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A review by steph01924
The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins
4.0
This is my fourth Higgins book, so I'm really starting to pick up on the patterns of her writing style. It's not all bad, but there are some things that she does that drive me nuts while reading.
Pros:
She's a good mechanical writer. The story flows together; you can tell she's thought out her plot points and there's rarely something in there that makes me stop and go, 'wait, WHAT?' This was so easy to read; I devoured it in a day.
She fleshes out her characters. I'm glad there's more about the protagonist's life, and also the love interest, than thinking about the other person. The secondary characters get the 'real life' treatment as well, and I appreciate that. I enjoyed the all-too-realistic attitude of Charlie, Mrs. J's embarrassment for falling in love, Tom's charm, Dana's shallowness. This, and the cute little town, is where the book shines.
Cons:
The rat dog. In the first Blue Heron book, the dog was dopey but it wasn't annoying. This "Spike" five pound PITA who bites ankles and gets so many people to coo 'schmoopie-pie' this-and-that to it...SO annoying. Just like in her book with the stupid dog who terrorized the girl's house and houseguests (the one with the delinquent next-door neighbor), I was turned off by the lack of consideration Honor gave Tom when her dog acted up on him (and only him, apparently. What was that supposed to prove?). 'Oh, little Spike peed on your carpet and gym bag - who cares, you probably did something to deserve it.' 'Oh, she bites your ankles and draws blood - isn't she darling, she's just so small!' What the crap? This is not cute. The immigration lady's overly-affectionate attitude to the dog: also very weird. Can Higgins write a decently well-trained dog for once?
The 'eggs'. I know there was some weird phrase/thing in the first Heron book that Faith kept referring to (maybe her lack of insight on men?) that made me roll my eyes, but I can't think of it at the moment, so I guess it didn't bug me too much. But in this book, Honor's stupid aging eggs that she constantly talked to and that made sly comments to her...OMG, MAKE IT STOP. It's eyebrow-quirkingly funny the first time; the fifteenth, it's just freaking strange. Figure out some other way to get these 'nuggets of observation' into your book, because this was just lame.
The 'cursing'. Fine, you don't want all of your characters to constantly be cussing. I get it. But then, please, put on your creative thinking cap and branch out beyond the same stupidly dumb fake curse word that appears every three pages. Oh, fungus. FUNGUS. Fungus, he's saw me. Fungus, I'm in a pickle. Ugh, I got really sick of it, especially when Tom was able to bust out his own 'fucking's any time he wanted, so it's not like the writer has an aversion to curse words. Making it some weird, off-the-wall term like that (and REPEATING IT OVER AND OVER) only calls more attention to it. People use more than one (non)curse word, Kristan.
Anyway...the cons aren't enough to not read the book, they are just the silly things that seem to be her 'signature' that I really dislike.
Pros:
She's a good mechanical writer. The story flows together; you can tell she's thought out her plot points and there's rarely something in there that makes me stop and go, 'wait, WHAT?' This was so easy to read; I devoured it in a day.
She fleshes out her characters. I'm glad there's more about the protagonist's life, and also the love interest, than thinking about the other person. The secondary characters get the 'real life' treatment as well, and I appreciate that. I enjoyed the all-too-realistic attitude of Charlie, Mrs. J's embarrassment for falling in love, Tom's charm, Dana's shallowness. This, and the cute little town, is where the book shines.
Cons:
The rat dog. In the first Blue Heron book, the dog was dopey but it wasn't annoying. This "Spike" five pound PITA who bites ankles and gets so many people to coo 'schmoopie-pie' this-and-that to it...SO annoying. Just like in her book with the stupid dog who terrorized the girl's house and houseguests (the one with the delinquent next-door neighbor), I was turned off by the lack of consideration Honor gave Tom when her dog acted up on him (and only him, apparently. What was that supposed to prove?). 'Oh, little Spike peed on your carpet and gym bag - who cares, you probably did something to deserve it.' 'Oh, she bites your ankles and draws blood - isn't she darling, she's just so small!' What the crap? This is not cute. The immigration lady's overly-affectionate attitude to the dog: also very weird. Can Higgins write a decently well-trained dog for once?
The 'eggs'. I know there was some weird phrase/thing in the first Heron book that Faith kept referring to (maybe her lack of insight on men?) that made me roll my eyes, but I can't think of it at the moment, so I guess it didn't bug me too much. But in this book, Honor's stupid aging eggs that she constantly talked to and that made sly comments to her...OMG, MAKE IT STOP. It's eyebrow-quirkingly funny the first time; the fifteenth, it's just freaking strange. Figure out some other way to get these 'nuggets of observation' into your book, because this was just lame.
The 'cursing'. Fine, you don't want all of your characters to constantly be cussing. I get it. But then, please, put on your creative thinking cap and branch out beyond the same stupidly dumb fake curse word that appears every three pages. Oh, fungus. FUNGUS. Fungus, he's saw me. Fungus, I'm in a pickle. Ugh, I got really sick of it, especially when Tom was able to bust out his own 'fucking's any time he wanted, so it's not like the writer has an aversion to curse words. Making it some weird, off-the-wall term like that (and REPEATING IT OVER AND OVER) only calls more attention to it. People use more than one (non)curse word, Kristan.
Anyway...the cons aren't enough to not read the book, they are just the silly things that seem to be her 'signature' that I really dislike.