jellybeexo's Reviews (450)

Boring, pointless and random

Right from the beginning I found Abel’s story more interesting than William’s and was tempted to just skip William’s chapters. I enjoyed seeing Abel grow with his challenges and not giving up but as the story progressed and became more and more political and about finances it got boring and I find it ridiculous that they hold a life-long grudge against each other. The ending took me by surprise but made the grudge even more pointless in my opinion, they should’ve just talked things out for their families’ sakes instead of making everyone’s lives miserable.

I had to force myself to continue reading, I didn’t particularly like the German translation but I sadly couldn’t find an English version.

Bernadette Fox used to be an award-winning architect, but after one of her creations was deliberately destroyed she moved away, became a recluse and fell into
depression.
Her husband is worried about her
increasingly erratic and anti-social 
behavior and stages an intervention
to have her commited to a psychiatric hospital. Bernadette
isn't having it and vanishes without a trace. Her daughter Bee starts retracing her mother's steps by reading old email, notes, articles etc. in an attempt to figure out what happened to Bernadette and find her.

This book is light-hearted and funny
despite the seemingly serious plot.
However, I didn’t like the style. Bee
tells her mother's story in
present tense but most of the book are just the notes and emails
she read copy-pasted. This doesn't
make for a fluent read and parts of the content of these emails just seem superfluous and annoying to me, I would have preferred Bee just
telling the story in her own words. As it is, I wouldn't recommend this book.