Love Among the Walnuts

Review: Love Among The Walnuts by Jean Ferris. 06/15/2017

This is a great story about friendship and fidelity. I think the author did a great job with her writing style and introducing characters that were different, individually creative, and eccentric with humor in the mix. I call it either a cozy, relaxing or beach book. The person narrating has a hopeless sounding style but just enough heart to keep the intimidating fundamentals humorous even when they are frightening.

This is a story about a wealthy man but he is not happy until he meets Mousey and they get married. They have a child and they named him Alexander but call him Sandy. After growing up Sandy tried hard to take care of his parents who are the legacy of his wealth but show more also Sandy was a caring person. Everything was going great until the day his two greedy uncles came back to town with nothing but trouble for the family and were planning to get rid of their brother, sister-in-law and Sandy to get there grubby hands on the multimillion dollars Eclipse Estate, free and clear….

One day the two uncles showed up with a birthday cake, laced with poison, to join in the festivities at the mansion. However, their plan didn’t go the way they wanted. Sandy and the butler didn’t eat any of the cake, no reason just coincidental. For some unknown reason Sandy’s parents, the housekeeper, Flossy, who the butler had a crush on and a pet chicken who had freedom in the Eclipse mansion…all fell into a coma…! Now, Sandy knew his uncles were up to no good. They made other attempts but were unproductive to succeed.

Sandy now has to hire a nurse to help him to care for his parents at home. The nurse turns out to be a little wacky but Sandy was fascinated with her. However, their home nursing plan was sabotaged. I wonder who was involved stopping their care at home…!? But wait, wouldn’t you know they lived next door to a sanitarium known as Walnut Manor…I’ll leave the other weird events for the next reader…. show less

I see this adorable modern fairy tale is thought of as a YA book. I personallly think teens & 20s are too cynical for it, or at least would want to think themselves too cynical. There are def. no vampires and it's pretty much Utopian, not Dystopian or post-ap. But 'tweens can read it for sure. And adults can read it in one sleepless night.

Btw, the mystery is the big hook on which the story is hung, but really what it's about is the power of love & friendship and the questions of sanity vs insanity & of engaging the world or indulging waldenlust*


*Waldenlust is a term one of [a:Gretchen Rubin|21246|Gretchen Rubin|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1252934548p2/21246.jpg]'s fans coined, as mentioned in [b:Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump show more More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life|13414599|Happier at Home Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life|Gretchen Rubin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1344014249s/13414599.jpg|18713712]. show less

I picked this up when my daughter had to read it for school, and what a pleasant surprise! It's one of the most charming books I've ever read.

This was another one of my recent reads that had me underwhelmed. I wasn't a fan of the writing to begin with--I felt that it was trying much too hard to be whimsical and this was overly obvious. It gets better as the plot progresses, but the plot is pretty weak, predictable, and boring. I felt like it was in great need of plot twists and funny situations, instead of just ironically "funny" narration. Now, don't get me wrong, some of the whimsy was hilarious. The character's names were clever and really fun to track. I just don't know, though. If you're in the mood for whimsy, I would strongly recommend Ferris's other books, Once Upon A Marigold and Twice Upon a Marigold. This was more morbid, darker humor, reminding me a times of show more Pushing Daisies (but really not as funny). I just kept trying to look past the plot, theorizing that there'd be a twist in relation to the characters, the location, the mystery, whatever, and nothing really surfaced. I did enjoy watching the relationship between Sandy and Sunnie progress, but even that felt drastically drawn out (but maybe that's what made it so cute!). All in all, not the greatest book, but there are definitely worse.

Rating: 3/5 show less

I think Ferris was channeling Ellen Raskin when she wrote this young adult novel, but left out the puzzles Raskin is known for. It has the same breezy, almost flippant tone and odd characters. I'm not sure who the audience is for this - probably kids that read a lot and are ready for something out of the ordinary.

Love among the Walnuts is a charming, amusing story, if not profound. It's shelved as a young adult novel in my library, and I loved it in high school, though I'm not quite as enthusiastic now. However, it does have fun characters, and while the plot isn't original, the highjinks are a little different. And like most non-drama stories taking place near a "loony bin" it's the loonies who really make the story.

Pretty good, kinda weird. Great characters and kooky and interesting plot lines. I enjoyed it while I was reading but it wasn't terribly compelling. Still, a nice little mindless break from some of the heavier reading I've been doing otherwise.