James Kennedy

If Only It Was About Ravenna

Revisado: 01-31-24

Ravenna is a beautiful and appealing city, rich in culture and history, not to mention architecture, I highly recommend a visit.

But this book isn't really about the city - Ravenna is just the context on which the author hangs a dense and lovingly embellished hagiography of the christian elements of its history, delivered in numbing and repetitive detail - its bishops, its archbishops, its prominent christian residents and donors, its monks, its priests. Did I mention donors. On and on. Did I mention bishops.

Unfortunate. Ravenna is surely a gift to a writer with a sense of history. For the city to be used as just an ante room where the writer can endlessly introduce and waffle on about bishops, archbishops ... ugh. Did I mention donors.

I have to close by acknowledging that I didn't finish the book so I can't tell you who were the Archbishops and bishops and donors in the tenth century. But I'm very sure you can find out more then all you want to know about them, much more, by reading the book.

James K

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A Sparkling Book

Revisado: 02-09-23

Such an enjoyable book. A clever and really quite original plot, twisty and surprisingly gripping,, and told in such bright, witty language, often downright funny. The characters pull us in too, especially Gracie, dropped unexpectedly into the deep end of the pool - a very nice pool as it turns out but still the deep end of it. We follow her as she struggles to keep her head above water, mostly winning, but making sometimes-harrowing choices. Her choices don't always work out the way she hoped but we're on her side, she's someone you'd like to know. And we learn more about her as she learns more about herself. We're not being beaten over the head by this dawning self-awareness but it's beautifully worked in, we've all been there. It's believable.

"Stand-In" was recommended to me by a friend who surely knows I'm not even supposed to like this genre, insofar as it's a rom-com. But every now and then a book is so good it simply rises above its category. In Ms Chu's case,, far above it.

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Boring and Repetitive

Revisado: 12-18-22

Endless dull repetitive detail. If you want to be stunned into indifference by absurdly long repetitions of the past this is your book.

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Yeah, The English

Revisado: 12-23-21

If you always thought the English were always right, always fair, always just, this is for you. And I say this as an Anglophile, I like their culture, I think they gave a lot to the world. But this is just utterly craven fawning.

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