Tag: Beach Read

Books, Fiction

A Chaste Christmas Novel: Debbie Macomber’s Jingle All the Way

RaeAnna
Jingle All the Way by Debbie Macomber | Sweatshirt | Shorts | Hat

Worth A Read No
Length 272
Quick Review A chaste (and confusing) Christmas romance for those who really don’t want to be surprised or titillated by love or the holiday spirit. 

I’m going to start off with: I have nothing good to say about Jingle All the Way by Debbie Macomber. I would suggest this book because it is the perfect Christmas romance for Christian women with a sex-sensitivity. Honesty, it doesn’t even have to be sex… intimacy is also applicable.

Everly is a high-powered CEO of a company in downtown Chicago. She gets sent on her idea of hell: a trip down the Amazon river with absolutely no way to connect with the outside world. While on the cruise, she connects with the ship’s naturalist and Chicago-native, Asher. They fall in love on the Amazon as they encounter illness, accidents, kidnapping, and mishaps. 

I still do not understand the title, Jingle All the Way, or the cover image. Poor choices. They do not match the plot at all in any way shape or form. It is very confusing, and I hate it. Poor choices on the publisher’s part.

For the completely inept at knowing how a Christmas romance novel is going to end: If you don’t want to know how it ends (the same as every other one in this genre), do not read this paragraph. I really loathe how the characters always end up married and usually with child in the epilogue. Let’s have a new ending. Like they had three great months before brain cancer suddenly took Asher from Everly and she dedicated herself to preserving the Amazon in his memory. That’s romantic and new!

Macomber’s writing is incredibly unbelievable. The dialogue is very cringe worthy. As someone who is of the same age as the main characters, we would not talk that way to one another, especially if it was a flirtation. The dialogue has as much emotional depth as encounters I have with a friend I don’t much care for rather than the person I’m falling head over heels in love with. 

Having more fun on the photo shoot than I did reading the terrible book.

I know that romances must have a reason the two love interests shouldn’t or couldn’t be together, but the reasons Macomber creates in Jingle All the Way are hardly believable. The only thing I remotely like about this one is that Asher is pressured to give up his wandering ways to settle down and begin a family. For once the man is also giving up something. Surprise, surprise, surprise, they both decide to settle in a small town and be happy and a family and give up their wandering and high powered lives. Yuck.

Macomber also starts off the novel with an attack on Gen Z by painting Everly’s assistant as inept, irresponsible, catty, and an all around shitty human and employee. I don’t like this because it’s a sweeping judgement rather than individualized to this particular person, who is a crap assistant. It also sets the scene that Everly is much older, but in reality, they’re maybe ten years apart in age. 

One of my favorite (read this sarcastically) moments in Jingle All the Way is when Macomber takes the opportunity to defend romance novels as a genre. I don’t understand why she feels the need because the vast majority of the people reading it are fans of hers and the genres. So it feels very self-aggrandizing when Everly says, “They’re positive and uplifting and give me hope of finding my own handsome hero one day.”

I do have one audience to whom I can and would suggest this novel. As much as I really did not enjoy reading Debbie Macomber’s Jingle All the Way, it is perfect for Christian women or women with a sex-sensitivity. I, for one, do not love reading sex scenes. They make me uncomfortable. Yet they are a natural part of any romantic relationship. Kissing is also normal… Everly and Asher do none of it. They two chaste kisses. To have a raging love affair last two weeks on vacation in South America without technology or connection to the outside world, I can’t imagine them not having sex. Not realistic. 

Like I said. Don’t waste your time on this book. It’s terrible unless you really hate intimacy and want to know what the ending is by paragraph one. 

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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Title: Jingle All the Way
Author: Debbie Macomber
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2020
ISBN: 9781984818751

Books, Fiction

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

RaeAnna

Worth A Read Yes
Length 338
Quick Review Casiopea Tun lives an unextraordinary life as a maid in her grandfather’s house in a small town when she meets a Mayan God of Death and starts on an adventure. 

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Reading Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia at MCAS New River in North Carolina. | Swimsuit | Cover Up | Head Band |

I just got home from a fabulous trip to North Carolina and New Orleans. I read Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia in a day partially because I had the time. This is the perfect book to take on vacation: full of adventure and intrigue.

Set in 1927 small town Mexico, Casiopea Tun is eighteen, hates her life, and dreams of life in the city. Her family is the richest in town, but she lives like a servant waiting on them hand and foot. She has a particularly hateful relationship with her twenty year old cousin, Martín. He is the heir to the family fortune and takes delight in ordering Casiopea around. After an incident, Casiopea is left home alone. She opens a chest in her grandfather’s room and accidentally lets out the bones of the God Hun-Kamé, Lord of Shadows, rightful Lord of Xibalba. God Hun-Kamé is dependent on Casiopea’s blood until he completes several tasks, so they leave town together.

I enjoyed the story very much, and the ending was not dissatisfying. Gods of Jade and Shadow is very quotable with a decent amount of humor. Moreno-Garcia does a good job of misleading the reader without actually misleading, like a magician. There are three points of view: Casiopea’s, Martín’s, and Vucub-Kamé’s. Moreno-Garcia  also gives historical context and background when needed because most readers are probably not familiar with Mexican history, unfortunately. There is a lot of telling why people are feeling, doing, being certain ways when the actions and dialogues tell enough. It feels like I’m being spoon fed with airplane noises.  

There is very little push back from Casiopea, who is Catholic, about a rival religion and God’s existence. Unrealistic is the best way to describe this. The characters fall into starkly good and bad categories. There is little complexity in emotions, characters, interactions, etc. Oversimplification of humanity is a grave mistake in my book. 

Gods of Jade and Shadow is an interesting read. There are some negatives, but the story is interesting. I like reading books from a different ethnic background. I’m glad I got to relax on the beach reading this one. 

Memorable Quotes
“She was reasonable enough to recognize that many other young women lived in equally drab, equally small towns.”
“Seldom was he the cause of his own misfortune.”
“…once glorious, then ruined, as all earthly things must be ruined…”

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Title: Gods of Jade and Shadow
Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Publisher: Del Rey (Random House)
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9780525620754

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Books, Fiction

Sinner

RaeAnna

Read: No
Difficulty: IV – because it was so painfully bad
Quick Review: A very poorly written novel about a man whose troubled past manifests in serial killing ways.

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I have been avoiding writing this review. That would mean I have to think about this novel again, and reading it once was horrific enough. Not because it was a thriller, but because it was just that bad.

I just… It’s…  I can’t… I mean I can; I don’t want to… But here it goes.

I was approached to review this novel. I don’t typically read thrillers. I have been trying to branch out, so I said “yes!” I would create a time machine just so I could go back and say, “STOP, DON’T READ IT!” Or go back even further into time and convince Christopher Graves writing may not be his calling.

The basic concept of Sinner is there is this group of violent, religious, women killing vigilantes. A dude named Zeke goes around killing women of loose morals… basically any lady who isn’t chained to the stove with three babies banging pots around her… due to his religious conviction. Come to find out he had a rough upbringing. (Poor white man, your daddy didn’t love you.) The “strong” female characters fight back. Yada yada yada… It’s terrible.

The thing that made me hate this novel straight off is the narration switches between Zeke (creepy serial killer) and the ladies being serial killed or other key ladies in the story. When dealing with women who are being raped… it’s best not to try and enter the psyche of a woman being raped when you are, in fact, not a woman. I yet to read a male author who can portray these scenes well. It falls flat at best. As a rape survivor myself, it was nowhere near realistic for me. It even came across as flippant, disrespectful, and, quite frankly, offensive. Every section where the woman is narrating, it’s hollow from the dialogue to the internal monologue to the description of how she views herself. You want to buy into the characters and feel for them, but Graves does such a poor job in character development none of the characters even approach likable.

Graves’ writing is unfocused, disorganized, lacks cohesion, and reads like a bad high school first draft. The timeline jumps around in a state of confusion. I don’t think he knows how to organize a novel. Timelines don’t have to be linear, but they do need to make sense. Spelling mistakes run rampant. There are grammar and syntax issues. His word choice is questionable at times. Over all, the writing feels amateurish. I can almost imagine him flipping through a writer’s handbook, pointing at a literary device, and thinking yes, I’ll try that one. When there’s an absence of literary device, don’t fret an analogy is just around the corner. It’s not the work of a capable author probing into the psyche of a troubled man… I would be interested in reading that.  It reads like an aspiring writer trying to be all of those things.

Total side note… What is with all the female characters winking? It’s obnoxious and unrealistic. What sane woman winks in the middle of awkward silences or at staring strangers or constantly. As a living, breathing woman, I can’t tell you the last time I winked at someone. I can almost guarantee you it was at a small child and not at the creepy dude staring at me in a pizza joint.

Sinner by Christopher Graves will be released April 5, 2018 (tomorrow) for audiences enjoyment(?). Please don’t read it. It’s not even ironically painful to read. It just caused me pain.

Memorable Quotes:
There were none. Too painful.

Title: Sinner
Author: Christopher Graves
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9780999643723

 

Books, Fiction

Bridges

RaeAnna

Read No
Length 194
Quick Review The plot is flat, and the characters are superficial at best. For having a grammar police of a main character, the syntax is riddled with errors. The cover is incredibly misleading. Overall, it reads like a sub par young adult novel.

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Bridges by Maria Murnane is a novel about female friendship. Three women, who met in college, are in very different points in their lives. Told through the eyes of Daphne, a divorcée, mom and aspiring novelist from Ohio; she meets her friends in New York City for a long weekend. Daphne celebrates the impending marriage of the successful and perpetually single Skylar along with KC, the hottest, youngest grandma there ever was. Though they are close, they still have things to learn about each other, which could bring them together or drive them apart.

The story centers around three women in their forties, but the cover is incredibly misleading picturing three women looking to be in their early twenties. Not only is the cover mismatched but the title, as well. I have finished the book, and I still am not quite sure where Bridges comes into play.

Murnane tries to tackle the complexities of female friendship but falls short. Her characters are hollow. Their friendship feels incredibly surface. One of the largest contributing factors to this is the dialogue. Murnane makes a concerted effort to keep the dialogue light and true to how people talk; however, it doesn’t flow naturally. She tries too hard to make the dialogue witty and interesting. There are unnecessary characters, who do nothing to further the plot. Murnane is trying to stay relevant by using Lokai bracelets, but it’s kitschy and overdone. She also tries to incorporate internet dating through an irrelevant side character. The “horrifying” dating experiences she comes up with may have been avant garde in the 1940’s, but they’re nothing to bat an eye at for any actively dating woman under the age of 45.

Daphne seems to be a fictional version of Murnane as an aspiring novelist. The other characters are always referring to Daphne as something of a grammar police. She shows her knowledge of grammar in ludicrous ways, which add nothing to the story except irritate and distract the reader. After constant mention of being the perfect icon of grammar, the novel itself is riddled with grammar mistakes and odd word choices.

Overall, the novel could be something really interesting, but, as it stands, Bridges is a let down falling short of a the complexity that is female friendship. I would be happy to recommend you better novels about female friendship. Just let me know!

Memorable Quotes
“… love is completely random.  There’s no rhyme nor reason whatsoever to where we’ll find it, or how.”

Title: Bridges
Author: Maria Murnane
Publisher: Self-Published
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9780980042511