I’m wondering if I was able to enjoy this book more than others might because personally I see very little difference in a painting done by James Buttersworth in 1800 or Ken Perenyi in 1980. If the fake is identical enough to fool authenticators, down to the period canvases, frame, and varnish, I'll take it. I do realize it’s wrong (lying for starters, plus stealing from whomever you sell it to and devaluing authentic paintings); I’m just more fascinated than indignant, while I can see some people having a hard time reading about such large-scale fraud.
It took awhile to get to the fascinating stuff, though. The first several chapters were hard to slog through and almost completely irrelevant to the rest of the book. They made me really glad I wasn’t around during the psychedelic 70s, though. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll would not have been for me.
If you thought Pride and Prejudice was as boring as all get out, as I did, the addition of a murder mystery does nothing to make it more interesting. If you do like (or love) Pride and Prejudice it appears, from reading other reviews, you probably won't think this book worthy of the characters. So there's really no winning here.
This book snuck up and surprised me. I expected (or hoped,
at least) it would be a solid three-star book, since I know Melissa Ford has a
popular, well-known blog. The beginning of the book was a little bumpy and overly
filled with blogging 101, but by the end I genuinely cared about the main
character, Rachel, and was kind of upset it was over. Lately it has seemed like
all of the books I read tell instead of showing and this one finally broke that
streak. The emotion was portrayed really well and I even cried in solidarity
with Rachel in a couple places.
I never got into this one. I really tried, because I love Ali Wentworth, but the book was just too over the top. I was never sure if anything was true, since each story was so extreme (“and then I snorted half a brick of cocaine, freaked out, and ran off to the airport to fly home with the other half in my backpack!”). The chapters were also disjointed, so I could never get into the groove. This was a book I had been looking forward to for awhile and I was pretty disappointed.
I love your review of Death Comes to Pemberley. I love Pride and Prejudice, but I'm a bit of a classics snob, so I think I'd fall into the second category. I've bought several of these books (someone else taking up where Austen left off) at thrift stores, but I can't really bring myself to read them so I just feel like I've wasted my money...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I just wanted to say that I added the two you liked to my Goodreads list and that I think you and I might have very similar taste in books. So if you're doubting whether or not to keep writing book posts, I vote that you do. :)