The First Phonecall From Heaven
In summary of the plot, The First Phonecall From Heaven by popular American writer Mitch Albom is about a group of people from a fictionalized Clearwater, Michigan who begin to receive phonecalls from loved ones who are deceased and the ensuing consternation, scepticism and media coverage.
This is not a book that I would ever have voluntarily chosen but it was selected for Book Club this month. Normally, when I take a dim view of a book before reading I chastise myself for prejudice and book snobbery and hope, sometimes correctly, that I will be proven wrong.
Unfortunately, my prejudices against this novel were entirely borne out. This book is so badly written that I cringed. It is tripe of the highest order, complete and utter bilge. It is easily the worst book I've read in the last 3 years since the blog began in 2011, and would probably rank highly as one of the worst books I have ever read in my whole entire life.
Diabolical.
Verdict : 0/10
Showing posts with label Tripe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tripe. Show all posts
Monday, 23 June 2014
Friday, 15 March 2013
Book #20 Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Beautiful Creatures
Length Of Time In Possession : 3 weeks
At the age of 31, I should be perhaps too old for books aimed at the teenage market, but there have been several franchises I have really enjoyed : Harry Potter, Twilight (for my sins), The Hunger Games Trilogy, The Chaos Walking Trilogy, and Julianna Baggott's 'Pure' series, thus far.
I rather hoped that in the Beautiful Creatures novels I would find either books which transcend age ranges like Chaos Walking or an addictive guilty pleasure like Twilight.
I found myself disappointed :
In Beautiful Creatures, small town teen Ethan, reeling from the death of his mother falls in love with an enigmatic and unusual outsider who moves to the town. So..Twilight in reverse. The object of his affection Lena Duchenne, like Edward Cullen, is hiding supernatural abilities.
Lena belongs to a family of "Casters" - witches and wizards basically, who have the power to cast spells. A heavy curse was laid upon Lena's family generations earlier, after which, unlike other Caster families when their family members come of age they don't get to choose whether they will be Dark or Light and are instead claimed by whichever side wins.
I really like the premise of this book, yet I found it slightly tedious, the prose didn't pop off the page, the dialogue was flat, and I didn't become emotionally involved in the fates of the characters. The Civil War aspects dragged the book down and could have been explained in a much quicker way.
When I start a series I usually aim to read all the books, but I was so unenamoured of the novel, that what I did was look up synopses on Wikipedia. What I found was that even with the fantasy parameters which the book lies within; the plotlines of the following books descend into utterly ludicrous tripe.
Verdict : Not for me, I'm afraid 5/10
Destination : Passed to friend's child
Length Of Time In Possession : 3 weeks
At the age of 31, I should be perhaps too old for books aimed at the teenage market, but there have been several franchises I have really enjoyed : Harry Potter, Twilight (for my sins), The Hunger Games Trilogy, The Chaos Walking Trilogy, and Julianna Baggott's 'Pure' series, thus far.
I rather hoped that in the Beautiful Creatures novels I would find either books which transcend age ranges like Chaos Walking or an addictive guilty pleasure like Twilight.
I found myself disappointed :
In Beautiful Creatures, small town teen Ethan, reeling from the death of his mother falls in love with an enigmatic and unusual outsider who moves to the town. So..Twilight in reverse. The object of his affection Lena Duchenne, like Edward Cullen, is hiding supernatural abilities.
Lena belongs to a family of "Casters" - witches and wizards basically, who have the power to cast spells. A heavy curse was laid upon Lena's family generations earlier, after which, unlike other Caster families when their family members come of age they don't get to choose whether they will be Dark or Light and are instead claimed by whichever side wins.
I really like the premise of this book, yet I found it slightly tedious, the prose didn't pop off the page, the dialogue was flat, and I didn't become emotionally involved in the fates of the characters. The Civil War aspects dragged the book down and could have been explained in a much quicker way.
When I start a series I usually aim to read all the books, but I was so unenamoured of the novel, that what I did was look up synopses on Wikipedia. What I found was that even with the fantasy parameters which the book lies within; the plotlines of the following books descend into utterly ludicrous tripe.
Verdict : Not for me, I'm afraid 5/10
Destination : Passed to friend's child
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