OYENTE

Lolita Watkins

  • 12
  • opiniones
  • 60
  • votos útiles
  • 26
  • calificaciones

The best performance

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-13-25

A great performance. I wish all romances were performed with men reading the men’s roles and women reading the women’s roles. The story was also unique and not one that I would think I would like, but the performance is so great the writing is great. I like the strong personality of the heroine.

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Overwhelmed by backstory

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 03-02-25

I love many Mary Balogh novels, she has written for years and obviously there very good ones and some that were not quite aa good. This one may take its inspiration from the Scarlet Letter, or at least there is a whiff of that as Lydia’s reputation is ruined in a small religious community. The problem for me was that the novel was burdened with its backstory that was recounted over and over again, There was so much repetitive explaining. It did not progress the story or give insight into the characters. I thought the novel would move on from that, but eventually I lost interest in the characters and stopped reading. I had read other books in the series and I was very interested in what had become of Harry, but Harry just was not fleshed out and neither was Lydia. I prefer banter, and flirtation. Lydia just decides she wants to have sex with someone, Harry thinks why not, and then there is a big fuss about the family descending on Harry, and again there is no relationship building into romance.

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Unconditional

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 02-14-25

I don’t know what makes a couple stay together after all of the betrayals, when one of them seems to have bought into a nonsensical reality but as a person who saw my parents marriage survive bleeding and crippled, and my father on his knees praying tearfully at my Mom’s bedside as she died and my own marriage end, but at the same time accepting that it never ended, it just moved on to a new manifestation of a marriage. All of what is described in this one is beautiful. It is possible all of that mental torture is just about the nature of marriage.

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Overwrought writing and padded with pointless verbiage

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 02-02-25

I have liked other romances by Kathleen Ayers but not this one. Maybe it is just a matter of what kind of characters I find to be likable.

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India India India

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-29-25

I like Romance with great characters. I recently read A Room with a View again, and the thing that book was filled with was very distinct characters revealed by a constant stream of conversation. Blackmoore was not quite in that manner of literature, but this was a well done story. Kate initially seems spoiled and chaotic but eventually morphed into a typical heroine, The only issue I had with the story was there was no reason for Kate to go to India. There was no job, no relatives, no fiancé , just a decision to park there wit an Aunt and wait for Henry to come to her with his own job to give any kind of purpose to going there. Maybe they were tourists only, but the author provides no explanation. Maybe they went to India for the bird watching.

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This one hit my favorite tropes

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-13-25

There were strong characters. The focus was the relationship, and even though Genevieve had trouble figuring out her feelings, she did it in a not too ridiculous way. Most of her life she had dreamed of winning Harry, so it was difficult for her to recognize her feelings. I liked that the Duke gave her what she thought she wanted and once she knew was able to forget her old longings. I liked that he did not take forever to figure out his own feelings. The novel did not go overboard but it was a slow burn. I was able to finish it because it wasn’t padded with misunderstandings and over wrought exclamations of love from both characters. It ended at the right place and it flowed. I usually find myself cringing when the hero prostrates himself too much and when the heroine waxes on and on about her love. I usually stop reading when the romance is over and the adventure starts. If the adventure goes on while the romance builds that works for me, but they should be integrated. There was great banter between the hero and the heroine and humor.

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Bell and Blake

Total
3 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
2 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 01-05-25

Blake, the hero starts out as a very progressive kind and intelligent young man really almost modern in his belief in women’s rights when Bell first proposes to him. Then he seems to become very clueless when he thinks his patron is an old man, because Bell’s epistolary seems ultra feminine when they are talking about gothic romances, but at least Blake is willing to be open with his views on their strange letters. and then when Blake returns to England and suddenly realizes Bell once proposed to him, and he is suddenly enraged that she did so, the hero turned into an unforgivable prig. He owes her everything yet he forgets it. I could accept why he might be confused since he is a dunce but he has no grounds to hate her, however since he seems to think he has grounds and he holds his grudges for so long, even after she nearly lost her life, I just washed my hands of him. I wanted Bell to finally get over him and move on. The nice man she once proposed to was not a man that treated her well and was very ungrateful. She needed to find someone else because he really had not aged well, and had become a jerk. So if the reader likes abusive hero’s this is the book for them. It wasn’t what I like in a hero. I also had problems with Bell’s behavior. She is crying and worrying through the whole last half of the book and, I’m feeling impatient with all the hand wringing. Please Bell get over this guy. He isn’t worth it.

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Mixed feelings

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
3 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 12-21-24

The writer has interesting historical tidbits. The mystery of who killed the Duke’s brother was fairly seamless. The point is I thought this book, had I read it as a book instead of listening to it might have enjoyed it more.

The narrator had a beautiful voice, she can be a great reader, but when she was the Duke, her accent, her gruff voice turned him into a crotchety old man. All those love scenes were with a crotchety old man. I tried on occasion to imagine the words in my readers mind, where I would have turned him into a gorgeously voiced man in his thirties, but trying to override it was just too difficult. I’m not sure why so many female narrators add quavers and nasally upper crust accents to the heroes voice, other than possibly they disrespect the genre? They want to make the love scene’s or maybe the heroes ludicrous? It shouldn’t take that much to slightly lower the voice. Just a little. Not too much.

There are narrators who can read well the opposite sex. The ones who do it best don’t do high falsettos from men or from women the overly slow and gruff voices, to the point that the hero sounds doddering. A male hero voice might have a confident clip from a female narrator, a male narrator a slightly smoother or a faint softening. The point is not to turn voices into caricatures, causing listeners to cringe.

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Beauty and distaste

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-08-24

I loved this romance as much as other of Ivory’s other books. The retelling of Beauty and the Beast is delightful. Ivory is reminding while I read her of authors of the period. Proust’s accounting of Swan’s obsession with Odette, and Wharton’s Undine in Custom of the Country. Ivory’s characters are not quite so flawed. Louise is not so vapid as Odette or Undine, but Ivory flavors Louise with some of their arrogance, and coldness. Charles suffers a kind of emasculation at the hands of Louise’s blindness. All of these flawed characters only make their romances more entertaining. Ambergris, where it comes from, what is, I also enjoyed her metaphor in a kind of essay on the unusual places beauty can be found. I thought the narrator portrayed Louise’s cool American hubris, perfectly.

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Outstanding character and fabulous dialogue

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 09-07-24

I have no idea why this is so poorly reviewed unless readers didn’t like the heroine falling in love with a rat catcher. The performance was also outstanding. I had read the book, years ago, and in my head I was reading it with an accent, but the actor gave Nick the rat catcher much more nuance than my reading so it is an amazing performance. Ivory uses Shaw’s Pygmalion as a bases for her plot, she switches the transformation to the male character, and in my estimation the only thing wrong with the story is that the rat catcher becomes a handsome Duke. I laughed out loud at many situations Ivory involves her characters I love all of the books she has written that I can get my hands on. But there are rules to the genre that are hard to break and the one that requires the hero be an aristocrat seems to be one of them. It is the same disappointment I feel when I watch Beauty and the Beast. I usually love when authors take the rigid structure of a romance and wrestles with it. Ivory is by far my favorite romance writer, but it seems she has stopped writing unless someone can tell me whether she is writing under a different name.

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