Happy 244th Birthday Jane Austen!

Tags

244th Birthday, “Northanger Abbey”, Jane Austen

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves. It is not my nature.

~ Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey ~

The Real Cost Of Private Medicine

My friend Pete and I have had several discussions regarding the British healthcare system versus the US one (or lack thereof). While my fellow Americans won’t be shocked at this video, I think Britons, Canadians, and people from just about any other country will find this shocking!

beetleypete

After my post about going to see the doctor yesterday, my dear blogging friend Kim sent me a link to a very interesting video. This may be of great interest to British readers.

Few of us here know much about private health care, although a percentage of people do pay into a scheme to get preferential, or faster treatment. Having a pet might make you realise just how expensive treatment and drugs can be these days, as I have found out with Ollie’s trips to the Vet.

In this short film, random people on a British street are asked to guess the cost of medical treatments and drugs in America, for example an asthma inhaler.

Their answers are very interesting.

Given the recent publicity about government ministers considering significant changes to the NHS and overall healthcare provision in this country, this is something we all need to be aware of.

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Unfollow Me, by Charlotte Duckworth ~ 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Mystery, Psychological Thriller, Social Media, Suspense

Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: March 10th, 2020

352 Pages

Synopsis: 

You Can’t Stop Watching Her.

Violet Young is a hugely popular journalist turned-mummy-vlogger, with three young children, a successful husband, and a million subscribers on YouTube who tune in daily to watch her everyday life unfold.

Until the day she’s no longer there.

But one day she disappears from the online world—her total social media presence deleted overnight, with no explanation. Has she simply decided that baring her life to all online is no longer a good idea, or has something more sinister happened to her?

But do you really know who Violet is?

Told from the perspectives of her most avid fans, obsessed with finding out the truth, their search quickly reveals a web of lies, betrayal, and shocking consequences…

With the exception of WordPress I’ve made a point to stay off social media including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. While I acknowledge that they can bring people together who are separated by long distances, I also believe that social media often brings out the worst in people in terms of mean spiritedness and obsessive over sharing. Unfollow Me addresses both of these and underneath the entertaining plot is a very real cautionary tale.

The story unfolds through the perspectives of three characters who are all pretty murky and unreliable. At the beginning they seem separate except for their shared connections through Violet, but then things turn into a truly wild and crazy roller coaster ride filled with so many twists I found myself gasping out loud more than once.

While the main mystery concerns what happened to Violet, there are smaller ones pertaining to the other characters, and they all kept me guessing right up until the end. Because of this and the book’s fast pace, I literally was unable to put this down and finished it in one sitting.

Unfollow Me is a fantastic thrill ride filled with damaged characters who you can’t help but feel sympathy for. I HIGHLY recommend this for anyone looking for an engrossing psychological thriller that addresses real life issues.