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Infinite Country by Patricia Engel | Thoughts

   Published : 2021   ||    Format : print   ||    Location : Colombia ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.. Thoughts : Infinite Country follows two characters - young Talia, who at the beginning of this book, escapes a girl’s reform school in North Colombia so that she can make her previously booked flight to the US. Before she can do that, she needs to travel many miles to reach her father and get her ticket to the rest of her family. As we follow Talia’s treacherous journey south, we learn about how she ended up in the reform school in the first place and why half her family resides in the US. Infinite Country tells the story of her family through the other protagonist, El

Review: Open Season by Linda Howard


TitleOpen Season
Author: Linda Howard
Genre: Romance
First Published: 2001
Publisher: Pocket Books
Source: Personal Copy
Challenges100+ Reading ChallengeA to Z Challenge
337 pages

 

On the flap
On her thirty-fourth birthday, Daisy Minor decides to make over her entire life. The small-town librarian has had it with her boring clothes, her ordinary looks, and nearly a decade without so much as a date. It's time to get a life -- and a sex life. The perennial good girl, Daisy transforms herself into a party girl extraordinaire -- dancing the night away at clubs, laughing and flirting with abandon -- and she's declared open season for manhunting. But her free-spirited fun turns to shattering danger when she witnesses something she shouldn't -- and becomes the target of a killer. Now, before she can meet the one man who can share her life, first she may need him to save it.

I have very little good words to lace up this review with. The book blurb had a lot of promises, none of which were delivered to my satisfaction.

My opinion
Open Season starts on Daisy's 34th birthday, when she gets the sickening realization through one entire chapter that she is a Miss Goody-two-shoes with no life to boast of. No husband, no kids, no love life in years, still living with her mom and aunt (I know this is frowned upon so much, but I can never understand what's so wrong or embarrassing about it). With the help of her mom and aunt, she gets herself a beauty consultant to help with her make-up and wardrobe. The beauty consultant himself has some plans of his own, which includes sending Daisy to certain specific nightclubs for man-hunting. In addition, she finds herself seeing Jack Russo, the Chief of Police a little too much. In the background, a Mexican illegal immigrant girl has been raped and murdered. If I write one more line here, I am sure I can wrap up the story for you too, but that's for you to read and find out. :)

Open Season is more romance than crime. There are a couple of chapters devoted to some steamy sex, and there's quite a bit of humor, for which I am thankful. Jack Russo provides most of the laugh along with Daisy's new puppy.

I wish there were more plus points to write, but I've reached the end of it. As for what didn't work, there's a lot of coincidence at play in this plot. When there's a lot of coincidence, it means there's no mystery, since everything is falling into place for the characters. Right when the criminal plans to kidnap Daisy, she changes house and takes a day off from work. No one has any proof of impending crime, but Daisy's whole family is being given protection. Daisy just starts groom hunting, and suddenly Jack Russo is interested. I won't even mention the last part of the Epilogue. That's just some of them.

Another annoying factor was the number of pages dedicated to Daisy's make-over. How she applies make-up, how her beauty consultant does it, the shopping trip she goes for, puppy-buying and training, house-buying and decoration. By the time the real story starts, more than half of the book is over. There was no suspense holding my interest, and I was thinking of my next read the whole time.

Overall, this was a disappointment. Save for the few laughs, there's really not much to look forward to in this book. I know a lot of readers who are fans of Linda Howard, so I don't want to make any judgments based on this book alone. Hopefully, I will come across some other book of hers that will be a better read.

Title Demystified
Remember the animated movie, Open Season, about a cuddly-wuddly grizzly bear? I loved that movie when I first watched it. I think that's one of the reasons I picked this book. Of course, I knew this was about no bear, but fond memories of that movie came to me when I first saw this book. Daisy's plan of man-hunting is being referred to by the title in this book, as opposed to the bear-hunting in the movie. (There's no connection between the movie and the book. I'm just giving you trivia! :) )

Cover Art Demystified
I think this cover is pretty good. No specific meaning to it, but it still looks inviting to me. The cover definitely gave me the feel of a light read, and the book was true to that!

What did you think?
Have you read this book? I'd like to know what you thought about it. Please leave your review link in the comments, or a brief opinion, if you hadn't reviewed it.

Comments

We both just finished duds. I hope your next one is better!
bermudaonion said…
Doesn't sound like the book for me, so I'll skip it.
Tales of Whimsy said…
You keep picking such cool reads :)