#274 pages

[book-reviews-by-an-idiot]

No One Needs to Know by Lindsay Cameron

271 pages

Dual POV

2.5 🌟

Spice level-🌶

***Contains spoilers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!***

As I first started this story I was expecting drama, murder, a who dunit mystery that kept me on my toes. I was underwhelmed and unimpressed on how it played out.

The story follows three mothers: Norah, Heather, and Poppy.

Heather is the classic mom who wanted better for her Daughter Violet than herself. She pushes her daughter hard to do good in school, get excellent over-the-top grades, and get into a high-level boarding school for high school. She works as an author and is one of the few parents at Violet's school that doesn't have millions. She wants her daughter to succeed but when a leaked picture on an anon Insta account gets seen by hundreds, she might go a little too far to protect her own.

Norah was your typical workaholic mom who was hardly home, hoping she isn't messing up her child by being gone all the time. She made millions so her family never had to worry about finances like she did as a kid, with her mom slowly succumbing to Parkinson's (which is only ever brought up once throughout the book). All she wanted was to keep Caroline on track and try not to notice how sketchy her husband, Bennett, had been lately. Her husband also owned a gym where he trained those on lacrosse teams called Reflex an important detail at the beginning of the book.

Poppy wasn't happy in her marriage. It was sexless and unloving, she was a trophy wife in her relationship, but she didn't mean to cheat. Or rather she definitely did. Norah had the right to be suspicious about her new husband Bennett. At first, it was just flirting, a quip here, a compliment about her lips there. Until she invited him into her and her husband's bed. The prenup she had signed with her husband flashed before her eyes. She had screwed up, Bad.

She also had a housekeeper that I will call M. She was incredibly good-looking and one of the only ones to see Bennett come into the apartment for the cheating event. And always seemed to be in the wrong room at the wrong time.

Not long into the story, the readers find out about an app called UrbanMyth and The Doubles dance.

UrbanMyth is an anonymous app where you can go to post just about anything you can set your mind to. Cheating husbands, inflation at the grocery store, and accused drug dealers in a private middle school. Anyone can comment, but the catch? It only takes a small group of hackers to send it tumbling down(I will come back to this in a second)

The Doubles dance is basically if someone locked 100 or so celebrities in a room without their phones. The kids were all filthy rich and didn't realize their actions had consequences. All three kids end up at this dance: Poppy's son Henry, Heather's daughter Violet, and Norah's daughter Caroline. Henry is covered in phone numbers written in pen by the girls at the dance, a weird tradition that they have there.

As Heather drops off her child, waiting back just to make sure, a child, a girl, sneaks around the guard not giving him her phone, and runs into the dance. This is where the drama starts, with this well-written line by Heather that makes it sound like her daughter died but was actually just caught vaping. (Henry is in the picture as well, or rather his arm reaching out to take the vape from Violet)

"Rules were rules. If she hadn't left. If She'd somehow intervened. If. If. If."

As I said previously, Violet was caught in a picture, vaping, and was posted to an anon Instagram account, to which Heather freaks out and blames Norah's daughter Caroline. Eventually going as far as to search through Caroline's phone for the picture which leads me to my next subject.

Bennett, lovingly referred to as stepdad by caroline, bastard by Poppy, and countless other names by me as the book continues on. Bennett has a business of sleeping with wealthy women and getting them on tape if you catch my drift, forcing them to give up a ransom for deletion of the video(but let's be honest he probably doesn't delete them.) As he and Poppy are laying in the bed she sees his phone recording and screams at him to leave. A lot of stuff goes down but in small words, he demands money in a week and she freaks out thinking her husband is going to divorce her and take everything because of the prenup. She does end up transferring him the money, but wasn't able to meet up with him so she doesn't know if he deleted the video.

Caroline finds out about Poppy and Bennett very early on, catching a picture of them on her phone, making out in the backseat of her car. Norah later finds this picture, as does Heather as said above, and kicks him out of the house, with him telling her she will regret what he had done.

As I said before, Urbanmyth is very popular amongst the Crfton middle school parents. Except, well it gets hacked. Everyone's secrets are out. A lot of stuff happens during this time but it's not big enough to be remembered by me. Except Heather doing something incredibly stupid after finding the picture. Posting on the app about how she was sleeping with the coach at Reflex, trying to out Poppy to the world. But instead getting heavily questioned by the police.

Norah gets a call from Bennett's mom about not being at her birthday party and this is when the story gets juicy. You see he had never missed a party of his dear mother's. Like ever. A few days later he's missing. Oh no not Bennett.

Skipping a few parts we are in the living room of Poppy's apartment. Heather, Poppy, M, and the doorman stand there. A secret is let out, Bennett wasn't just missing, he was murdered. By M. Which she annoyingly, and willingly admits. The day Poppy was supposed to meet him in the apartment, Bennett went after M, touched her in a place she didn't like while she was cleaning, and tried to rape her. She pushed him off, she was on a ladder, and he hit his head and died on impact(or possibly broke his neck I can't remember exactly. Maybe both.) Fernando, the doorman, hid the body because M and he are dating.

He is found a day before this interaction, in the water underneath a bridge. The police suspect no foul play, and when they arrive at Norah's apartment tell her that he most likely committed suicide by jumping off the bridge. Poppy and the others find this in the news headlines and accept this as their new normal.

The book ends with M in a bank, holding a 100k check in her hands and depositing it into her account. Poppy had given it to her for her silence, and because she was laying her off. And then she is free.

All in all the book by itself is a decent and quick read. But don't trust the tags that read 'thriller', 'fast-paced', or 'murder mystery' because it's just not that. On page 240ish, the murder is first brought up. I rated this book this way because I was severely disappointed, and led to believe it was something it was not. There is no mystery ad the one who murdered Bennet was jut out right said and there was no detectiveness that you could do to try and figure it out. I wished that it was in third person because the three person dual POV was a little hard to follow at first, and wished the book was much longer. I also would have loved to learn more about Poppy's son Henry because it seemed he was just there to connect her to Crofton. And honestly I think the kids' POV's would have been a cool way to do this as well. If you want a quick read I recommend it, but if you want a thriller? Somewhere else is your best bet.

[revuetraversees]

Catherine Andrieu, Des nouvelles de Léda?, Éditions Rafael de Surtis, 2024, 274 pages, 25€

Une chronique de Lieven Callant Catherine Andrieu, Des nouvelles de Léda?, Éditions Rafael de Surtis, 2024, 274 pages, 25€ En couverture: Léda peint le Cygne, huile sur toile, 280X200, Anora Borra, (squat du Carosse, 2010) Sous ce titre, sont réunis les poèmes de quelques recueils de Catherine Andrieu et préfacés par  Jean-Paul Gavard-Perret, « Parce que j’ai peint mes vitres en noir », Éric…

[dynamic-dingo]

"You must be tripping, striker..."

September's monthly coloring. It was meant to be a request, but I couldn't help myself. My wrist has been feeling a bit better too, it didn't hurt/feel tired as much as it would when I did previous colorings. So dropping down to one coloring a month was a fantastic idea.

[hazellvsq]

was rereading mark of athena and rick snuck in there that leo’s morse code “i love you” that he shared with his mom came from their grandfather and was about hazel. who had been dead for decades at that point.

[averyreaderofmanybooks]

[aprilstory]

baek isak my beloved 💖 u didnt deserve anything that happened to u

[heahven-2023]

oct 2, 2023

today has been a lot. no one really knew what was going in bc of the assembly and i stayed back lol. it was just chaotic and messy. work was ok but afterwards i had to go to tutoring. i was falling asleep while driving lol. made it to three hours- then had dinner with mom bc dad went out to the city.

[archildeleon]

I write this from the mountains. How did I end up here? 

Mother died, came back, and then died again, though she died at with a priest at her side. Father Jerome convinced me to speak the truth of Louis’ and the warden’s deaths, and I finally let Parker know the full reality. He still trusted me, he maintained that he did. I promised that I would go with him once my mother passed.

I was unable to make good.

Mother died with the God she did not wish to walk with, it was her last indignity. Everything was a blur after. I was encased in grief, in fear, in just not knowing... when I really came to, when I was done dissociating, I was in the mountains and along trails with Elise by my side. 

She made the choices, I just abided by them. This would never hold up in a court of law. I fear Quigley and Parker get closer and closer. I would be unsurprised if they were practically upon us.

[twinsimming]

Utilities Mod by Twinsimming 💡💧

This mod adds optional power and water utilities for players looking for some added challenge in their gameplay.

This is a script mod that can be placed in your Packages folder. It was built and tested on 1.69 but should work fine on 1.67.

New Objects

Power Box

- Price: §0 - Category: Misc. Electronics/Misc. Appliances - Includes 3 original swatches + 1 recolorable option (3 channels) - Poly Count: 274

Water Pipes

- Price: §0 - Category: Misc. Plumbing - Includes 3 original swatches + 1 recolorable option (3 channels) - Poly Count: 1065

Utilities

The Power Box controls power and the Water Pipes control water (self explanatory :p). Both utility objects are free in buy mode in the Misc. Electronics tab and Misc. Plumbing tab, respectively.

Once placed down on your lot, you can enable one or both utilities. When the utilities are enabled, power and/or water will be cut off to certain objects on your lot until you "Turn On" the Power Box and/or Water Pipes.

While the utilities are on, your sims will be charged between §1 - §3 simoleons for every 10 minutes they use an object that requires a utility, with the charge varying based on the size of the object. The total cost will be added to your next household bill.

If you want to opt out of the utilities system, just use the “Disable Power Utility” and “Disable Water Utility” interactions available on the utility objects.

The utilities system only applies to the active household.

A full list of all of the objects affected by the Power Box and Water Pipes utilities and their usage costs can be found on the mod download page.

Utility Costs and Usage

To check how much you've spent on utilities during the current billing cycle (between when you pay your bills and the next bill payment), click on the "Check Utility Usage" interaction on either utility.

To see your full utilities breakdown, use the new "Check Utility Costs" interaction on the computer.

Also included in the full utilities breakdown is a Green Energy Rebate total.

This total calculates how much money a lot saves by using the Solar Panels and Wind Turbines from the Sims 3 Store and factors that into the total utilities cost.

The full utilities breakdown also shows up when your sim pays their bills.

Lack of Funds

If your household funds fall below the usage cost of a utility, that utility will be shut off and cannot be turned back on until your funds are sufficient.

Bill Delinquency

If you’re late on paying your bills, your utilities will get shut off. Both utilities will be shut off when your bills are two days old.

Tuning

All of the tunable values can be found on the mod download page under the header “Tuning”.

Script Namespace

If you want to turn another object into a power or water utility, open your desired object in s3pe and replace the current script name with the following:

Sims3.Gameplay.Objects.Twinsimming.Utilities.PowerBox

Sims3.Gameplay.Objects.Twinsimming.Utilities.Water Pipes

Conflicts & Known Issues

These are new scripted objects so there shouldn’t be any conflicts.

Credits

EA/Maxis for The Sims 3 and The Sims 4, Visual Studio 2019, Sims4Studio, Blender, Milkshape, TSRW, ILSpy, s3pe, Notepad++, and Gimp.

Thank You

Thank you to gamefreak130, @zoeoe-sims, @greenplumbboblover, and @echoweaver!

If you like my work, please consider tipping me on Ko-fi 💙

Download @ ModTheSims

[tybaltsjuliet]

here's the thing about charles dickens. [discussion of his antisemitism, misogyny, and racism ahead.]

his last, unfinished novel, the mystery of edwin drood, features helena and neville landless, heroic and sympathetic south asian (sri lankan, specifically) characters, and the racism they endure in an english town is relevant to the plot to the point where neville ends up falsely accused of murder. in the wake of the indian rebellion of 1857, dickens applauded the english brutality against "that oriental race," and called for genocide.

fagin is called "the jew" 274 times in the first half of oliver twist. an article in the jewish chronicle asked why "jews alone should be excluded from the 'sympathizing heart' of this great author and powerful friend of the oppressed." at first, dickens dismissed this, and claimed he was just being accurate about london's criminal makeup. but he was moved enough by eliza davis's letters to him on the matter that he halted the printing of the latter half of oliver twist so he could change the text and remove the antisemitic language therein.

dickens was an abolitionist who despised chattel slavery in the united states, and called emancipation a "moral duty." dickens didn't think black americans were intelligent enough to vote, and he wrote an entire character in bleak house who is a joke to be disliked and mocked because she'd rather oversee charity missions to help children in africa than be a proper mother and tend to her own family at home in england.

speaking of one's own family at home in england, dickens smeared his wife, catherine hogarth, publicly so he could justify separating from her and taking up with a younger woman. catherine hogarth was likely mentally ill, likely living with postpartum depression. she was also an author in her own right and loved her family dearly. her reputation never recovered in her lifetime from the claims he made about her. in dickens's novels, time and time again, from nicholas nickleby to david copperfield to our mutual friend to the mystery of edwin drood, men who menace and take advantage of vulnerable women are portrayed as the worst kind of villains, deserving of whatever grisly ends come to them.

charles dickens was both privately and publicly a raging asshole in many ways and the world would be worse off without him, because he wrote for bourgeois, comfortable victorians, the very people who so often failed to "think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys." in the same breath that he calls agnes fleming, who opens oliver twist as an unwed mother dying in a workhouse, "weak and erring," he dares to add that "i do believe that the shade of that poor girl often hovers about that solemn nook-ay, though it is a church." he calculated jo's death to the page in bleak house for maximum effect. but when he wrote of the orphaned crossing-sweeper, "dead, your majesty. dead, my lords and gentlemen. dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. and dying thus around us every day," people listened.

i dedicated years of my life to reading him and studying him and thinking about him and writing about him and his novels. now, i turn to condemn him; now, i turn to justify him. i wish i had a time machine so i could shake his hand. i wish i had a time machine so i could publicly debate him. i wish i had a time machine so i could break his nose.

charles dickens gives me courage and hope. charles dickens makes me want to tear my goddamn hair out. he is everything i despise and everything i love about the victorian age in one; the term "a man of his time" ought to have been invented for him. the leaps and bounds the victorians made for progress in the public good are only matched in greatness by the extremity of their atrocities against their "fellow-passengers" on this earth. the way we think about nearly every modern social ill can be traced back to the 19th century; the way we think about nearly every modern idea of social justice can be traced back to the 19th century. every last one is writ large and small in dickens's novels. he and his age are the greatest contradictions in human history and that's why i can't shut up about them, ever, even when i am exhausted by them, even when i am inspired by them, even when it was two centuries ago and it shouldn't matter anymore, but it does. it always will.

[heahven-2022]

oct 1, 2022

i wasted a whole day working on my edtpa. 🤦🏻‍♀️ well i wouldnt call it call a total waste, but still, i wanted to do other things today //: sigh. i want to pass this already and leave it all behind me. you got this monica. just power through 💪 god knows you will make it

[ellina4n4]

supermodel diet

tw: ana/ed

. ۫ ꣑ৎ .

hey guys! i’ve never tried making one of these before so here’s my first shot it. this is a role play type diet to keep you motivated!! hope ygs enjoy 🫶🏻 ib: @honey-diet

year 2001

you are the biggest supermodel of your time. on every vogue and time magazine, you star on the cover page in a delicate and flashy new outfit. Every girl young and old would die to look like you. You are young and thin. Your collarbones and effortlessly slim arms let clothes fit you like you’re a hanger. You are petite and striking. Nothings free, your manager keeps you on a diet to make sure everyone’s jaws drop when you walk down the runway.

inspo:

rules —⊹ ₊ ⟡ ⋆

you are famous, you can only afford to have a stunning body, watch what you put in it

if you binge, it’ll show through your clothes on the runway, everyone will know what you did

always drink water, no mater how many c4ls your manager gives you, you drink water

be kind to yourself, after all you do need enough energy to do the best at your shows

diet— (feel free to change to your liking) 🫶🏻

breakfast ⋆｡°

you wake up in your trailer at 5:10 am, prepared for your show in the evening. the models’ chefs’ cook your meal. ———- for breakfast you eat 2 boiled eggs, whites only, which are salted and peppered . (34 c4l) You wash it down with either black coffee with monk fruit sweetener (0 c4ls) or cold iced water with cucumber and lemon (3 c4ls)

lunch ⋆˚.⋆

after consulting with the stylist what outfit you’re wearing tonight, lunch is prepared. lunch is one slice of toast, with either tuna on top, (84) or just the toast. (49 c4l) on the side you have a cup of raspberries, (64 c4l) and a cup of cold ice water (0 c4l)

dinner ⋆｡°

before your makeup artist starts on your iconic look, your manager notifies you dinner is served. for dinner you have a cup of mashed cauliflower seasoned with garlic powder and pepper (27 c4l) with a delicious grilled chicken breast, salt + peppered (90 c4l) and 3 cooked asparagus. (10 c4l)

total: 274-312

the show went great! you appeared in the latest news stories, everyone praised you for your excellent performance on the runway and and your slim figure accentuating the clothing

since the total is pretty low, be careful luvs! 🫶🏻

[alexshenry]

“Look, I might not be a fucking royal,” Alex says, crosses the horrible rug, moves into Henry’s space, “but I know what it’s like for your whole life to be determined by the family you were born into, okay? The lives we want—they’re not that different. Not in the ways that matter. You want to take what you were given and leave the world better than you found it. So do I. We can—we can figure out a way to do that together.” Henry stares at him silently, and Alex can see the scales balancing in his head. “I don’t think I can.” Alex turns away from him, falling back on his heels like he’s been slapped. “Fine,” he finally says. “You know what? Fucking fine. I’ll leave.” — RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE (chapter ten, page 274)

[dragoneyes618]

In its fortieth year, Israel remains in a state of war with several Arab neighbors. That is bedrock. It must never be forgotten in discussing the Land and the Faith. No guns are going off as I write, in March 1987, but formal hostilities exist with no end in sight. The Jewish populace has grown in forty years from half a million to more than three million. The Israel Defense Force has become a military power without peer for its size; considered comparable, in some aspects of tactics and technology, to superpower forces. That is probably way the guns are not firing at the moment.

Since I wrote "The Ashes and the Gold" in 1969, the remarkable chronicle of the Jewish State has been punctuated by further military exploits The brilliant but scary and very costly turnaround victory in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the airborne rescue of hostages from Arab terrorists at Entebbe in 1976, the controversial expulsion of the PLO terrorists from Lebanon, the surgical bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq, the air strike on the terrorist headquarters in Tunis; such high combat drama has repeatedly made world headlines.

The Israelis would gladly trade all that adventure and glory for peace. They have proved it. I was present at the lowering of the flag at the Sharm El Sheikh naval base in April 1982, a final step in their peaceful evacuation of the Sinai peninsula, under the Camp David agreement. A son of mine was serving in a Wasp patrol boat based there. After the ceremony I sailed with him up the Red Sea to Eilat, the new base for his vessel, having witnessed the most impressive sacrifice for peace made by a nation in modern times. I will never forget the sight of his Wasp squadron, circling around and round full speed offshore with sirens eerily wailing, in the farewell ceremony for a lost ship; nor the ranks of girl soldiers in white dress uniform on the wharf, standing at attention and weeping as the Star of David flag came down. Egypt lost the war to regain Sinai by force of arms. The Israelis gave back this strategic buffer of their own accord, to fulfill their part of a breakthrough peace on one front.I once asked an Israeli general how it was that his tiny new nation had so swiftly acquired remarkable military prowess. He replied, "We had to." That is the long and the short of it. The oil-rich Arabs can buy all the weaponry they require from other countries, mainly the Soviet Union. The Israelis have to build their own tanks, and much of their defense materiel. So they have learned to make armaments, and to excel in advanced technology, scientific and agricultural as well as military, for one and the same reason: they have had to.

- This Is My God, Herman Wouk, page 273-274

[bigtimedaddy111]

TSoA, Page 274

[clevercatchphrase]

Page 274

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