Barbara > Recent Status Updates

The words hilarious and laugh out loud imply humor. So far, I may have smiled to myself four or five times. Mostly it's a very depressing read.

I'm enjoying the book except for the fact the characters don't cross their legs - they "hook" one over the other.

Page 38 and I am so over this book. My take on it is that the author was several thousand words short of the publisher's requirements and she went back and threw adjectives and adverbs anywhere possible. What do you think?
"As she stood there, surrounded by the verdant oasis of foliage, a blanket of calm wrapped its tendrils of tranquillity around her shoulders like a welcoming hug

Rose is an exceptionally annoying character and may keep me from finishing this book.

DNF. Too much name dropping

Reads like telegram. Author Alley Oop? May not finish if nothing changes. Hellishly annoying.

Colgan knows NOTHING about Quakers. She should have done some research - the religion has changed since the 1700s,

Meh.

Hate that little page count/percent button. About 25% through

Waste of time. I gave up after the antisemitic one. Mostly from the 1800s and completely non-relevant.

Not worth finishing. It reads like a 16 year old girl's fantasy.

Emily sighed. ‘Lily Jemima Butterworth, what are we going to do with you?’

Does the author have a pancake obsession? And what's with British authors giving their characters silly last names?

Why doesn't Samantha just ask her mother why she hates her?

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

If you saw a portrait in Montreal at a caricaturist's stall of a man you thought had died 20 years before, wouldn't you ask her how long ago she has drawn it? Wouldn't you assume, or at least suspect, he was still alive? If you got confirmation that he indeed hadn't died would you fly to Berlin to look for him before investigating in Canada?

Danny Boy is not an Irish hymn. It is not a hymn at all. It's a maudlin ballad at best.

Sloppy plotting, rather basic writing

Popping in to say it's rather silly of the author to have Italians unable to say Naimh (Neev-uh) correctly when they have no problem saying via (vee-uh).

DNF! Estralita has to be one of the most annoying characters ever. I cannot believe we are supposed to like her, though the main character and her best friend calling each other "darling" every 30 seconds runs a close second in the how to get me to quit reading a book contest.

I am a third of the way in and considering giving up. The main character is a 35 year woman who is incapable of commitment in any aspect of her life, evidently because she had her heart broken when she was 17. Her idea of flirting is making tacky suggestive remarks worthy of a drunken teenager. I find her annoying, unrelatable and sad.

I am a third of the way in and considering giving up. The main character is a 25 year woman who is incapable of commitment in any aspect of her life, evidently because she had her heart broken when she was 17. Her idea of flirting is making tacky suggestive remarks worthy of a drunken teenager. I find her annoying, unrelatable and sad.

I gave up. Not worth my time. The writing isn't engaging and the obvious truth about the crime didn't dawn on anyone until a quarter of the way in.

This novel reads as if Daphne DuMaurier had come back to life and was currently writing. It has that subtle undertone of mystery and suspense she was a master of evoking. I made the mistake of reading a few reviews and fear I shall ultimately be disappointed, but for now I am delighting in every page.

Written for a YA audience, the author does an excellent job of writing the narration and dialogue realisticly. Lina is a 16 year old whose mother dies and is sent to Italy to live with her father. Within a day of her arrival, Lina is given a journal kept by her mother when she attended art school in Florence. The journal reveals aspects of her mother's life she never knew and secrets she never suspected existed.