around and hiding under the tables/ on the stairs to overhear conversations so she could have an understanding of what was happening since no one talked to her really again was just so sad but realistic.
I’m just going to list the themes/topics I saw here for when I reread this review in a year or two.

Family communication and upraising creating insecurities and problems
Racism in small towns and how micro aggressions can affect the mentality of a child throughout their life
Parental pressure to succeed
Favoritism dynamics
Sacrifices a mother makes for her children
The concept of fitting in vs standing out and which one you desire for yourself
Perfectionism
People pleasing
Dealing with Grief in different ways
Communication amongst siblings
Doing something out of societal norms
Women’s education
Jealousy
The desire to be around people similar to you that “understand/get� you

Long ramble mainly done, I feel like I should talk to my siblings more after reading this and check in with them. Feeling bad about when I was a teen and didn’t want to hang out with my little brother.

I did enjoy this overall and while I loved that it touched on many topics I felt the writing style changing povs suddenly was a little confusing and felt like there were lots of stories that were trying to be fleshed out in a short amount of time and a few weren’t executed with too many details leaving me feeling it either wasn’t super necessary or it needed more. ]]>