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neo_ultraAnd now for something completely different - chick lit!
Honestly I thought it would be British, if I had known it would be about New Yorkers, I would not have picked the book up. But since I already had the book, I read it and it was not even all completely bad!
Most of the time I could not relate to the struggles of the characters - getting drunk and sleeping with a random guy, missing a dead husband, having a baby fever and getting pregnant from some rando despite having no secure job and being over 40... And of course there was this whole American mentality, with their obsessive need to be somebody, to achieve things without relying on others, but simultaneously to make oneself legitimate by being part of a larger narrative. Uwu, we are Scottish-Americans! Girl no, you are just a plain old American, don't try to claim a heritage because you visited your grandma in Scotland a couple of times and you quite enjoy a scone.
But somehow I ended up supporting the characters. Sure, their problems were not relatable, but they were still real and the characters were not bad people. So in the end I ended up rooting for them. Even despite their sometimes naive views. As if people in Scotland have never seen a person of a mixed race before. As if a really poor person ever would throw their phone out of a car window in a fit of pique. And does knitted dress even look good enough for a gala?
And then of course the ending happened, when the main character just suddenly died. That was a turn of events I neither anticipated nor wanted. I suppose the author's intention was to inject some gritty realness into the narrative and show that sometimes people die, but the important thing is that their legacy lives on and that their kindness had changed the lives of others...
But I felt this was out of place in a schmaltzy feel-good Hallmark book about people finding love, forgiveness, themselves and sometimes even god. It felt like a rather cheap attempt at squeezing some emotions out of the readers and for what? It would have been just as cathartic if they all just lived happily ever after and continued being good friends. Oh well.
Honestly I thought it would be British, if I had known it would be about New Yorkers, I would not have picked the book up. But since I already had the book, I read it and it was not even all completely bad!
Most of the time I could not relate to the struggles of the characters - getting drunk and sleeping with a random guy, missing a dead husband, having a baby fever and getting pregnant from some rando despite having no secure job and being over 40... And of course there was this whole American mentality, with their obsessive need to be somebody, to achieve things without relying on others, but simultaneously to make oneself legitimate by being part of a larger narrative. Uwu, we are Scottish-Americans! Girl no, you are just a plain old American, don't try to claim a heritage because you visited your grandma in Scotland a couple of times and you quite enjoy a scone.
But somehow I ended up supporting the characters. Sure, their problems were not relatable, but they were still real and the characters were not bad people. So in the end I ended up rooting for them. Even despite their sometimes naive views. As if people in Scotland have never seen a person of a mixed race before. As if a really poor person ever would throw their phone out of a car window in a fit of pique. And does knitted dress even look good enough for a gala?
And then of course the ending happened, when the main character just suddenly died. That was a turn of events I neither anticipated nor wanted. I suppose the author's intention was to inject some gritty realness into the narrative and show that sometimes people die, but the important thing is that their legacy lives on and that their kindness had changed the lives of others...
But I felt this was out of place in a schmaltzy feel-good Hallmark book about people finding love, forgiveness, themselves and sometimes even god. It felt like a rather cheap attempt at squeezing some emotions out of the readers and for what? It would have been just as cathartic if they all just lived happily ever after and continued being good friends. Oh well.
