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mxhermit's reviews
949 reviews
Argyle Fox by Marie Letourneau
4.0
This is a cute story to share with a little one as warmth returns to us, now that spring is beginning again.
Argyle Fox is an intelligent little fox that may seem stubborn when he's continually trying to play games that others are telling him won't work in the strong wind, but I thought this showed strength of character. He wasn't being rude to them, but rather learning for himself why something might not be plausible, such as building a card tower outside when it's windy.
His inevitable turn to kite flying is nice, though I question whether knitting a tail for the kite (the inspiration from his mother's knitting) would have worked quite as well as is pictured in the book. A lot of yarn is quite heavy and given the size of the kite, I think it would've weighed Argyle Fox's kite down rather than enabled it to soar as shown.
Regardless, this tale is a good one about perseverance and learning to work with what you have. Argyle Fox tried to play with a variety of things, such a card towers and a cardboard castle, that simply didn't work. In the end, flying kites with your friends, especially with kites you made for them, can be just as enjoyable.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Argyle Fox is an intelligent little fox that may seem stubborn when he's continually trying to play games that others are telling him won't work in the strong wind, but I thought this showed strength of character. He wasn't being rude to them, but rather learning for himself why something might not be plausible, such as building a card tower outside when it's windy.
His inevitable turn to kite flying is nice, though I question whether knitting a tail for the kite (the inspiration from his mother's knitting) would have worked quite as well as is pictured in the book. A lot of yarn is quite heavy and given the size of the kite, I think it would've weighed Argyle Fox's kite down rather than enabled it to soar as shown.
Regardless, this tale is a good one about perseverance and learning to work with what you have. Argyle Fox tried to play with a variety of things, such a card towers and a cardboard castle, that simply didn't work. In the end, flying kites with your friends, especially with kites you made for them, can be just as enjoyable.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Super Narwhal and Jelly Jolt by Ben Clanton
2.0
Rating: 2.5 Stars
Narwhals are awesome creatures and I've been seeing more picture books with them featured lately. In this collection of short comics, the second in the Narwhal and Jelly series, Narwhal discovers his superpowers and uses them for good in various ways.
I loved the idea of a narwhal being a superhero. The first comic, when Narwhal discovers he is a superhero but not what his superpower is, was my favorite. The art is appropriately charming and goes well with the stories.
The next story was less than thrilling and a bit boring. The third, when he needed to cheer up a friend and in doing so discovered what his actual superpower was, was the most heartfelt of the book. Being someone that brings out the best in others is nothing to sneeze at!
The reason I'm giving this book only a 2.5 star rating is because, while the art was good and the first story was really fun, the rest of the book was rather lackluster. There was substance missing from the stories, in that there was the barest sketch of a story and not much fleshing out of it. Perhaps, in this sense, a comic book was the wrong medium and each story would have been better as it's own picture book?
This book will probably be most attractive to a younger audience to whom the lack of a fleshed out story won't matter, as it is visually appealing through out the work.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Narwhals are awesome creatures and I've been seeing more picture books with them featured lately. In this collection of short comics, the second in the Narwhal and Jelly series, Narwhal discovers his superpowers and uses them for good in various ways.
I loved the idea of a narwhal being a superhero. The first comic, when Narwhal discovers he is a superhero but not what his superpower is, was my favorite. The art is appropriately charming and goes well with the stories.
The next story was less than thrilling and a bit boring. The third, when he needed to cheer up a friend and in doing so discovered what his actual superpower was, was the most heartfelt of the book. Being someone that brings out the best in others is nothing to sneeze at!
The reason I'm giving this book only a 2.5 star rating is because, while the art was good and the first story was really fun, the rest of the book was rather lackluster. There was substance missing from the stories, in that there was the barest sketch of a story and not much fleshing out of it. Perhaps, in this sense, a comic book was the wrong medium and each story would have been better as it's own picture book?
This book will probably be most attractive to a younger audience to whom the lack of a fleshed out story won't matter, as it is visually appealing through out the work.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The Resistance: United in Love by Zoe York, Katherine Rhodes, Harper Miller, Megan Benjamin Evans, Olivia Linden, Morgan Jane Mitchell, Ella Dominguez, Deborah Cunningham Burst, G. Miller, Robin Lee, Natasha Boyd, Selene Chardou, Kimberly Rose, JC Andrijeski, Danielle Allen, C. Ricketts, Leslie Claire Walker, Nicole Falls, M.C. Cerny, Dylan Allen, Elizabeth Burgess, Amalie Silver, S. Simone Chavous, John Gregory Hancock, Emme Burton, Sarah M. Cradit, T. Thorn Coyle, M. Stratton, Bayli Lane
3.0
Rating: 3.5 Stars
A collection of varying pieces, from essays to poems to free form works, The Resistance utilizes personal experience to detail feelings of hope, of fear, of worry. There are pieces that may mean more to some people than to others, but the collection as a whole showed a solidarity among these authors to lend their voices to a collection that, I feel, needs to be shared.
For Who? by Danielle Allen was the piece that stood out the most to me as the one that summed up the collection best, the one that needs to be shared the most. It spoke about how the current administration (45) preaches about "make America great again", but asks the important question: for who? The Natives who've been murdered, whose descendants were/are forced off their land? Those of African descent who were seen as 3/5 of a person? For women, told that sexual assault is their fault, paid less because of their gender regardless of their abilities? For Who? is best summed up by this excerpt:
The poem that felt the most personal to my person was Do You See Me? Because I See You by Danielle Allen. It spoke to the hypocrisy of people that proclaim to support their friends and family of targeted genders/sexualities/etc., but at the same time shout out their support for the oppositional administration.
I have family and friends that I simply cannot understand that would benefit from reading this collection, especially Danielle Allen's poem. A position such as this is not only hypocritical, but it's dangerous because it makes them blind to not only what happens to their friends & family, but to the millions of other citizens in this country.
I was saddened when I read Your Son by Amalie Silver and it was almost more personal than Do You See Me? because while that poem spoke to me, this essay spoke to my experience with my son. He's a special needs child and I recognized him in this story. He was born as a child that I loved, but that others recognized needed help. Because of them, he's been learning things I could never have taught him on my own because I'm too close to him. This essay understood that, but it also made me realize how very real the fear is that the programs that help him could and very well may disappear with the current Secretary of Education. A woman who doesn't believe that children like my son deserves help, that money is more important than helping him and children like him. How horrifying, that reality.
As a whole, this collection had an 85-90% rate of success with the content. There were some pieces that I thought either didn't fit or were not edited as well as I would have liked, regardless of content. Regardless of the minimal disappointments, this collection was important. While the pieces did lean toward a certain liberal mindedness, there were many authors that reminded us that we should be there for each other. We have to protect one another and work toward a safe environment despite what the current administration is trying to do to us, to our friends and families. Remember, that for all our differences, we still have in common our humanity.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
A collection of varying pieces, from essays to poems to free form works, The Resistance utilizes personal experience to detail feelings of hope, of fear, of worry. There are pieces that may mean more to some people than to others, but the collection as a whole showed a solidarity among these authors to lend their voices to a collection that, I feel, needs to be shared.
For Who? by Danielle Allen was the piece that stood out the most to me as the one that summed up the collection best, the one that needs to be shared the most. It spoke about how the current administration (45) preaches about "make America great again", but asks the important question: for who? The Natives who've been murdered, whose descendants were/are forced off their land? Those of African descent who were seen as 3/5 of a person? For women, told that sexual assault is their fault, paid less because of their gender regardless of their abilities? For Who? is best summed up by this excerpt:
Instead of the current administration holding on to the reigns of discrimination and oppression to “make America great again” for only one very specific group (wealthy, heterosexual, Christian, white men), all of us, regardless of race, class , gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc., need to step up so we can make America great (for all of us) for the first time.
The poem that felt the most personal to my person was Do You See Me? Because I See You by Danielle Allen. It spoke to the hypocrisy of people that proclaim to support their friends and family of targeted genders/sexualities/etc., but at the same time shout out their support for the oppositional administration.
When you say that we’re friends and that you love me Do you not think of that when you blindly agree With the hateful words and derogatory tone Of an administration whose intentions were known?
I have family and friends that I simply cannot understand that would benefit from reading this collection, especially Danielle Allen's poem. A position such as this is not only hypocritical, but it's dangerous because it makes them blind to not only what happens to their friends & family, but to the millions of other citizens in this country.
I was saddened when I read Your Son by Amalie Silver and it was almost more personal than Do You See Me? because while that poem spoke to me, this essay spoke to my experience with my son. He's a special needs child and I recognized him in this story. He was born as a child that I loved, but that others recognized needed help. Because of them, he's been learning things I could never have taught him on my own because I'm too close to him. This essay understood that, but it also made me realize how very real the fear is that the programs that help him could and very well may disappear with the current Secretary of Education. A woman who doesn't believe that children like my son deserves help, that money is more important than helping him and children like him. How horrifying, that reality.
As a whole, this collection had an 85-90% rate of success with the content. There were some pieces that I thought either didn't fit or were not edited as well as I would have liked, regardless of content. Regardless of the minimal disappointments, this collection was important. While the pieces did lean toward a certain liberal mindedness, there were many authors that reminded us that we should be there for each other. We have to protect one another and work toward a safe environment despite what the current administration is trying to do to us, to our friends and families. Remember, that for all our differences, we still have in common our humanity.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The Dining Car by Eric W. Peterson
2.0
Rating: 2.5 Stars
Food Network is one of my favorite channels on television. Food competitions and food history shows are very entertaining for me. So, in the last couple of months, I've been reading more food related books, whether they are recipe books, restaurant recommendation guides, or fictional books about bartenders aboard trains, pouring drinks for an esteemed food writer, as it the case in The Dining Car.
The great thing about this book was the way the author talked about the liquor and the food. He was very descriptive, but not in a way that made it feel like I was reading a catalog. It was easy to see the bar in the opening scenes at Biscuit Shooters/Mount Hollow and the spreads that Jack, the main character and bartender, witnessed aboard Horace's train, the Pioneer Mother. Wanda, the chef on the train and creator of all the delicious food Horace consumed, was an amazing source of knowledge that Jack did not possess upon taking up this job. She knew everything from the proper place setting to all of Horace's personal idiosyncrasies and handled them with more grace than I can imagine in such small quarters.
These scenes were the best part, but the connecting passages were somewhat duller and made the book drag rather more than I would have liked. It made reading it an unenjoyable challenge. Some of the characters alleviated this somewhat, particularly Wanda. My first impression of her was a no-nonsense woman who is used to an unorthodox work environment and the insanity that goes along with it. Horace, while an eccentric grandfather type, came across as annoying in his magazine articles. Peppered throughout the book, they were filled with excessively long and complicated words, as though he (or the author of this book) used a thesaurus while writing them. Jack, the main character, was alright, but I never really felt anything for him beyond seeing him as a vehicle to meet all these other people and witness all these other events.
On the plus side, I think that readers will see an elegant side of dining and, at times, humorous moments, such as when Horace punches a Senator or some of his other comments and drunken escapades. On the negative, you'll have to wade through some rather dry passages, which I'd like to chewing on a tough steak that Wanda would never have let get to her table in the first place, all while Jack let's your wine glass sit empty.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Food Network is one of my favorite channels on television. Food competitions and food history shows are very entertaining for me. So, in the last couple of months, I've been reading more food related books, whether they are recipe books, restaurant recommendation guides, or fictional books about bartenders aboard trains, pouring drinks for an esteemed food writer, as it the case in The Dining Car.
The great thing about this book was the way the author talked about the liquor and the food. He was very descriptive, but not in a way that made it feel like I was reading a catalog. It was easy to see the bar in the opening scenes at Biscuit Shooters/Mount Hollow and the spreads that Jack, the main character and bartender, witnessed aboard Horace's train, the Pioneer Mother. Wanda, the chef on the train and creator of all the delicious food Horace consumed, was an amazing source of knowledge that Jack did not possess upon taking up this job. She knew everything from the proper place setting to all of Horace's personal idiosyncrasies and handled them with more grace than I can imagine in such small quarters.
These scenes were the best part, but the connecting passages were somewhat duller and made the book drag rather more than I would have liked. It made reading it an unenjoyable challenge. Some of the characters alleviated this somewhat, particularly Wanda. My first impression of her was a no-nonsense woman who is used to an unorthodox work environment and the insanity that goes along with it. Horace, while an eccentric grandfather type, came across as annoying in his magazine articles. Peppered throughout the book, they were filled with excessively long and complicated words, as though he (or the author of this book) used a thesaurus while writing them. Jack, the main character, was alright, but I never really felt anything for him beyond seeing him as a vehicle to meet all these other people and witness all these other events.
On the plus side, I think that readers will see an elegant side of dining and, at times, humorous moments, such as when Horace punches a Senator or some of his other comments and drunken escapades. On the negative, you'll have to wade through some rather dry passages, which I'd like to chewing on a tough steak that Wanda would never have let get to her table in the first place, all while Jack let's your wine glass sit empty.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The Otto Digmore Difference by Brent Hartinger
3.0
After seeing the movie Geography Club and being presented with the opportunity to review LGBT books by Lauren Becker, I was extremely pleased that the first book I get to read and review is The Otto Digmore Difference by Brent Hartinger, the author of the book that the movie Geography Club was based on.
A road trip book can be all kinds of fun, especially when one of the characters loves those kinds of stories in movies, such as one of my favorites To Wong Fu Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar. The incidents that cropped up for Otto and Russel were a bit stretchy, sometimes, but there was the air of adventure and thrill that you might expect in a film, something he delighted in (I'm sure!).
As for Otto, our main character, the author gave us, in him, an example of how horrible people can be online, safe from confronting the target of their taunts and threats. Otto, with disfiguring scars on one side of his face, doesn't hear these so much in person anymore, but online people feel protected and he is still sent gifs of fried chickens, insinuations that he should commit suicide.
Otto doesn't become a victim because of these, but he isn't immune to these people either. It hurts, these dark parts of the Internet. Plus, having to have a public face for his fans all the time drains a person. His character, while having moments of what feel like utter deflation to me, is still strong because he remains in spite of these obstacles. He doesn't let them destroy him.
I liked Otto's remembrance of his home before his big break. The Hive was a collective for artists of all kinds with nary a night passing by quietly. It reminded me of the Cloud Club, a similar place where musician and author Amanda Palmer resided. That place always sounded like a haven for creativity and I imagine Otto found a lot of grace and solace there.
Ironically, it was after he got everything he wanted (t.v. role on Hammered, money, etc.) that he felt the most lost. While not the most beautiful of descriptions, the level of detail the Brent put into describing Otto's life and his place of residence was high. It was easy to be put into the locations that Otto visited, starting with his apartment decorated by an interior designer.
I loved the callbacks to Brent's Russel Middlebrook series, which I remember most fondly from The Geography Club. There were also plenty of nerdy references, such as Pokémon Go and Stranger Things.
Russell, apart from being the bright half of the duo, had a good point himself when he was talking about Hollywood movies. As a screenwriter, he had the unique perspective of seeing how, to quote him:
I know that I love the Wizarding World movies. I love Marvel movies and I even enjoy a lot of the remakes that Disney is making. However, it begs the question, where's the originality? Russell's point, what movies are we missing because we as the Hollywood consumer base are comfortable with the same old, same old, is an excellent one.
I admit that I did get a bit frustrated with how many stops there were in Otto's quest to get this final audition. The summary made it sound as though he had one destination all along, but it was much more involved than that. There were some characters, too, that frustrated me, especially when the ending was resolved for this book (the first in the Otto Digmore series).
At the beginning of the novel we meet Fiona, Otto's agent, who he describes as a great agent that isn't a big one, but is still very dedicated to her clients. Her assistant, Greg, is the one that mentions the aforementioned audition to him for a movie called The Tulip Vase. Right from the get go with his involvement I could tell something was off because he never let Otto talk to Fiona about it, so I felt that something weird was going on. It turned out that my suspicion was correct because she had nothing to do either with the initial audition or Greg egging Otto on to meet the director and audition for him personally. That was very sneaky behavior and I would not have been able to trust him after an episode like that.
It was this series of actions that caused Fiona, once she found out, to drop Otto as a client because she didn't feel he trusted her anymore. While Greg made excuses for why Fiona could never come to the phone, Otto never pushed too hard against these, so I think he's at least a little responsible. Then, after Greg admits what he has done, he also confesses that he has feelings for Otto, wants to become a manager himself, and would like to manage/date Otto. Neither of these sounded like good ideas because a) he can't be trusted (see the previous sneaky behavior and outright lying to Otto as evidence) and b) there was no sign of any sort of affection that might have led to them ending things where they did. After the deceitful behavior, I couldn't understand how Otto would place himself in that position.
The biggest romantic feelings in the book were, I felt, between Otto and Russel, though it was one sided as Russel had been married 1-2 weeks during the majority of the book. It felt strange that I would get all these feelings when I knew that Russel was a faithfully married man and Otto knew that, though clearly he had to work out his feelings for his former boyfriend (Otto and Russel dated/were lovers in a previous Brent Hartinger novel).
I'm not sure where this book will go from here. Perhaps there will be redemption for certain characters that I disliked at the close of the novel. Hopefully Otto will be able to find some of the success that he has the talent for. Time will tell, as will the next book in the Otto Digmore series.
I received a copy of this book from Lauren Becker as part of the LGBT Book Tour in exchange for an honest review.
A road trip book can be all kinds of fun, especially when one of the characters loves those kinds of stories in movies, such as one of my favorites To Wong Fu Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar. The incidents that cropped up for Otto and Russel were a bit stretchy, sometimes, but there was the air of adventure and thrill that you might expect in a film, something he delighted in (I'm sure!).
As for Otto, our main character, the author gave us, in him, an example of how horrible people can be online, safe from confronting the target of their taunts and threats. Otto, with disfiguring scars on one side of his face, doesn't hear these so much in person anymore, but online people feel protected and he is still sent gifs of fried chickens, insinuations that he should commit suicide.
Otto doesn't become a victim because of these, but he isn't immune to these people either. It hurts, these dark parts of the Internet. Plus, having to have a public face for his fans all the time drains a person. His character, while having moments of what feel like utter deflation to me, is still strong because he remains in spite of these obstacles. He doesn't let them destroy him.
I liked Otto's remembrance of his home before his big break. The Hive was a collective for artists of all kinds with nary a night passing by quietly. It reminded me of the Cloud Club, a similar place where musician and author Amanda Palmer resided. That place always sounded like a haven for creativity and I imagine Otto found a lot of grace and solace there.
Ironically, it was after he got everything he wanted (t.v. role on Hammered, money, etc.) that he felt the most lost. While not the most beautiful of descriptions, the level of detail the Brent put into describing Otto's life and his place of residence was high. It was easy to be put into the locations that Otto visited, starting with his apartment decorated by an interior designer.
I loved the callbacks to Brent's Russel Middlebrook series, which I remember most fondly from The Geography Club. There were also plenty of nerdy references, such as Pokémon Go and Stranger Things.
Russell, apart from being the bright half of the duo, had a good point himself when he was talking about Hollywood movies. As a screenwriter, he had the unique perspective of seeing how, to quote him:
"...for every Star Wars movie that gets made, every new Marvel universe movie, that means there's one less other studio movie made. There's less of a chance of some future movie they might love."
I know that I love the Wizarding World movies. I love Marvel movies and I even enjoy a lot of the remakes that Disney is making. However, it begs the question, where's the originality? Russell's point, what movies are we missing because we as the Hollywood consumer base are comfortable with the same old, same old, is an excellent one.
I admit that I did get a bit frustrated with how many stops there were in Otto's quest to get this final audition. The summary made it sound as though he had one destination all along, but it was much more involved than that. There were some characters, too, that frustrated me, especially when the ending was resolved for this book (the first in the Otto Digmore series).
It was this series of actions that caused Fiona, once she found out, to drop Otto as a client because she didn't feel he trusted her anymore. While Greg made excuses for why Fiona could never come to the phone, Otto never pushed too hard against these, so I think he's at least a little responsible. Then, after Greg admits what he has done, he also confesses that he has feelings for Otto, wants to become a manager himself, and would like to manage/date Otto. Neither of these sounded like good ideas because a) he can't be trusted (see the previous sneaky behavior and outright lying to Otto as evidence) and b) there was no sign of any sort of affection that might have led to them ending things where they did. After the deceitful behavior, I couldn't understand how Otto would place himself in that position.
The biggest romantic feelings in the book were, I felt, between Otto and Russel, though it was one sided as Russel had been married 1-2 weeks during the majority of the book. It felt strange that I would get all these feelings when I knew that Russel was a faithfully married man and Otto knew that, though clearly he had to work out his feelings for his former boyfriend (Otto and Russel dated/were lovers in a previous Brent Hartinger novel).
I'm not sure where this book will go from here. Perhaps there will be redemption for certain characters that I disliked at the close of the novel. Hopefully Otto will be able to find some of the success that he has the talent for. Time will tell, as will the next book in the Otto Digmore series.
I received a copy of this book from Lauren Becker as part of the LGBT Book Tour in exchange for an honest review.
Promdi Heart (Hometown Love Stories) by Chris Mariano, Georgette S. Gonzales, Agay Llanera, Ines Bautista-Yao, C.P. Santi, Jay E. Tria
2.0
This book brings together six authors to write about hometowns in the Philippines, each with their own take on stories bringing tow young lovers together. A chance Twitter encounter brought this book across my Kindle and today I'm sharing my thoughts on this collection.
Only the Beginning by C.P. Santi
I did not enjoy this story for a few reasons, primary of which is that I couldn't get into the story. The action didn't seem to have a clear pace. The characters, especially the main one (Andrea), were confusing. Andrea starts the story objecting to a project, vehemently speaking out against it at a meeting, but this objection seems to slide to the side because someone close to her is actually in charge and gets her a job involved in the project.
The "chapters" were cut off seemingly at random and quite abruptly, another thing that bugged me. The timing was another matter that made the story difficult to process; it jumped from saying a couple days later, a couple days later, etc. It felt weird and like saying dates or even specifying the times would've flowed better.
The basis of the story sounded like it could have been really interesting. Gathering the stories of the community, learning things about them, could have been a great way to share details with the reading audience, but I never got that sense of community from this particular story. The romance itself never felt real, either, whether it was because of the jolting nature of the storytelling or because there simply wasn't enough time to develop the relationship, I'm not sure. In either matter, this was not my favorite story of the collection.
Letters About a Boy by Ines Bautista Yao
Told in a series of letters from Tin-tin to her friend/cousin Annette, this story shared the trait of odd timing with Only the Beginning. Since these are letters, dates would've made infinitely more sense rather than "end of summer" or "a few weeks into high school year".
Tin-tin herself was not a sympathetic character. She came across as a bit whiny and more than a little petulant. She's pining over a boy, Nicholas, who gives her mixed signals about his interest. Over the years he dates, but never gets over Regina, a girl he was interested in at the beginning. Tin-tin is quoted as saying:
That is a classic pot calling the kettle black situation if I ever heard one. It didn't help that in the next paragraph she started tearing Regina apart, wondering why Nicholas liked her because Tin-tin doesn't think she looks like anything spectacular.
I really didn't like the relationship that "developed" between Tin-tin and Nicholas. She really did end up pining after him all these years, he made excuses for why he didn't "see" her sooner, and everything wrapped up far too nearly too quickly. They may have know each other for a long time as friends, but that's different than being in a romantic relationship. These two seem to have skipped several steps in between, making the finale a letdown.
Drummer Boy by Chris Mariano
This was the most visually appealing story of the novel. Taking place during the Ati-atihan Festival, the description of a party in the street, full of bright colors and loud music gave the piece a jubilant air.
I liked the familial relationship between Reina and Dex more so than the romantic one between Reina and Ben. Though brief, I got a real sense of caring from Dex. He was the annoying big brother, sure, but he was also helpful to Reina when he realized that she liked Ben (which he found out when he elbowed his way into their first "date", but that's a whole other thing). It was a weird situation to come to terms with in his mind, but he knew it was his sister's decision, would make her happy, and what he could do was support her (and take her side in any fights she and Ben might have 😉).
While there was still an insta-love feel to the relationship, it didn't feel quite as strong as some of the other stories. Reina and Ben have loosely known each other 8 years, but their interest is thrown into overdrive at the commencement of this tale. A little drama and it ends at a decent place: not solved, not a huge cliffhanger; just right for a short story.
One Certain Day by Jay E. Tria
I enjoyed the writing at the beginning of this story more than the previous stories and thought that it spoke of a turnaround for the collection as a whole. While it turned out that story's quality didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, the quality of telling it was good enough that I'd considered trying this author again in the future. This story in and of itself could have blossomed into a longer piece, I think, and been a contemporary YA novel. Things felt too rushed, too shoved into a too-small space.
There were some things that didn't make sense to me, such as Alice's interest in being an actress being mentioned offhand at one point. She mentions a part she gets called back for, but someone else is up for it so she's not sure she'll get this coveted role. Until then I'd had no idea what really spoke to her in terms of interests, other than All Saint's Day and Son's writing a song for her.
I'm glad they were able to reconcile their feelings and be friends at the end, even though Alice had hoped it would be different. Alice and Son, close as their are, do seem like they could be best friends. Things may change in the future, they may not, but the note they ended on was a decent one, if not wholly exuberant.
Once Upon a Bully by Georgette S. Gonzales
This story was a bit of a conundrum for me. The writing was decent, the characterization good (even if I didn't like the characters, the way they were written certainly managed to evoke specific emotions), but there were elements of the tale itself that did not make sense.
Bridgette has spent the last decade of her life somewhere, in stasis, but where? Her family is a bit far flung (Germany, Ontario) and remaining in the Philippines was her choice, though I'm unsure why. She says she's never lived away from her family, claims to be living alone, but it sounds like the place she's moved into on page one is an apartment/glorified room in a compound of her aunt's. Does this really count as living on her own?
This got relegated to the background of my mind when we were introduced to how she treated Miguel, her new neighbor and former childhood classmate, when they were children. It was abominable behavior and made me dislike her for the rest of the story. She seemed to show some guilt, but I have to wonder whether that guilt was tainted by her childhood fear of getting into trouble for torturing a fellow person.
I'm not sure if it was a cultural difference, Miguel's handling of the bullying. Perhaps a fellow reader could clear this up for me. He says:
I'm not sure I could agree fully with his assessment that harboring ill feelings was pointless. Maybe you could move on from someone making your life horrible for months on end as a child, but would you really grow up to fall in love with them? That whole aspect of this story felt disingenuous and had me pulling faces the further I read.
This passage further highlighted something that Bridgette interpreted from her interaction with Miguel that I couldn't understand. I'm "glad" she feels she's been absolved of her bullying past, but that kind of past speaks to her character. She never really faced consequences for her actions; a slight embarrassment, maybe, but nothing that was anywhere near what she put Miguel through. This goes back to my wondering whether it's a cultural handling of bullying, but are things different in the Philippines than in the US? Was there any consideration for what bullied children actually go through and what it's like to see a story in which a bullied child enters a romantic relationship with their tormentor?
Back to the Stars by Agay Llanera
This story was by far my favorite because, while there were some parts that were not as fleshed out as I'd have liked, it felt like there was a good, solid story. There was conflict, happiness, and I could follow along on the action, the most important thing of all.
Leah's conflict between two love interests had me a bit unsteady at first, but when she and her work group (love interest #1 included) went to her beach house for the weekend, we got a peek at her life growing up. Wency (love interest #2) was there waiting for her, a summer time childhood friend, and we learned more about Leah, about what her hesitation regarding the past really meant for her, what it meant for her future. This story had the most heart of the collection, to me, and the least amount of difficulties.
Summary
I had some difficulty enjoying this book because I was out of my depth with the culture and the terms that were being used. I spent a lot of time having to look up terms that, while I could get the general context of, made it difficult to sort out who was related to who, or what their exact relationship was. The constant going to Google kept taking me out of the story, preventing me from really settling in to any one of them.
The stories were about 50/50. Three I liked fairly well, the other three I did not like much at all. With short story collections from different authors, or even from collections by the same author, this kind of thing is bound to happen. The ones I liked, I'd recommend seeing if you can find more from those authors and trying their longer fiction out. At the conclusion of the book is a brief bit on each author, including previous titles.
I received a copy of this book from Agay Llanera, one of the authors, in exchange for an honest review.
Only the Beginning by C.P. Santi
I did not enjoy this story for a few reasons, primary of which is that I couldn't get into the story. The action didn't seem to have a clear pace. The characters, especially the main one (Andrea), were confusing. Andrea starts the story objecting to a project, vehemently speaking out against it at a meeting, but this objection seems to slide to the side because someone close to her is actually in charge and gets her a job involved in the project.
The "chapters" were cut off seemingly at random and quite abruptly, another thing that bugged me. The timing was another matter that made the story difficult to process; it jumped from saying a couple days later, a couple days later, etc. It felt weird and like saying dates or even specifying the times would've flowed better.
The basis of the story sounded like it could have been really interesting. Gathering the stories of the community, learning things about them, could have been a great way to share details with the reading audience, but I never got that sense of community from this particular story. The romance itself never felt real, either, whether it was because of the jolting nature of the storytelling or because there simply wasn't enough time to develop the relationship, I'm not sure. In either matter, this was not my favorite story of the collection.
Letters About a Boy by Ines Bautista Yao
Told in a series of letters from Tin-tin to her friend/cousin Annette, this story shared the trait of odd timing with Only the Beginning. Since these are letters, dates would've made infinitely more sense rather than "end of summer" or "a few weeks into high school year".
Tin-tin herself was not a sympathetic character. She came across as a bit whiny and more than a little petulant. She's pining over a boy, Nicholas, who gives her mixed signals about his interest. Over the years he dates, but never gets over Regina, a girl he was interested in at the beginning. Tin-tin is quoted as saying:
My god, Annette, it's been so freaking long. Why can't he get over this girl?
That is a classic pot calling the kettle black situation if I ever heard one. It didn't help that in the next paragraph she started tearing Regina apart, wondering why Nicholas liked her because Tin-tin doesn't think she looks like anything spectacular.
I really didn't like the relationship that "developed" between Tin-tin and Nicholas. She really did end up pining after him all these years, he made excuses for why he didn't "see" her sooner, and everything wrapped up far too nearly too quickly. They may have know each other for a long time as friends, but that's different than being in a romantic relationship. These two seem to have skipped several steps in between, making the finale a letdown.
Drummer Boy by Chris Mariano
This was the most visually appealing story of the novel. Taking place during the Ati-atihan Festival, the description of a party in the street, full of bright colors and loud music gave the piece a jubilant air.
I liked the familial relationship between Reina and Dex more so than the romantic one between Reina and Ben. Though brief, I got a real sense of caring from Dex. He was the annoying big brother, sure, but he was also helpful to Reina when he realized that she liked Ben (which he found out when he elbowed his way into their first "date", but that's a whole other thing). It was a weird situation to come to terms with in his mind, but he knew it was his sister's decision, would make her happy, and what he could do was support her (and take her side in any fights she and Ben might have 😉).
While there was still an insta-love feel to the relationship, it didn't feel quite as strong as some of the other stories. Reina and Ben have loosely known each other 8 years, but their interest is thrown into overdrive at the commencement of this tale. A little drama and it ends at a decent place: not solved, not a huge cliffhanger; just right for a short story.
One Certain Day by Jay E. Tria
I enjoyed the writing at the beginning of this story more than the previous stories and thought that it spoke of a turnaround for the collection as a whole. While it turned out that story's quality didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, the quality of telling it was good enough that I'd considered trying this author again in the future. This story in and of itself could have blossomed into a longer piece, I think, and been a contemporary YA novel. Things felt too rushed, too shoved into a too-small space.
There were some things that didn't make sense to me, such as Alice's interest in being an actress being mentioned offhand at one point. She mentions a part she gets called back for, but someone else is up for it so she's not sure she'll get this coveted role. Until then I'd had no idea what really spoke to her in terms of interests, other than All Saint's Day and Son's writing a song for her.
I'm glad they were able to reconcile their feelings and be friends at the end, even though Alice had hoped it would be different. Alice and Son, close as their are, do seem like they could be best friends. Things may change in the future, they may not, but the note they ended on was a decent one, if not wholly exuberant.
Once Upon a Bully by Georgette S. Gonzales
This story was a bit of a conundrum for me. The writing was decent, the characterization good (even if I didn't like the characters, the way they were written certainly managed to evoke specific emotions), but there were elements of the tale itself that did not make sense.
Bridgette has spent the last decade of her life somewhere, in stasis, but where? Her family is a bit far flung (Germany, Ontario) and remaining in the Philippines was her choice, though I'm unsure why. She says she's never lived away from her family, claims to be living alone, but it sounds like the place she's moved into on page one is an apartment/glorified room in a compound of her aunt's. Does this really count as living on her own?
This got relegated to the background of my mind when we were introduced to how she treated Miguel, her new neighbor and former childhood classmate, when they were children. It was abominable behavior and made me dislike her for the rest of the story. She seemed to show some guilt, but I have to wonder whether that guilt was tainted by her childhood fear of getting into trouble for torturing a fellow person.
I'm not sure if it was a cultural difference, Miguel's handling of the bullying. Perhaps a fellow reader could clear this up for me. He says:
...he didn't hate or dislike her. He was not brought up that way. He tolerated her bullying because his mother told him to never tease girls nor strike back and hurt them.
I'm not sure I could agree fully with his assessment that harboring ill feelings was pointless. Maybe you could move on from someone making your life horrible for months on end as a child, but would you really grow up to fall in love with them? That whole aspect of this story felt disingenuous and had me pulling faces the further I read.
Of course, just because he said there was no reason to be nasty, it meant she was absolved from her bitchiness. Or maybe she was absolved from that but not from apologizing.
This passage further highlighted something that Bridgette interpreted from her interaction with Miguel that I couldn't understand. I'm "glad" she feels she's been absolved of her bullying past, but that kind of past speaks to her character. She never really faced consequences for her actions; a slight embarrassment, maybe, but nothing that was anywhere near what she put Miguel through. This goes back to my wondering whether it's a cultural handling of bullying, but are things different in the Philippines than in the US? Was there any consideration for what bullied children actually go through and what it's like to see a story in which a bullied child enters a romantic relationship with their tormentor?
Back to the Stars by Agay Llanera
This story was by far my favorite because, while there were some parts that were not as fleshed out as I'd have liked, it felt like there was a good, solid story. There was conflict, happiness, and I could follow along on the action, the most important thing of all.
Leah's conflict between two love interests had me a bit unsteady at first, but when she and her work group (love interest #1 included) went to her beach house for the weekend, we got a peek at her life growing up. Wency (love interest #2) was there waiting for her, a summer time childhood friend, and we learned more about Leah, about what her hesitation regarding the past really meant for her, what it meant for her future. This story had the most heart of the collection, to me, and the least amount of difficulties.
Summary
I had some difficulty enjoying this book because I was out of my depth with the culture and the terms that were being used. I spent a lot of time having to look up terms that, while I could get the general context of, made it difficult to sort out who was related to who, or what their exact relationship was. The constant going to Google kept taking me out of the story, preventing me from really settling in to any one of them.
The stories were about 50/50. Three I liked fairly well, the other three I did not like much at all. With short story collections from different authors, or even from collections by the same author, this kind of thing is bound to happen. The ones I liked, I'd recommend seeing if you can find more from those authors and trying their longer fiction out. At the conclusion of the book is a brief bit on each author, including previous titles.
I received a copy of this book from Agay Llanera, one of the authors, in exchange for an honest review.
Other Breakable Things by Kelley York, Rowan Altwood
1.0
Why did I pick up this book?
I saw this book's cover and was intrigued. My husband is very into origami and is constantly making origami cranes; he has probably made at least a thousand by now. Reading the description made it sound like maybe Evelyn would share some of this interest as well, plus the road trip held some interest. The Death With Dignity Act is something I believe in and as Luc was intending to go to Oregon with this in mind, I thought it would be a unique book to read.
My review
I wanted to like this book so much, but oh. my. god. was it slow and painfully dull. I was sorely disappointed and found myself considering DNFing it at 25%, but ended up skimming it as best I could.
I never felt any real connection between Evelyn and Luc. Their relationship felt flimsy at best before they met up again after not having seen each other for three years and the relationship that panned out over the story felt really fake, especially the ending. As of writing this review, it occurs to me that they remembered "being close" before Evelyn moved away prior to this reunion, but how did she never realize he was sick? His heart would have been an issue long before that and as far as I can remember, this never came up in even the lightest of manners.
The origami cover and Evelyn's tendency to fold didn't really make that much of an impact on the story. The summary made it sound like she would sincerely be trying to fold at least one thousand, perhaps two thousand, in order to get the wish that one is granted if the feat is accomplished. By the end of the novel, I think she'd only managed one hundred. It felt like a letdown because it was built up visually and summarily.
There were also some events of the novel that felt kind of skeevy, particularly Luc marrying Evelyn so that she will be taken care of by his insurance policy. That was awkward enough, though I suppose I can understand why his parents would've taken the policy out, but when he mentioned knowing the suicide clause, that was creepy. However, that became a moot point when he died via car crash, a horrific call back to how he go his heart in the first place. That whole situation felt weird and I hated that they got married because as much as he professed to love her and want to protect her, leaving her a widow seems like a good option? The money seemed more important; taking emotion out of it I get it, but reading it, I felt like my skin was crawling.
Would I buy this book?
Very much no. My problems with the story aside, the writing was terribly slow and uninteresting.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I saw this book's cover and was intrigued. My husband is very into origami and is constantly making origami cranes; he has probably made at least a thousand by now. Reading the description made it sound like maybe Evelyn would share some of this interest as well, plus the road trip held some interest. The Death With Dignity Act is something I believe in and as Luc was intending to go to Oregon with this in mind, I thought it would be a unique book to read.
My review
I wanted to like this book so much, but oh. my. god. was it slow and painfully dull. I was sorely disappointed and found myself considering DNFing it at 25%, but ended up skimming it as best I could.
I never felt any real connection between Evelyn and Luc. Their relationship felt flimsy at best before they met up again after not having seen each other for three years and the relationship that panned out over the story felt really fake, especially the ending. As of writing this review, it occurs to me that they remembered "being close" before Evelyn moved away prior to this reunion, but how did she never realize he was sick? His heart would have been an issue long before that and as far as I can remember, this never came up in even the lightest of manners.
The origami cover and Evelyn's tendency to fold didn't really make that much of an impact on the story. The summary made it sound like she would sincerely be trying to fold at least one thousand, perhaps two thousand, in order to get the wish that one is granted if the feat is accomplished. By the end of the novel, I think she'd only managed one hundred. It felt like a letdown because it was built up visually and summarily.
There were also some events of the novel that felt kind of skeevy, particularly Luc marrying Evelyn so that she will be taken care of by his insurance policy. That was awkward enough, though I suppose I can understand why his parents would've taken the policy out, but when he mentioned knowing the suicide clause, that was creepy. However, that became a moot point when he died via car crash, a horrific call back to how he go his heart in the first place. That whole situation felt weird and I hated that they got married because as much as he professed to love her and want to protect her, leaving her a widow seems like a good option? The money seemed more important; taking emotion out of it I get it, but reading it, I felt like my skin was crawling.
Would I buy this book?
Very much no. My problems with the story aside, the writing was terribly slow and uninteresting.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Mexico: Stories by Josh Barkan
2.0
Rating: 2.27 Stars
The Chef and El Chapo: (3 Stars) while I'm not sure I understood the point of the story, it was well written and full of emotion: passion for cooking, terror when El Chapo takes over the restaurant, and fear/regret once the chef has completed the task set before him. The ending felt a twee bit hollow, but I hope the chef was able to find comfort in his decision.
The God of Common Names: (3 Stars) this is the story of a teacher and the Romeo & Juliet situation he finds between two of his students. While that seemed like it might play a large part in the story, in the end it didn't really. The story of Sandra and Jose was more of a catalyst for the resolution of the teacher's own familial difficulties. I was more interested in the pain and hardship he and his wife and father-in-law were experiencing, due to the teacher being an atheist Jew and the father-in-law an Orthodox Jew. The length of the tale was adequate, though I'm not sure that the ending was quite as tied up as the author would like us to believe. It felt temporary, like there will be more trouble ahead for this teacher and his family, but that is a story we will never get to see.
I liked the thought behind the title, though: how, even though we give different names to the same thing (in this case, the teacher's idea of a greater power and his father-in-law's God), it is should be alright because we should know they're the same thing, just by a different name.
I Want to Live: (2.5 Stars) The summary of this collection insinuates that the primary characters' stories run up against cartel violence, but I would argue that this is an instance in which that was not true. We are introduced to a former nurse from the U.S. who has relocated to Mexico City. Five years later she is in a hospital waiting room, trying to decide is she should have a preventative mastectomy, when she meets Esmeralda, an orphan who grew up and met a rising star of the cartel world.
It is Esmeralda's story that is told through the bulk of I Want to Live and it was her's that was most interesting. The few interjections that the former nurse made made her sound like a selfish character, something that Esmeralda observes more than once herself. She got Esmeralda to tell her her story because she made uninformed observations about Esmeralda's physical characters and, when confronted by evidence to the contrary, she badgers her into explaining how these marks occurred.
This made the nurse an unlikable character to me and I did not care one whit about her decision in the end because it didn't matter. Esmeralda was the person that I was more interested in hearing about, though I am curious as to what she was doing in the same hospital waiting room as our American nurse. There was never anyone in to see her, to take her away to an appointment. It felt like a very contrived meeting arranged just for the nurse's "benefit" in the story. In the end, despite what the nurse decided and her rudeness toward Esmeralda (both in asking about her story and her assumption that Esmeralda wanted to tell the story to her despite no evidence of such), I found Esmeralda's strength profound.
Acapulco: (1 Star) The first couple of paragraphs had me disliking the narrator. In a book of stories that take place in Mexico, this person started off disparaging the country straight away, saying that police reports cannot be taken seriously, older Mexican men are all unfaithful and have lovers on the side of their marriages, but he (the narrator) is better than that because he left that all behind when his parents sent him to study in Harvard. He goes on to try to make it sound like saying this is all okay because he considers himself to be from Mexico because he was raised there, his family is from there, but he is a citizen of the world. That sounds like he is either a) distancing himself from his Mexican culture/heritage or b) someone who was born abroad, raised in Mexico City, but thinks himself better than natives. His arrogance was appalling and had me viewing him with a side eyed expression.
He continued to talk down about the people he came in contact with, especially his client who wore a gold Rolex, which apparently in his mind was bad because it reeked of new money whereas his (the narrator's) money was old (as though that meant something in the grand scheme of things).
This was my second least favorite story because this man, this architect, was an arrogant person that, after encountering a near death experience, seems to have learned something, but that revelation feels false in light of the arrogance he demonstrated in the beginning.
The Kidnapping: (1 Star) This one started doff with a bad taste in my mouth when the author used a derogatory word beginning with a T to describe sex workers in the character's neighborhood. There was no reason for it, no learning from it, just...ick. 😠 The character using this word, the painter who is a kidnapping victim, uses the term again in a reminiscence and once more at the end of the story and it still sucks.
Aside from the offensive language used more than once, there was a distinct lack of characterization that made the story suffer. I didn't know enough about this painter to care when he was kidnapped or when the kidnappers tortured him. All I had to go on was his disrespect for transgender people and that made me dislike him.
The Plastic Surgeon: (2 Stars) The problem I had with this story was that it had the storyline meant for an faster paced piece and the writing did not live up to it. The telling became almost philosophical and that didn't mesh well with story of the plastic surgeon who is forced to makeover a narco boss. With a conclusion that was anything but conclusive, I found that I was bored by The Plastic Surgeon and couldn't really find a facet of it that would save it in my esteem.
The Sharpshooter: (No rating) This story wasn't bad, exactly, it was simply of a type that wasn't for me, thus I found it painfully boring. The story of a young soldier full of ideals, dealing with a friend and fellow soldier who betrays him and their company, didn't interest me; most Army stories don't. If this were a book on its own, I wouldn't give it a rating because this is a case of a story that I can tell is simply not my thing, but there are people that might appreciate it, perhaps people that enjoy reading about soldiers and their personal conflicts.
The Painting Professor: (1 Star) Like the last story The Sharpshooter this one was also ridiculously boring, but unlike the previous story this one wasn't written well, even from an objective point of view. It didn't seem to have a point and what thread of coherence it had got lots in the rambling writing.
The American Journalist: (2 Stars) There wasn't much development in this story, either from a character perspective or otherwise. By this point it seemed all of the short stories in the collection took place in the same area or nearly so, so the setting wasn't as big of a let down, but I didn't care much about the journalist or his friend that was shot.
The most interesting thing about this to was from the beginning, when the journalist talked about how his paper, the Houston Chronicle, and other papers like it, only cared about running stories that fit into a certain narrative. For example, one about bombings in other countries that then make the American people feel safe because they don't live there. It can be incredibly difficult to get a story through mainstream media because of such "comfort" and his pointing that out from a journalistic standpoint was interesting.
Everything Else Is Going to Be Fine: (1.5 Stars) If ever there was a disjointed story in Mexico, it is this one. The character "told" the reader his story and that felt off. The pieces of story we did get might have worked in a better narrative, but combined as they were felt like pages had been ripped out of a book and sewn back together badly. Whats-more, I felt badly that he had been molested and raped as a child, but I felt like the author was using that part of the character's past to explain his possible asexuality. That confused me and made me uncomfortable, upset, and not at all pleased with the story.
The Prison Breakout: (4 Stars) I favored this story for the feeling of non-fiction it gave me. The main character, a man that helps find the history of men on death row in order to explain why they may have committed their crime, starts out the story talking about growing up, seeing crimes happening on a global scale, and knowing they were wrong, voicing his displeasure with them, but ultimately not doing anything about it. That's something that should resonate with a lot of people today, with the atrocities we see being committed against people because of their gender/race/sexuality/etc. For all the talk, what do we really do?
The Escape From Mexico: (4 Stars) When I got to this story, I was feeling rather disheartened by the collection overall. The first few stories had been alright, but then I was hit by a bunch that were, in my opinion, just bad. I felt suckered in and upset about that. This story, while it doesn't save the collection, made me feel at least a little better that I stuck it out to the end.
This is the story about Gordi, a young boy who runs up against another young man, one who is in charge of a gang at the age of fourteen and has marked Gordi for punishment: either death or gang recruitment, for a crime Gordi did not commit, but that this person holds him responsible for. The terror of the weeks where Gordi is searching for the watch, then trying to avoid the gangster, trying to find a way out of this, was palpable. His mother comes into the story too, a true testament to a mother's love and willingness to do anything to save her son.
What I did not like about the story was that, midway through, there was a brief change in perspective, from Gordi to his mother, but it remained in first person and there didn't feel like enough of a difference in the voice of each perspective. If it were not for pronouns or the mother out and out saying that she was Gordi's mother, I would not have realized what happened.
Summary: First of all, this book was mostly a letdown. It felt like it told only about the bad things in Mexico without any of the good, playing upon the stereotypes that Americans have of the country. I'm not saying that these things don't happen, but if all we see in literature about Mexico is the type of content in this book, what sort of view will the readers form?
Second, one of the oddest things about this collection was that the title, Mexico, gave me cause to think that it would be about the people. While it was, in a way, the main characters for the majority of the stories were American. What characters were Mexican were often involved in the drug word, portrayed as some other kind of criminal, or spoken of in slurs by the narrating voice. I expected there to be some violence, as the summary spoke of the narrowing of the divide between the cartel world and the "real" world, but this played too heavily to that theme.
I was disappointed in the overall quality of the stories because it seems like the author really could have written something fantastic.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The Chef and El Chapo: (3 Stars) while I'm not sure I understood the point of the story, it was well written and full of emotion: passion for cooking, terror when El Chapo takes over the restaurant, and fear/regret once the chef has completed the task set before him. The ending felt a twee bit hollow, but I hope the chef was able to find comfort in his decision.
The God of Common Names: (3 Stars) this is the story of a teacher and the Romeo & Juliet situation he finds between two of his students. While that seemed like it might play a large part in the story, in the end it didn't really. The story of Sandra and Jose was more of a catalyst for the resolution of the teacher's own familial difficulties. I was more interested in the pain and hardship he and his wife and father-in-law were experiencing, due to the teacher being an atheist Jew and the father-in-law an Orthodox Jew. The length of the tale was adequate, though I'm not sure that the ending was quite as tied up as the author would like us to believe. It felt temporary, like there will be more trouble ahead for this teacher and his family, but that is a story we will never get to see.
I liked the thought behind the title, though: how, even though we give different names to the same thing (in this case, the teacher's idea of a greater power and his father-in-law's God), it is should be alright because we should know they're the same thing, just by a different name.
I Want to Live: (2.5 Stars) The summary of this collection insinuates that the primary characters' stories run up against cartel violence, but I would argue that this is an instance in which that was not true. We are introduced to a former nurse from the U.S. who has relocated to Mexico City. Five years later she is in a hospital waiting room, trying to decide is she should have a preventative mastectomy, when she meets Esmeralda, an orphan who grew up and met a rising star of the cartel world.
It is Esmeralda's story that is told through the bulk of I Want to Live and it was her's that was most interesting. The few interjections that the former nurse made made her sound like a selfish character, something that Esmeralda observes more than once herself. She got Esmeralda to tell her her story because she made uninformed observations about Esmeralda's physical characters and, when confronted by evidence to the contrary, she badgers her into explaining how these marks occurred.
This made the nurse an unlikable character to me and I did not care one whit about her decision in the end because it didn't matter. Esmeralda was the person that I was more interested in hearing about, though I am curious as to what she was doing in the same hospital waiting room as our American nurse. There was never anyone in to see her, to take her away to an appointment. It felt like a very contrived meeting arranged just for the nurse's "benefit" in the story. In the end, despite what the nurse decided and her rudeness toward Esmeralda (both in asking about her story and her assumption that Esmeralda wanted to tell the story to her despite no evidence of such), I found Esmeralda's strength profound.
Acapulco: (1 Star) The first couple of paragraphs had me disliking the narrator. In a book of stories that take place in Mexico, this person started off disparaging the country straight away, saying that police reports cannot be taken seriously, older Mexican men are all unfaithful and have lovers on the side of their marriages, but he (the narrator) is better than that because he left that all behind when his parents sent him to study in Harvard. He goes on to try to make it sound like saying this is all okay because he considers himself to be from Mexico because he was raised there, his family is from there, but he is a citizen of the world. That sounds like he is either a) distancing himself from his Mexican culture/heritage or b) someone who was born abroad, raised in Mexico City, but thinks himself better than natives. His arrogance was appalling and had me viewing him with a side eyed expression.
He continued to talk down about the people he came in contact with, especially his client who wore a gold Rolex, which apparently in his mind was bad because it reeked of new money whereas his (the narrator's) money was old (as though that meant something in the grand scheme of things).
This was my second least favorite story because this man, this architect, was an arrogant person that, after encountering a near death experience, seems to have learned something, but that revelation feels false in light of the arrogance he demonstrated in the beginning.
The Kidnapping: (1 Star) This one started doff with a bad taste in my mouth when the author used a derogatory word beginning with a T to describe sex workers in the character's neighborhood. There was no reason for it, no learning from it, just...ick. 😠 The character using this word, the painter who is a kidnapping victim, uses the term again in a reminiscence and once more at the end of the story and it still sucks.
Aside from the offensive language used more than once, there was a distinct lack of characterization that made the story suffer. I didn't know enough about this painter to care when he was kidnapped or when the kidnappers tortured him. All I had to go on was his disrespect for transgender people and that made me dislike him.
The Plastic Surgeon: (2 Stars) The problem I had with this story was that it had the storyline meant for an faster paced piece and the writing did not live up to it. The telling became almost philosophical and that didn't mesh well with story of the plastic surgeon who is forced to makeover a narco boss. With a conclusion that was anything but conclusive, I found that I was bored by The Plastic Surgeon and couldn't really find a facet of it that would save it in my esteem.
The Sharpshooter: (No rating) This story wasn't bad, exactly, it was simply of a type that wasn't for me, thus I found it painfully boring. The story of a young soldier full of ideals, dealing with a friend and fellow soldier who betrays him and their company, didn't interest me; most Army stories don't. If this were a book on its own, I wouldn't give it a rating because this is a case of a story that I can tell is simply not my thing, but there are people that might appreciate it, perhaps people that enjoy reading about soldiers and their personal conflicts.
The Painting Professor: (1 Star) Like the last story The Sharpshooter this one was also ridiculously boring, but unlike the previous story this one wasn't written well, even from an objective point of view. It didn't seem to have a point and what thread of coherence it had got lots in the rambling writing.
The American Journalist: (2 Stars) There wasn't much development in this story, either from a character perspective or otherwise. By this point it seemed all of the short stories in the collection took place in the same area or nearly so, so the setting wasn't as big of a let down, but I didn't care much about the journalist or his friend that was shot.
The most interesting thing about this to was from the beginning, when the journalist talked about how his paper, the Houston Chronicle, and other papers like it, only cared about running stories that fit into a certain narrative. For example, one about bombings in other countries that then make the American people feel safe because they don't live there. It can be incredibly difficult to get a story through mainstream media because of such "comfort" and his pointing that out from a journalistic standpoint was interesting.
Everything Else Is Going to Be Fine: (1.5 Stars) If ever there was a disjointed story in Mexico, it is this one. The character "told" the reader his story and that felt off. The pieces of story we did get might have worked in a better narrative, but combined as they were felt like pages had been ripped out of a book and sewn back together badly. Whats-more, I felt badly that he had been molested and raped as a child, but I felt like the author was using that part of the character's past to explain his possible asexuality. That confused me and made me uncomfortable, upset, and not at all pleased with the story.
The Prison Breakout: (4 Stars) I favored this story for the feeling of non-fiction it gave me. The main character, a man that helps find the history of men on death row in order to explain why they may have committed their crime, starts out the story talking about growing up, seeing crimes happening on a global scale, and knowing they were wrong, voicing his displeasure with them, but ultimately not doing anything about it. That's something that should resonate with a lot of people today, with the atrocities we see being committed against people because of their gender/race/sexuality/etc. For all the talk, what do we really do?
The Escape From Mexico: (4 Stars) When I got to this story, I was feeling rather disheartened by the collection overall. The first few stories had been alright, but then I was hit by a bunch that were, in my opinion, just bad. I felt suckered in and upset about that. This story, while it doesn't save the collection, made me feel at least a little better that I stuck it out to the end.
This is the story about Gordi, a young boy who runs up against another young man, one who is in charge of a gang at the age of fourteen and has marked Gordi for punishment: either death or gang recruitment, for a crime Gordi did not commit, but that this person holds him responsible for. The terror of the weeks where Gordi is searching for the watch, then trying to avoid the gangster, trying to find a way out of this, was palpable. His mother comes into the story too, a true testament to a mother's love and willingness to do anything to save her son.
What I did not like about the story was that, midway through, there was a brief change in perspective, from Gordi to his mother, but it remained in first person and there didn't feel like enough of a difference in the voice of each perspective. If it were not for pronouns or the mother out and out saying that she was Gordi's mother, I would not have realized what happened.
Summary: First of all, this book was mostly a letdown. It felt like it told only about the bad things in Mexico without any of the good, playing upon the stereotypes that Americans have of the country. I'm not saying that these things don't happen, but if all we see in literature about Mexico is the type of content in this book, what sort of view will the readers form?
Second, one of the oddest things about this collection was that the title, Mexico, gave me cause to think that it would be about the people. While it was, in a way, the main characters for the majority of the stories were American. What characters were Mexican were often involved in the drug word, portrayed as some other kind of criminal, or spoken of in slurs by the narrating voice. I expected there to be some violence, as the summary spoke of the narrowing of the divide between the cartel world and the "real" world, but this played too heavily to that theme.
I was disappointed in the overall quality of the stories because it seems like the author really could have written something fantastic.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The To-Do List by J.C. Miller
1.0
This is the book that did it, the one that made me want to invent a negative star rating system because I hated it so much that it was the audio version of watching a train wreck that only seemed to get worse by jumping the track and going down Main Street, taking out little old ladies and puppies along the way.
I'll be quite frank with you, I hated this book. If it were possible to give a negative star rating, something I've never hoped for before, even in the case of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, this would be the book. Therefore, things might get a little rant-like at times. I encourage you to bear with me because I have reasons for hating it as much as I do and I'll explain them.
First, let me start with some not quite so horrible things.
Cover
This book is a lesson in not judging a book by its cover. It's a good cover in general, but for this particular book it was all wrong. Going by what I saw, I thought that it might be a murder mystery of some kind. Why you might ask? There's the titular to-do list with "Kill Cal" on it, a cleaver on the table, and blood dripping from the "t" in "List". It's the perfect cover for one of those "lite" mysteries that I imagined it to be. For the book it ended up being? It fails at conveying almost anything in relation to the book.
Narration (Sara K. Sheckells)
The sound quality of the narration was good. There was no static like quality to it and I could hear the narrator's enunciation well.
The narrator herself was something of a 50/50 situation. Her narration when not dealing with character voices was good. It was neither too high pitched nor too low. However, when she tackled the different characters, the male voices sounded quite fake. A good narrator should be able to, even with a different gendered character, present a decent front in their act, but I didn't get that in the portrayal of either Cal or Luke. Clark's stutter sounded accurate, but when his diction got better, his voice blended with the narrator's natural voice and faded into the background.
The women's voices were slightly better. They were each unique, at least, but the life behind them didn't feel special or particularly vivacious. Ginny's voice had a bit of a nasal, speaking-to-a-child-like quality to it that didn't make sense and probably added to the reasons why I didn't like her.
This is the first time I've heard this narrator and I might be willing to give her a chance again, but I think that I'd prefer it if it were a non-fiction book or one with no conversation, as that seems to be her weakness.
The Book - Plot
This part is going to be long. There will be SPOILERS and a Trigger Warning (sexual assault) within because I wrote notes as I was listening to this story and expounded upon the parts that bothered me, so fair warning. Also, I will make notes as to what percent I noted some things at, which pertain to the Audible version of this book, in case you decide to listen to this yourself.
Starting very early on in the story (7%), it was evident that the people in Ginny’s life were awful. I was still on her side in the beginning mostly because she only seemed to have one decent person around: her co-worker, Clark. Margie, her only other co-worker and one that she insinuates has the job because of her connections to the mother of Ginny’s boss, makes comments behind Ginny’s back that we overhear and is “subtly” rude to her face.
Ginny herself was a confusing character here too because she had issues with flip-flopping emotions regarding people and things, making it difficult to get a grasp on what she really felt about them or thought: i.e. first she says Margie is cold/distant, then she’s personable and able to get the children at the library they work in to listen; also Ginny’s comments about her leather shoes being unforgiving, then breaking in wonderfully, then horribly tight again. The inconsistencies in her observations of things made her a conundrum to me.
Things got worse because it became evident, once we met Ginny’s husband Cal (10-14%), that she was being emotionally abused. The problem with the handling of this subject in the book was that it wavered between possibly being severe underappreciation and downright emotional abuse. It takes so long for anyone to even hint at anything being wrong, let alone address the actual issue, that I couldn’t be sure if that was what the author was intending, for Ginny to be an emotionally abused character.
Noticing it before the characters did, though, made it easy to spot the parts in her life where it was affecting her (17%). It made it difficult for her to complete her job, for her to work with anyone at the library, including Margie and her boss, Owen.
At (24%), while Ginny is blind to her own situation, I am glad that she sees and tries to intervene for her daughter. It's heartbreaking to see her not realize that she's in the same position she's warning Kelly away from, which Kelly is smart enough to finally confront her on. Ginny's kids have grown up seeing her abused and thinking it's ok, which is why Kelly's in this pickle. After the night when this occurs, though, it gets dropped again and not really talked about, which seemed like an odd moment of clarity before getting swept under the rug again.
I was painfully aware of how done with this book I was at (28%), but little did I know that things would get worse. At (42%), the book took a turn from the unlikeable and boring to the downright disgusting. We’ve already established that Ginny is an abused character and given the visual marketing for this book, I would never have suspected that there was this kind of content within, but I have to include a TRIGGER WARNING for instances of sexual assault.
Cal rapes his wife and all Ginny is worried about is soothing his ego. If she hadn’t been set up as so damn unlikable earlier in the book, before the emotional abuse even took place, this might have had a different effect other than disgust. The fact that it happens and is never mentioned again, not even to Ginny’s divorce attorney later in the book, feels like a slap in the face. Such a traumatic event shouldn’t be used for shock value.
Ginny, at some point, thought that it would be interesting and fun to sign up for a trial subscription to a dating site. Okay, fine, but then she starts to lead one of the men on (44%). Doing so is a despicable action. She knows that he’s a real person and yet she pretends to be a real person, someone that can be with him for something like a date for coffee, when she is not. This is prior to her separation, so no, it’s no okay. It definitely would’ve been cheating, even with the sorry excuse for a husband she has. To make matters worse, she used a fake name and a fake picture, so right then she was cat fishing and I hated her for it. While I did feel sorry for Luke initially, once he does find out about her deception, he completely forgives her for it and they start moving towards dating. That is either completely unbelievable or the moment when I gave up on Luke as a serious person. How could he trust a thing she said when she admitted that everything they’d shared until that point was a lie, even her name?
To further why I don't like Ginny, despite her being a pitiable character at this stage in the book, she’s started constantly makes snide little remarks about people. Like Jackie, the receptionist at Curves and old friend (remakes about her "prepubescent" body). Like Margie, an elderly woman who, while admittedly not a great person, has hearing problems and can't cope as well these days.
Moving on in the book, once she’s separated from Cal and she’s thinking of dating Luke, she has this interaction with Jackie, her friend, that begins something in the narrative I felt was disturbing.
When Ginny is talking to Jackie about meeting Luke, she wonders if she’s racist because she reveals that Luke is black (which, to my memory, is the first time his race is ever mentioned) and she’s nervous. Jackie comments that she doesn’t think Ginny is racist, merely cautious because all women need to be cautious these days, especially if you’re meeting someone from online. That was said, I was done, moving on.
HOWEVER, then Ginny is waiting in the car prior to her date with Luke and is having second thoughts and, rather than thinking she’d made a mistake meeting a man from the Internet, she specifically states a black man from the Internet. While she’s not a vile racist spewing slurs all over the place, that statement right there is evidence there’s at least a little racism going on in that head of hers and excusing it under the guise of caution annoyed me. The author could’ve left Ginny’s thoughts at a man from the Internet, but by adding that note she added another layer of meaning and not a good one, rather a potentially harmful one that wasn’t necessary.
And while we’re on the subject, once she does meet Luke for the date, while I’m saying caution is good, Ginny throws what little she had, laced as it was with the aforementioned bad feeling, to the wind because she assumes that based on Luke’s appearance he couldn’t possibly be a rapist or a murderer. This has nothing to do with skin color, just his clean cut appearance. Dear God, woman, ANYONE can be a serial killer or rapist, have you not seen American Psycho? I don’t understand how Ginny could flip between these two extremes so quickly.
(87%) really highlighted something a genuinely foolish act on Ginny’s part that felt like the cherry on top of the hate I’d gathered for this character. She and Cal are moving on with the divorce. He has, at some point, found out about her trial dating service, and threatens to use that as leverage in the divorce (yet another thing that is mentioned once and never again). So, when Ginny finally does read the divorce contract that was served to her, she reads it carefully, apparently…and then signs it without showing it to her lawyer.
That was the single STUPIDEST thing I think she did in the entire book. She had no history with law, other than reading a couple of books in preparation for getting divorced, she knows nothing about the intricacies of a contract, but because she thinks it sounds fair after a couple of reads she decides to just go ahead and sign it without showing her lawyer. I was really hoping for something to back to bite her in the ass at that point because she would’ve deserved it for being so quick to sign and careless. She only thought about how foolish it was after she’d dropped the contract off in the mailbox.
After that horrible incident, things were starting to wrap up and I was coming to the conclusion that, while I felt sorry for Ginny because of the emotional abuse and disliked her for a great deal of other things, there was no way the author could make me hate her more. I was wrong. She holds a barbecue at her house, inviting some friends, and while that was nice, one of the people she invites is her old co-worker, Clark (he was downsized early on in the story) and his girlfriend Maya. Her treatment of Maya demonstrated that she puts down other people to, ostensibly, make herself feel better about being plus size (which is NOT a bad thing, but it’s her issue here).
(95%) When Clark shows up with his girlfriend, Maya, Ginny describes her as bland. Seeing as Ginny doesn’t know her very well and doesn’t have the slightest idea what the relationship is like, this was insulting. When she accepts the tulips that Maya brought and is out of the room, she was internally gleeful that Maya was bland. This haughty and bitchy reaction was due, in part, to Ginny believing that Clark had had, and might still have, a crush on her, which she enjoyed even though she hadn’t been in a position to act upon it.
Maya was among strangers and it never occurred to Ginny that maybe she’s uncomfortable around them. Ginny never had any interest in Clark as a love interest until he was taken by someone else. That was infuriating because, again, she has NO idea what Clark and Maya’s relationship is like outside of this one time she’s meeting her.
At the end, the very end, Ginny has decided to go to law school and start a practice to help abused women and their families. That was the best move she probably made the entire book.
The Book - Pacing
The book lagged so badly through the majority of the story. I would check the finished percentage fairly infrequently and still be astonished at how little progress was being made. The littlest things were dragged out, like Ginny's obsession with Arby's or her engaging with her dog; the trouble with Kelly that never really amounted to anything. She was never really punished, not in a meaningful way, nor did she have to see a counselor of any kind for her acting out behavior (pot smoking, excessive lying, etc). The only time a counselor was brought up was after the divorce papers were signed, when Kelly's whole demeanor had changed. It's like a light switch flipped and I still don't know why.
I think that a lot of the excess material from this book could have been removed, turning it into a novella, and maybe, MAYBE, it would have been salvageable. As it is, there's no way I'll consider picking up another book by this author. This was too bad of an experience to warrant trying again.
I received this audiobook at no-cost from Audiobookworm Promotions. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.
I'll be quite frank with you, I hated this book. If it were possible to give a negative star rating, something I've never hoped for before, even in the case of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, this would be the book. Therefore, things might get a little rant-like at times. I encourage you to bear with me because I have reasons for hating it as much as I do and I'll explain them.
First, let me start with some not quite so horrible things.
Cover
This book is a lesson in not judging a book by its cover. It's a good cover in general, but for this particular book it was all wrong. Going by what I saw, I thought that it might be a murder mystery of some kind. Why you might ask? There's the titular to-do list with "Kill Cal" on it, a cleaver on the table, and blood dripping from the "t" in "List". It's the perfect cover for one of those "lite" mysteries that I imagined it to be. For the book it ended up being? It fails at conveying almost anything in relation to the book.
Narration (Sara K. Sheckells)
The sound quality of the narration was good. There was no static like quality to it and I could hear the narrator's enunciation well.
The narrator herself was something of a 50/50 situation. Her narration when not dealing with character voices was good. It was neither too high pitched nor too low. However, when she tackled the different characters, the male voices sounded quite fake. A good narrator should be able to, even with a different gendered character, present a decent front in their act, but I didn't get that in the portrayal of either Cal or Luke. Clark's stutter sounded accurate, but when his diction got better, his voice blended with the narrator's natural voice and faded into the background.
The women's voices were slightly better. They were each unique, at least, but the life behind them didn't feel special or particularly vivacious. Ginny's voice had a bit of a nasal, speaking-to-a-child-like quality to it that didn't make sense and probably added to the reasons why I didn't like her.
This is the first time I've heard this narrator and I might be willing to give her a chance again, but I think that I'd prefer it if it were a non-fiction book or one with no conversation, as that seems to be her weakness.
The Book - Plot
This part is going to be long. There will be SPOILERS and a Trigger Warning (sexual assault) within because I wrote notes as I was listening to this story and expounded upon the parts that bothered me, so fair warning. Also, I will make notes as to what percent I noted some things at, which pertain to the Audible version of this book, in case you decide to listen to this yourself.
Starting very early on in the story (7%), it was evident that the people in Ginny’s life were awful. I was still on her side in the beginning mostly because she only seemed to have one decent person around: her co-worker, Clark. Margie, her only other co-worker and one that she insinuates has the job because of her connections to the mother of Ginny’s boss, makes comments behind Ginny’s back that we overhear and is “subtly” rude to her face.
Ginny herself was a confusing character here too because she had issues with flip-flopping emotions regarding people and things, making it difficult to get a grasp on what she really felt about them or thought: i.e. first she says Margie is cold/distant, then she’s personable and able to get the children at the library they work in to listen; also Ginny’s comments about her leather shoes being unforgiving, then breaking in wonderfully, then horribly tight again. The inconsistencies in her observations of things made her a conundrum to me.
Things got worse because it became evident, once we met Ginny’s husband Cal (10-14%), that she was being emotionally abused. The problem with the handling of this subject in the book was that it wavered between possibly being severe underappreciation and downright emotional abuse. It takes so long for anyone to even hint at anything being wrong, let alone address the actual issue, that I couldn’t be sure if that was what the author was intending, for Ginny to be an emotionally abused character.
Noticing it before the characters did, though, made it easy to spot the parts in her life where it was affecting her (17%). It made it difficult for her to complete her job, for her to work with anyone at the library, including Margie and her boss, Owen.
At (24%), while Ginny is blind to her own situation, I am glad that she sees and tries to intervene for her daughter. It's heartbreaking to see her not realize that she's in the same position she's warning Kelly away from, which Kelly is smart enough to finally confront her on. Ginny's kids have grown up seeing her abused and thinking it's ok, which is why Kelly's in this pickle. After the night when this occurs, though, it gets dropped again and not really talked about, which seemed like an odd moment of clarity before getting swept under the rug again.
I was painfully aware of how done with this book I was at (28%), but little did I know that things would get worse. At (42%), the book took a turn from the unlikeable and boring to the downright disgusting. We’ve already established that Ginny is an abused character and given the visual marketing for this book, I would never have suspected that there was this kind of content within, but I have to include a TRIGGER WARNING for instances of sexual assault.
Cal rapes his wife and all Ginny is worried about is soothing his ego. If she hadn’t been set up as so damn unlikable earlier in the book, before the emotional abuse even took place, this might have had a different effect other than disgust. The fact that it happens and is never mentioned again, not even to Ginny’s divorce attorney later in the book, feels like a slap in the face. Such a traumatic event shouldn’t be used for shock value.
Ginny, at some point, thought that it would be interesting and fun to sign up for a trial subscription to a dating site. Okay, fine, but then she starts to lead one of the men on (44%). Doing so is a despicable action. She knows that he’s a real person and yet she pretends to be a real person, someone that can be with him for something like a date for coffee, when she is not. This is prior to her separation, so no, it’s no okay. It definitely would’ve been cheating, even with the sorry excuse for a husband she has. To make matters worse, she used a fake name and a fake picture, so right then she was cat fishing and I hated her for it. While I did feel sorry for Luke initially, once he does find out about her deception, he completely forgives her for it and they start moving towards dating. That is either completely unbelievable or the moment when I gave up on Luke as a serious person. How could he trust a thing she said when she admitted that everything they’d shared until that point was a lie, even her name?
To further why I don't like Ginny, despite her being a pitiable character at this stage in the book, she’s started constantly makes snide little remarks about people. Like Jackie, the receptionist at Curves and old friend (remakes about her "prepubescent" body). Like Margie, an elderly woman who, while admittedly not a great person, has hearing problems and can't cope as well these days.
Moving on in the book, once she’s separated from Cal and she’s thinking of dating Luke, she has this interaction with Jackie, her friend, that begins something in the narrative I felt was disturbing.
When Ginny is talking to Jackie about meeting Luke, she wonders if she’s racist because she reveals that Luke is black (which, to my memory, is the first time his race is ever mentioned) and she’s nervous. Jackie comments that she doesn’t think Ginny is racist, merely cautious because all women need to be cautious these days, especially if you’re meeting someone from online. That was said, I was done, moving on.
HOWEVER, then Ginny is waiting in the car prior to her date with Luke and is having second thoughts and, rather than thinking she’d made a mistake meeting a man from the Internet, she specifically states a black man from the Internet. While she’s not a vile racist spewing slurs all over the place, that statement right there is evidence there’s at least a little racism going on in that head of hers and excusing it under the guise of caution annoyed me. The author could’ve left Ginny’s thoughts at a man from the Internet, but by adding that note she added another layer of meaning and not a good one, rather a potentially harmful one that wasn’t necessary.
And while we’re on the subject, once she does meet Luke for the date, while I’m saying caution is good, Ginny throws what little she had, laced as it was with the aforementioned bad feeling, to the wind because she assumes that based on Luke’s appearance he couldn’t possibly be a rapist or a murderer. This has nothing to do with skin color, just his clean cut appearance. Dear God, woman, ANYONE can be a serial killer or rapist, have you not seen American Psycho? I don’t understand how Ginny could flip between these two extremes so quickly.
(87%) really highlighted something a genuinely foolish act on Ginny’s part that felt like the cherry on top of the hate I’d gathered for this character. She and Cal are moving on with the divorce. He has, at some point, found out about her trial dating service, and threatens to use that as leverage in the divorce (yet another thing that is mentioned once and never again). So, when Ginny finally does read the divorce contract that was served to her, she reads it carefully, apparently…and then signs it without showing it to her lawyer.
That was the single STUPIDEST thing I think she did in the entire book. She had no history with law, other than reading a couple of books in preparation for getting divorced, she knows nothing about the intricacies of a contract, but because she thinks it sounds fair after a couple of reads she decides to just go ahead and sign it without showing her lawyer. I was really hoping for something to back to bite her in the ass at that point because she would’ve deserved it for being so quick to sign and careless. She only thought about how foolish it was after she’d dropped the contract off in the mailbox.
After that horrible incident, things were starting to wrap up and I was coming to the conclusion that, while I felt sorry for Ginny because of the emotional abuse and disliked her for a great deal of other things, there was no way the author could make me hate her more. I was wrong. She holds a barbecue at her house, inviting some friends, and while that was nice, one of the people she invites is her old co-worker, Clark (he was downsized early on in the story) and his girlfriend Maya. Her treatment of Maya demonstrated that she puts down other people to, ostensibly, make herself feel better about being plus size (which is NOT a bad thing, but it’s her issue here).
(95%) When Clark shows up with his girlfriend, Maya, Ginny describes her as bland. Seeing as Ginny doesn’t know her very well and doesn’t have the slightest idea what the relationship is like, this was insulting. When she accepts the tulips that Maya brought and is out of the room, she was internally gleeful that Maya was bland. This haughty and bitchy reaction was due, in part, to Ginny believing that Clark had had, and might still have, a crush on her, which she enjoyed even though she hadn’t been in a position to act upon it.
Maya was among strangers and it never occurred to Ginny that maybe she’s uncomfortable around them. Ginny never had any interest in Clark as a love interest until he was taken by someone else. That was infuriating because, again, she has NO idea what Clark and Maya’s relationship is like outside of this one time she’s meeting her.
At the end, the very end, Ginny has decided to go to law school and start a practice to help abused women and their families. That was the best move she probably made the entire book.
The Book - Pacing
The book lagged so badly through the majority of the story. I would check the finished percentage fairly infrequently and still be astonished at how little progress was being made. The littlest things were dragged out, like Ginny's obsession with Arby's or her engaging with her dog; the trouble with Kelly that never really amounted to anything. She was never really punished, not in a meaningful way, nor did she have to see a counselor of any kind for her acting out behavior (pot smoking, excessive lying, etc). The only time a counselor was brought up was after the divorce papers were signed, when Kelly's whole demeanor had changed. It's like a light switch flipped and I still don't know why.
I think that a lot of the excess material from this book could have been removed, turning it into a novella, and maybe, MAYBE, it would have been salvageable. As it is, there's no way I'll consider picking up another book by this author. This was too bad of an experience to warrant trying again.
I received this audiobook at no-cost from Audiobookworm Promotions. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.