Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

The Book of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly (with Recipes) by Kate Lebo

1 review

daniellekat's review against another edition

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slow-paced

1.0

Ugh. I should probably mark this as DNF but I'm going to cheat. I read 8 of the 26 essays, and then skim-read another 7. This was not at all what I expected nor what I feel like this book advertised. The title notes "Arguments for the tart, tender, and unruly" so I was expecting some history, science and maybe some folklore content within each essay. Instead, this was a collection of memoir vignettes loosely related to each fruit the author selected. While I enjoyed the first couple of essays, the style quickly became formulaic and redundant...basically some personal anecdote with a fruit as a background character. For example, 'Elderberry' was entirely about the author's grandfather's funeral and there was a elderberry bush in the yard. Or 'Kiwifruit' was about her mother's job at a nursing home and how she peeled a kiwi. This was exhausting to read. If this was maybe 10-12 essays long it might have been more manageable but the repetition was mind-numbing, especially considering the snapshot anecdotes were not particularly interesting. The only positive take away were the unique recipes.
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