Laura
Most of this book was about Charles Lenox running for Parliament. I did not read this book in order to learn about 19th-century British election procedures. The mystery itself was only mildly interesting and was wrapped up rather quickly.
Another “DaVinci Code” knockoff....but boring. It's hard to believe that this is supposed to be the first of a series featuring the main character, Molly O'Dwyer, because it was extremely dull.
Neither Mary nor Elizabeth comes across as even remotely appealing. The tone of the whole thing is very gossipy and lurid. And having Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour have sex is just too much!
- I don't really want to know such detail about butchery, because it's kind of gross.
2. The author is seriously messed up.
3. I feel sorry for her family and anyone who knows her, because who wants to read such horrible stuff about someone?
4. The main reason I read this book is that the library summer reading program has a “food” theme, so I get a raffle ticket for books that have something to do with food. I'd better win something good!
I won this book in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway, otherwise I would have put it down after the first few chapters. I think the author must have had a thesaurus by his side as he came up with words like “viridian” and “rubiginous” in the first two pages alone. The characters are one-dimensional; for example, John is EEEVILLL, and Richard is Valiant. I also was annoyed by the abrupt end to the story. There seemed to be no resolution to the conflict.
An excellent review of the Mass for Catholics and a straightforward explanation for everyone else.
According to the blurb on the back, this book is “urbane” and “funny”, but it actually turned out to be rather dry and boring.
Received as ARC through Penguin Books First to Read.
An interesting take on “The Three Musketeers” from Milady's perspective. Although somehow I still prefer the original!
I received an e-book copy through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Try though I might, I could not get through this book. Long passages of dialogue, illogical skips in the narrative, and thoroughly unlikeable characters made it a chore to even get halfway before I gave up.
Another one that I couldn't get into, so I might as well just return it to the library.
This book has an interesting concept–pseudo-newspaper accounts of historical events–but it just wasn't enough to keep my attention. It would be fun to dip into now and then, however.
Got it from the library again Feb 2013 and tried to read more, but I decided it's just too boring!
Should be subtitled “Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Around Ten Things that We Eat, Presented in an Annoyingly Snarky Way”.
Received through LibraryThing member giveaways.
The topic is interesting but the story was pretty thin and made little sense. There really was no solving of a mystery - Isaac just knew who the murderer was, somehow. The whole book seemed more of an outline where a lot of connecting and/or explanatory material would have been helpful. Also, there were many, many typos...
I wanted to like this book more, since I enjoyed the previous three in the series. But I just couldn't get into the mystery–it wasn't as personal to the characters as in the previous books. Hopefully in the next book, Emily will get back to England to do some detective work.
