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More Than Words Can Say: A Novel (2011)

by Robert Barclay(Favorite Author)

3.28 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0062041193 (ISBN13: 9780062041197)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

William Morrow Paperbacks

review 1: You can tell this was written by a man who doesn't understand women. I mean, seriously, no one is going to be shocked to the point of tears to find out her grandmother cheated on her grandfather. No one is going to need that excessive of hand holding or so such ridiculous amounts of emotional support from a random dude to read a diary. Not any stable, normal, sane person that is. The way Barclay writes you'd think that Chelsea is unable to read diary entries by herself because she will become so overwhelmed with emotion that she will faint or have a break down or some other such nonsense. And who fucking reads only one entry of a diary a day? Especially one of a relative that you were close to? Any normal person would read that ASAP and not dick around...It's unreali... morestic. The author tries to create suspense but all it did was infuriate and bore me. There was some drama about a lost fiance and an angry brother, but that didn't really go anywhere or create any problems besides a few awkward encounters. And really it was just a misunderstanding and after one long talk everyone is super best friends again...*eye roll*Also don't go up to other women they just met and cry "Let's be best friends and talk about boys!" Ok, maybe that wasn't verbatim, but that's essentially what happened at one point. It was just bad and insulting to the female gender.
review 2: A very disappointing read. I was excited to read a story about the Adirondacks and the story was fine. The writing, however, although technically fine, served to distance the reader from the characters, even as the author was trying to bring you closer to their thoughts and feelings. I could understand this if it were self published, but since it was published by HarperCollins and promoted by them as a book club selection, I put a lot of blame on the editor.If you don't understand what "show don't tell" means, read this book and you will understand. Everyone is doing something happily or sadly and their intimate thoughts and feelings are fully explained rather than shown through action. It disrupts the narrative and takes the reader out of the scene. That said, I don't think it would have been that hard ( time consuming, but not hard) to take this book and rewrite it in such a way that the explanation came out and was replaced by action. I think that the author would have discovered new things about the characters in the process and the reader would have benefited. I will be recommending this book to my sister, who like the main character owns a cottage on an Adirondack lake, but I hope that the author thinks about rewriting the book and that HarperCollins does a better job working with their authors in the future. That said, it would make a nice Lifetime movie. less

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