We decided to do a joint book review every month and since we had that AMAZING trip last month we didn’t do March’s book club review so this month we are doing March and April’s together. Yay!
In March we read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, best selling author of Rules of Civility. A member of my book club is very interested in Russian history and literature so this was her pick. I’m not going to lie and tell you we were all ecstatic to read it because well quite honestly we are uncultured and it looked boring. I did have the fear! But I was also excited about it because I knew it was going to be different from my regular reading which can be a good thing.
We all jumped in and within 3 days I had received texts from 3 different people, one of them decided after the first chapter that it wasn’t worth it and decided to be done. The other two moaned via text. It made me nervous.
I started it and was immediately intrigued with it but then as I went on I found it to be quite odd. Beautiful writing style though but just very odd. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was reading.
Count Alexander Rostov- recipient of the Order of St Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt- is a “Former Person.” Russia’s new Soviet masters have sentenced him to house arrest in Moscow’s luxurious Metropol hotel, where he lives out his days pairing wine with his meals and dashing around like Eloise, if Eloise were set in a version of Stalinist Russia. Anyway, confined to his hotel the Count passes whole decades making a world out of a hotel and the people in it. A precocious 9 year old, a moody chef, the maitre d’ and others that drift in and out of his sphere.
The book itself was superbly well written. The author eases you along in the story with phrases so poignant you almost don’t realize how emotionally invested you are until the end when you set it down and sigh. I have nine members in my book club, 3 of us didn’t finish it. It was too slow moving and didn’t capture their attention. One of us finished it but thought it just horribly boring. 5 of us loved it and we had an amazing discussion.
It wasn’t exactly an action packed book and I honestly have a hard time knowing for sure how much I liked it. It was slow and very different but it was also moving and beautiful. I don’t think it's one that I would have on hand to recommend to everyone and I honestly don’t see myself reading it again. If the right person came a long it is something I would recommend but carefully just because it is a slower paced book and I like more quick flowing books. I gave it a solid 3 stars which is commendable for how I rate my books.
In April we ventured out of Russia and into Victorian England. The New York Times bestselling author of the Lady Julia Grey mysteries, Deanna Raybourn, has introduced another intrepid adventuress in Veronica Speedwell. The first book in the new series is A Curious Beginning and takes place in London 1887. Veronica has buried her spinster aunt and is now free to resume her world travels in pursuit of natural science and most especially butterflies. She prepares to embark on the journey of a lifetime but fate has other plans when she thwarts her own abduction with the help of an enigmatic German Baron who has ties to her mysterious past.
I loved the Lady Julia Grey series and was very excited to dash off on new adventures with Veronica Speedwell. The book begins very well and launches you into the plot very quickly. However, I was disappointed in the writing. It read flat, and I found Veronica off putting. The story took odd twists and turns, the characters were poorly developed and the author spent so much time telling me how independent and adventurous the heroine was I found myself irritated by her.
I had never read anything by Deanna Raybourn and this was the first book club book that I was super excited about because I love this type of genre. It was written in first person which was a little surprising to me. Most of the books I read are third person and when I do come across a first person perspective it's usually Young Adult. I didn’t dislike Veronica as much as Steph did it actually surprised me how irritated she was with Veronica because normally I’m the one really put off by a lot of female characters. What bothered me the most, like Steph mentioned, was the lack of character development in particular Veronica’s love interest. Raybourn just didn’t give me enough to feel like I really knew the characters.
Here’s how the book club members received it. Two people loved it and started on the second book right away. Three of us found it an easy and enjoyable enough read but found it generally silly. And four of us hated it and spent an hour of book club picking it apart.
I did however read the second one mainly because it counted towards my 100 new books. The third one isn’t out yet. Will I read it? Probably but again only because it's another book I can count towards my hundred. On that topic I'm on book 41 of 100 new books. Yeah baby!
Next months book is The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck. I'm excited to dive in to yet another new author.
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