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Bill's Reviews > Count the Ways
Count the Ways
by
by
I guess Count the Ways could be classified as Women's Fiction, but I really enjoy family drama for stories. I had seen quite a few raves for How the Light Gets In, a follow up to this one, and so I decided to give this a try.
I really enjoyed the story and how realistic things can happen to a family and how people deal with them, and how Joyce Maynard constructed the novel and how things were playing out were really working for me. For over half the novel I was quite sure that I would be giving this one four stars. Now that I am finished it I would throw it across the room if it wasn't on my beloved Kindle.
Oh, I've got things to say. I'm going to have to enclose a few of the things I had big problems with as they will be major spoilers.
Firstly though, let me address the writing. Perhaps it wasn't as bad through the first half, or at least I didn't notice, but the writing became painfully repetitive for the rest of it. Like really, really bad. She would mention the same occurrence or the same observance over and over and over and over and over again. And in a manner as if her reader were a child with the short term memory of a gnat.
Also for the most part, the overall writing had way too much telling and not enough showing. Which I don't like. But, given the story developments below, I'm grateful to be spared the immersion.
Now for what bothered me about the story:
(view spoiler)
(view spoiler)
(view spoiler)
Such stupid character developments, and it's a wonder I finished the book. But I had to see how it wrapped up. I wish I didn't.
Suffice it to say I won't be reading the follow up. Ridiculous.
I really enjoyed the story and how realistic things can happen to a family and how people deal with them, and how Joyce Maynard constructed the novel and how things were playing out were really working for me. For over half the novel I was quite sure that I would be giving this one four stars. Now that I am finished it I would throw it across the room if it wasn't on my beloved Kindle.
Oh, I've got things to say. I'm going to have to enclose a few of the things I had big problems with as they will be major spoilers.
Firstly though, let me address the writing. Perhaps it wasn't as bad through the first half, or at least I didn't notice, but the writing became painfully repetitive for the rest of it. Like really, really bad. She would mention the same occurrence or the same observance over and over and over and over and over again. And in a manner as if her reader were a child with the short term memory of a gnat.
Also for the most part, the overall writing had way too much telling and not enough showing. Which I don't like. But, given the story developments below, I'm grateful to be spared the immersion.
Now for what bothered me about the story:
(view spoiler)
(view spoiler)
(view spoiler)
Such stupid character developments, and it's a wonder I finished the book. But I had to see how it wrapped up. I wish I didn't.
Suffice it to say I won't be reading the follow up. Ridiculous.
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