Candace > Recent Status Updates

Now she’s just flying to Italy. Where she get that money when her job is children’s theater director. Nope. Can’t do this book.

Ugh. Julie is the "good sister" and Janice the "bad sister." Why do authors do this???? Does it get any better? So far the writing is not fantastic. Plot unbelievable. Julie sucks as a character - just passively drifting along doing what her aunt, Umberto, and Janice get her to do!

Ugh. Probably DNF because the author is quite possibly a terrible person. If you are friends with someone who gleefully kills birds.... you probably study birds as specimens, not as amazing beings. I began to wonder if I could appreciate this book right away with his detached description of pigeon races. If you love birds you probably won't like this book.

Ana tells him she can't jeopardize her job to assist Daniel with his project even though she wants to. He thinks to himself that he doesn't want her to walk away. Like DUDE, she just told you that she is not willing to lose her EMPLOYMENT for you.

So I am enjoying the intrigue of the book and learning about a piece of Spain's history, but what is driving me absolutely nuts is Daniel's complete disregard for Ana's job. He does not seem to have any awareness that she actually has to work and have boundaries with hotel guests, and he's like "Hey let me monopolize your time, hey why don't you come hang out with me, hey I'm going to insert myself into your life"

Sooooo Lulul has Veryl and it is seriously starting to sound a lot like a Mammy/Scarlett O’Hara thing. Like Lulu is “different” from all the other white people and so Veryl will do anything for her and make sure she takes care of her? Ugh. And I can tell Williams is trying to be like “see how progressive I am? My white characters are so forward thinking!”

Was enjoying it, Williams is an author I have typically love to read. Then I started getting into the riot section and really did not care for the way Williams handled this - it literally became entirely about the main character. Could have done better with this - I won’t say more so I don’t spoil.

Also the main characters are becoming annoying passive

Normally I don’t update my progress as I’m reading a book or even leave reviews. I’d been enjoying the book so far until suddenly I read the book equivalent of nails on a chalkboard: the author describing characters as “and old black man” etc. So far, she hasn’t described characters as white so apparently we are to assume everyone is white unless otherwise stated. Now if that’s not implicit bias...

"Americans had a taste for what he called a "democracy of manners," which was not the same as real democracy. He meant that voters accepted huge disparities in wealth but at the same time expected their elected leaders to 'cultivate the appearance of being no different from the rest of us.'" (258).

One of my favorite lines: "Can a nation call itself free if it finds itself periodically on the verge of bankruptcy and starvation in the face of the fact that it possesses all the materials of the good life....freedom was compromised when a nation allowed the majority of its people to suffer devastating poverty and enduring economic insecurity" (216).

"Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don't want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don't want Custer. You want Robert E Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can't...(187).

So far, her sister's pregnancy has been mentioned on what feels like every single page. For some reason, Alana always seems to be "under a great strain." I keep reminding myself of the time this is taking place....but come on.

Page 370 another female stomping her foot. Probably one of the actions I despise the most - authors, please don't have your characters do this unless they're under the age of 10.

So I finally got to a point where I said to myself "Okay...I really hope I'm not the only one having these thoughts about this book. Time to look it up on Goodreads." Sure enough, several of the reviewers had similar thoughts about this book. Not going to throw out any spoiler alerts, but what's up with the abusive boyfriend shit?