When I read the First Impression of this book, I was intrigued and thought I might actually be able to relate to Claire on some level, being a professional woman who has had to struggle sometimes to be taken seriously at work. But, after the first couple of chapters, not only was there no "woman trying to prove herself at work" storyline (which is fine, of course, as it's not what this book is about, but it did take away the one connection I may have had with Claire), Claire's personality was just inexplicably horrible.
We were supposed to understand where her unbelievable hostility came from based on the handful of interactions with and memories of her grandmother. Unfortunately, all that came across is that Grandmother Leona is nasty for no reason, and Claire is basically awful.
I truly wanted to like this book, and there were aspects of the story that I did enjoy. I thought the premise was great and the pace was good. Unfortunately, the dialogue seemed generally hard to believe (due, in part, to Claire's unrelenting coldness and lack of caring about anything at all.) I found it very difficult to follow when the "flashback" conversations were thrown right in the middle of a "now" paragraph or conversation, and because these flashback conversations sometimes used quotation marks and regular dialogue rules, and other times were just part of the regular paragraph text. Several times I wasn't sure if what I was reading was a live conversation or one that had already taken place.
Generally, the writing style is simplistic and almost elementary in sentence structure, though in many places I didn't mind it, but there wasn't really any character or relationship development to round it out. None of the relationships were believable to me, as none of them were actually developed. Instead, we were told that Gavin was her best friend and she hung out with him a lot when they were kids and that he knew how awful her grandmother was. But there was nothing actually showing their closeness.
Again, I feel that the premise was great and perhaps with some more character development and some softening of Claire's insanely sharp edges, it would be a more enjoyable read.
(There was also a "then/than" mixup in one of the first couple of chapters which should be cleaned up.)
We were supposed to understand where her unbelievable hostility came from based on the handful of interactions with and memories of her grandmother. Unfortunately, all that came across is that Grandmother Leona is nasty for no reason, and Claire is basically awful.
I truly wanted to like this book, and there were aspects of the story that I did enjoy. I thought the premise was great and the pace was good. Unfortunately, the dialogue seemed generally hard to believe (due, in part, to Claire's unrelenting coldness and lack of caring about anything at all.) I found it very difficult to follow when the "flashback" conversations were thrown right in the middle of a "now" paragraph or conversation, and because these flashback conversations sometimes used quotation marks and regular dialogue rules, and other times were just part of the regular paragraph text. Several times I wasn't sure if what I was reading was a live conversation or one that had already taken place.
Generally, the writing style is simplistic and almost elementary in sentence structure, though in many places I didn't mind it, but there wasn't really any character or relationship development to round it out. None of the relationships were believable to me, as none of them were actually developed. Instead, we were told that Gavin was her best friend and she hung out with him a lot when they were kids and that he knew how awful her grandmother was. But there was nothing actually showing their closeness.
Again, I feel that the premise was great and perhaps with some more character development and some softening of Claire's insanely sharp edges, it would be a more enjoyable read.
(There was also a "then/than" mixup in one of the first couple of chapters which should be cleaned up.)