“Bless Your Heart” follows the investigation into the murder of a prominent man named Anderson Tupper in Atlanta's wealthy Buckhead neighborhood. The book circulates through various points of view including five women who are a part of wealthy families in Buckhead and the lead detective on the case, Shay Claypool.

Dunlap, for her part, was a screenwriter, so it makes sense that her book reads as cinematically as it does. Although her screenwriting credits include '“A Cinderella Story” starring Hilary Duff, so this book feels like a fun departure from that.

The book in itself is one of my favorite types of thrillers because it navigates complex things such as race, class, gender dynamics in marriages, while also being a twisty, entertaining whodunnit, which think Dunlap does it pretty well for the most part.

One of my favorite things about this book is that most of the main female characters are not necessarily likable, and that's on purpose. However, they are written in a way that makes you still root for them which I think is expertly done. And despite the fact that they’re mostly unlikable rich ladies they still feel very three-dimensional and their families feel three-dimensional.

The ending of this book was satisfying because although the perpetrator isn't necessarily brought as a suspect throughout the book, the ending doesn't feel all that surprising.

Near the end of the novel when the perpetrator of the crime is revealed, although I wouldn't have guessed it personally, it didn't trip me up; I was along for the ride.

My one critique of this book would be that although the perpetrator of the murder doesn't feel surprising, the motive for the murder feels a little out of left field. Like, I don't think in a million years I would have guessed it, which isn't necessarily a good thing with thrillers. It's a very delicate balance you have to strike with your reader where it's not easy to guess but it's at least something where they can look back and say, “Oh I don't know how I missed that.” The motive in this book did not feel like that.

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All in all, I give this book a five out of five stars. I give it a 6/10 for sexual content, a 4/10 for violence, and a 2/10 for language. Come back next week for my review of “Good People” by Patmeena Sabit.

P.S.- I added an audio optipn for this post so you can listen while you’re doing something else!

So, after weeks of debating… I caved and bought an ebook of the book I wanted to read. It was amazing! A whole new world opened up before me. My only complaint was that Book of the Month Club didn’t have an ebook option.

I still preferred physical books: the smell, writing in the margins, flipping the pages, being able to go back and forth as I pleased to reread something. But it was nice to have an ebook option for when I (gasp) forgot my book or didn’t have room for it.

Fast-forward a few years, and now it’s 2022. I’m a mom to a six-month-old, holding a full time job, and every time I crack open my book after a long day, I fall asleep.

Reading audiobooks felt even more scandalous to me than reading ebooks did. At first, I did it in secret. Spotify had recently rolled out their new audiobook feature, and after scrolling past it time and time again on my way to yet another murder mystery podcast where you knew little more at the end than you did at the beginning…I caved.

And my life changed forever.

Now, I was able to read a book once every two or three days, immediately transported into a world different than my own, where I could spend my time while driving or typing or cleaning the kitchen.

And then BOTM came out with its audiobook feature (still waiting on the ebook), and between that, Spotify, Audible, and Libby, I was in heaven.

As you probably can guess, when I heard that Spotify is partnering with bookshop.org to sell physical books through its platform, as well as feature called Page Match or Page Sync, where users can scan a page from a ebook or physical book to get to that exact spot in an audiobook, I was thrilled.

Finally, something for us eternal multitaskers who sometimes start reading a book, and then want to continue it but don’t have the hands available to be physically reading, and have no idea where to pick up from. And it’s worth noting that since Spotify charges for listening hours, so you don’t want to waste your valuable minutes (read: money) stumbling around like a drunk cockatoo through audio cyber space relistening to, and therefore repaying for, content you already heard.

According to Spotify, new listeners are up 36% from a year earlier and listening hours grew 37%.

This new feature comes at a time when physical book sales are flagging but digital book consumption is booming.

Although how people prefer to consume their books is changing, one thing is clear: the appetite for books is strong.

Tech millionaires know your art is valuable but don’t want to pay you for it

Sadly, it seems that Jeff Bezos has been ignorant of this, as the Washington Post made a slew of cuts recently in the name of the almighty dollar, including completely eliminating the Books section.

Book coverage is important because what is art without critique, without feedback? Art isn’t simply meant to be made and then collect dust in silence, it is meant to be discussed, dissected, analyzed, and commiserated over. Book coverage also allows people to make an informed decision if they’re choosing which book to read next. In fact, I do that all the time. I once purchased a WaPo subscription just to read a book review.

Not only that, but book coverage helps authors who have worked for months, sometimes years, on a manuscript introduced to the masses, which in turn can introduce people to the favorite book they didn’t know they had.

The cherry on top of all of this is that a few weeks ago, unsealed court documents in an ongoing legal battle with AI companies like Open AI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta showed that these companies used websites to obtain books through various means, including by pirating, then scan and, in Anthropic’s case, destroy the books to train its AI models, particularly its AI chatbot, Claude. In typical movie villain fashion, Anthrophic named this endeavor “Project Panama.”

“‘Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world,” an internal planning document unsealed in legal filings last week said. “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this’,” a Washington Post article written about the mayhem said.

According to an article by the Washington Post (which has a content partnership with OpenAI), “‘Books were viewed by the companies as a crucial prize, the court records show. In a January 2023 document, one Anthropic co-founder theorized that training AI models on books could teach them “how to write well” instead of mimicking “low quality internet speak.” A 2024 email inside Meta described accessing a digital trove of books as “essential” to being competitive with its AI rivals.”

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The article says that while a couple of employees brought up potential legal concerns, they were ultimately dismissed by higher-ups.

It’s worth noting that Jeff Bezos is an investor in Perplexity, which uses Claude AI models. So, while he is helping line the pockets of millionaire tech bros to steal the hard work of wordsmiths everywhere, he’s laying off journalists that help get the word out about those works of art, despite the fact that they are apparently so valuable to his buddies.

Are you an author if you’re not doing the actual writing?

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“Lost Lambs” focuses on the Flynn family, headed by Bud and Catherine Flynn. The couple and their three children, Abigail (17), Louise (15), and Harper (13) are going through a tough time, leaving the children to their own devices while they themselves go through crises and fantasize both sexually and otherwise.

Abigail, like her mom, is very focused on her appearance and learning how to use it to move through the world while also dating a 22-year-old soldier with IBS who earnestly cares for her.

Louise, the middle child, doesn’t really have a personality outside of wanting someone to notice her and because of this ends up dating a terrorist through chat rooms and online messaging.

Harper is the most three-dimensional Flynn child, as well as discerning and Sheldon-level smart. This quality leads her to be the first character in the novel to come around to the fact that something sinister is afoot in their town.

“Show, don’t tell”

Anyone who’s been writing for more than five minutes has been told by some well-meaning person at some point, usually a teacher, “show, don’t tell.” I’ve seen this advice railed against a lot recently on LinkedIn, and for good reason. When you tell writers to completely stop doing one thing, you take some complexity and variability out of the writing, because you are leaving them with one less tool in their tool box.

Cash, however, absolutely nails this advice. I’ll give you an example.

In the beginning of the novel, we learn from Bud’s perspective the headshot Catherine commissioned and gave to him for his anniversary, which we’re told is an example of her narcissism.

Then, in Catherine’s chapter, we learn she took these herself as a type of self portrait to try to rediscover herself as an artist.

Also in Bud’s chapter, we learn Catherine got a mole removed, which Bud was “pretty sure was cosmetic.”

In Catherine’s chapter, we learn that the mole was a pre-cancerous melanoma mole.

There are more examples of this in the novel between Bud and Catherine that give the reader context about why Catherine prosing an open marriage isn’t necessarily as out of the blue as Bud thought, but she never explicitly says. “Bud stopped paying attention to Catherine a long time ago, so she felt misunderstood and starting seeking out attention elsewhere.” No, she lets the reader figure it out for themselves, making that a-ha moment ten times better.

There are other instances in the novel when she pull this off phenomenally, but I won’t spoil those for you. Go discover them for yourself.

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Critique

I want to preface this section by saying that the thing I thought could use some work in the novel is something I also think may well have been intentional.

This novel has lots of characters. The Flynns, the church the Flynns sporadically go to, the town they live in, the pastor, the billionaire who runs the town, the Flynns’ love interests, and more.

However, of all these characters, I would argue the Flynns are the ones we should care about the most. Disappointingly, the reader isn’t given much of an opportunity to really get to know Catherine, Abigail, and Louise beyond superficial caricatures, whereas we get a full view into the lives of several side characters. We feel pity for Catherine, Abigail, and Louise, sure, but I was left wanting to know about who they were outside of beauty and “pick me” standards of femininity.

I mean, we get a whole, graphic description of Bud’s sexual fantasy. We get led down the rabbit hole of Abigail’s friend, Tibet, and what her goals for the future are. We even take a tour through the backstory and motivations of Priscilla Winkle, who plays multiple roles in the story, and yet we know nothing about what kind of mother Catherine was before she felt neglected by her husband. We know she put in years of unpaid labor into supposedly raising her three daughters, but we don’t know what that was or how she felt about it. We don’t even know much about her parents even though they bought the literal house the Flynns live in, but we know all about Bud’s upbringing and his parents. Catherine and Bud have sex one time in this book, it doesn’t go well, and we get Bud’s side of the story and his feelings, but almost none about how Catherine feels. I mean, come on.

As for Abigail and Louise, there was a lot of potential for them to be “complex female characters,” but they mostly ended up just being symbols of a very specific moments in adolescence. (Ironically, it is Harper who laments her likelihood of not being a complex female character when she is the only Flynn girl who is one.) In Abigail’s case, her whole character is really a snapshot of that time in teenage girlhood when a girl is obsessed with how they look and how men perceive them and that angst and giddiness of falling in love for the first time. In Louise’s case, she was a snapshot of the awkward time in adolescence when you’re still halfway between kid and young adult and you’re desperately looking for someone to see you. But even when I was 15 and basically begging people to notice me, I still had a personality outside of that. I still had a best friend. I was trying to get my learner’s permit. I wasn’t just some two-dimensional look-at-me shell of a human.

I have a sneaking suspicion Cash may have done this on purpose as a commentary on the fact that once a girl hits puberty, people stop seeing them for who they fully are and that they become more of an object in the public eye.

And although I can acknowledge this and think it was a skillful storytelling concept, I think she may have done it too well. I was left disappointed that by the end of the book I knew so little about three of the main characters and so much about Bud’s gross proclivities. I mean, there are a total of four sexual scenes in the book, and three of them are featuring Bud, and one is Bud’s nightmarish daydream of Catherine sleeping with their neighbor. Yet we have none from Catherine’s (or any other woman’s) POV. So if I was an editor, I would explore that a little more before sending it to publish.

All in all, I give this book a four out of five stars, because although I have quibbles with the sex scenes and the character development, Cash is a talented writer. Her voice is dry, laugh-out-loud funny, and engaging, and as you’re going through the novel, there isn’t a single word that feels unnecessary. Every word feels precise and like it was chosen to be there for a specific purpose.

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I give this novel 0/10 for violence, a 6/10 for sexual themes, and a 3/10 for profanity. If you listen to this as an audiobook, this probably isn’t one that would be safe to listen to while sensitive ears are around.

Tune in next week for my review of “Bless Your Heart” bt Leigh Dunlap.

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For those just tuning in, I started my getting transcranial magnetic stimulation to treat my treatment-resistant depression, and have been documenting the process. You can read about my first week and more of the nitty gritty details about TMS here.

The weekend preceding my treatment was busy. The theme of my life for the first month of 2026 has been sleep troubles. Getting my kids to bed has been like trying to herd cats and exterminate cockroaches at the same time.

My daughter has been the queen of stall tactics and even when I finally get her physically in bed, her ability to keep herself awake is unmatched.

Friday night going into Saturday we all slept in, which was glorious, and Saturday night going into Sunday was pretty good too, but Sunday night my daughter feel asleep at 7 only to wake up at 9 and then want to party till midnight.

Monday, Day 7

Thus begins my week. I woke up feeling pretty good, considering the night before.

I got to the office and filled out the same paperwork I do at every visit.

Depression: 3

Sleep: 5-6 hours (I honestly wasn’t sure)

Tuesday, Day 8

This morning, I woke up unable to hear out of my left ear.

It was my own fault. Last night, I tried “cleaning” my ear with an ear swab for the first time in over three years, and managed to create a blockage.

Despite this, I’m in a good mood, just a little inconvenienced by the minor sensory deprivation I brought upon myself.

Sleep was another big struggle for my kids last night, and this morning, they both woke up grumpy. At drop off, my daughter refused to go into the school, and when the secretary tried to carry her in, my daughter almost knocked the poor woman over with the strength of her kicking.

A couple of months ago, this would’ve sent me into a depression spiral comprised of sobbing and hating myself. Instead, today is the moment I decide something has to change.

So I make a plan.

When I get to my TMS appointment, I not only get my normal daily paperwork, but also my beloved depression and anxiety questionnaire.

When I took this questionnaire on the morning of my first TMS session, my depression was a 9 (my lowest ever recorded) and my anxiety was a 12.

This time, my depression was an 8 and my anxiety was a 14.

On my daily form, I ranked my depression as a 2.

Sleep: 6 hours

When Johanna asks me how it’s going, I tell her it’s going good. I definitely feel less depressed on a daily basis (more motivation, more solutions oriented, less exhausted) but that I’ve been feeling more anxiety and irritation than I used to.

Johanna tells me that TMS helps with anxiety too because it’s stored in the same part of the brain as depression.

I tell her about my daughter almost injuring the poor school secretary, and how I feel like I’m failing her because I just can’t seem to do sleep right and she’s tired and doesn’t want to go to school.

“No one wants to go to school,” Johanna said.

“But I see all these other kids go in just fine, and none of them seem to have a problem,” I say.

“You don’t see other kids on the days they don’t want to go to school,” Johanna said. “You’re being too hard on yourself. You’re doing a great job.”

I try to protest, but she doesn’t let me.

Then I tell Johanna about my ear and (bless her) she offers to help me clean it with something called an elephant ear, which is essentially a tube attached to a spray bottle filled with warm water and rubbing alcohol that gets lots of gross ear wax out, and does move the blockage so things just feel a bit muffled rather than obscured completely.

Wednesday, Day 9

Johanna was home sick today, so a different nurse did my treatment, which went well.

Depression: 1.5

Sleep: 5.5 hours

On the bright side, I’m making progress on my kids’s sleep schedules.

Thursday, Day 10

Depression: 1

Sleep: 5.5 hours

I wake up this morning feeling kids. I got my kids asleep almost a full two hours earlier than normal and they wake up in great moods. This hasn’t been an easy month, but I feel a lot more like a pilot in control of my plane than a damsel in distress.

Friday, Day 11

Depression: 1

Sleep: I have no clue. 5-6 hours?

The above is verbatim what I wrote on my daily intake sheet.

I was able to stick to the sleep schedule I made for my kids again and they slept through the night and woke up happy and ready to face their respective days. I woke up not really feeling depressed but a little annoyed because my youngest baby woke up multiple times during the night and my sleep was obviously disrupted. I was able to sneak an hour in between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. though, which I greatly appreciated, and I didn’t feel overly tired. I think my poor baby is teething.

Final thoughts

I’m ending week two of TMS feeling cautiously optimistic. I feel like I’m able to handle the rough moments without melting down, which used to be a real struggle for me.

Not even exaggerating, I used to cry every day, sometimes multiple times a day, and when I started it was hard for me to stop. Now, it’s been more than a week since I last cried, and I’m feeling better about myself and more regulated in gerneral. While I’m not feeling like my anxiety and depression are completely in remission, Johanna and my psychiatrist are telling me it’s possible, so I’m hoping to stay cautiously optimistic that my progress will only improve over the coming weeks.

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Tune in next Sunday to see how week 3 treated me!

In “Anatomy of an Alibi,” we follow two women, Camille and Aubrey, who are connected in ways they don't fully realize at the beginning of the novel.

SPOILER ALERT

Just a heads-up for anyone who is easily confused like me, Camille and Aubrey do not switch lives. When I read the synopsis for this book, I thought they switched, but that's not the case. One woman takes the other's place for like 12 hours, but they don't switch.

On a scale of 1 to 10 of gore and graphicness, 1 being no gore at all and 10 having blood and guts and violence in every chapter, I'd give this novel a 4.

The novel hinges on the murder of Camille’s husband, Ben, and the description of his body after he is murdered is bloody and a little graphic. There are a couple of suspenseful standoff scenes but nothing overly graphic or gory.

There is a scene where one of the female main characters is threatened at gunpoint and that's pretty suspenseful, but compared to other thrillers I've read I would still consider this pretty mild.

As far as spice goes, there's not really any sexually graphic scenes. There are allusions to sex but nothing that I think anyone would consider offensive. This is a 2 out of 10 on my spice meter.

As far as language goes, one of the narrators, Hank, is prone to some foul language such as the F-word. So if you're reading this as an audiobook I would be really mindful of that, especially during Hank’s chapters. This one rates a 7 out of 10 for language.

I had a couple of slips where I was listening to it and my kids were in the room that had me internally cringing.

The anatomy of a good thriller

A good thriller must have three things: a strong beginning that makes you care about solving the murder, a variety of suspects introduced that are all plausible as the murderer, and a satisfying conclusion. This last one is what I feel like thrillers struggle with the most. I have read many thrillers that have a strong beginning, a suspenseful middle and then you get to the end and the murderer is like thrown out of thin air, like you never could have seen that coming. You go back and realize that unless you had a crystal ball, you couldn't have correctly guessed the murderer. This is not only so frustrating as a reader, but also the easiest way to make readers come away with a bad taste in their mouths.

This novel did not do that. “Anatomy of an Alibi” had a strong beginning, it had characters that made you care about them, and at the end the killer made sense. It wasn't someone who had just been introduced one sentence before you found out it was them, and it wasn't a scenario that made me scratch my head and wonder if the motive was strong enough for murder.

The motive felt real and the ending felt well-earned but not obvious. So Bravo to Elston for that.

The only thing I would say in regards to the mtoive is I would have liked more specific examples of what exactly the killer had on thw hard drive that they were trying to make go away. We knew the stuff on there was career ending, but I wanted to know how career ending. How far did this person go that they’re now trying to erase?

Critiques

As far as critiques go, I don't have a ton. I think my biggest critique is centers around the blossoming romantic tension between Camille and Hank. The author positions these two characters in a way where you kind of feel like there's some chemistry between them but you're also kind of wondering why. There are a lot of flashbacks in this novel, but there are none about Hank and Camille specifically. For example, we don't know how they met and what the extent of their interactions were while Ben was alive, and so that romance didn't really feel earned. It was like, the chemistry is there, but why is there chemistry?

So if I was going to do a edit of this book, that is one thing that I probably would have pointed out. I understand from one perspective not wanting to put in backstory for Hank and Camille to leave a possibility that Hank is the killer without making the readers too attached, but to be completely honest, the suspicion that Hank is the killer fades from view about a quarter to a third of the way into the novel.

By the time Hank becomes a narrator and you start learning about his history with Ben, you’re already attached to him as a reader, and we already care about him too much. For him to be the murderer at this point would already be a total betrayal of the reader, so why not go all in?

Rating

This novel is my firat thriller of 2026, which is exciting. Taking wverything into account, I would give this novel five stars because it’s one of the better organized ones I've read in a while. So if you're into thrillers and you're looking for something with not a lot of gore and not a lot of graphic sexual content but something that will hold your attention and satisfy your true crime mind, I would definitely recommend this book.

If you’d like, you can buy it here using my affiliate link in print, large print, ebook or audiobook.

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Come back next Friday for my review of “Lost Lambs” by Madeline Cash! And let me know what you think of “Anatomy of an Alibi” in the comments.

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Rest assured, Johanna and I aren’t planning world domination or to pull a Thelma and Louise, Johanna is a medical assistant trained to administer transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to patients with treatment-resistant depression, meaning patients whose depression didn’t go into remission with medication or didn’t tolerate medication well.

Patients like me.

I’ve had depression since I was seventeen years old, so about ten years.

I first realized I had a problem when I noticed that I would spend up to two hours a day crying in bed, unable to leave the house because I couldn’t decide what to wear.

It took longer than it probably should have to dawn on me that maybe that wasn’t normal.

My first plan of attack was counseling, which I liked, but didn’t necessarily reduce my depression.

I started taking medication when I was 19, and since then have taken a variety of depression medications that have run the gammit from Zoloft to Effexor to Wellbutrin to Lexapro and more.

My psychiatrist told me the goal is to get my depression to 0, but honestly, after so many years, I resigned myself to the fact that I’d always have this dark cloud accompanying me. The best I could do was control the size.

That’s why a few months ago, she suggested trying TMS.

After talking about it over several sessions and doing my own research, I decided to give it a try.

The first step was an MRI

TMS works by delivering repetitive magnetic pulses to stimulate nerve cells via an electromagnetic coil in the part of your brain involved in mood control and depression, but before the treatment can begin, an MRI is necessary to see where that is exactly in your brain specifically.

So on October 15, I got my first-ever MRI. The process was fairly easy because I didn’t have a pacemaker or any other metal implants, I don’t wear earrings or other jewelry, I wasn’t pregnant, I didn’t have a history of medical problems, and I’m not claustrophobic.

The MRI itself took about 10 minutes, during which I got to listen to oldies music on some headphones, and then I went about my day. A few days later, I got a message to my MyChart that my brain is “unremarkable.” Okay, thanks?

At our next appointment, my psychiatrist told me there was a waitlist for TMS, but that I would probably be able to start in January.

Fast-forward to January 7, when I got a call that my insurance had approved the TMS, and could I start Friday?

I said I could, and the nurse told me that the first appointment would be the longest.

The first appointment

I was greeted at my first appointment with a pile of more paperwork. I was familiar with the depression and anxiety questionnaires they gave me, which I’ve filled out dozens of times before, but had never seen the TMS-specific paperwork before that listed possible side effects. There was also a form similar to the MRI form asking me about my medical history, tattoos, piercings, possible pregnancies, and things of that nature.

This was the first time I met Johanna. She led me back into a room, asked me questions about my paperwork, and told me that the most common side effects of TMS are headache and scalp pain.

“But you have really thick hair,” she said. “So it shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

My psychiatrist was also in the room for this first visit, along with a medical student named Kate.

I’ve been seeing my psychiatrist for about three years, so she knows I have three kids, and she agreed with Johanna that I have very thick hair and asked me if I ever lose it postpartum.

“No,” I said. “I’m lucky. Good genetics, I guess.”

And then I thought to myself what a mixed bag genetics are. I got super-thick, enviable hair that I haven’t lost after pregnancy, and in return I got depression so stubborn my last hope to get rid of it is a magnet to my brain.

Life is a box of chocolates.

The first thing the doctors needed to do was map out my brain use a pen-like tool. They pressed the tip of the pen on my head in about a dozen places, a little ding sounding each time. Later, Johanna told me she wishes there was a cap or something at the end because she feels like she’s stabbing people with it.

After they got a good picture of my brain, they showed it to me so we could all admire it together.

Then, my psychiatrist put some sensors on my thumb and put the coil on the part of my brain that controls thumb movement, and worked up to the lowest intensity possible to make my thumb move so they could find my motor threshold.

Apparently, mine is 31, which is on “the low end of normal.” Because my threshold was so low, I could do the three-minute treatments rather than the 19-minute treatments.

The treatments are equally effective, my psychiatrist told me, but the pulses in the three-minute treatments are faster, so they opt to do the 19-minute treatments with people with higher thresholds because it’s more tolerable.

After that, they put the coil in the place it would be for the duration of the treatments.

Johanna told me there was a .03% chance of seizure, but because I didn’t have a history of seizures and because I wasn’t taking any medications, I should be fine.

She also told me that patients receiving the treatment had reported either sleepiness or extreme energy immediately after treatments, so to watch out for that.

I had to take off my metal glasses and put earplugs in that Johanna gave me, because while the machine isn’t loud, it does emit a frequency that can damage your hearing.

My psychiatrist administered the pulses, which felt like someone lightly snapping a rubber band against my head.

They started the intensity lower than 31 and worked their way up, the snapping sensation getting more uncomfortable as they did. They told me that if at any time I felt pain in my teeth, eyes, or nose, to let them know because that meant they were hitting the facial nerve and needed to readjust.

Luckily, my facial nerve was undisturbed, but my jaw did twitch every time the coil was pulsing, which was a bit annoying but not painful.

At the end, my psychiatrist told me she got to 84% of my threshold, which isn’t uncommon, and that they hoped to get to 120% by the end of the following week because that’s what the research shows is most effective.

The fact that what I just felt wasn’t the most intense it would be was a little daunting to me, but my psychiatrist and Johanna assured me I would get used to it.

Appointment 2, Monday

My next appointment was Monday, and I never felt a surge of sleepiness or energy like I was told I would immediately after the appointment. I also didn’t have any side effects, no headaches or scalp pain. Just as Johanna predicted. However, Friday night I did feel some tingling in the back of my head on and off for a few hours.

When I got to the doctor’s office, they gave me a piece of paper asking me to rate my depression on a scale of 1-10, how many hours of sleep I got that night (less than four and we’d need to cancel that day due to increased seizure risk) and if I had suicidal thoughts and whether there’d been any changes to my medication.

I listed my depression at a 2 and my sleep at 6.5 hours. Johanna asked if that was normal for me, and I said 2 was lower than usual, but 6.5 hours was pretty common for me.

She told me we’d start with the intensity at that 84% and she’d increase it, but that people don’t feel the increase or find it painful.

Well, I have a low pain tolerance, and although it wasn’t painful enough to not tolerate it, I could feel it get more and more uncomfortable.

That day, Johanna told me we got to 106%, and she was confident wd could get to 120% by the end of the week, which is usually how long it takes.

That night, I had that same on-and-off tingling feeling on the back of my head, and I had so much energy it took longer than usual for me to fall asleep, and I was able to read a little (a physical book!) before bed without passing out in minutes.

Appointment 3, Tuesday

This morning, I woke up easily with a lot of energy. This was noticeable because for the past several months, I’ve been waking up feeling like I got run over by a bus and it has been extremely hard for me to wake up.

Depression level: 2

Sleep: 6 hours

I told Johanna about the tingling and she said it was probably just from the nerves being stimulated.

Johanna told me at the end of this appointment that we got up to 119%. At this point, it definitely feels like a rubber band snapping without the sting, and I noticed that my jaw would move so much that my teeth would clack together during the pulses if I didn’t male sure my jaw was open.

That night, I still had a lot of energy and was able to read, no tingling in the back of my head though.

Appointment 4, Wednesday

I woke up this morning with energy again, and was able to get out of bed easily and without pain.

Depression level: 3

Hours of sleep: 5.5

My jaw clacked together more during treatments, as we started and ended at that 120% and that night my teeth hurt. I was more tired this night, but still read for a little but and was able to get the house and kids’ clothes prepped for the next day.

Appointment 5, Thursday

I woke up this morning with energy.

Depression level: 3

Hours of sleep: 5.5

I told Johanna and my psychiatrist about the tooth pain, and Johanna adjusted the coil so it was turned in a slightly different position but still hitting the target area, and my jaw moved a lot less and my teeth did not hit together!

My psychiatrist asked me if I’ve seen any improvement so far, and I said I have. She asked what percent I felt I was better, and I told her about 50%, which she said was great progress.

And then that afternoon tested me.

I went to bed with energy but feeling very down on myself because of different events that happened that evening and was crying, but not uncontrollably so, which has often been a problem for me in the past.

Appointment 6, Friday

I didn’t go to bed until 1 AM, and I slept in and had trouble getting out of bed. I didn’t have that same run-over-by-truck feeling, but I was definitely groggy and woke up crying.

After crying it out for a few minutes, I was able to get myself together and write, make coffee, and get dressed, which I feel like is sometimes hard for me to do when I get down enough to cry like I did. Although I still wasn’t feeling great, I think it’s an improvement that I was able to move on in my day.

Depression level: 3.5

Hours of sleep: 6

Final thoughts to close out week one

So far, treatments have been going smoothly for me. I have been enjoying the energy boost I’ve been feeling and on the whole have been feeling like I’m able to bounce back more when things go wrong. I still cry at easily, but I feel like I’m able to stop crying easier. Which is an improvement.

The slight increase in my depression scores does have me a little discouraged, but I think that may be more reflective of the week being more difficult as it goes on than the TMS being ineffective. I’ll track my progress next week and remain optimistic. I still have about 30 treatments to go, so there’s a lot of time left.

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If you’ve read this far, thanks for sticking around, and keep an eye out for next weeks TMS report.

On his search to find it, he runs into a raccoon, a group of playful bunnies, and a goat, who haven’t seen the scarf but give him other gifts for Fox, who is delighted by his present and presence. She gifts him a beautiful blue yarn he doesn’t already have in his collection and he uses it to make a hat for her. She already has a scarf.

Then, we flip over the book to read the story from Fox’s point of view, who makes brownies to greet Moose with only to have them stolen. After trying and failing to get them back, she finds a red string of yarn that she decides would be a great gift for Moose.

She has no idea.

Unfortunately for her, in the time it’s taken for the string to appear and her to collect it, other woodland creatures have taken it upon themselves to use it for their own purposes.

As Fox happens upon them, she asks them for it, and they all initially refuse but then compromise and give her the yarn they don’t need, along with other offerings, culminating in a gift for Moose she’s happy with. When Moose arrives, he gives her something she is able to make a sweet treat, so she is able to make him a dessert after all.

“Exactly as Planned” has an easy-to-follow story arc and engaging characters. The second point of view that starts with the back cover is a fun surprise that my daughter loved. It's compelling how the reader can put together what happened before they read the second POV by paying attention to the illustrations.

As someone who has read going on a thousand children's books, this one stands out because it offers several lessons for kiddos without being preachy.

Lesson 1: sometimes, no matter your best efforts and intentions, things won’t go as planned. That’s okay. You’re resourceful enough to come up with a plan B.

Lesson 2: don’t be greedy! Take what you need and recognize what you can give to someone else without shorting yourself.

Lesson 3: it’s okay to show emotion and ask for help. Just don’t let the emotions paralyze you.

Lesson 4: you’re doing better than you think. That gift that, to you, is just “random things from the forest,” is something your friend believes is a thoughtful offering of all the things they like best.

Lesson 5: while it is good manners for a host to provide a sweet treat and a guest to provide a gift, true friends will value your presence over your presents every time.

This book is not for you if:

❌️ you or your child are triggered by thieving crows that get away with their crimes

❌️ you are deeply unsettled by your resemblance to the frazzled raccoon character who hoards shiny things and just wants her babies to sleep

This is a suitable read for kids ages 1 to 8. My 2.5-year-old and 4.5-year-old loved it!

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Today, articles from outlets like Psychology Today and The Children’s Trust firmly state you can’t be friends with your child and detail why, citing reasons like losing your authority and child’s respect.

We’ve seen portrayals in popular media like “Gilmore Girls” and “Ginny and Georgia” about the complications that can come with being more of a friend to your child than your parent. However, in “Gilmore Girls,” we also see the perils of not being friends with your child at all in Lorelai’s dynamic with her own parents.

Last Month, I read “Spectacular Things” by Beck Dorey-Stein, which details the lives of the Lowe women, Mia, Cricket, and their larger-than-life mom, Liz, whose once promising soccer career gets replaced by teen parenthood when she finds herself expecting a baby before she graduates high school.

In the novel, Liz’s pregnancy is unplanned, and although she doesn’t realize it at the time, it takes away all the things she had planned for herself: college at UCLA and being a world-renowned woman soccer player. Upon discovering her pregnancy, Liz’s wealthy parents disown her, spurring Liz to move with the baby and never look back a la Lorelai Gilmore.

Liz quickly declares newborn Mia her best friend, and as Mia grows up, especially after her younger sister Cricket is born, she becomes more and more of a partner to Liz than a daughter, often sacrificing her own dreams for Cricket’s at Liz’s pleading.

To avoid spoiling the novel, I won’t say anymore about the book’s details, except to say that Mia and Cricket turn out okay with no drug use or teen pregnancy to speak of. Rather than not respecting Liz’s authority, Mia has trouble saying no to Liz because of this best friend/partner dynamic, which is arguably no better than the alternative.

Sure, she doesn’t make super dysfunctional relationship and career choices that collide with her goals and values like Rory, and she doesn’t self-harm like Ginny, but she also gives up her dream, and it takes her until her early 20s to be brave enough to put herself first, which I think we can all agree is not something we want for our children, and, reading about Liz, I definitely don’t think she’d want that for her daughter. She wanted her girls to be fearless and chase their dreams with an unstoppable force, which is compromised by the parentification she puts Mia through.

But still, Mia turns out okay. She’s caring and empathetic and eventually finds her voice, a job and family she loves, so it seems being her mom’s best friend and being parentified doesn’t destroy her life.

Reading this novel was interesting for me, a parent of a girl myself, who has often called my daughter my mini BFF and wondered every time I did it if I was breaking some sacred parenting rule.

I think a lot of this depends on a) how you define the word friend, and b) how much of a friend you are to your child in comparison the stereotypical parent role.

According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary, friend has many definitions, including:

• 1: one attached to another by affection or esteem, acquaintance

• 2a: one that is not hostile

  • b: one that is of the same nation, party, or group, ie. showbiz friends

• 3: one that favors or promotes something (such as a charity)

  • ie: The friends of the library will host a fund-raiser.

• 4: a favored companion

• 5: Friend : a member of a Christian sect that stresses Inner Light, rejects sacraments and an ordained ministry, and opposes war, called also Quaker

• 6: a person included in a list of one's designated connections (see connection entry 3) on a social media service

Based on these definitions, being a friend to your child hardly seems harmful or dysfunctional.

One thing this parenting mantra seems to overlook is that few things in life are black and white. Perhaps being a parent doesn’t mean you can be a 0% friend to your child.

I mean, what do friends do? They support, they encourage, they spend time together and share interests. These are all things that we as parents are encouraged to do with our children.

Where things start to get murky is when you veer into more than friendship and start treating your child as a partner, as Liz arguably does to Mia. When you start to expect your child to shoulder the burden of your responsibilities, such as paying bills, keeping food in the house and taking siblings to doctor’s appointments and filling out paperwork, that is something you would arguably not expect of a friend, but a partner.

It’s true that you can confide in a friend about your life like a partner, and that is often why being a friend to your child is criticized, because it’s harmful to children to feel like they’re responsible for their parent’s emotions, which arguably is demonstrated in “Gilmore Girls,” “Ginny and Georgia,” and “Spectacular Things.”

Right now, I’m happy with the balance I have with my kids.

I don’t talk to them about finances, I don’t vent to them about my personal problems, and I don’t rely on them for emotional assistance, and I genuinely enjoy being around them; and when we’re sitting on the couch watching the new “Lilo and Stitch” movie while eating chocolate ice cream from the container, I remember doing the very same thing with my best friend as a kid, and I do feel like my kids are my family, but my friends, too.

And what could be better than that?

Here’s the thing: when a new or potentioal customer is looking over your website, or reading your social media posts or your novel, they probably know very little about you. All they have to go on are the words in front of them, and there’s a lot those words can tell them: your personality, your level of professionalism, and your level of creativity, to name a few.

If you’re trying to position yourself as an expert, whether that be on Instagram or your website, a typo can give people the impression that you’re sloppy or worse, don’t know what you’re talking about.

“Well, Kasey,” you might be thinking, “will people really notice one typo? Will they care? We’re all human after all.”

And you, dear reader, have a point. Some people’s brains may just scan over your typo and not notice it and others may notice it and not care. However, there may also be a few who do notice it and use it as the deciding factor between you and another professional.

The online job market is bananas right now. Every word counts. Some employers get inundated with hundreds of applications from talented candidates within days of posting, especially when the work is freelance, remote, and creative. The trifecta. And a misplaced comma or there/their/they’re mishap can be the deciding factor between you and someone else equally qualified. It can be the difference between someone clicking ‘follow’ or continuing to scroll.

And that’s where a proofreader comes in. After you’ve accounted for the voice, the tone, killing your darlings and making sure each sentence lands *just* the way you want, a second set of eyes is crucial to make sure everybody and their grandma trusts that no one is more of an expert in xyz than you.

If you’re reading this and are thinking that you might want to see what this proofreader thing is all about, feel free to check out my website or my LinkedIn.

From my desk to yours,

Kasey

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Hi, I’m Kasey.

Hi, I’m Kasey: a writer, editor, proofreader, mom of three, hobby baker, and reader of what seems like an endless stream of books. I live somewhere between the smell of fresh chocolate muffins and the click of a keyboard, juggling deadlines with school pick-ups and grocery runs.

I started this newsletter as a place to gather all the threads of my life — the words I work with, the meals I cook, the books I devour, the moments of motherhood that make me laugh, and whatever else is percolating in my brain at the moment.

Here, you can expect:

• Writing, editing, and proofreading tips from someone who’s been in the trenches with articles, transcripts, and stubborn typos.

• Motherhood and parenting reflections from someone who is not claiming to be a child expert, but hoping that some of my hard-won experience might help you out, whether it be trying a strategy you hadn’t thought of or just making you feel better by detailing my own parenting blunders.

• Baking and cooking stories with recipes I actually use (often while answering client emails).

• Book reviews and the occasional deep dive into a current event that’s rattling around in my head.

I’ll be dropping into your inbox a couple of times a week. Some weeks, you might get a practical tip to make your writing shine; other weeks, a recipe that saved me on a chaotic Tuesday; and sometimes, just a musing about what it means to live, work, and parent in 2025.

My hope is that this becomes a cozy, useful, and sometimes thought-provoking space — a place where words meet real life.

I’d love to hear from you: what’s a book, recipe, or small life lesson you’ve been living with lately? Hit reply and tell me.

From my desk to yours,

Kasey