Mini - Comments

My days have been kind of busy and that means I have posted with less consistency. Spring and Summer are high seasons at my work and between that and house chores, there is always something to do.

Anyway, to keep track of my reading diary, short comments are necessary, thus why the next two books will merit only a smaller entry.

When his family abandoned him at Eton, Benedict Hastings found an unexpected ally in his best friend's sister. Her letters kept him going— until the day he had to leave everything behind. Years later, Benedict has seen his share of betrayal, but when treachery hits close to home, he turns to his old friend for safe haven...
After five torturous years on the marriage circuit, Lady Evelyn Moore is finally free to live her life as she wishes. So when her brother shows up with a dashing stranger, she finds herself torn between her dreams...and newfound desires.
Despite his determination to keep Evie at a distance, Benedict cannot deny the attraction that began with a secret correspondence. Yet as they begin to discover each other, the dangers of Benedict's world find them, threatening their lives, their love, and everything they thought they could never have..

Comment: I got interested in this book in 2015 for who knows what reason now, but now that I finally got to it, I have to say I was a little disappointed. The book has a mix of "friends to lovers" to "deceitful identity by the hero" tropes and while the story isn't too bad as a whole, it was also a little boring to me. 

I feel the characters end up being forgettable and their romance not as marvelous as one could hope for. I don't think the story or the writing are bad but they didn't feel captivating. It was also a bit annoying how the misunderstandings and the secrets the characters have would have led them all into such tiresome situations.

Grade: 4/10

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Here is the dazzling saga of two women, the brilliant, bookish Elena and the fiery, uncontainable Lila.

Both are now adults; life’s great discoveries have been made, its vagaries and losses have been suffered. Through it all, the women’s friendship has remained the gravitational center of their lives.
Both women once fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up—a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final book, she has returned to Naples. Lila, on the other hand, never succeeded in freeing herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect her neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable! 

Comment: The final installment in the Brilliant Friend saga. I read it, like I said, for closure on the series and not as much because I was desperate to know how it would end. Sadly to me, I feel the plot didn't go anywhere surprising except, perhaps, in the sense it still leaves loose ends...like real life where not everything is always fully explained. We get to see what happens to the two friends as they get older, how their friendship survived the test of time but despite how realistic it can be, I was still disappointed they never got to evolve, to become better or to improve their attitudes in life. In one sense, even with different paths in life they took individually, I guess one can say they remained attached, nonetheless, by their roots and shared hopes. Still, I wanted more from this saga.

Grade: 6/10