Saturday, March 2, 2024

Remember Love

Remember Love (Ravenswood, #1)

Remember Love by Mary Balogh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Gwen Rhys and Devlin Ware grew up as neighbors, each secretly infatuated with the other until they realize their mutual attraction the day of the annual summer fete and become engaged.  But that same night, the pair discover Devlin's father with his mistress, and Devlin's strong sense of justice and love for his mother lead him to confront his father in public.  Devlin is banished, joins the army to fight Napoleon, and doesn't return for six years, two years after he inherited his father's title. 

I liked this story, but I didn’t love it. Mostly, I think, because we don’t witness Gwen & Devlin falling in love. They never really get to know each other, just go from childhood crushes they believe to be love to insta-love after being reunited 6 years later. They respect each other, which is a good start, but they don’t actually know enough about each other to be in love.

I also really hated that Devlin had sex with SOOOO many women during the war. Historically accurate? Probably. But really, what are the odds he didn’t come home with multiple sexually transmitted diseases, which he would then have passed on to Gwen?! Ruined all romance for the rest of the book, especially the one sex scene, which I just had to quickly skim because all I could think about was how he was almost certainly giving her syphilis. *shudder*

View all my reviews

 

Saturday, October 21, 2023

Slacker

SlackerSlacker by Gordon Korman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm a huge Gordon Korman fan and have been since childhood, uh, some decades ago. Unfortunately, this one is not my favorite. I'm really tired of all the adult characters being clueless and/or uncaring, for one thing. And for another thing, the "main" character (if you can call him that in a book where only a few of the chapters are from his POV), Cameron Boxer, is a video game addict who really doesn't grow or mature very much over the course of the book until he suddenly has something of a change of heart at the very end.

I think that's really why this story didn't resonate with me: virtually no character development. So much more *could* have been done with that. I would love to have learned more about Xavier's background and emotional growth, for example. I enjoyed the scene with the handmade bowl. Both Pavel and Chuck had potential. Melody's motivations begged for elaboration. And what was up with the high school mean-girl-on-steroids who never got her comeuppance or ah-ha moment? Seriously, NO adults figured out what was happening? And NONE of the high schoolers--in a supposed do-gooder group--were willing to resist her nasty schemes or spill the beans? *sigh*

What this book was, was fast-paced and plot-driven. I read it in a single evening after I got my son to bed. The short chapters bounced from character's POV to another's and flew by rapidly, so I think this book will be far more interesting to kids, who typically read for plot anyway and who lack the adult perspective that makes the plot holes and cardboard characters so obvious. There are some mildly humorous situations, mostly the result of people ascribing positive motivations to this self-centered kid who doesn't care about anyone or anything except his video games. I was actually shocked he followed the dripping water in his chapter at the retirement center.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is obviously primary. No sexual content or swearing. The only violence was a middle school girl tackling a senior citizen to save a beaver. Well, and a big chaotic "fight" in a sabotaged swimming pool, but no one got hurt that I can recall--it was mostly a lot of yelling and anger vaguely described.

View all my reviews

 

Friday, October 13, 2023

The Wishing Bridge

The Wishing BridgeThe Wishing Bridge by Viola Shipman
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Henri Wegner grew up a beloved child in Frankenmuth, Michigan, helped her father plan and execute his dream of opening the world's largest Christmas store, and then moved to Detroit to live her own dream of going to business school. She couldn't wait to leave behind small-town life and her childhood sweetheart. Fast forward a few decades, and the company she has worked for since graduating is now run by the son who inherited when his father died, and the son's a 2-dimensional stereotype of a greedy corporate shark. To save her job, she impulsively promises to convince her father to sell his now-famous, beloved store to a soulless company that will destroy it for profit. All she has to do is go home in December for the first time in years and betray her family to save a job she hates and doesn't really need or have strong ties to anymore.

*sighhhhhh* I wanted to like this book. It's a Hallmark Christmas movie in book form. Sadly, it is NOT one of the good Hallmark movies. There is no real conflict in this book, just a couple hundred pages of a grown woman agonizing over the world's most obvious choice.

This story is an identity crisis, and not in the way it intends (see above about the faux dilemma). Henri is introduced as being 52 years old, but the math on that doesn't work out, since based on the timeline of all the flashbacks, she had to be born in 1967, and the main part of the story has to take place now (2023) or thereabouts because of how the author refers to the COVID pandemic's effect on businesses in town. So Henri is actually 56. A 56-year-old woman with the angst and immaturity of a 26-year-old.

And that's, I think, really the problem. I LOVE finding stories centered on middle-aged characters, but this one doesn't feel authentic in the slightest. We are supposed to believe that Henri has lived and worked in the same place for *decades* and yet seems to have zero community? Her assistant is the closest thing she has to a friend in the city. There is no mention of anything that would in any way tie her to her current life--no friends or neighbors or former coworkers she keeps in contact with, no favorite restaurants or theatres, no faith community, no personality of any sort in her fancy, cold, uber-modern condo, and her work life is unbearably toxic. Apparently Henri has had the world's most routine, robotic life for the past 34 years, and we're supposed to believe this is in some way hard to give up to come home to a place she says she loves and feels loved, to take over management of a business she helped get started and still feels nostalgic for?

If Henri *had* been 26, I could buy that she was a workaholic driven by ambition and focused on her career to the exclusion of all else. I could believe that she was facing a quarter-life crisis and grappling with the realization that her life was going in the wrong direction. Actually, I could believe that of a 56-year-old if the circumstances of her life were different--multi-dimensional instead of a negative caricature of "Big City Life." It feels as though Henri was intended to be 26, but the author wanted to include all the nostalgia of life in the 1970s & 80s, which she couldn't do without making Henri a generation older. And it just doesn't work.

I did appreciate the nostalgic bits--I am old enough to have grown up with the excitement of those huge Wish Books at Christmastime that came from Sears and Montgomery Ward. However, I'm also old enough to know that NO ONE in 1975 was excited to get Star Wars figurines for Christmas, as is asserted in the opening of the book, because Star Wars didn't come out until 1977. That was just the first of several anachronisms.

One other thing really bugged me: toward the end, when Henri's boss & rival showed up at her family's store "unexpectedly" (it was telegraphed so hard...), Ms. Shipman describes the two of them sitting on the giant Santa throne in an "unchristian" way. I'm assuming she meant something akin to "lewd" or "x-rated," so the term raised my hackles. And then I snort-laughed at the implication that Christians don't have sex. Sure would be a lot fewer if that were true!

As with all Hallmark Christmas movies, there was supposed to be a romantic theme. Again, it would have worked quite well if the main characters had been 26 instead of 56. Or if they had spent more time getting to know the people they've grown into over the past 35 or so years since Henri broke Shep's heart, and IF the people they have become were actually a good fit. But that was pretty much glossed over, aside from Shep's newfound maturity a la post-divorce therapy. Nothing at all with the realities of single-sided step-parenting (which I can promise you is tricky!). I honestly think the most real character was Shep's ex-wife Hannah, who had done some major self-reflection and personal growth that Henri and her childhood BFF had not. Well, Sophie might have done a bit. All that is to say, the romance aspect of the book, which is usually my favorite part of a Hallmark Christmas movie, was both incidental to the main story and disappointingly paper thin.

For readers' advisors: I'm going with setting doorway as primary, for the descriptions of Frankenmuth and all its snowy businesses. There was no sex or violence, only a little swearing and a fair amount of drinking. Don't suggest this book to anyone who cares about complex, well-developed characters or a compelling plot, but it will probably appeal to readers who don't care about those things and just want to inhabit a Bavarian Christmas fantasy-land for a while. In that, it succeeds!

Nevertheless, I am very grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for the free eBook ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

View all my reviews

 

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

The Bad Guys (#1)

The Bad Guys (The Bad Guys, #1)The Bad Guys by Aaron Blabey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mr. Wolf is tired of being thought of as a Bad Guy just because he's a wolf, so he rounds up some other folks (Mr. Snake, Mr. Shark, and Mr. Piranha) who have faced the same prejudice, cajoling and convincing them to join his new Good Guys Club to seek out opportunities to do Good Deeds and change their reputations. They aren't at all certain this plan will work or whether they even want it to, but Wolf sweeps them along through sheer force of personality and enthusiasm. The team starts with rescuing a cat in a tree and moves on to liberating a dog pound.

My kids screeched with laughter as we read this fast-paced graphic novel, and I was quite glad I'd bought the full set. The series is a strong incentive for them to get ready for bed on time for a change so as to maximize bedtime story time.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, language (humorous banter) is secondary. Target audience is elementary school children. Piranha gets swallowed temporarily, and both Piranha and Snake get smacked against the side of a building a few times, but no realistic violence.

View all my reviews

 

The Proposal

The Proposal (The Wedding Date, #2)The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I bought and read this book months ago because I love Jasmine Guillory's books, but this one wasn't my favorite. It was mostly good, and there were parts I really liked, but what stands out most in my head is the scene where (slight spoiler ahead) Carlos tells Nik he loves her, she freaks out because she's in dire need of some therapy to work out her issues, and then--what drove me nuts--she uses the word "care" in the way that men use that word, and he responds to her use of the word in the way that women respond to it, which is to say, Not Well. I'm all in favor of gender-flipping things usually, but that part had me arguing with the book out loud, and months later that is what I remember most. I may need to re-read the book to remind myself of the rest of the story.

For readers' advisors: some steamy sex scenes and a fair amount of swearing.  One person (who deserves it!) gets punched.  Two secondary female characters meet & begin falling in love. Trigger warning: discussion of domestic abuse, specifically emotional abuse.

View all my reviews

 

Hey, Bruce! An Interactive Book

Hey, Bruce!: An Interactive Book (Mother Bruce Series)Hey, Bruce!: An Interactive Book by Ryan T. Higgins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ryan T. Higgins' books are an auto-buy for our family, and this one did not disappoint. My kids giggle and take turns poking, swirling, lifting, turning, and shaking the book, etc. as the mice try and "help" Bruce take his nap. We've read it many times since the Easter Bunny first delivered it in April.

View all my reviews

 

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Princess Pulverizer: Grilled Cheese and Dragons

Grilled Cheese and DragonsGrilled Cheese and Dragons by Nancy E. Krulik
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A spoiled brat princess hates her teacher and her Royal School of Ladylike Manners. She wants to go to Knight School instead because that looks way more fun. Her father tells her she can go to Knight School on the condition that she will first go out into the world and do eight good deeds, bringing back proof of each. This proves harder than she imagined, since honor, kindness, and sacrifice are not her strong suits, but eventually she gets an ogre to capture her so she can try and retrieve the jewels he stole and return them to their rightful owner. Along the way, she grudgingly teams up with a Knight School dropout and his dragon friend who wants to be a chef. One down, seven more good deeds to go!

I bought this book for my daughter, and it's pretty cute. I like how the self-centered princess (very) slowly begins to think of others, which bodes well for the later books in the series. I do wish Lady Frump and the ogre weren't basically caricatures of stereotypes, but perhaps they might be given depth and nuance later on in the series? I won't hold my breath on that, though.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, character secondary. Very fast-paced. Good for showing that not everyone fits neatly in predetermined gender (or species) roles, and even misfits have strengths to contribute.

View all my reviews