Hey, that surprise trip to Florida actually happened! I will definitely post more about that soon. TIL that when you are sunburned in the winter, people will ask if you had fun skiing. I’m not a skier so this was news to me.
This was an awesome week personally but a little rough on the reading front. I have liked Kristin Hannah in the past, and the first ~200 pages of The Great Alone was compelling, but it took a serious nosedive for me from that point. The plot took very melodramatic turns, including several things that are always pet peeves for me. And I’m just never going to root for someone to spend half her life holding out for the one guy she ever dated when she was 16. I was ready to throw this across the room for the last hundred pages or so, and I seriously hated the ending. I know most people are loving this one but it was too teen soap for me.
Sadly, that was not the worst book I read this week. That honor goes to Mrs. This was compared to Big Little Lies, and I loved her book of short stories, so I figured this would be a slam dunk for me. Hoo boy was I wrong there, I absolutely hated this book. I really never DNF, but I might have done so with this one, but I was reading it on a plane, and my other books were in the overhead, so there you go. The writing is fine but the point of the book seems to be, here’s a wealthy beautiful woman, she used to be a model, let’s humiliate and abuse her for 300 pages, cool. I don’t know what was going on here but it was nauseating. I’m not going to say anything else about it, because even thinking about this book is making me annoyed.
Could only go up from there, thankfully. It was pretty meta reading Sunburn while sporting a lobsterface. I’m just that committed, guys. For the most part, this was a very cool, cinematic, noir page turner. I loved loved loved the minor characters; Sue Snead’s chapter was especially impressive. I loved the way she casually used pop culture references throughout to show the time period. A great use of showing, not telling, although I’m still not exactly sure why it’s set in 1995. I also liked that she made references to James M Cain and Dashiell Hammett since that was clearly the vibe she was going for. (Also I just always enjoy Dashiell Hammett references for personal reasons.) The only thing I didn’t love about this was the ending. In this kind of story, I want the ending to pack more of a punch, I want there to be a really surprising twist, and I want the main character to do something really clever that you don’t see coming. This ending didn’t really do any of that for me, and it was a little sappy for my taste. But I couldn’t put this down and it was a perfect vacation read for about 95% of the way.
I have way too many books out right now, and I spent a long time deliberating over what to start next, and I finally settled on Neon in Daylight. This has grabbed me right from the start and I can’t wait to get back to it. I hope it keeps this momentum!
