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Bella Malicia (2010)

by Rebecca James(Favorite Author)

3.79 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

El Aleph Editores

review 1: Reading this was a chore. The story may be high concept but the execution is extremely low rent. The characters are thin vehicles for a plot that is completely implausible and the prose is pedestrian at best. The device used repeatedly in the first several chapters - "the terrible thing I had done", "my shocking secret", "my dark past" etc (I'm paraphrasing but you get the idea) - is lazy and wears thin very quickly. There are much more effective - and subtle - ways to generate suspense than this almost Goosebumps-style 'technique', which seemed very clunky indeed.I've seen this book described as a psychological thriller but I would characterise it as melodrama. There was really nothing thrilling about it and much of the psychology is implausible at best.Most oddly, we nev... moreer really get access to the characters' inner lives, even that of the main character. She's forever telling us how she feels but the prose conveys no sense of this whatsoever. Even when she recounts what should have been a shocking event in her past, and does so in real-time, as if it's happening before her eyes, there's just a flat line that states, essentially, "Terrible people were doing terrible things" and the reader is given no insight at all into her actual human - physiological or psychological - response. She simply doesn't appear to have one apart from the action which drives the next part of the plot forward. I found this to be a feature of the book as a whole; as if, as a reader, I was skimming the surface of the various mechanical parts of a story rather than being part of the world of the characters.I can see why the basic narrative arc might have appeal to filmmakers but in the hands of this author, I found this a very dull story and am completely bewildered by the hype.
review 2: Dávám knize poměrně nízké hodnocení, ale všechno má své vysvětlení. Samotný začátek, nebo celkově kniha je hrozně chaotická. Neustále se tam mění tři časy - minulý (z jejího dětství), minulý (když už byla starší) a přítomný, který tomu všemu ještě přidával další změť věcí. Celkově má autorka hodně specifický styl psaní, který mi nějak nesedl, ale jinak byla kniha hodně dobrá. Očekávala jsem od toho sice trochu něco jiného, ale ani tohle mě vyloženě nezklamalo, jenom mi to přišlo nerozvinuté a nedopracované. Ale jsem ráda, že jsem si ji přečetla, na jednu stranu by se mnohým mohla líbit! :) less

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