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A Stranger Like You: A Novel (2010)

by Elizabeth Brundage(Favorite Author)

3.03 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0670022004 (ISBN13: 9780670022007)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Viking Adult

review 1: Not a review, just notes for myself.1st chapter: I liked the beginning, I was expecting it to start with the man (Hugh) getting his script to the movie executive. So the beginning took me by a little surprise and I thought the beginning was more interested than the one I had thought. On the first chapter I noticed two things that irritated me some. First: the girl he takes with him to the motel room. I was so amazed that the girl just took of with him, there should´ve been some more talking between the two or something. The whole thing about the girl in the first chapter left me thinking: was she necessary to the story? At least, in did not sound like it. Maybe she´ll be more important later in the book, maybe not. What was written about her made me think that that was i... moret about her. Second: the story seemed to me to jump abruptly from one place to another a few times. With different kinds of paragraph dividing it wouldn´t have felt like that.After finishing the first chapter I´m thinking: how will the story continue. How is the author going to tell about the main characters doings when they are in different places? Is the girl going to have a part in the rest of the book? How will Hedda Chase be discovered, or will she?2nd chapter: What I forgot to write on the first chapter was about Hedda: she wasn´t the usual women character in a book, she was a little fierce, not beautiful, not good mannered. I found it interesting.On the second chapter I noticed I got a little irritated by the writing. At times it felt like sentences after senctences that weren´t that tied together. I thought the story kept jumping ahead. Hugh met with the other writer he had met on the party, Ida. It felt strange to me how fast they seemed to hit it off. Maybe I´ve been reaging old books and young adult books for too long? Maybe more adult books are different in this way. And maybe the characters are just that different than I am.3rd chapter: The things that bugged me on the two first chapters didn´t come to me anymore. I think I was more concentrated in the reading and reading not just to read but to enjoy the reading. Hugh going to Hedda´s appartment and talking to Hedda´s boyfriend and ending up drinking with him made me think that Hugh has some obsession that makes him to stupid things, take risks that a "normal criminal" wouldn´t perhaps make. He went back to the car and found it had disappeared. I kept waiting on some information of what had happened to it. What had Hedda been doing? Had she come around at all or was she unconscious of all at the moment? There was also more background information on Hugh´s past life. He had some interest in men and he had cheated on his wife before. I had thought that he had been faithfull and a good husband till meeting Ida even though his marriage was obviously been dull for a while already. I thought this act of kidnapping Hedda was the first bad thing he had done.After this chapter I´m waiting on some narration of Hedda´s thought and act in the trunk of the car. And if Hugh ever goes back to Hedda´s guy Tom to spend more time and getting to know him more. I think the risk of hanging out with him might make him regret his act more than he already did, discovering the good things about Hedda in addition to the bad things he only knew of her, making her more of a whole and familiar person to him that can only lead to more regret and suspicion of the act..4th chapter: For a while I felt a little confused. A nice way of getting inside her head. Also a nice way of giving the reader some more about her personality and story. Reading this chapter really got me into it, sort of swept me away. Even though the chapter didn´t get the story going forwards, it did not disturb me in any way. I´ve been waiting to read about Hedda and what she´s doing in the trunk and what´s she´s thinking and feeling, but this chapter, in a good way, made me forget for a while what had happened to this person. It gave a short and nice story about three people meeting on a random day, that meant something different to them all.5th chapter: Continued like the fourth one. At times the paragraphs bugged me again as the writing seemed to jump in the next paragraph into something or somewhere else. But reading this was easy and it was easy to keep reading..6th chapter: I was disappointed that still the story didn´t return to the present, Hedda in the car and all that. As an individual chapter I really liked it, it could´ve been an idea for a totally different book what it told about. But as a whole, I think the book could´ve done without this chapter. At times I was yet again irritated about the paragraphs.. At this point all I´m thinking is when will it come back to telling about Hedda in the car and Hugh doing something. Actually, I had already forgotten what his name is..Maybe if the book had started out with telling about Hedda´s life it would´ve worked out better, but now it just feels like filling in between the actual story, that the story of the kidnapping won´t have enough ideas to write about without something unrelated to that story in between..7th chapter: Nothing new for me, the same as before..8th chapter: When this chapter begun I thought "OH my god..not more of this." The chapter itself was nicely written and the story of Denny was interesting to read. But yet again I thought if this was necessary chapter for the story, of course it makes sense at the end.9th chapter: I think things came together nicely in this chapter: Hugh, Daisy, Tom, Denny..but it should´ve happened earlier.10th chapter: The story is going somewhere after the pause of Hedda´s personal story of her life. To me the book has gotten way better in these few last chapters now and I´ve gotten back the feeling of reading with enthusiasm.11th chapter: A little disappointed it went back to this. I´m over halfway through the book and I´ve heard nothing of what Hedda´s doing, thinking or feeling while in the trunk..12th chapter: Things told before made more sense after this chapter.13th chapter: The same as the previous one..14th chapter: Finally! Hedda´s in the trunk and the reader gets know what she´s doing! Then again this chapter was very short and the next one goes back to Hugh again.. 15th chapter: Nothing new came to me while reading this one, the story seemed to get a new twist as Hugh seemed to get a new idea..16th & 17th chapter: Things are moving on in the story now. The craziness of Hugh increases little by little, he´s started to plan some things he does, others he just does as the circumstances, to him, gives no other option. Denny and Daisy are driven into a mad situation with a woman they´ve never seen in their trunk, in a car Denny stole, a police car stopping them and then coming after them, them driving off the road where a man comes to them with a riffle. Things are finally happening! Even though the writing is still at times annoying and so are the paragraphs, but no I don´t pay that much attention to those as the story is now more interesting.18th chapter: Denny and Daisy (and Hedda). There´s something sweet about them being together. Daisy has her doubts, which makes her sound more smart a person than she did in the very beginning of the book when she went with Hugh after having spoken just a little while with the man. 19th-24th chapters: Like already a few of the previous chapters, this was the real deal. What I had waited for a long while since the beginning of the book. I really did enjoy reading these chapters and I thought there were some really exciting things that happened at the end of the book. Giving a review for this book will be hard, since I liked the ending and beginning but felt the middle lacked something. In the end I understand why she wrote this book as she did, the other characters (apart from Hedda and Hugh) needed to be introduced before things actually started to happen and it gave the characters more depth. Still somehow, it should´ve been done differently to make the whole book interesting and exciting to read. Maybe if I´d known when I started to read that it was written like this, it would´ve made a difference, maybe not.
review 2: this book seems uneccessarily complicated. Reading it felt like listing to a story told by a drunk person. It was difficult to even figure out the plot and to figure out if the ramblings were relevant. I am pleased to say that most of the ends were tied at the end, but it could have been told in a much simpler way. I did not find it engaging and it did not have the suspense that I expected.The story seemed to rely heavily on irony. It's a story about a writer committing crimes to prove that his script is realistic (makes you wonder what brundage is trying to say). He is caught, ironically, when someone goes to him for protection. in my opinion, this was the most interesting part if the story.There was not a lot of character development. I would have appreciated the changing of perspectives a lot more if it provided more insight in the characters. I really liked Danny and I wished the story centered around his and Dasy's experience. But that is just because I found them more interesting.If I wasn't reading it for book club, I probably wouldn't have finished it. To be fair, it was different, which may be more interesting to other readers. less

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