The Pleasing Hour

'The Pleasing Hour' by Lilly King, is the story of how Rosie travels to France to become an Au Pair after she gave birth to a son and immediately handed him to her barren sister who longed for children. She is a postpartum mother without her own child while raising someone elses. The mother of the family is cold and distant, treating Rosie rather rudely. Despite that, she learns to love her new family and begins to emotionally heal.

I am not going to lie to you- this was the most confusing book I have ever read. I am not exactly sure why I stuck with it and read it until the end. I guess I was hoping for a magical moment where the author tied everything in and gave me that "ah-hah!" moment, which never came. There are chapters from the view points of Rosie, Nicole (the French mother), Nicoles mother, and the three children that Rosie looks after. I never could figure out what the underlying theme was. Rosie gets pregnant on purpose her senior year of high school simply because her sister wants a child so badly. When it comes time to hand her son over though, she doesn't want to, and ends up hating her sister for holding him first. And in the end she has an affair with the dad of the family she lives with. Nice. Nicole's mother has an affair with a German soldier and then gets pregnant with Nicole... who is Nicole's father? It never says. Then Nicole's mother kills herself and that's what leads to events leading up to Nicole moving to Paris with her aunt. As for the three childre, we read a chapter on the oldest daughter the night she loses her virginity, the youngest son wants to be priest, and the middle daughter's chapter made no sense whatsoever and didn't add to the story line in the slightest. This book was all over the place and so full of the weirdest, most inappropriate situations that do not need to be put down in the written word. 

When I finished the last word in the last chapter of the book, the only thing I thought was, "How in the hell did this book ever get published?!" Don't read this book. Seriously. It sucks. 

Mary Poppins, She Wrote

I am a huge Disney fan.... HUGE! I love all things Disney. So when I saw two of my favorite actors starring in a new movie by Disney I was thrilled! I couldn't wait to see 'Saving Mr. Banks' and when I finally did I definitely was not disappointed! In fact I loved the movie so much that I started to read the book that the movie was based off of. The book is called, 'Mary Poppins, She Wrote' by Valerie Lawson. Unfortunately, unlike the movie the book did disappoint me... a whole lot. It was just soooo dry and factual. I honestly felt like I was reading a student's report that they handed into their teacher. And it wasn't even a good report. It was one of those reports that you find facts from google and then cut and paste words and sentences off the internet together to reach your assigned number of pages that had to be written. It was dull. It had no color. There was no magic whatsoever. I suffered through 25 pages before I gave it up. So my advice is to see the movie and skip the book, which NEVER happens!

Gulliver's Travels

I have a goal to at least try to read all of the classics. My latest attempt was to read 'Gulliver's Travels' by Jonathan Swift.... I didn't get very far. It kind of makes me feel like a bad reader when I have to stop reading a book, but dang, it was SO boring! I thought that this story was going to be an adventure, but the author is all about facts and measurements. He explained how everything and everyone looked in enormous detail, so much so that I was bored to tears. I tried to get through this book, I really did, but it just didn't work out. There are so many great books out there that I honestly feel like reading shouldn't be such a chore. Kuddos to you if you liked this book and actually got through the entire thing, but this was not the book for me.

Beautiful Creatures

Lately I have been trying to get through the series 'Beautiful Creatures' by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. I finished the first book and most of the second one, but then I kind of lost interest and they became a chore for me to read. Books shouldn't be a chore to read in my opinion because there are too many amazing books out there. So why try and drudge your way through them right? In the beginning the story was captivating and held my interest, but then it started to kind of drag on and on. Each book is more than 500 pages and I feel like there is just a lot of fluff in there that doesn't accomplish anything other than taking up space. Some of the tangents the authors go on definitely do not hold any importance to the plot line, and there were many times when I just wanted to scream, "Will you get to the point already?!" However, I am sure there are plenty of people who love these books, I am just not one of them. I think they are something that you have to kind of judge for yourself though.

Having said that, I still do want to see the movie. It looks really good and there are some pretty awesome actors in it. I have heard good things about it so I will definitely be giving it a chance. Here is the trailer so you can check it out for yourself.

Disappointments

As many of you know, I am the biggest Harry Potter nerd ever. So when I found out that J.K. Rowling was writing a new book I almost fell over dead with excitement. Last night I started reading it and I only made it through 20 pages before I deemed it as a lost cause. Within those 20 pages not only had I read the F word a dozen times, read about some very crude things, but I was soooo bored! Something that has never happend to me while reading J.K. Rowling. I was beyond disappointed. So my advice is don't wast your time. This book has only received three stars on Amazon and most of the reviews are bad. I had such high expectations, but I feel like the girl off of '27 Dresses' when she says, "I feel like I just found out that my favorite love song was written about a sandwhich."

My next disappointment, though much less of a disappointment than Rowling, was the second book of "Leven Thumps". I had read the first book, and although sometimes reading it felt like a chore, for the most part I enjoyed it. However, I started the second book in the series and didn't get very far. There was no build to the climax, the action just kind of hits you in the face from the very beginning, and I felt a little whiplashed. I also gave that up as a lost cause. However, I am not condeming it like I am Rowling's book. Some readers may enjoy this style of writing very much, it just was not my cup of tea.