Painful book
I had a very hard time reading this book: poor style, artificial characters, boring story. I felt like I wasted my time. Would absolutely not recommend.
Rated of 5
by Linda A. (Palo Alto, CA)
Falling Together
I rate this book somewhere between poor and average. While the situations at times are compelling, the endless brackets within parentheses diversions are extremely annoying I wanted to tell de los Santos to "just get on with it." At times it seems as if she doesn't know which line of thinking she will give the character, so she includes every idea she has. The characters are pretty one-note...nice. Confused, yes. But NICE. Except for Jason. His "nice" seemed real only in relation to Augusta. There are many better books to read.
Rated of 5
by Kim L. (cary, IL)
Disappointment
I really wanted to like this story, but the characters were so one dimensional. I just could not get into this story. The story did not draw me in, I just had to push myself to finish reading it. It was not a plausible story line in my opinion.
Rated of 5
by Marjorie H. (Bedford, TX)
The Sandbox
"Listen to you, thought Pen, you are straight out of the clucking sandbox." Actually, this whole book is out of a sandbox - unappealing child-adults that are as unrealistic as they get. The only sympathetic character is Cat - who manages to extract herself from this childish triangle. And when she tries to STAY away - she's hunted down by the idiot trio consisting of her husband (is he in 8th grade?) and two friends that I'd run away from. Adults who use words like "suck" and "freaky" give me the impression that these characters weren't well thought out - torn between adolescence and well...... adolescence. Lola Lita summed it up when she says, "You must understand that this trip was very important to Cat. She wanted to be --- undisturbed." We all should have been undisturbed by this book.
Rated of 5
by Suzanne G. (Tucson, AZ)
Falling, falling, falling
This is one of the most unorganized, or maybe I should say over-organized, books I believe I've ever read. There is too much information and over-explaining about insignificant events that have nothing to do with the flow of the story. Not only was I irritated by the nicknames of the characters, their personalities were irritating as well. There were way, way too many parentheses and brackets, causing the continuity to be disrupted and too choppy. All in all I didn't like Falling Together and call it a "falling failure."
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today's globalized world.
The story of an American family, middle class in middle America, ordinary in every way but one. But that exception is the beating heart of this extraordinary novel.
First time novelist Vaddey Ratner captured my heart and senses in this novel based on her childhood in Cambodia. Her story transcends any news story...
read more
From the first page, I was drawn in by the lyrical writing of the author and mesmerized as the narrator, eight year old Raami, remembered the years...
read more
Trite but true, all good things must come to an end. I so wanted to keep reading the wonderful prose, the settings that let one think they are part...
read more
Amazon cuts off 5200 affiliates in Minnesota(Jun 19 2013) With Minnesota's online sales tax law due to take effect July 1, Amazon has played a familiar card by cutting ties with 5,200 members of its Associates...
Full Story