Virginia > Recent Status Updates

I hate historical fiction that plays fast and loose with the lives of real people as Chevalier does here. Casanova lived more than 100 years later as did his patron. Just use a completely fictional character instead!

I feel like someone invaded Ms Picoult’a body and took over writing this novel. The writing is amateurish. The story is researched, but overly simple. I Amy abandon the effort.

And it is okay for a grandchild to say grandpa is not okay to drive because he is 300 years old??

So, the husband gets mad when his wife doesn’t tell him someone else’s secret. And the wife doesn’t defend herself.

What is wrong with all these people?

Spoiler!!!

So, the son’s girlfriend is pregnant and tell the mom. The son then blames the mom for being told and the mom apologizes?

The hypocrisy of the characters is astounding. The mom lives in a perpetual state of menopausal anger but instead of looking at her son and flat out telling him it is not her fault that the girlfriend told her, she apologizes?

What is wrong with the characters in this book?

An adult daughter apologizing to her father when he was the one lying about family history for her entire life? A younger daughter telling her mother not to be a narcissist about it? Who is this author and what world of insanity does she live in?

I cannot believe how bad this book is. Here are some highlights.

It is inappropriate to call your father daddy.

The characters go swimming at a pond while vacation on Cape Cod. Why???????

The mother and daughter talk about sex all the time.

It is perfectly fine for the adult children to criticize their parents.

About halfway through. Absolutely nothing is happening in this novel. Just a lot of babbling and a too long list of characters.

Might be time for Eve Dallas to retire. This one is absolutely terrible.

About 2/3 through. What a hot mess this novel is. It randomly jumps back and forth through time, telling the current story and the backstory. I suppose that is necessary as that is how facts of a murder are revealed.


Too many unnecessary stories. When a shocking detail is revealed about halfway through, it made me wonder if the author realized this just was not working so she had better add a surprising twist.

About a quarter through. I know who did it about 10% of the way in. Love this author, but this one is not up to her standards. When one character said she could feel the night spilling in to her feet, I knew I was in for a rocky read.

Enough! This book is so bad that I cannot understand why I am still listening. So many character with pretentious names. Not a one is remotely likable. I get that Nantucket is “rich,” but this is ridiculous.

Plus, the reader obviously did no research as she cannot pronounce Bucknell or Haverford.

As the graduate of Mount Holyoke which is very near Smith, I am thoroughly offended by this author disparaging the other women’s colleges as she does early on in this poorly constructed novel. I shouldn’t be surprised, though, as her alma mater, Yale, was considered the brother school to Smith.

She has clearly done a good amount of research, but falls short in putting that into a cohesive, readable novel.

Ugh and double ugh. I don’t know why I am continuing with this novel that is so full of contrivances as to be ridiculous. Very little of the last hundred pages has taken place as the Dakota. No. Instead we learn all about the atrocities on Blackwell island (now Roosevelt Island). Throw Nellie Bly into the story and it falls off the cliff.

I had high hopes for this book until it went so completely off the rails.

This is a fictional story about the history of the Dakota, NYC’s most famous apartment building. It was going so well with the opening of the building paralleling a story from the 1980’s. Then the building’s manager, a woman was sent to an insane asylum for no reason. So far off the rails as to be ridiculous.

I get the idea behind this novel. A modern version of It’s A Wonderful Life. I am enjoying it except for one major flaw.

If Nora lacks the knowledge she needs to go forward in each of her lives then, of course, she will reject them. No one can navigate a life without everything that came before. She cannot be a glaciologist if she knows nothing of glaciers.

It makes the ending inevitable instead of a surprise.

I am totally turned off by the simple fact that the first two pages of this novel comprise only four sentences, two short ones and two that go on for a couple of hundred words, filled with hyphens and commas that make for a disconcerting and almost impossible read and leave me wondering how on earth I am going to endure what I perceive to be an already miserable and impossible effort at endurance and undertaking.

I am about halfway through this mystery. Once in a while, I figure it out before the end. This one, I figured out about a quarter of the way through. The fact that the characters in the book, including the lovely Inspector Gamache, have not done so is really kind of ridiculous.

I mean, really, how can the author justify dragging this out for any longer?????

This is one of those extraordinarily annoying books in which adults let kids run roughshod all over them. Filled with two-dimensional characters and secrets that no one would ever keep (who does not tell their family members they have MS?), this novel is totally falling flat. Every time the teenage girl opens her mouth, I wish someone would slap her. She is rude and they let her be rude. She needs a good soaking.

Terrible. Stopped reading this surge of endless drivel.

I do not know why I continue to read books by this author. She is a skilled novelist, but her grasp of the law is appalling and unacceptable. I am only as far as the arrest of one of the characters, but the charges against her are incompatible with each other. I do not know why her editors continue to let her play fast and loose with the law, but they do and it is driving me crazy.

I have yet to finish this, but know exactly where it is going. Some of the reviews equate this to Big Little Lies which I have not read. It is, however, a carbon copy of Outer Banks by Anne Rivers Siddons, in almost every detail. Shame on Ms. White.

Just started this audio book. Cannot bear that one of the readers is the voice of the Janet Evanovich series about Stephanie Plum. It is just too weird. The story is slow. V-E-R-Y slow.

This novel is infuriating. But for the use of cellphones, I would wonder whether this story is taking place now or in the fifties.

Mabel is a college student with no confidence or self worth. Yet she goes to college on the other side of the country from her family. Her roommate, Genevra, is wealthy beyond words, donating a famous painting to the college early in in the story.

I have barely begun this book and it is infuriating. How did it get past the editor? No one, not even in Oklahoma, loses their job as an accountant because of an arrest, not even a conviction, for DWI. No one. This author needs to check her facts and do her research before she jumps into matters she knows nothing about.

This novel moves at glacial speed. If it doesn't pick up soon, it will end up in the "did not finished" file.