I had a lot of good reasons for not wanting to read this book. Even before all the pearl-clutching reviews came out bemoaning the racism of a beloved character, before the stories that pointed out how we’ve always misunderstood the race component of To Kill a Mockingbird [TKAM] anyway, I suspected that a sequel to a classic novel was bound to disappoint. And the strange circumstances of its publication, after decades of the author and her sister saying it never would be, further dampened any […]
Not every unhappy family is interesting
Reviews of this novel from NPR and The New York Times were effusive. The NPR reviewer called Among the Ten Thousand Things suspenseful and compared it favorably to Gone Girl. The NYT reviewer was impressed with Pierpont’s writing style and the way she structured her novel, as well as with her mature character development given that Pierpont is only 28 and this is her first novel. While I can see why the NYT reviewer feels this way, my overall impression of this story was … […]
Contemporary Romance from an Autobuy Author
This second book in Laura Florand’s La Vie en Roses contemporary romance series was not my favourite, but that in no way changes the fact that I will continue to buy everything she publishes, nor my strong recommendations for her novels. If nothing else, A Wish Upon Jasmine made me go and re-read a large portion of the preceding book Once Upon a Rose and that made me all smiley. Damien Rosier, “the mean one”, is the glue that holds his family’s perfume business together. […]
No one will ever know
I have, for whatever reason, a deep fascination with disasters and mysteries at sea. To the point that I’ve even watched several Really Bad™ ocean salvage movies (Ghost Ship [No relation] and Lost Voyage, I’m looking at you). And yes, I also saw Titanic. But that’s not my point. I do not spend a lot of time on the ocean, haven’t been on a boat in years (and haven’t been out of the breakwater on a boat or ship even longer ago than that), and […]