I was hopeful about this book. The story revolves around a man who found a mail-order bride in Manila, and is told in a series of chapters going from the point of view of one character to the next as the story evolved. Typically I enjoy this style of story-telling, but I didn't feel it was particularly well-executed in this case. It wasn't terrible, but I wasn't very drawn into the story. The characters tended to be very one-dimensional, and the parts of the story I found most interesting involved the lives of the impoverished families back in Manila. The rest of it sort of drug on for me.

I rated it two stars because it wasn't altogether terrible, and I would give this author another chance if the plot sounded interesting enough, but I didn't mind at all when the book was over. The end would have been unsatisfying if I cared about the story or the characters. ( )

I won a copy of Thoughts of Maria from LibraryThing and was intrigued by the plot. In short, a divorced man, Gerry, pays brings over a mail-order bride from Manila. There are obviously as lot of complicated sides of this issue, and the author does a decent job of showing some of the nuances of the situation. The mail-order bride lives in abject poverty with virtually no hope of getting out of the literal dump in which she lives, and so it makes sense that she'd grab on to any way to get to the U.S.

Gerry is divorced and lonely, and doesn't believe that marriage should be about love. He believes it should involve tenderness and care for your spouse, but that inevitably he wants a partner and he thinks if you look at it practically and without all the messy love stuff, you'll make a wiser decision. I found this thought process of his to be believable.

That said, there were several sides of it that I thought he handled pretty poorly. I got the impression that the author wanted readers to feel positively about mail-order brides. However, the situation described in this book is the absolute ideal situation and I don't know that I buy that it happens this way very frequently. The man who bought this woman was very kind and non-abusive, the man who went to the dump in which she lived and recruited her was honest and fair with her and her family. I felt like all of the things that make this kind of thing problematic were just glossed over and not addressed. Which is fine, if that's the story the author wants to tell, but I would have found the book much more satisfying if it had explored some of these issues.

I also didn't enjoy the characterization of the characters. Gerry had an ex-wife and a son, both of whom were awful and had absolutely no nuance to them. His wife was presented as some sort of shrew who was completely void of redeeming qualities, while his son was a fuck-up who sat around masturbating to pictures of his dad's mail-order bride. They were completely flat, never surprised me, and were essentially uninteresting past their initial characterizations.

The writing style was not particularly compelling either. The book was comprised of numerous short chapters and shuffled from the POV of one character to another. I tend to like this format, but the problem was that the author didn't exactly nail each character's voice. Each chapter was titled with the name of the character it was about, and if he hadn't done that, then I would not have been able to tell who was writing what. When you tell a story from a first-person perspective of so many people, they need to have really dynamic, believable voices that feel as though they're truly from several points of view. This was just the author over and over again, and some of them were almost painful to read; most specifically, the son, who was sort of young and the author did a pretty embarrassing job of trying to write like a young 'hip' kid.

It was kind of like when you have a favorite TV show you've watched for years, and then you go back and watch the pilot and you're like, "Damn, this is terrible. These characters are not at all themselves yet. They're still trying on these roles."

Overall I would not recommend this book and I'm sorry to say that I was glad when it was over. ( )

I really tried to give this book a chance, however, it didn't hold my attention. There didn't seem to be a cohesive plot. ( )

As many of the other reviewers, I also received this as an eBook for Early Review. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, as well as having so many perspectives to see the world from. Although I agree that the ending was somewhat abrupt and did not tie everything up in a happily ever after, that did not bother me. Rather, it made me enjoy it just a little more. I think he is a very talented writer and I too will keep an eye out for his next work. ( )

. I think the characters were extremely one-dimensional. Gerry is a Mister Rogers: He's quiet, kind and honest. Which makes the wife that left him nothing but a bitch, and his son is a jerk for not being exactly like Gerry.

2. There's no ending. The book ends but the plot has absolutely no resolution.

3. This book romanticizes sex trafficking. Gerry is a sweet old man looking for love so he goes and rescues poor, poor Maria and they live happily ever after the end. Click here to read more about the connection between mail order brides and trafficking:http://www.unc.edu/~birkos/mail_order_brides/trafficking.html ( )