What do readers think of Minding Ben by Victoria Brown? Write your own review.

This is a light, better than "beach read" book but the story felt familiar and predictable, as if I already knew the immigrant Nanny experience from what I've read in the news or seen on TV. The characters are real, although stereotypical in many instances, evil Jewish landlord, gangster Island acquaintances, neurotic employer, and on and on.
If your reading time is limited try something else.

The author, like the main character, Grace, experienced immigrating to the US from Trinidad and working as a nanny, which she calls a "baby sitter". Grace finds employment, but it seems to be a hopeless, go nowhere situation, with no chance of saving enough money to better herself and almost a slave to an unfeeling, power hungry employer. The book touched on the problems of getting a green card, disappointment in what immigrants find in America and homesickness for their homeland while trying to make the U.S. their new home. Not an exciting plot, but interesting enough to keep reading until the end. Anyone who feels discouraged about their own set of circumstances will feel a little luckier about their life after reading what these people go through.

An interesting story with insight into the immigrant experience. Grace was a wholly sympathetic character, and the peek into the world of "playground politics" was fascinating. The problem that I had with the book was the one-dimensional quality to the ogreish family for whom Grace worked, and the absence of a more developed relationship between Grace and her young charge, Ben.

The story line was a bit predictable but I read on because I needed to know more about Grace and her experiences as a nanny. Dialect was difficult to follow at some points. Maybe a few too many characters that we didn't get to know well enough and some that would have been best left out of the storyline all together.

This story of an immigrant's experience in NYC is told in a well executed first person voice -- and the strength of this voice held my interest. However, the author tries to do too much. There are too many shallowly drawn characters. The three Jewish characters (the Bruckners and the landlord) are portrayed in the most negative light with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Unfortunately, the overall impact is unsatisfying. There's a good book in here somewhere, but I don't think this one fully realized its potential.

I guess giving this book a 3 rating sounds worse than the book actually was. It was an entertaining story and fairly well written but just an average story about being an immigrant "nanny" in New York City. I found the main character a bit too refined to be believable considering the cast of characters around her and as a result I never quite fell into the spell of what a really good story can do for you. All of the characters were too stereotypical and shallow -- the storyline too predictable. I was disappointed as I felt the premise of this book promised much more depth than it delivered.

Some of the characters needed to be fleshed out a bit and the plot needed to be more organized, But this was an eyeopener of a story and I came to admire Grace very much for how well she held up.

I so did not like this book. The characters were not well developed and the story line did not hold my attention. Every time the book started to get interesting, the author would drop that story line and begin another. I especially did not like how the book ended ... very abruptly and with many loose ends.