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A review by crescent_just
Rhode Island Red by Charlotte Carter
3.0
I'm actually annoyed that a potentially great story was wasted.
First of all, for a book centered on the main character Nanette, and for it to even be in her point of view, there is actually very little Nanette in the story. The entire mystery has quite literally got nothing to do with her, and happens to be a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, all very circumstantial which I found unfortunate I mean what then is the point? Why am I looking on alongside the main character while the actual story is happening elsewhere?
Now as much as I was frustrated by this, there was not a bigger pet peeve than Nanette the character herself.
Which leads me to my second point: there is nothing concrete about Nanette. A lot of the information she gives about herself is greatly lacking at best and hazy at worst. Even if she's not directly involved in any of the mystery, the best thing would have been to give us something about the character to work with. Her inner monologue and dialogues were infuriating because I couldn't decide if they were meant to be funny or just a fault of the author's because I could not take her seriously at all. The only concrete aspects were her love for Henry ( which I was really invested in) and Aubrey (which would be debatable considering she only appeared when Nanette needed help).
Thirdly, the writing could have been better but I didn't dislike it although I do think the author seemed to have some knowledge about the jazz bit enough to make it Nanette's choice of career but while the little nuggets about jazz interspersed within the story did have a correlation with the overall story, Nanette's interest in it just seemed to be a point to justify the plot. Majority of the time I forgot it was even her job.
I might have loved the book better if Nanette was heavily involved in the story heck, I wouldn't have minded if she was also interested in the Rhode island red which made her get caught up in the mess lol because I thought that aspect of the book was quite interesting.
But then even if the author wasn't interested in involving Nanette, there could have been more effort put in Nanette's character to make her a bit more interesting than a mouthpiece for a far interesting aspect of the book.
First of all, for a book centered on the main character Nanette, and for it to even be in her point of view, there is actually very little Nanette in the story. The entire mystery has quite literally got nothing to do with her, and happens to be a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, all very circumstantial which I found unfortunate I mean what then is the point? Why am I looking on alongside the main character while the actual story is happening elsewhere?
Now as much as I was frustrated by this, there was not a bigger pet peeve than Nanette the character herself.
Which leads me to my second point: there is nothing concrete about Nanette. A lot of the information she gives about herself is greatly lacking at best and hazy at worst. Even if she's not directly involved in any of the mystery, the best thing would have been to give us something about the character to work with. Her inner monologue and dialogues were infuriating because I couldn't decide if they were meant to be funny or just a fault of the author's because I could not take her seriously at all. The only concrete aspects were her love for Henry ( which I was really invested in) and Aubrey (which would be debatable considering she only appeared when Nanette needed help).
Thirdly, the writing could have been better but I didn't dislike it although I do think the author seemed to have some knowledge about the jazz bit enough to make it Nanette's choice of career but while the little nuggets about jazz interspersed within the story did have a correlation with the overall story, Nanette's interest in it just seemed to be a point to justify the plot. Majority of the time I forgot it was even her job.
I might have loved the book better if Nanette was heavily involved in the story heck, I wouldn't have minded if she was also interested in the Rhode island red which made her get caught up in the mess lol because I thought that aspect of the book was quite interesting.
But then even if the author wasn't interested in involving Nanette, there could have been more effort put in Nanette's character to make her a bit more interesting than a mouthpiece for a far interesting aspect of the book.