2/5 (I'm feeling generous)
Last week I picked up this little book from my town library. I chose it for two main reasons:
- It fit the "best-seller published the year you graduated high school" prompt for the 2018 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge (2019 challenge is here), and
- It was really short and I only had two days left in 2018.
The basic plot of this book is that a couple with a young child is getting tired of their cramped apartment so they respond to an ad in the paper offering free room and board in a mansion across town in exchange for chores, yard work, etc. Basically a lonely old lady wanted some company.
There is absolutely no conflict in this book. They love the old lady! The old lady loves them! They don't even have to do the chores they really hate! She'll just get someone else to do them!
The husband in the family is doing a little snooping in the attic. He finds a fancy wooden box full of letters clearly written by the old lady to a mysterious other person that she misses. But who could it be? Considering something else he finds in the attic at the same time, it's really obvious, but it's supposed to be a plot twist that's revealed in the last few pages, so I won't spoil it in case you want to read it.
It's a book that would fit into your purse and has double-spaced font on pages with large margins, so it was perfect for reading in an hour while I washed the kitchen floor with the other hand. It was basically a longform Chicken Soup for the Soul story, which were also really popular at that time. This book was so successful that it has two sequels and a made-for-TV movie. It was #1 on the New York Times Best-Seller list until it was knocked off by The Horse Whisperer.
Maybe I'm being too hard on it, but it didn't do anything for me. Well, that's a lie. It helped me cross that prompt off my reading challenge list in record time, and for that I will be forever grateful!
No comments:
Post a Comment