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A Dixie Christmas
by Sandra Hill
by Sandra Hill
Ruth's review
bookshelves: contemporary-romance, net_galley, hit-my-face-with-a-wet-kipper
Dec 11, 11
bookshelves: contemporary-romance, net_galley, hit-my-face-with-a-wet-kipper
Read from December 08 to 10, 2011
I received this set of two Christmas-themed short stories from netgalley, and I was really disappointed.
The first one is supposed to be an Elvis-themed Christmas story about a Wall St type finding lurve. There are some weakly amusing aspects, and I guess City Slicker-meets-Farm-Girl is an interesting trope, but it is just that, an overworked, quite old-fashioned plot. There are so many things wrong with this story that it's hard to know where to begin, but I'll do my best...
- If I came from Tennessee, I'd be pretty put-out. I have friends and colleagues from Tennessee, and the whole wooden-teeth thing is so old and tedious that I was quite annoyed to find that this story implied that the heroine and her family were a modern day version of the Beverley Hillbillies, but without the Beverley Hills bit. The story doesn't play on the real Southern hospitality you find in Tennessee, and I honestly couldn't figure out why not.
- If I worked on Wall St/financial services, I'd be pretty put-out. Whatever your politics, most people who work in financial services are just completely normal people earning a living, even the ones who earn big livings are just normal people like the rest of us. This book doesn't adequately distinguish between the everyday people who work on Wall St, and the incredibly wealthy people out there (the hero is one of the latter). Also, the hero was pretty pathetic for a City Slicker - lives in a mansion by himself (actually, I can't see that - wouldn't most of them live in beautiful big apartments in Manhattan not mansions?), and comes across as rather drippy really.
- If I were a farmer, I'd be pretty put-out. This book represents a missed opportunity to show that farmers are pretty technologically-savvy people, and show them in a good light, rather than the hokey, hickey, but strapping, poor people this book makes them out to be.
- The hero and heroine decide that they want to spend their lives with each other within about 20 minutes of meeting, which is the biggest load of horse manure I've ever read. And then they're surprised that the other doesn't want to move? Utter tripe.
- The dreadful Aunt Liza character seemed to serve no purpose beyond sharing her 16th century morals and irritating the reader.
And that's before I even get to complain about the number of really tenuous Elvis links in it.
The second book is actually worse than the first one, and I can't really bring myself to write in detail why. The heroine has some real self-image problems, and apparently thinks that resorting to diet pills when she's a size 10 is normal behavior, letting her 7 year-old daughter dress like a hooker is "unique" and that she's a good role model by discussing in front of said daughter exactly how she's going to starve herself so she can fit into a slinky red dress. I felt incredibly sorry for her NASCAR ex-hubby, but he wasn't much better really and came across as a hopelessly pathetic case. We never find out why they really got divorced, or what has changed to make it a potentially viable relationship again.
So, 1 star. I didn't like, and actually disliked quite a lot.
The first one is supposed to be an Elvis-themed Christmas story about a Wall St type finding lurve. There are some weakly amusing aspects, and I guess City Slicker-meets-Farm-Girl is an interesting trope, but it is just that, an overworked, quite old-fashioned plot. There are so many things wrong with this story that it's hard to know where to begin, but I'll do my best...
- If I came from Tennessee, I'd be pretty put-out. I have friends and colleagues from Tennessee, and the whole wooden-teeth thing is so old and tedious that I was quite annoyed to find that this story implied that the heroine and her family were a modern day version of the Beverley Hillbillies, but without the Beverley Hills bit. The story doesn't play on the real Southern hospitality you find in Tennessee, and I honestly couldn't figure out why not.
- If I worked on Wall St/financial services, I'd be pretty put-out. Whatever your politics, most people who work in financial services are just completely normal people earning a living, even the ones who earn big livings are just normal people like the rest of us. This book doesn't adequately distinguish between the everyday people who work on Wall St, and the incredibly wealthy people out there (the hero is one of the latter). Also, the hero was pretty pathetic for a City Slicker - lives in a mansion by himself (actually, I can't see that - wouldn't most of them live in beautiful big apartments in Manhattan not mansions?), and comes across as rather drippy really.
- If I were a farmer, I'd be pretty put-out. This book represents a missed opportunity to show that farmers are pretty technologically-savvy people, and show them in a good light, rather than the hokey, hickey, but strapping, poor people this book makes them out to be.
- The hero and heroine decide that they want to spend their lives with each other within about 20 minutes of meeting, which is the biggest load of horse manure I've ever read. And then they're surprised that the other doesn't want to move? Utter tripe.
- The dreadful Aunt Liza character seemed to serve no purpose beyond sharing her 16th century morals and irritating the reader.
And that's before I even get to complain about the number of really tenuous Elvis links in it.
The second book is actually worse than the first one, and I can't really bring myself to write in detail why. The heroine has some real self-image problems, and apparently thinks that resorting to diet pills when she's a size 10 is normal behavior, letting her 7 year-old daughter dress like a hooker is "unique" and that she's a good role model by discussing in front of said daughter exactly how she's going to starve herself so she can fit into a slinky red dress. I felt incredibly sorry for her NASCAR ex-hubby, but he wasn't much better really and came across as a hopelessly pathetic case. We never find out why they really got divorced, or what has changed to make it a potentially viable relationship again.
So, 1 star. I didn't like, and actually disliked quite a lot.
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Reading Progress
| 12/09/2011 |
|
62.0% | "Size 10 is "curvy" (Christ, I hate that word!) enough to require diet-frikkin'-pills?!! I'm well and truly fucked then.." 2 comments | |
| 12/09/2011 |
|
63.0% | "And the hero still calls the woman from whom he's been divorced five years his "wife"? Grrr." | |
| 12/09/2011 |
|
72.0% | "This stupid heroine lets her 7 year-old daughter dress like a hooker?!! And then calls it her "unique style"...." | |
| 12/09/2011 |
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73.0% | "AND she talks about putting herself onto a diet of grapefruits (!) to get into a dress in front of her skanky little girl. Am I the only one who thinks that frikkin' weird?" 7 comments |
Comments (showing 1-8 of 8) (8 new)
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Gaeta1
(new)
Dec 11, 2011 07:08am
sounds bad! Your reading progress comments were great.
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Gaeta1 wrote: "sounds bad! Your reading progress comments were great."Well, netgalley has a no naughty-language policy for reviews, but I couldn't hold it in!!!!
This was one awful collection. Would have felt sorry for the heroes if they'd actually had a backbone between them.
"hit my face with a wet kipper"? :D There should be a whole nominations and awards process for GR shelf names. XD
LOL! Great review, Ruth, :). Those stories sound baaaaad. (And where does Elvis fit in?)I guess as long as the author is equally ignorant of each group she writes about (Wall St., farmers and folks from Tennessee), it's all good. ;D Wouldn't want to be unfair, you know.
Karla (Mossy Love Grotto) wrote: ""hit my face with a wet kipper"? :D There should be a whole nominations and awards process for GR shelf names. XD"It's the best way I could think of to describe the dull but irritating pain experienced whilst reading books of this calibre.
Tammy wrote: "LOL! Great review, Ruth, :). Those stories sound baaaaad. (And where does Elvis fit in?)I guess as long as the author is equally ignorant of each group she writes about (Wall St., farmers and ..."
The Elvis thing was completely tenuous and predicated on the plot setting in Memphis and the hero's mother apparently photographing Elvis. Daft.
Tammy wrote: "Daft.You're not kidding. Aren't you glad this was from netgalley and not a bookstore? :)"
I honestly wouldn't have even considered buying this one. The description didn't appeal to me at all, but sometimes you just never know, and you end up with a book that sounds like crap but is actually really good. This one was just crap.
