whitewallbooks

[whitewallbooks]

Book Review; the third.

The book in question: The Heart Has Its Reasons, by María Dueñas

Blanca Perea, in simple terms, is having a mid-life crisis. Her husband of twenty-five years left her only two months ago, and yet has already impregnated another woman. Her two sons are adults now and haven’t lived with her for ages. Blanca is lonely and hates life. She needs to get away - so, her logical decision as a university professor is to travel halfway around the world from her mother country of Spain, to San Francisco, America, following the idea of spanish missions in the 19th century to this very city. She only wants to take on mindless work to forget about her old sad life, but unexpectedly, falls further down the rabbit hole of a past professor at the university who tragically died before he could finish his life-long research. Thus, Blanca, somewhat subconsciously, commits herself to finish the work he started. But her old life keeps creeping up her, and her new life is starting to be a burden too. Hardships, torn relationships and deceit ensue.

I was excited because this book is about a university professor, an occupation that excites me - the research and discussion between adults of a like-mindedness seems really exciting to me in comparison to sad teachers only half-invested in what they are teaching talking down to a class of high-schoolers who are essentially forced to do subjects that don’t really matter and they don’t really care about (can I say matrices, anybody?). However, this character is not one happy to discuss with other professors and learn about the university, and almost every time we see her in the university, she’s throwing herself into the work of the late professor. Thus, the one thing that had drawn me to this book, unfortunately, was not at all what I wanted from this book, if not the most boring part of it.

Chapters flip between Blanca’s POV in the present, a narrator detailing the life of Andres Fontana, the professor Blanca is researching, and third person POV of Daniel Carter’s past, Blanca’s work colleague, who essentially got her started on her Andres Fontana-related work. I understood why in Chapter 4 we flipped to Andres Fontana - he’s the centre of Blanca’s work and so it’s cool to see what she’s researching instead of being in the dark, but reading Daniel Carter’s story didn’t make much sense at all to me until chapter 32. It did all make sense in the end - but only by the very last sentence! That made me a little frustrated.  

And perfect segue. The reason this frustrated so much, or why I mentioned chapter 32 is because the story doesn’t pick up until chapter 32. To put it in perspective, that’s chapter 32 about of 45, page 266 out of 372, more than 70% of the way through. This book is slowwwwww. And the twist or rather, the good part of this story, the part that hooked me at least, didn’t come until chapter 32. I know that the previous book I read (2nd Chance) was maybe oversaturated with twists in every chapter, but this was dramatically on the other end. Most of the chapters 1-31 saw Blanca switching between ”I hate my old life and where I’ve been left in the cold mean world”, and “I hate this work and the only thing I want is the satisfaction of completing it”. In other words, pretty boring. 

There were small smatterings of some kind of romantic tension, but it was never initiated or even appreciated by Blanca, she didn’t seem to really make a connection even platonically, probably because she assumed she was going to finish the work, and then leave the uni. Then suddenly in the last three pages of the novel, there is a romantic action (I won’t spoil) that came super out of the blue, and came at an unexpected moment, from an unexpected source. It was nice, but not satisfactory because Blanca really didn’t seem to like people at all, and now people are making her super happy? I’m not sure how I feel, I just don’t think that the happy ending was earned by this book’s beginning and middle.

A positive: If you like Spanish history or the history of Spanish colonisation or missionaries, this might actually be nicer for you, because of the split perspectives you learn some Spanish history, as well as some information on modern day Spain and what drives people in the present to move from Spain to America. We also get to see native Spaniard Blanca, adjust to some American traditions, such as Thanksgiving. That gives this book some insightful points. If Spain’s not your thing though, there’s really not a draw to this book.

I really have nothing more to say about this book. I felt bored reading it, and had to push myself to get through, and like Blanca, only felt good about this reading due to the satisfaction of finishing it (it was satisfying, I was told twice to just give up on it, but I pushed through, good for me). Basically, I am not happy with this book, and it’s not a recommendation that I will give anyone. I’m sure there are other books with similar plots that are much more interesting the whole way through, and not a dull slog to get through. I don’t think this book was worth my time apart from for making another review (though I will say that writing a negative review, and formulating my own opinion on a book rather than being informed of it before for once has been quite fun). Final word on this book: It was not worth my time and not worth yours either.

Quality of writing: 8/10 Pace: 3/10 Plot development: 5/10 Characters: 7/10 Enjoyability: 3/10 Insightfulness: 4/10 Ease of reading: 8/10 Re-readability: 0/10

Notes: I gave plot development 5 and enjoyability 3 and not a 0 literally only because of the split POVs and the last 13 chapters. Everything else seems to add little to the plot. Not going to lie, though I finished this, I skimmed so much of this, and I’m not even embarrassed or apologetic, it was boring. I would like to add that the author María Dueñas is not a bad writer, all the language was easy to read. It’s obvious that she’s well-researched, knows about Spain, and the little bit of research I myself did shows that this story comes from her experience as a professor herself at both Spanish and American universities. And, believe it or not, I actually quite like the way she writes - not overly simplistic but not flooding the pages with unnecessary detail either. In fact, she easily shows that she has a good grip on effective contemporary writing. But a good writing style won’t save a book when the problem is a lack of plot. Sorry Dueñas.

[whitewallbooks]

Book Review; the second

The book in question: 2nd Chance, a Women's Murder Club novel by James Patterson and Andrew Gross

Note: This book is part of the ‘books on the abandoned shelf’ series. To read more about this follow this link.

Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer is put onto the case of a murder of an eleven year old girl. The girl being the sole victim of a mass shooting, the team has written the murder off as just a crazed killer shooting at anything he could, but something isn’t adding up to Lindsay. When a second murder occurs only days later, the lieutenant is determined to join the dots and crack the case.

The book is written by two authors - but no matter: whatever transition there is between the two writers is utterly undetectable (at least to me) and the book reads really seamlessly, as if it has come from a single author’s mouth. Both authors are New York Times bestsellers but as the tremendous size of his name as compared to the size of his co authors name on the cover suggests, James Patterson is the star here - and I don’t say that lightly. As the holder of 114 New York Times bestselling novels, 67 being #1 bestsellers, which is the Guinness World Record for #1s, Patterson is no amateur. And even this book labels itself right in the middle of the cover as an international No.1 bestseller.  So I was expecting something great from him in this book. And I don’t know much about Andrew Gross but I do know that he’s written not just contemporary thrillers but historical ones too, which I am eager to check out, and I also know that his partnership with Patterson, which has produced nine books, has been quite successful. Thus, you could say that I had a high bar for this novel - the question is, did it live up to the expectations it set for itself?

This book is really women-centrist, being a part of the ‘women’s murder club’ series book after all. I really appreciated that we were able to see strong females in many fields - homicide detective Lindsay, medical examiner Claire, assistant district attorney Jill, and reporter Cindy - and aside from successful career women, their friendship comes across as quite realistic, and I also love that sometimes these women talk about their daily lives, and then the next time they see each other, they’re directly aiding each other in solving the mystery. It’s a really cool dynamic that you don’t always get in stories that aren’t contemporary novels.

Something that was odd about this book was the chapter length: Most chapters were only two pages long and the longest chapter I read was only four pages! This kind of put me off, and I had to change my reading method, which is typically to read (at least) a chapter every reading session and leave off at the conclusion of each chapter. For this book, I read at least ten chapters each session, as this was about 35 pages, enough to actually get some decent information/plot out of my reading. I guess the chapters were broken up this way to signify scene changes and time skips, but did it really need to be done this way? Did the authors not consider asterisks to do the same things? Also the book was split into three sections, titled Book 1, Book 2, etc. This seemed even more pointless, because the ends and beginnings of the books didn’t seem to mark any differences in the narrative. Nonetheless, it’s not a detriment to the story, more of a personal gripe then anything (still weird though). One more grievance, because I’m easily annoyed, was that a couple of times the novel would show something happening, and then the next chapter would present the information as a revelation. For instance, one chapter (character I won’t name because it’s a spoiler) is killed, and then the next chapter, a character would say “Claire...(character I won’t name because it’s a spoiler) was shot”. Maybe this was helpful to explain how the characters find out about the events they weren’t present at, but I find it so unnecessary - can’t we just assume that all people involved in the case would have told the lead detective about developments in the mystery off screen? But again, this might only bother me.

If you’re worried about leaving the book and forgetting the plot (as I often am - hey, we 21st century people run busy lives now!), don’t worry, this book seems to find ways to remind you of what they have discovered so far in solving the case, whether through Lindsey recapping as she tries to decipher the elements of the mystery or through her filling in her three friends on the details or

Something interesting was that ever so often the perspective would switch - and this was really interesting - from the protagonist to the killer. Most of the chapters just showed his musings about his crimes and how he wanted revenge, but the POV gave an interesting insight into the mystery while also adding stakes to the story as you get the sense that he was always one step in front of the detectives, which is chilling at points. These musings never once spoiled the villain either, they were well crafted.

If you wanted more, I will just add that this story is one of 19, with the 20th coming in 2020! It’s also a tv show and has produced 4 online games as well. How interesting! I jumped in at book two, but these novels seem to work fine as standalones. However if you were reading the series, you would get the standalone mysteries each book as well as the series-spanning character arcs. This series is something I may actually consider continuing to read in the future. However, as this is a mystery novel that I know the reveal to, probably won’t read this again.

That being said, the ending was quite satisfying! I’m quite pleased that Lindsay really thought about the case while the rest of her team were sure they had solved everything there was to be solved. I’ll just add that the realistic characters and relationships help make the ending feel quite deserved and, well, realistic. Violence/gore warnings: It’s not actually that violent, nothing is described in high detail. However autopsies will talk about location of bullet holes. The violence is more disturbing because of who the victims are; a 11-year old-girl, a elderly widow.

Quality of writing: 7/10 Pace: 9/10 Plot development: 9/10 Characters: 10/10 Enjoyability: 7/10 Insightfulness: 2/10 Ease of reading: 9/10 Re-readability: 6/10

[whitewallbooks]

Book Review; the first

The book in question: What the hell did I just read, David Wong

This book follows David Wong, accompanied by best friend John and girlfriend Amy. Though it is focused mostly on David, the story is actually told from all three perspectives at different times (because none of them seem to be completely reliable narrators, and they, particularly John, like to...ahem...stretch the truth, to put it lightly. This adds to the humour, very fun writing style). David and John are detectives, specifically the guys the police call when the police can’t get the job done. This is because David and John consider the supernatural as possible answers to mysteries - this may or may not be because of involvement with drugs, particularly a special drug they have dubbed the Soy Sauce (you have to read this book, trust me). Poor Amy kind of gets roped along, coz neither of the three have much better to do, if we are being honest.

These guys follow a lead on a missing girl. However, nothing’s ever that simple, unfortunately. 1 girl turns into 2 missing kids. Then 12. There are links to a mysterious (alleged?) pedophile, who happens to have a really familiar face. Other witnesses insist that the kids were snatched by a BATMANTIS?? (stylised exactly like I have here with the capital letters and question marks). And others think the mystery in town isn’t the missing kids at all. What David does know, however, is that every weird, wrong thing in town is linked and that they are all fucked.

I must mention that the book moves very fast through the plot, which is aided by countless cliffhangers, or last-minute notes in the chapter that makes you want to turn the page. This book thus makes for a really good read in one sitting.

However, a problem I had was that if I stopped reading at the end of a chapter, I sometimes struggled remembering what had previously happened when I returned to it. This was not because there were too many plot elements (though there were many characters and the split perspectives gave different names to the same characters so it was a tad confusing). Rather, the element of not knowing what is real and what is fake, though quite interesting and successful at keeping you on your toes throughout, gets to be quite confusing particularly when you come back to the book after several hours.

If I could mention one last thing, it would be the ending. Now I should have seen it ending like it did, it was very in character with the book, but still, not the neat, wrapped in a bow conclusion I would have liked. But I’m a whiny baby when it comes to these things, what do I know? It still very much follows the rising action, climax, resolution ending, so I shouldn’t complain.

This is more of a fun, pretty interesting, and certainly creative read, rather than one with deep insights. Also, because of the nature of mystery novels and also my troubles with reading it (its pace and structure didn’t suit my lifestyle as I had to put the book down too much, and lost my place/understanding), I’m going to classify it as a good one-time read, because I already know the resolution of the mystery, and so it certainly won’t be nearly as fun on a second read. But I am a fan of the author’s personal writing style and humour so you never know - probably worth just picking up another of his books though.

Horror warning: Nothing scary really, more sinister. Not really gruesome, the only thing that made me slightly squeamish is the constant mention of a giant, toddler sized, writhing maggot.

Science fiction warning: Everything is told in a really standard English, common speak, so nothing that couldn’t be comprehended if you were not a scientist. Most confusing was an element about a portal which I still don’t really understand but it doesn’t seem to affect the plot much so no bother there.

Other warnings: quite a bit of crude language, but most of it lends to the comedy. Mentions of drugs and pink silicone asses (don’t ask, just read the book).

Quality of writing: 7/10

Pace: 10/10

Plot development: 8/10

Characters: 9/10

Enjoyability: 9/10

Insightfulness: 5/10

Ease of reading: 7/10

Rereadability: 4/10