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2016 book: Where the Deer Dwell
Apr. 17th, 2016 08:14 amWhere the Deer Dwell by Dorothy E Gravelle
Rating: Hated (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
Bad book. Bad bad bad. You're a bad book and you should feel bad.
Once I realized this book was romance, I wondered why/how I ended up with it on my Kindle. Then, once I remembered the plot, I understood how I might have overlooked that fact: The story is about a woman who loves 'prehistoric fiction' (Clan of the Cave Bear and the like), and somehow ends up in that time and has to survive. Seems like a cool, fun idea!
The story opens with that woman. She loves her boss. He's the ~perfect~ man, so wonderful and attractive and cares about her and just ~perfect~. Except he's happily married. So, since she cannot have that ~perfect~ man, she decides life is just not worth living. So all she does is read. When she leaves work, she spends all night reading. Over the weekends, all she does is read, because life isn't worth living if she can't have ~perfect~ man. And when I say all she does is read, I mean that literally -- every Sunday, she realizes she still has her makeup from Friday workday on...
Issues by this point of the story, besides the whole 'life isn't worth living without ~perfect~ man' thing:
- No character in this story acts like a real person. None.
- As a fan of prehistoric fiction myself, I can tell you there are not enough books of that type for her to read endlessly nonstop for years. She buys at least one new one a week (from a physical bookstore no less, which would further restrict the pool of them).
So, on the rare Sunday afternoon when she's finished Friday's new books and has nothing left to read until she can buy more on Monday, she goes to the museum to see all the things she reads about.
One day she goes to the museum, only to fall into a trap. Under the museum is a super secret scientific lair. The scientist there has invented time travel, and for no reasonable reason, is sending women back to prehistoric time.
Issues:
- There are dozens and dozens of people working in this super secret lair. Scientists, businessmen. Yet somehow the fact that this guy invented time travel and is using it pointlessly never gets out.
- They send the women back with BOOKS, modern weapons (knives, GUNS), backpacks -- no care at all about sending these modern things into the past, where they might change history and thus change 'the future'/current time. And yet they send almost no food or water back with the women...
About the 25% point of the book, she arrives in the past. Now I thought it might get interesting. The author must be a fan of prehistoric fiction herself, so maybe the book would start getting good... Funny thought, I know.
I think the main character woman actually somehow got even more stupid. When she first arrived, in a forest full of wild animals, a beetle landed on her arm, so she screamed and threw her gun away and ran. Ugh.
Then we started getting different POVs, meeting the clan of people who lived in that time. Utterly unsurprisingly, they seemed more like modern people than some ancient tribe (talk of trials and juries, for example). The bad guy in that tribe was just so over the top, mustache-twirling bad, I couldn't continue reading.
I hit the 33% point, so close to 50%, yet didn't make it further so cannot count this towards the count for the year. Dud #11 in a row.
Currently reading: The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness. If Patric Ness cannot get me out of this book slump, there is no hope.
Rating: Hated (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
Bad book. Bad bad bad. You're a bad book and you should feel bad.
Once I realized this book was romance, I wondered why/how I ended up with it on my Kindle. Then, once I remembered the plot, I understood how I might have overlooked that fact: The story is about a woman who loves 'prehistoric fiction' (Clan of the Cave Bear and the like), and somehow ends up in that time and has to survive. Seems like a cool, fun idea!
The story opens with that woman. She loves her boss. He's the ~perfect~ man, so wonderful and attractive and cares about her and just ~perfect~. Except he's happily married. So, since she cannot have that ~perfect~ man, she decides life is just not worth living. So all she does is read. When she leaves work, she spends all night reading. Over the weekends, all she does is read, because life isn't worth living if she can't have ~perfect~ man. And when I say all she does is read, I mean that literally -- every Sunday, she realizes she still has her makeup from Friday workday on...
Issues by this point of the story, besides the whole 'life isn't worth living without ~perfect~ man' thing:
- No character in this story acts like a real person. None.
- As a fan of prehistoric fiction myself, I can tell you there are not enough books of that type for her to read endlessly nonstop for years. She buys at least one new one a week (from a physical bookstore no less, which would further restrict the pool of them).
So, on the rare Sunday afternoon when she's finished Friday's new books and has nothing left to read until she can buy more on Monday, she goes to the museum to see all the things she reads about.
One day she goes to the museum, only to fall into a trap. Under the museum is a super secret scientific lair. The scientist there has invented time travel, and for no reasonable reason, is sending women back to prehistoric time.
Issues:
- There are dozens and dozens of people working in this super secret lair. Scientists, businessmen. Yet somehow the fact that this guy invented time travel and is using it pointlessly never gets out.
- They send the women back with BOOKS, modern weapons (knives, GUNS), backpacks -- no care at all about sending these modern things into the past, where they might change history and thus change 'the future'/current time. And yet they send almost no food or water back with the women...
About the 25% point of the book, she arrives in the past. Now I thought it might get interesting. The author must be a fan of prehistoric fiction herself, so maybe the book would start getting good... Funny thought, I know.
I think the main character woman actually somehow got even more stupid. When she first arrived, in a forest full of wild animals, a beetle landed on her arm, so she screamed and threw her gun away and ran. Ugh.
Then we started getting different POVs, meeting the clan of people who lived in that time. Utterly unsurprisingly, they seemed more like modern people than some ancient tribe (talk of trials and juries, for example). The bad guy in that tribe was just so over the top, mustache-twirling bad, I couldn't continue reading.
I hit the 33% point, so close to 50%, yet didn't make it further so cannot count this towards the count for the year. Dud #11 in a row.
Currently reading: The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness. If Patric Ness cannot get me out of this book slump, there is no hope.
