A review by a_ab
A Christmas Celebration by Heidi Swain
1.0
Almost DNF @~80%.
This book started off well enough, but, unfortunately, it didn't know when to stop - it's interminable. It's like the grotesque parody of a pompous actor who refuses to die on stage and keeps coming up with progressively more ridiculous ways to prolong the performance!
The worst part of it is that there's nothing of substance happening in the entire book. There is no development for either the characters or relationships (none of which have any depth to them!). It's just busy bustling about doing chores for almost 500 pages!
I am a fan of low stakes cozy slice-of-life stories, but this was just repetitive tedium upon repetitive tedium ad nauseam.
At around 50% I completely stopped caring and around 80% mark I just couldn't be bothered anymore. I finished it out of sheer stubbornness. Not that it enriched the experience any.
The writing itself (sentence structure and word use wise) wouldn't have been bad if applied to better subject matter, but the author has nothing useful or interesting to say and instead insists that painstaking descriptions of moving boxes around and dropping obnoxious hints for future anticlimactic "reveals" is effective storytelling. Everything is very contrived and needlessly stretched out - misunderstandings, "mysteries" of concealment, internal debates, etc.
Character dialogues seem okay taken out of context scene by scene, but make no sense when you consider those characters as people.
It is supposed to be this inspiring story of kindness and second chances in life and capacity for positive change and all, but instead it felt shallow, fake and disgustingly saccharine.
The romantic line is the most awkward and fake of them all. If's as if it were written by someone who heard of romantic relationships, but had no personal or observational knowledge of them whatsoever.
And seriously, the author must have been paid on the page count basis.
I don't think I'd ever want to subject myself to this author's writing again.
This book started off well enough, but, unfortunately, it didn't know when to stop - it's interminable. It's like the grotesque parody of a pompous actor who refuses to die on stage and keeps coming up with progressively more ridiculous ways to prolong the performance!
The worst part of it is that there's nothing of substance happening in the entire book. There is no development for either the characters or relationships (none of which have any depth to them!). It's just busy bustling about doing chores for almost 500 pages!
I am a fan of low stakes cozy slice-of-life stories, but this was just repetitive tedium upon repetitive tedium ad nauseam.
At around 50% I completely stopped caring and around 80% mark I just couldn't be bothered anymore. I finished it out of sheer stubbornness. Not that it enriched the experience any.
The writing itself (sentence structure and word use wise) wouldn't have been bad if applied to better subject matter, but the author has nothing useful or interesting to say and instead insists that painstaking descriptions of moving boxes around and dropping obnoxious hints for future anticlimactic "reveals" is effective storytelling. Everything is very contrived and needlessly stretched out - misunderstandings, "mysteries" of concealment, internal debates, etc.
Character dialogues seem okay taken out of context scene by scene, but make no sense when you consider those characters as people.
It is supposed to be this inspiring story of kindness and second chances in life and capacity for positive change and all, but instead it felt shallow, fake and disgustingly saccharine.
The romantic line is the most awkward and fake of them all. If's as if it were written by someone who heard of romantic relationships, but had no personal or observational knowledge of them whatsoever.
And seriously, the author must have been paid on the page count basis.
I don't think I'd ever want to subject myself to this author's writing again.