Meh Monday

Although Monday isn’t the start of the work week for A Reader’s Respite (today is our Friday, as a matter of fact), there seems to be a collective bad-vibe out there whenever Mondays roll around and we’re not immune to it.

So today will be designated Meh Monday and we can take a looksy at some of the meh books we’ve read lately.  Not bad books by any stretch of the imagination, just meh ones.  You know, the kind you read and promptly forget about.

The kind we think you should move to your library list as opposed to your spending-good-money-on list.

The Girl in the Green Raincoat, by Laura Lippman.  Admittedly, this was our first Lippman read and it probably wasn’t the best to start out with.  More of a novella (that part we liked) than a full-length novel, the story features private detective Tess Monaghan, a character Lippman features quite regularly.  As mysteries go, this one was just meh for us.  The characters seemed weak and we figured out the mystery just a few chapters in….that doesn’t mean A Reader’s Respite is a brilliant mystery-solver, just that the mystery presented in the plot was a tad transparent.  Unless someone out there has a good suggestion for a better Lippman novel to start out with, we won’t be likely to pick up another of her novels.

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick.  Yes, another paranormal, teen-angst novel.  But this one featured fallen angels and we thought it held promise.  Not so much, as it turns out.  Of course if features a beautiful but troubled high school girl who falls in love with the dark, brooding and handsome local boy who (did ya see this one coming?) is a fallen angel.  Is he there to protect and love her forever or is he a danger to her?  We ain’t telling.  But the book is the first in a trilogy if that’s any hint.  Trilogy or no, we won’t be reading the next two books in the series.  It’s not a bad novel, just extremely predictable.

The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff.  This meh surprised us.  A Reader’s Respite  thought for certain that we’d fall in love with this magical realism novel, given that it’s suffused with literary lore and features a healthy dose of diary entries and letters between characters….that’s usually just our style.  Instead of love, we fell in meh.  The story of a young woman returning to her hometown in disgrace and reconciling with her past, her mother and her ancestry never really picked up steam.  The characters never really grew on us and their motivations seemed weak at best.  In short, we never really connected with a single one of them.  Groff is, however, a talent with words.  We’d be highly likely to try another of her works….perhaps her short stories might be more to our liking.  Who has read Delicate Edible Birds?

Okay, that’s enough meh for one day.  Carry on and remember:  tomorrow is Tuesday so it can only get better.