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A review by nkcrabtree
No Grits No Glory by Elaine Calloway
4.0
I received a copy of this book as part of the Goodreads First Reads giveaway, and the first thing that made me hesitate to dive in was the fact that the novel was double spaced! Like an essay! I shied away from it for a couple weeks, choosing other books, before I decided that I'd take a stab at the book and try and get past the typeface and design issues.
Boy, am I glad I did.
It took me a minute, but I really began to like the main character, Brianna, and her tough-as-nails attitude about her predicament, life decisions, and love interest, Stephen. Sometimes the book would switch from talking about things from Brianna's POV to Stephen's in really odd places, which got disconcerting, but about a third of the way through the novel, it started to click much better. The only real issue that I had with the novel's setup, however, was why Brianna felt like she needed to escape ghosts and her past by moving to Savannah and continuing to work in a mortuary. All of that felt way too contradictory to me, and the storyline would have been better suited had her reason to relocate been as simple as, "I wanted a change of scenery."
That being said, I enjoyed the novel immensely! The action was fast-paced enough that I didn't get bored, yet simplistic enough that I wasn't constantly lost and checking in earlier chapters for information. Characters were well-developed, if slightly cliche, and the villain was convincingly bad. I'd definitely read another of Elaine Calloway's novels! Thanks for the book!
Boy, am I glad I did.
It took me a minute, but I really began to like the main character, Brianna, and her tough-as-nails attitude about her predicament, life decisions, and love interest, Stephen. Sometimes the book would switch from talking about things from Brianna's POV to Stephen's in really odd places, which got disconcerting, but about a third of the way through the novel, it started to click much better. The only real issue that I had with the novel's setup, however, was why Brianna felt like she needed to escape ghosts and her past by moving to Savannah and continuing to work in a mortuary. All of that felt way too contradictory to me, and the storyline would have been better suited had her reason to relocate been as simple as, "I wanted a change of scenery."
That being said, I enjoyed the novel immensely! The action was fast-paced enough that I didn't get bored, yet simplistic enough that I wasn't constantly lost and checking in earlier chapters for information. Characters were well-developed, if slightly cliche, and the villain was convincingly bad. I'd definitely read another of Elaine Calloway's novels! Thanks for the book!