Couldn’t She Make Up Her Mind?

Couldn’t She Make Up Her Mind?

Once again, I listened to an audiobook to get my intellectual needs met while I worked around the house. It may be tenacity that I stayed with it even when I started getting disappointed in it, or it could have been out of laziness. I almost gave up on it several times, but my curiosity got the better of me. For many years, I refused to not finish a book, but no more, life is too short. As this book went on, I could not figure out what the writer wanted the story to be. Was it

a supernatural tale,

a whodunit,

a social commentary,

a fact-based novel,

or a romance novel.

Any two of these are fine, more than two and it is a muddle, yet this author tried to squeeze in all of them in and when it came to the fact-based social commentary, she managed to throw in several at one time.

I was not going to do a review of this, except for the fact that so much was wrong. Then I thought that I would do a full review, but again, too much was going on that if you couldn’t figure out the BIG MYSTERY from my description, well, that would be very odd.

 I knew the two storylines that she bounced between had to be related from the moment she switched the first time.

“Related” being an operative word here.

For a small place in the country, too many people from in and outside of the area were unwittingly involved in a shady business, and an extremely few of those involved said anything to their grown children, who were directly involved. Too few Locals questioned the strange coincidences and occurrences in the woods and town, and there is one big moral problem throughout the book that suddenly isn’t a problem near the end.

Actually, it is; it is a really big problem. I never had sympathy for the one character to whom it is astonishingly no longer a problem, no matter how hard the author tried to explain away his erratic misbehavior.

The Bronte Sisters could not accomplish that for me, so this author certainly couldn’t.

Then there is the woman grocer who knows everything about everyone except what is right under her nose and in her own family; she’s not pretending, she simply does not see the obvious and never questions any odd thing that she is told or even sees herself, but she knows everything in the world else.

So, Protagonist-girl, is the man attractive or not? Is he creepy or not? Can you trust him or not?

Why do you trust your landlady?

Without a job, where do you get your money?
Why are you such a wimp that you are in total emotional shut-down after losing your boyfriend and job in one week, when it wasn’t a career and you don’t seem to be particularly heartbroken over the guy?

Why don’t you just report things to start with?

Another controversial social/moral problem of this age is put as a big scandal when it isn’t one. The person who was being blackmailed about it was simply guilty of not reporting the crime involved in the issue when she learned of it after the fact, because she was told that it would save a life.

Other than this unfortunate choice of scandal is tidied up and explained away, but must have been added only as an attempt to be current, and aware, or falsely compassionate. Other than that, the book is nearly squeaky clean, except for the moral problem mentioned earlier, and even then the victims change the situation when they are made aware…or one who doesn’t, but he should, since he did before. The author misses the mark if she’s trying to prove true love.

If the person were arrested, the people that she feared could not get to her.

Then there is the ‘science’ that explains the ‘supernatural’ element; it’s so bogus, it is ridiculous.

Even if it were true, the continual, sudden occurrence of this phenomenon under these conditions is positively silly, because it would be happening all the time, not just with these people, in this manner.

You can’t have it both ways.

I keep using that phrase. I say it to family, I say it to those who complain about one political party or another, I say it about the behavior of people, and I say it about writing:

You can’t have it both ways.

Make up your minds.

And I ask again:

Are there no editors anymore?

It all tidies up and ends in what would be a typical, pretty little HEA in a romance novel,

only, this book isn’t one, or maybe it was so muddled that I didn’t recognize it as one, and maybe the writer couldn’t decide if it was one.

At least I got a lot of things done while listening and didn’t truly waste any time on or in  “The Cottage” by Lisa Stone.

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