Books

Book 557: The Brontë Plot – Katherine Reay

The Brontë Plot cover artThe downside with reading so many romance novels by the same author back-to-back is you quickly discover their strengths and weaknesses. As I read each of Reay’s works, they became less and less memorable even as I was reading them.

If I have to tie it down to the most basic its character development closely followed by pacing. I’m not one to need a “two months later” directional at every instance, but in Reay’s case it would’ve helped a lot. Toward the beginning of the novel the meet cute and the timing was so off I found myself having to re-read multiple sections to see if I’d missed the introduction or some major indicator of time having passed. (I hadn’t.)

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ARC, Books

Book 550: Quietus – Vivian Schilling

I was excited when the publicist reached out to me about this book, it sounded just creepy enough to not be terrifying and interesting enough because of its location.* Unfortunately, because of the problems with the location (see most of the next four paragraphs), it ultimately wasn’t an enjoyable read for me.

I will cut to the chase, the problem with reading books set where you live, no matter the time unless it’s so far in the past that it’s unrecognizable, is how much they get wrong or it feels like they get wrong. So many of these could have easily been fixed with a quick internet search of the MBTA map in Boston and just looking at a map in Boston. Boston is not a large city and its public transit is not that large or complex. I want to blame the copy editor, but really it’s the author’s fault.

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Books

Book 529: My Own Mr. Darcy – Karey White

What I liked about this is that it wasn’t just a spin-off from the original Jane Austen novels, it was a novel based off of the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The main character, Lizzie/Elizabeth (yes named after Elizabeth Bennet),  becomes obsessed with Matthew McFadyen and finding her own version of Mr. Darcy who mirrors him exactly. So is it fan-fiction of the novel or the movie? It’s hard to say, but what really did it for me was the character’s appreciation of the score of the film.

The appreciation of Marianelli’s composition and Thibaudet’s performance made me appreciate this book more than I probably would have. When I need something to play in the background that doesn’t have lyrics 99% of the time I go to this score. If I just need to de-stress I go to this score. I’m sure a lot of it is how much I enjoyed this version of the film, but it’s also just an incredibly beautiful score. I’ve pasted it in after the recommendation. I should’ve been listening to it the whole time I read this book.

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