Ten Second Reviews

The Worst Best Man

By Mia Sosa

Left-at-the-alter wedding planner Lina is offered an opportunity to join a corporate hotel team that would alleviate her financial and business worries.  But she has to compete for the position - and her partner in the competition is the brother of her ex-fiance.

Man, I hate to be be hard on this one, since it's not that bad, but it also wasn't my jam.  It felt like it had very little substance, even though the set-up is delightfully juicy: left-at-the-altar Lina becomes unwillingly attracted to the brother and best man who convinced her ex to leave? But the book doesn't even stick to that depth, revealing in the final chapters that the brother didn't actually urge the ex to leave Lina, the ex just made it up.  And then the book sort of ends, after detonating that bomb, and I know it's years later, but uh, we're not going to explore what the hell that was all about, I guess.  Ex-fiance is let off the hook with a handwave, even though it makes him an objectively HUGE asshole, and brother is fully redeemed, even though honestly, he didn't need to be.  

Anyway, they meet, they hate, they bang, etc etc, and why does sex in modern romances feel so much more coarse than in historicals? Just me? Anyway, Lina gets the job, happy ever afters for all involved, except me, because this book talks about food and desserts a LOT, and right now I have a really bad sweet tooth except that my doctor just told me I should be eating more APPLES to avoid constipation with all the iron I'm taking. Great.   

 

Why My Cat is More Impressive Than Your Baby

By Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal)

A book of comics from the creator of The Oatmeal, and for a one-time flip through and lighthearted look at cat/dog/baby stereotypes, it was pretty fun.  I though it was amusing, but not worth buying or reading more than once.  It's a lot of " my cat is evil and mysterious but also delightful" and "babies are disgusting" so you know, pretty standard.   My husband, on the other hand, is still raving about it a week later and already bought three copies - one to keep and two to give away, so definitely there's an audience for it! To be fair, he's also particularly enamored of one of the more bodily humor based cartoons, which is not as much my jam.  To each their own!

 

 

Adios to My Old Life

Adios to My Old Life, by Caridad Ferrer

As a talented singer-guitarist with a dream of going pro, Alegria Montero is getting fed up with the endless, boring parade of quinceaneras and other family party gigs. She's longing for something bigger. And Oye Mi Canto - a new reality show that's searching for the next Latin superstar - is definitely that. Ali figures she'll never make the cut, but auditioning sounds like a good way to get her overprotective father to take her ambitions seriously.

To Ali's complete shock, she passes her audition. Next thing she knows, she's dealing with wardrobe fittings, cameras, reporters, vocal coaches, and websites designed by lovestruck fanboys. She's also dealing with jealousy, malice, and sabotage among the contestants, all of which has her wondering: Is it really time to shoot for the stars and try to win the whole competition, or is it time to say "Cut!" and become a normal teenager again?

Adios has a lot of things going for it - humor, teen angst, glitter and a peppy, poppy voice. The rhythm of the writing feels very fresh and true, with the spanish interspersed and the natural cadences of speech. The plot seems ludicrous, but Ferrar plays with that, trying to make the characters as real as possible so we accept the circumstances. Ali Montero is an uber talented seventeen year old, who can play guitar as well as piano, and who sings the old ballads as well as she does the hot new singles. She's got a place assured in the competition, a hot assistant director making eyes at her, a ever loyal cousin, a loving father, and one mean bitch nemesis. In the end, the utter absurdity of the plot does overwhelm the book. It's a modern fairy tale wrapped up in American Idol, and everything comes out okay in the end with the fairy god(father) pulling the strings. It's a soothing, easy read, because you know that all the conflicts will end up with a happy ending, good will triumph over evil, and that everyone gets exactly what they deserve.

Unfortunately, the utter niceness of it all brings down the depth of the story - why care about Ali's arguments with her father about whether she can handle this type of life when you know it will all be solved when Ali proves she can be cool under pressure and finds her father a nice romance? Why care about Ali's (kinda ridiculous) break-up with Jaime when you know that although he lives in New York and she lives in Miami, there's going to be an easy solution for everyone concerned? [NB. An easy albeit, creepy solution, in which he follows her around all day, filming her, mmmm.] All the choices and characters in Adios are black and white - which isn't to say that they're bad, just. . . less great. There's little character development, because Ali already is (basically) perfect. She's stressed, to be sure, but she entertains no doubt, and she never questions herself. And maybe she doesn't need to, because she makes all the right decisions, but it's not the most compelling read.

I'm more upset by this than I really ought to be, because the writing itself is so sparkly and sparky and kicky, that it deserves better material. It sounded like a real person talking, and first person point of view books need that kind of voice. As a narrator, I utterly believed in Ali. I just wish she had more interesting things to talk about.