Book Review and Giveaway – Sounds Like Crazy by Shana Mahaffey

I am thrilled to announce that not only am I lucky enough to have received a copy of this book to review for my blog, but I’m also giving away 3 copies of this book to 3 lucky winners!  The best part is that the author will be autographing the books and she is willing to mail them anywhere in the world! 

Have you ever acted not quite yourself?  Maybe you’ve said or done something that has people shaking their heads in wonder.  Perhaps you have different moods, heck, even different personalities from day-to-day.  Most people would say you are moody, PMS’ing, maybe a little off, or even Bipolar, but if you are Holly Miller, you really are six different people.  Sounds Like Crazy by Shana Mahaffey is a fabulous work of fiction

The faceless boy, the prayerful Silent One, the protective Sarge, the rotund Ruffles, and the high-maintenance Betty Jane all live in Holly’s mind, and together they form “The Committee” that governs this young twenty-something, as she suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) which used to be known as Multiple Personality Disorder.  Normally, I would have preferred to read a memoir or non-fiction book on the subject matter, but this book was so brilliant that I was half-convinced the author must have suffered from DID herself.

Sounds Like Crazy is a darkly comic and ultimately healing story about Holly Miller, a college graduate and New York City waitress who suddenly becomes an Emmy Award winning cartoon voice-over artist.  Holly has actual voices in her head due to having multiple personalities, and her strongest personality is Betty Jane, who often takes over Holly’s body using her sassy-yet-seductive southern voice with Holly’s customers.  One of Holly’s customers hears her use the Betty Jane voice and before Holly knows it, she is getting paid the big bucks to do the voice of the main character for a new animated television show called The Neighborhood.  Holly has never been able to maintain a stable job due to her condition, and has only been surviving alone in New York with the emotional and financial support given to her by her older sister Sarah and her longterm therapist, Milton, who are the only people in the world (besides her parents) who know Holly’s secret.

We all know how hard it can be to keep our own secrets, so you can only image the pressure Holly is under keeping her massive secret from her new co-workers, employers, and boyfriend Peter.  While she has been living in dysfunction for years, Holly’s life begins to crumble under the pressure of constantly fighting Betty Jane for control of her own body, especially after she is asked to do a second voice on the show with the help of Ruffles.  With Milton’s help, Holly is forced to discover the source of her multiple personalities, and the last part of the book is downright fascinating learning what actually happened in Holly’s childhood to cause these personalities to appear out of the blue.  I loved reading about the struggles, the love-hate relationships, and the eventual evolution of Holly, the faceless boy, the Silent One, Sarge, Ruffles, and Betty Jane.  I’m not telling you if it was harmonic or chaotic, you’ll need to find out that for yourself once you read this book.

Once I read the last page of Sounds Like Crazy, my journey into Holly’s mind did not end.  I spent hours reading about DID, not only because I’ve had six psychology classes in college and I’ve always been interested in learning more about the function of our brains, but mainly because parts of my own early childhood memories have been totally wiped out.  I’ve relied on my best friend and mother’s versions of my childhood for years.  While I don’t have DID, I do have several years of total darkness, where I have forgotten actual friends, my brother’s illness, and all sorts of things about my family and my life.  This is probably why I obsessively take photographs, to help create visual memory stimulants and document my life.  Ditto with journals.  I did read the book and saw the film Sybil, but I was pretty young, maybe middle-school aged, and had forgotten what our minds can do to protect themselves from physical or emotional traumas.  Sure, I had a rough life, but so do many other kids in our nation.  Not everyone is able to talk about them, let alone write about it.  I just feel blessed that I didn’t create my own personalities to be able to survive my abuse and neglect.  Although, I will admit when I first became a waitress, I was so shy I came up with a solution to approach each table as either Alice, Vera or Flo from the tv show Alice staring Linda Lavin.

To buy your own copy of Sounds Like Crazy, (and please, do so!) go here.

To visit Shana Mahaffey’s website, click here.

To follow Shana on Twitter, go here.

To find Shana on Facebook, go here.

SOUNDS LIKE CRAZY CONTEST

RULES:
**Open to everyone, not just U.S. residents
**NO P.O. BOXES, PLEASE
**MUST INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS IN COMMENT
**ALL COMMENTS MUST BE SEPARATE TO COUNT

HOW TO ENTER:

 

+1 ENTRY: Go to Shana Mahaffey’s website HERE and tell me via your comment below what fun or interesting thing you learned or noticed on her website.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Watch the video above, and tell me what you liked about it.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Comment if you are a loyal follower of hers, either on Facebook or Twitter or Goodreads.  Tell me where and how you follow her.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Comment here and tell me why you need to win this book!   If you have DID or know someone who does, please feel free to tell us about it.

+5 MORE ENTRIES: Blog about this giveaway, share a link via Twitter, or post a link via Facebook or any other social networking site about my Sounds Like Crazy giveaway and come back here and leave a comment with that link.

Contest ends next Sunday, May 23rd at midnight.  Good luck to you all.

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