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3.18 AVERAGE
3.18 AVERAGE
The only person I would recommend this book to is someone who hates the institution of marriage. It tries to do too much that it comes across as inauthentic. Climate change, gender identity, disability, mixed religion marriages are all just obvious devices for trying to craft a story that is trying hard to appeal to too many people.
I wouldn’t have finished this book if it wasn’t an audio book - it wasn’t worth my sitting down reading time. It’s full unlikable characters and too many characters at that. The book is too long. Do people really screw up their lives with so.much.miscommunication or even non-communication - the scenarios seemed unbelievable. And there were details that were outright wrong that annoyed me. Rabies is not “nearly eradicated” in the US. How many wealthy women in 2016 waited until their 17th week of pregnancy to have their first ultrasound? And the fact that the one character’s kleptomania was not caused by her brain tumor just seemed like poorly researched writing.
And for the audio book - they should have had a second narrator, probably a man. There were too many characters for one person to pull off that many different voices well.
I wouldn’t have finished this book if it wasn’t an audio book - it wasn’t worth my sitting down reading time. It’s full unlikable characters and too many characters at that. The book is too long. Do people really screw up their lives with so.much.miscommunication or even non-communication - the scenarios seemed unbelievable. And there were details that were outright wrong that annoyed me. Rabies is not “nearly eradicated” in the US. How many wealthy women in 2016 waited until their 17th week of pregnancy to have their first ultrasound? And the fact that the one character’s kleptomania was not caused by her brain tumor just seemed like poorly researched writing.
And for the audio book - they should have had a second narrator, probably a man. There were too many characters for one person to pull off that many different voices well.
The premise of this book sounded good, and I liked the idea of structuring the story around changing weather/climate over the course of a year.
Unfortunately the characters all come across as one-dimensional stereotypes and the story devolves into too much soap opera and preachiness. The author tries hard to cover every controversial topic under the sun: divorce, frozen embryos, non-binary kids, adultery, immigration, climate change, elections...and it ends up being a lot of drama and very little substance.
Unfortunately the characters all come across as one-dimensional stereotypes and the story devolves into too much soap opera and preachiness. The author tries hard to cover every controversial topic under the sun: divorce, frozen embryos, non-binary kids, adultery, immigration, climate change, elections...and it ends up being a lot of drama and very little substance.
Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants a little rain. His wife and three daughters (who have their own problems) are blindsided with a harboring and costly secret that distracts him from everything else. The reader follows the Alvarado family as they wrestle with deception, betrayal, and decisions.
María Amparo Escandón is clever, humorous, and quirky. I can’t wait to read more of her work!
María Amparo Escandón is clever, humorous, and quirky. I can’t wait to read more of her work!
this book was so boring there was basically no plot or point at all
The message that both the absurd telenovela-level plot points and the love-hate relationship the characters have with LA convey is: it's complicated, but everything's going to be ok with love.
slow-paced
Did not finish this one. The very beginning was excellent and engaging, but after that, the characters became incredibly dramatic and over the top in everything they did and said. Another review mentioned the author was inspired by telenovelas which would explain everything.