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Monthly Archives: September 2013
Book Review: Moonlight, by Tim O’Rourke
I picked up a copy of Tim O’Rourke’s Moonlight as an Amazon freebie.
When eighteen-year-old Winter McCall is offered a chance to leave her life of poverty behind on the streets of London, she moves to a remote part of the South West of England. Here she takes up the job as housekeeper to the young and handsome, yet mysterious, Thaddeus Blake.
Warned that he has some curious habits, Winter soon realises that not all is as it firsts appears at the remote mansion where she now lives and works.
Blind to the real danger that she is in, Winter finds herself becoming attracted to Thaddeus, and with nowhere and no one to run to, she slowly succumbs to his strange requests. But none of them are as strange as asking Winter to stand each night in the moonlight.
My Review:
I passed a pleasant evening with Moonlight, but anyone who has ever read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches will find this plot immanently familiar and predictable (just with a paranormal twist). As I have read Doyle’s works it took a little of the fun out of it for me. I pretty much knew where the book was going from very early on. Despite that, I enjoyed O’Rourke’s writing style and Thaddeus’ personality (even if Winter didn’t do too much for me) and Michelle, Claude, and Nate are fearsome foes. For a quick read, Moonlight is well worth picking up.
Book Review: Incorrigibility, by Rayme Michaels
This is a wacky, dialogue-driven novella of bawdy, screwball, irreverent a surreal runaway train of guys talking the way men often do when women aren’t around or saying what they often have on their minds but are too bashful, due to the politically correct status quo, to actually speak, although it is very hyperbolic as well. It is a quirky relationship/sex comedy, where the boundaries of the mundane are mocked, bent, ridiculed, pushed, pummeled, pulverized, pounded, picked on and provoked. It is a tad bit existential as well and does have its serious and sappy, yet genuine, moments. It also holds within it the most riotous courtroom trial you’ll ever encounter! Enjoy the ride!
My Review:
Yeah, so… Matt, Brent, and Jessie are average guys? I don’t know if I believe it, but then I’m a woman, so what would I know? The book does have its funny moments, its existentialist moments, and more than a few surreal moments, but it is about as realistic as the hit TV show FRIENDS. Friends is funny, but most people understand that it is not a realistic depiction of the lives people in New York actually live. In the same way, Incorrigibility is funny, but I have a hard time imagining anyone having such brutal and blunt conversations. It feels more like an exaggeration of the conversations men have. This isn’t a criticism since I don’t think the book is aiming for realism. I’m just saying.
Matt is possibly the most repulsive man on earth, as he is meant to be. Brent and Jessie are a little hard to tell apart at times, but they are both generally good guys looking for the meaning of life and a worthwhile and legitimate love. The women are mere shells, hollow cutouts for the men to project their sexual frustrations upon. I would be offended, but this is a book about men’s perspectives on love and sex. I think it is meant to be one-sided.
I had no strong feelings about the book, one way or the other. It didn’t top my faves list, but I didn’t hate it either.