Month: March 2026

As someone who enjoys true crime, especially podcasts like crime junkie, I found Ricardo Piglia’s Money to Burn surprisingly interesting. The novel doesn’t just tell a crime story, it pieces it together in a way that feels a lot like listening to a true crime episode where the details slowly unfold.

The book is based on a real bank robbery that happened in Argentina in the 1960s. A group of criminals steal a huge amount of money and escape, but things don’t go according to plan. Instead of quietly disappearing, they end up hiding out in Uruguay while police close in on them. What follows is a tense standoff that turns the criminals into a kind of media spectacle.

What stood out to me most is the way Piglia tells the story. Rather than giving a straightforward narrative, the book feels like a collection of fragments like bits of testimony, rumors, police reports, and different perspectives. As a reader, you have to piece everything together yourself. It reminded me a lot of the storytelling style in true crime media, where each new detail changes the way you understand the case.

If you’ve ever listened to Crime junkie (if you haven’t you should) , you know that part of the interest is slowly uncovering what really happened. The hosts build the story step by step, sometimes presenting conflicting details or theories. This book creates a similar feeling. The truth of the crime isn’t always clear, and the narrative leaves room for interpretation.

The characters themselves also add to that sense of complexity. The criminals are not portrayed as simple villains. Instead, Piglia explores their personalities, their relationships, and the strange loyalty between them. Two of the central figures, nicknamed the “Twins,” share an intense bond that drives much of the story. Their connection makes the crime feel less like a simple robbery and more like a tragic chain of events.

Another interesting aspect is how the media and the public react to the situation. As the standoff drags on, the criminals become almost myth-like figures. People follow the story closely, and the line between reality and sensationalism starts to blur.

what did you like about the book?

Dearest gentle reader… (sorry I was watching Bridgerton today)

Honestly I quite enjoyed this book, the way it is written, I am a little biased that it is the story of a woman written by a woman but nevertheless in this book I noticed a lot of attention to the little physical details, like the locations, the features and the clothing. For instance how she mentions her gold pair of heels that she still keeps because they marked a before and after in growing up and becoming a “woman”, they honestly become symbolic. I just understand the value items hold not only in the physical form but also in memories, there’s so many important dates or moments i remember vividly, and somehow I always know what I was wearing, it’s a way of tying a memory to a physical object that often holds emotional value

Don’t get me started with her relationship with her mother it’s the constant love and hate relationship that just leaves you feeling disappointed and empty at the end of the day, because even though she wanted what was better for her daughter dare I say wanted to live through her she still managed to crush a child’s dreams and any hopes that the world could be a good place for a woman “I’ve never done anything but wait behind a closed door” pg. 25 . Forgetting is probably one of life’s blessings but also a curse, not knowing who you once were may relieve the pain, but it may also make you loose a part of yourself that you don’t even know once existed… leaving an emptiness hard to describe, and a puzzle you may never be able to fully complete.

I see it as a book full of emotions, narrated by a complex mind that was never allowed to develop freely, in a world with prejudice and expected roles. Where a woman’s value rests in what she portrays physically.

Her family’s poverty and dysfunction are what stripped her of her “childhood” long before the lover ever did. She looks at the world with the eyes of a woman who has already seen the worst of people in her own dining room. That’s why she doesn’t flinch when she enters the adult world of sex and money… she’s already survived a much more brutal war at home. She doesn’t just “fall” for the man in the limo, she uses him as a life raft to escape a family that would have eventually drowned her, like they drowned themselves.

Something that caught my attention in the book is the whole uncomfortable dance of power and desire. You may get hung up on the interesting affair, but the book is really a picture of how we use each other to survive. It’s not just a romantic or sexual thing, it’s entirely transactional. She needs the money, he needs to be seen. But what’s fascinating is how the power dynamics keep flipping. In the colonial world of Saigon, she technically has the “power” of being white, but she’s broke and desperate, while he’s wealthy but marginalized by his race. It’s this brutal, claustrophobic loop where love, money, and trauma get so tangled up you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

How about you? have you ever blocked out certain time periods of your life from your ?

See ya next week 🙂

Xoxo

Howdy partner,

Soooo, this book was a little humbling, definitely unlike anything I’ve read before. The best word i have to explain how this book made me feel is almost as if it was gaslighting me. In some way it made me think and read as the protagonist, taking me on this endless search for the ending of a book I wasn’t asked if I wanted to read. I was honestly vibing with the beginning hook of this mysterious atmosphere and then BOOM! It cuts off… a printer error that honestly felt personal, and suddenly I was diving into conspiracies about fake translations and secret societies.

This book is written in a way that every time makes you believe that you’ve finally found the “real” book, then they pull the rug under you and it continues with a brand new story that leaves you even confused with the genre. Like how do you go from a spy mystery to a to say the least… interesting japanese drama. I guess it kept me on my toes throughout the reading.

I guess the book really made me value endings, the constant human need for a conclusion in everything we read or do. It made me realize how much of an anxious reader I am… usually when I’m reading a book and there is some major development taking more than one page, I skip through a couple pages just to make sure none of my beloved characters died, but this book didn’t allow me to do that which was frustrating but also taught me I should control my anxiety. Overall if felt like a little adventure, with the message behind that at the end of the day books are a way of bringing people together and that sometimes the anticipation of what happens next and that attempt to read a little faster to get to the next page ends up being the beauty of reading, at least in my opinion. 

I think I liked the book? (emphasis on the question mark) maybe It taught me some cliche that the ending you want isn’t always the best one or something.

Do you guys have reading anxiety too or am I the only one (should probably work on myself )? 

See ya!

XOXO