This is, I believe, the worst book I have ever finished. A full catalog of its crimes would take several pages, but I shall try to restrain myself.
It is written in cliche-ridden, awkward English that is often incorrect; its characters are thinly drawn and tiresome, and its heroine verges on Mary-Sueism, so competent, virtuous, and beautiful is she. After all, if she cared about dressing well, she'd be the prettiest gal in town, and her blond, muscular, broad-chested veterinarian ex-husband wants her back sooooo much! Ah well, so much for restraining myself.
Perhaps most unforgiveable, after the ear-grating language, is the idealized setting in rural Northern Virginia, which comes with a pervasive assumption that people in rural N. VA have discovered the One True Way to live, and are nicer, more civilized, and just generally better than all others. I suppose no one told Rita Mae and her cat that the book would be distributed in many other places.
Anyway, the 'mystery' is not horrible, but I solved it fairly early on, and finished the book largely to see how long it would take Mary Sue to do so. The payoff was worth it, since she discovered so late in the game, and the consequences of her discovery were so appallingly melodramatic and badly thought out that my combined rage and laughter nearly caused me to crash my car when I got to that point in the audiobook.
About the reading: The reader was dreadful too. I guess her accents were nice enough, but her own awkward understanding of grammatical structure compounded the problems of the book, and her lack of proper emotional tone layered with that of the characters. ("I just found a man I know and like dying of a gushing neck wound! Ho-hum! How was YOUR day, strangely-named cardboard cutout character 3A?")
It is written in cliche-ridden, awkward English that is often incorrect; its characters are thinly drawn and tiresome, and its heroine verges on Mary-Sueism, so competent, virtuous, and beautiful is she. After all, if she cared about dressing well, she'd be the prettiest gal in town, and her blond, muscular, broad-chested veterinarian ex-husband wants her back sooooo much! Ah well, so much for restraining myself.
Perhaps most unforgiveable, after the ear-grating language, is the idealized setting in rural Northern Virginia, which comes with a pervasive assumption that people in rural N. VA have discovered the One True Way to live, and are nicer, more civilized, and just generally better than all others. I suppose no one told Rita Mae and her cat that the book would be distributed in many other places.
Anyway, the 'mystery' is not horrible, but I solved it fairly early on, and finished the book largely to see how long it would take Mary Sue to do so. The payoff was worth it, since she discovered so late in the game, and the consequences of her discovery were so appallingly melodramatic and badly thought out that my combined rage and laughter nearly caused me to crash my car when I got to that point in the audiobook.
About the reading: The reader was dreadful too. I guess her accents were nice enough, but her own awkward understanding of grammatical structure compounded the problems of the book, and her lack of proper emotional tone layered with that of the characters. ("I just found a man I know and like dying of a gushing neck wound! Ho-hum! How was YOUR day, strangely-named cardboard cutout character 3A?")