Review "Loving Mr. Darcy"

Some information

Title: Loving Mr. Darcy

Author: Sharon Lathan

Pages: 448 (aaargh)

Published: September 2009

Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark

My Scource: Boekenfestijn Gent

My Score on Goodreads: 2 stars

Blurb

Darcy and Lizzy venture away from Pemberley to journey through England, finding friends, relatives, fun, love, and an even deeper and more sacred bond along the way.

Having embarked on the greatest adventure of all, marriage and the start of a new life together, now the Darcys take the reader on a journey through a time of prosperity, enjoyment, and security. They experience all the adventures of travel, with friends

and relatives providing both companionship and complications, and with fun as their focus.

The sights and sounds, tastes and flavors of Regency England come alive. Through it all, Darcy and Lizzy continue to build a marriage filled with romance, sensuality, and the beauty of a deep, abiding love.

Review

I have to admit something. Every single time I pass by something related to Jane Austen, even in the smallest way, I have to go back, hug it a little and eventually buy it. Sometimes though this "love at first sight" turns out to be a little disappointing. That was the case with this book. I didn't dislike it, but I didn't like it too. Maybe it was the fact that there didn't happen a thing in this book that made me feel this way. I love to read love stories, but there has to happen something in them. This book just went on and on about the ever lasting love between Elizabeth and Darcy. Only a few chapters away from the end there happens something with these characters. For the rest of the time they say "I love you" a thousand times, buy a lot of things and think about all the things they still have to do. Tiresome!

Review "Vic Mongol"

Some information

Title: Vic Mongol

Author: Jerry Gill

Pages: 162

Published: January 2014

Publisher: Ann\Darrow#company

My Scource: author (thank you!)

My Score on Goodreads: 2 stars 

Blurb

Since man has been man, those called wise in every generation and culture have declared that true love never dies. There must be a reason they keep saying this. 

A merciless, agonizing memory can sometimes break a person and render them incapable of facing even the commonplace without being unnerved. Then sometimes it will forge a person into something more than human, a figure of near super human ability who can take action in even the most savage of circumstances.

Victoria Custer remembered how she and the one to whom she vowed her eternal love were buried by mountains and swallowed by the sea. That painful, frightening memory from a thousand generations past has forged her into something more than she was and has emboldened her with unrelenting purpose. Now, as Vic Challenger, she will confront even the grimmest peril and will venture into situations so horrible they make the bravest of men cower and weep for their mother. Vic has embarked against all odds on an epic quest that may last a lifetime and on any day could bring violent death. She has learned from her mysterious avatar Nat-ul, even when you face the gravest of threats, you need not be brave, you just need to do what needs done, for no matter how dire the circumstances, “It’s not hard. It’s just living.”

Nothing short of death will stop Vic. And even death itself seems to have failed at least once.

It’s the Fall of 1920 and Vic Challenger and her friend Lin Li have gone to Mongolia. They thought they were prepared for anything but doom begins to hound them, in the form of Hung-hu-tzes, White Russians, and hellish creatures that stalk them from underground. This is Lin's first trip with Vic but will it also be her last? They both have to wonder how this trip will end...

Review

Writing a book isn't easy, neither is writing a review about it. Sometimes you just don't know what to think about something you've read. For me that's the case with this book "Vic Mongol". I didn't know what to expect after reading the text on the cover. I also was a little scared because it's the second book about this main character, Vic, and I haven't read the first one. Always dangerous... I read the book nevertheless and now I'm sitting here and I don't know what to write about it.

The main thing that confuses me is the fact there seem to be many little unimportant stories in this book. We have a main character who's on a sort of quest in her life. We see her leaving for a trip to the other side of the world, hoping to find the person she's looking for. The one who can make her life complete. The curiosity is that this quest always seems to be put in the second place. Vic always gets in big trouble and instead of dealing with those things as quickly as possible, she always ends up putting these trouble central in her life. Where has her quest gone? Why doesn't she put more effort in finding that important person? Her whole life is dedicated to that mysterious person, but it seems to be easy to forget about him and end up looking for the murderer of an old lady she doesn't know of getting involved in political matters in Mongolia. Most of the time this just didn't make sense to me.

Who is this "Vic"? Victoria Custer, a.k.a. Vic Challenger, is a young reporter. She loves to travel around the world, take pictures of the amazing things around her and write controversial articles about them. Vic looks like a normal girl, a girly girl even, but she's everything but that. Vic has some sort of alter ego, Nat-ul. In her dreams Vic can communicate with this girl who lived more than a thousand years ago. Everything makes her believe she once was that person and is now reincarnated in a new human being. Nat-ul was in love with Nu, the son of Nu. A great warrior who returned her love and killed the biggest wild cat in the world to show her his love. Sadly Nu was killed after a giant earthquake. The cave he hid in, collapsed and he died. Nat-ul didn't survive this earthquake either but her soul keeps on searching her lover. Her soul which lives on in Vic Challenger.

Apart from Vic we also have some other characters in the book, but we don't get to know them very well. This is one of the things I didn't like about this story. Sometimes all of our characters and the crazy situations they were in, just became a big blur. Also the frequent hunting on animals, the unbelieveable situations and the supernatural creatures made me sigh more than once. Further there were a lot of indistinct descriptions of crazy situations. 

All these things set apart, this could be a good book for people who like this writing style, this genre and this kind of stories. 

Review "Sleeping Arrangements"

Some information

Title: Sleeping Arrangements

Author: Sophie Kinsella (writing as Madeleine Wickham)

Pages: 304

Genre: Chick Lit

Published: October 2010

Publisher: Black Swan

My Source: Boekenfestijn Ghent

My score on Goodreads: 2 stars

Covertext

An early bestseller from the fabulous author of the Shopaholic series. Chloe needs a holiday. She's sick of making wedding dresses and her partner Philip has trouble at work. Her wealthy friend Gerard has offered the loan of his luxury villa in Spain -- perfect.

Hugh is not a happy man. His immaculate wife Amanda seems more interested in the granite for the new kitchen than in him, and he works so hard to pay for it all, he barely has time for his family. But his old schoolfriend Gerard has lent them a luxury villa in Spain -- perfect.

Both families arrive at the villa and get a shock: Gerard has double-booked. An uneasy week of sharing begins, and tensions soon mount in the soaring heat. But there's also a secret history between the families -- and as tempers fray, an old passion begins to resurface.

My Review

Hmm I was a little bit disappointed after reading this book. I love books by Sophie Kinsella (Madeleine Wickham) because they are funny, witty and have unexpected twists and turns. This book didn't seem to offer me those things. It was long and there wasn't much variation. It seemed to go on and on without something happening. We have two main characters, Chloe and Hugh, and their families on a strange holiday. Because of a "misunderstanding" they are booked in the same villa in Spain for the same period. Without wanting this, the two families have to live together and share their holiday even though they wanted some private time with their own families. The thing I didn't like about Chloe and Hugh is that they don't develop or change. They just stay the same person through the whole book and this makes the ending very predictable. It's not that I expect people to change in a week time, but the thing is... Chloe and Hugh already knew each other for years. They had a painful history together (about which their partners don't know a thing)and that made me think this holiday would change their feelings towards each other. But it all remained the same... 

Normally I read books like this in 2 or 3 days... This one took me a little longer and that's the sign I didn't like it that much. I couldn't connect with Chloe and Hugh because they were so rigid. I didn't want to know what was going to happen because I had the feeling I already knew it from the beginning on. I didn't want to continue the book because I couldn't see how a holiday of one week could keep me interested for 300 pages... 

I can't say something about the story itself. It was a good idea for a book, but the author could have used more twists and turns in this one. Make it a little more exciting. For example, I like characters with faults because that's more human. Chloe and Hugh had those faults, but they always were compensated or something... Just when I started to feel some sympathy for someone in the book, there happened something else that flattened them again. Maybe I'm just being difficult here, but this book was not what I expected it to be and bored me a little to much to be positive. (Love other books by Sophie Kinsella though!)

Review "Keeping Score ~ A guide to love and relationships"

Some information

Title: Keeping Score ~ A guide to love and relationships

Author: Marc Brackett

Pages: 128

Genre: Non Fiction, Self Help

Published: july 2012

Publisher: Treinta y Tres Publishing

My scource: the author (thank you!)

My score on Goodreads: 2.5 (3 on GR)

Covertext

It's a relationship book even a man will read.

Keeping Score provides a relationship evaluation quiz followed by a common sense guide for relationship improvement, all with a humorous twist. You can determine if your relationship has the qualities it takes for a successful marriage and lasting love affair. 

If you're single- read this book to see how well your potential life partner measures up. If you're married- read this book to reduce conflict and increase your happiness.

Take control and shape your union into a relationship that will stand the trials of life and go the distance.

My review

At first I wanted to give this book 2.5 stars, but since that's not possible on Goodreads I doubted wether I would give it a 2 or a 3. A 2 was not enough and a 3 was a little too much. Than I thought: well, maybe I didn't like this book so much because I couldn't really "use" it at this point in my life. That's why I gave 3 stars to "Keeping Score - A guide to love and relationships". 

Although I didn't like the book so much, I have to admit there were some parts I found interesting. Other parts didn't give much new information and just recapitulated things I already knew. Sometimes it seemed like the author wanted to share a totally new insight with his readers and I had the "ooow, exciting!"-feeling. After reading those parts in the book I always had the "ooow, is that it?"-feeling and I felt a little disappointed.

Writing this review was so difficult and it's still a lot shorter than I wanted it to be! Reviewing a guide is totally different from reviewing a book with characters, a plot,... It took me a while to think about the book but here is my opinion: "Keeping Score" is a good read but I really don't know wether it would help a relationship or not. I don't think it would really help me...