It was kind of fun to read a book that featured pie.
With that said, this book was lousy.
Pros:
1. This books has 7 or so fun baking recipes, including a recipe for lemon meringue pie.
2. This book is set in a small town where the protagonist works in a bakery. I love bakeries! I love small, local businesses! If it weren't for this particular "pro," I would have put the book down after the first chapter.
3. This book was light and an easy read.
4. This book makes you want to bake and eat constantly. (...should that be a con?...)
Cons:
1. This book has awful writing, especially with its ridiculous dialogs.
2. This book is a mystery, but the ending is so obvious by Chapter Three that I kept expecting there to be a dramatic twist. There wasn't one.
3. This book requires the reader to suspend all reasonable thought in order to enjoy the story. I'm all for a light read, and I often enjoy suspending disbelief in a plot, but this book was ridiculous from start to finish. The way the protagonist conducts her murder investigation defies logic at every turn. It's excruciating.
4. In this book the protagonist calls her mom "Mother" and has the most annoying relationship with her that you can imagine. None of the characters in this book are endearing.
5. Through this book, the author tries to air her personal grammar and etiquette pet peeves. She makes the protagonist PERFECT in every way, and features situations in which someone talking to the protagonist says or does something wrong and she has to bite her lip to keep from correcting the person. No character is perfect except the protagonist. It is all very pretentious.
6. This book has sappy you-can-see-the-punchline-coming-a-mile-away kind of humor.
7. This book has a campy subplot about the protagonist's diet that made me roll my eyes dozens of times.
8. In this book, the protagonist has two boyfriends and there's even a scene where she holds hands with both of them at the same time while they watch fireworks. Ugh.
(Side annoyance that wasn't quite as important - This book mentions the protagonist's clothes many times, and the styles that are described are oh-so-ugly. I thought maybe it was written in 1989 but it was written in 2003. Before returning this book to the library, I should have copied the text of a passage or two about fashion to make Ann squirm.)
(Speaking of Ann, sometimes we like to watch a movie that we will both hate just to pause it and freak out at the stupidity of it. This book reminded me of that. Maybe during the year of cakes we'll read a cake version of this series and we can both post about it.)
FINAL ANALYSIS: Do not read this book. Unless you want to hate your life for a few hours. Then read it. But don't blame me.
3 comments:
Sounds like torture! I wish you had copied the text!
I love the cover and its perfect union of tasty pie and implied death.
SOLD!!!! Oh my gosh I can't wait to read this. It's like the "Mona Lisa Smile" of books! I checked out one of the other books on CD to listen to on a road trip but ended up only listening to the first chapter (it's a long story of why I didn't finish it). It was WRETCHED!!! Therefore I want to read them all. I can't figure out how the protagonists of these kinds of mysteries are always around 30, but they talk and act like 50 year old women. As someone approaching 30, it cracks me up every time.
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