I think the title of my post today is a bit unfair actually now I think about it, because I am going to mention a particular book and it probably isn’t a bad book. Because I love reading and respect the work that goes into writing and publishing a novel I absolutely hate not finishing a book, it feels like giving up and also I do have the fear that I am going to miss out on a great ending but sometimes, very occasionally if I am not enjoying a book I just have to put it down and move onto the next.
This happened to me last night. I have been reading Songs Of Love and War by Santa Montefiore. I picked it out on Kindle because the blurb called it the first of three in a chronicle of three women in Ireland beginning in the early 1900’s. Someone had called it a fantastic work of historical fiction. If you have read my blog before you will know that I loved The Morland Dynasty and was hoping for something in a similar style but set in Ireland rather than Yorkshire and I had high hopes. However nowhere did it mention or did I find any reviews at the time that called it fantasy because that is what a ghost story would be classed as wouldn’t it? At first when Kitty mentions seeing dead people I just thought it was something her quirky Grandmother spoke about, obviously just a little bit of fun between the two of them but nope it turns out Kitty actually can see and talk to dead people aka ghosts and thats where the author lost me. We then move onto the devastation that was WWI but to me the mention of ghosts just had me thinking that why worry about all the dying people because they will probably just come back and visit you anyway… I couldn’t continue. I had completely lost interest in these characters that I cannot relate to in anyway, only if you believe in ghosts could you relate to Kitty and I quite clearly do not. Also why was Maud so cruel to her daughter? Maybe I would have found out in the end but honestly do mothers really behave that way to only one of their children?
After a long chat with my sister she recommended a nice, light hearted, easy read called The Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gilmore, which just so happened to be on Prime on my Kindle so didn’t cost me anything to download. I am only 9% in but I am enjoying it already and am looking forward to bedtime which I wasn’t doing with the previous story.
The more I write the more I begin to think maybe my title isn’t so inaccurate after all…
NJ x
nicola jayne 