Story for the Week
There has been some debate on Threads lately about whether readers should post reviews that are less than 4 or 5 stars. A lot of debate.
When I first started blogging, I promised myself that I would share reviews of books that I love and books that I don’t love. I literally put it at the top of my website because it feels disingenuous to post only rave reviews. A lot of readers say that life is too short to waste time on books that you’re not enjoying. It’s a fair point, but I think there would be a lot of books I didn’t finish because I wasn’t feeling them. And that would make it really hard to publish a blog post every week. Plus, I think other readers appreciate seeing reviews that give them some insight into books they might not like.
At the same time, I see a lot of 1- and 2-star reviews that are marked DNF (did not finish), and I think that is patently unfair. If I review a book, rest assured that I have read the entire thing, and there is a method to my madness.
Say you’re a student. I am well past student age, but this is still my rationale. You take a test, and you didn’t do well in the beginning, but once you got into a rhythm, you killed it. Your teacher decides that your performance on the beginning of the test is indicative of your performance on the end of the test. (No, I don’t think this happens. It’s an analogy. Bear with me.) So as the teacher grades the first half, they see that you have missed 10 of the first 20 questions and decide that you will perform just as poorly on the rest of the test and give you a 50%. You fail the test. But you hit your rhythm and actually answered 75 of the remaining 80 questions correctly, so your score should be an 85%. The teacher failed you, but you earned a solid B.
I feel the same way about books. Maybe a book starts slow. Maybe a character is unlikeable but has a growth arc and experiences redemption at the end. If I’m going to review a book, I owe it to the author and to readers who see my review to review the whole book. I won’t tag the author unless the review is 4 or 5 stars, but I’m still going to publish it.
Does that mean I read a lot of books that maybe I wouldn’t finish if I didn’t have this blog. Absolutely. But at least I can say I gave each and every book a fair shot. As a result, there are very few books that I don’t finish, especially if I’ve received an advance copy like the book below.
If you’ve ever wondered about my definitions for each star rating, here they are:
- ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – a book that I have to sit with for a while and process when I finish because it made such a huge impact on me and made me feel all the feels. I will recommend this book to everyone and remember title and author without having to look it up.
- ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – an excellent read with no real flaws. I will also recommend this book, but I might have to remind myself of the author or title.
- ⭐⭐⭐ – it was ok. There were things I liked and things I didn’t. Some people will love it, and some people will hate it. I can take it or leave it. I will recommend it if you like this specific type of book.
- ⭐⭐ – I really didn’t care for this, but maybe it had a good twist and something else that was unexpected. I would only recommend if you are a true fan of this particular author.
- ⭐ – I did not like this book at all and will not recommend it to anyone. It might be really poorly written (in my opinion). Very few of the books I read fall into this category.
To be honest, I debated on whether to finish the book below. At 13%, I was ready to throw in the towel. I chose to keep going instead. I don’t regret that decision, but the result is the 1.5 star review below.
Book Review
⭐½
1.5 Stars for Rolling Toward Clear Skies by Catherine Ryan Hyde
293 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: November 12, 2024
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing.
Publisher’s Description
Maggie Blount, divorced mother of two and California physician, puts her private practice on hold when disaster strikes. Doctors on Wheels takes her and Alex—Maggie’s professional and romantic partner—wherever they’re needed. After rolling into rural Louisiana in the wake of a category five hurricane, Maggie immediately bonds with two sisters and their puppy, all orphaned by the storm. It’s enough to break Maggie’s heart, and she’s not leaving them behind.
Feeling blessed and looking forward to their new foster home in affluent Vista del Mar—a world apart from the one they’ve known—Jean and Rose are polite, appreciative, and humble. Frankly, they’re the polar opposite of Maggie’s own self-involved teenage daughters, Willa and Gemma, who resist this intrusion by strangers into their privileged lives. Soon enough, Maggie’s new blended family is in chaos.
Teaching Willa and Gemma about gratitude and empathy will be hard enough. Maggie must also admit her own role in their entitled upbringing, undo the damage, and anticipate the needs of all four girls and a puppy, all amid faraway natural disasters and those closer to home.
************
Main Characters:
- Maggie – 41 years old, divorced mother of two teenage girls, lives with Alex and her daughters in upscale Vista Del Mar in California, physician with a private practice who spends time after natural disasters treating patients from a converted bus as part of Doctors on Wheels
- Alex – early 30s, Maggie’s live-in boyfriend, a registered nurse who founded Doctors on Wheels
- Willa and Gemma – Maggie’s 16- and 14-year-old daughters, they stay with their father when Maggie goes out to disasters
- Jean and Rose – 16- and 14-year-old sisters impacted by a hurricane in Louisiana in which their parents were killed, treated by Doctors on Wheels for pneumonia, Maggie decided to foster and then adopt them after it’s discovered they can’t live with their elderly grandparents
My first Catherine Ryan Hyde novel, Rolling Toward Clear Skies will likely be my last. I requested it because the premise of the story seems interesting. Maggie drops everything when a natural disaster occurs to volunteer as a doctor with Doctors on Wheels. She shuffles her daughters off to their dad’s and drives into disaster areas—after hurricanes, fires, tornadoes—and it’s clear the girls resent it.
When the story begins, Maggie and Alex are being interviewed for a human interest piece on television about Doctors on Wheels. Willa and Gemma are completely disinterested. And when Maggie receives a call about a hurricane in Louisiana, her daughters call her out on the fact that she told them she wouldn’t go the next time. She corrects them saying that she said she might not go, and despite how angry and hurt they are, she goes anyway.
When she meets Jean and Rose, the difference between them and her own daughters stuns her. Jean and Rose are polite and thankful and helpful—a stark difference to entitled and ungrateful and rude Willa and Gemma. To make matters worse in the eyes of Willa and Gemma, Maggie feels especially drawn to Jean and Rose and decides to foster and then adopt them (and their newly found stray puppy) when their grandparents aren’t able to take care of them.
The possibility of seeing the family dynamic with all four girls was intriguing. I would have loved to see the growth in Willa and Gemma as they learn to accept Jean and Rose. Sadly, the author chose to make huge leaps in time and skipped so many opportunities to create conflict and resolution. Don’t get me wrong. There was conflict, but it came and went so fast, and it’s not like the author didn’t have room to add more of these situations. The book is less than 300 pages. Make it longer.
Willa and Gemma spend an entire school year at their dad’s after Jean and Rose move in, and we don’t see any of it. Once they start to accept Jean and Rose, the book fast forwards to an epilogue a year later. As readers, we get all the fluff and none of the substance. We don’t experience any of the growth. We just read about it when everything is over.
I was pretty put off by the personalities too. Alex literally doesn’t like Maggie’s daughters, yet she has spent the past four years with him. Willa and Gemma are hateful, insufferable characters. There is nothing redeeming about them. Jean and Rose have lost everything—their parents, their home, all of their belongings. When they meet Maggie, they literally have each other and the clothes on their backs. And Willa and Gemma resent them, refuse to share a room to make space for them.
When Maggie asks Jean and Rose to go with Doctors on Wheels to help during a wildfire, Willa and Gemma resent that Maggie is taking “them,” even though they have never wanted to go. They get angry at their grandmother for buying Jean and Rose thoughtful gifts when they are the ones who asked her to just give them money instead of buying them gifts they wouldn’t like.
And as much as I dislike Willa and Gemma, Maggie isn’t a prize character either. She stays with a man who dislikes and insults her children, and she doesn’t seem to care how her daughters feel at all. Granted, they’re rude and ungrateful, but parents teach their kids to be polite and grateful. Maggie is preachy and completely out of touch with her family.
This story had so much potential, and it really fell short.
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