Toss Me That Book

Date Started:  July 14, 2019 Date I Gave Up:  July 21, 2019 I slogged through a quarter of this book before I stumbled upon a review that compared the protagonist, Perveen Mistry, to Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.  I wish I had seen that exactly seven days earlier so I wouldn't have had to read this book.

Format:  Paperback Date Started:  June 3, 2019 Date I Asked Permission to Stop Reading:  June 12, 2019 You know that feeling of intense dread?  Like, something is coming down the pike, and it isn't good?    I had when I picked up the book and read that one of the characters was already so anxious about the coming day that he was throwing up.   As a result, I plodded through this book and did things incredibly out of character - like not reading at all before I went to bed - just so that I wouldn't have to face whatever was coming in the book.  Once it arrived, though, I felt like I had committed to riding out the horror, but I am a wimp and couldn't take it.  As ridiculous as it sounds, I had to ask my husband if I could stop reading it. I think I felt like I was abandoning the character in question when she needed help the most, and thus I needed permission to walk away from a totally fictional character...which will be great to ...

Format:  Kindle Date Started:  April 4, 2019 Date Finished:  April 12, 2019 A self-professed Anglophile whose life plan was, in fact, stolen by one Ms. Meghan Markle, I will read just about anything concerning the British Royals.  Heck, I check Hello Magazine everyday.  Even for me, this one was a slog. I made it to "Glimpse #60" before Margaret became altogether too much.  In giving the reader a series of vignettes loosely stitched together to tell her story, the full range of Margaret's snobbery, rudeness, and oftentimes cruelty became too much for me.  I'd like to think that Margaret thought she was being amusing or clever or witty, but, to me, she just read as if she just enjoyed being a brat well into her old age. 

Format:  Kindle Date Started:  March 19, 2019 Date Finished:  March 25, 2019 It looked like it was going to check all the boxes for me:  Paris, a mystery, books.  And then, it failed to deliver in any meaningful way. Paris is such a rich and wonderful place, full of quirks and customs, beauty and ugliness.  Instead of being a major character, Paris was glossed over.  For all of the narrator's rhapsodizing about the city, she operates as if it doesn't exist.  Her daughters live, love, and thrive in Paris, so I really wish we could have heard from them.  Hearing about what high school is like in Paris would have been better than whining and pining in a bookstore.  Heck, reading a list of books available for purchase in the bookshop would have been better than listening to the narrator moaning about her husband. I didn't finish the last half of the book because, at that point, it became painfully clear that I wasn't going to g...

Format:  Kindle Date Started:  January 16, 2019 Date Abandoned: January 23, 2019 Well, it finally happened -- the first Did Not Finish (DNF) of the year was Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game .  A quick internet search reveals that I’m in the minority onthis one.  The story’s rating on Goodreads is 4.5 stars. It had potential for sure.  Lucy and Joshua work together and hate each other with a passion.  Okay, great.   I can work with this as a set-up for a romance.   However, I only made it halfway through the story when I gave up because the only things that had happen were a ridiculous amount of clever banter and food poisoning.  And while I’ll admit that I’ve read and enjoyed stories with less action in them, this was so boring that I couldn’t keep going because I didn’t care about either of the characters, I wasn’t invested in the outcome of the plot, and I value my time -- if you’re writing a romance story, I’m going t...