Carol Treacy

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13199651

As a vegan myself and an avid reader, I can't help but be aware of the use of animals in fiction. I don't enjoy accounts of meals eaten where the author waxes poetic about the animals on the plate. I ache when I read about abuse of cats and dogs and pigs, about hunting and fishing. I won't read books where these subjects dominate the book (with few exceptions) and sometimes I just wish I didn't have to read about the mindless exploitation of animals that is so acceptable to others.

So I felt obligated to read this book. I can't say that I had high hopes for it, given that the summaries I read suggest that it's a romance novel, at least in part, and that the author published the book herself. Nevertheless, one of my fine qualities is that I am able to change my mind when warranted.

In this case it was not warranted. The writing is dull and lifeless and simply has no real direction. This happened and then this happened. There is one short bit of conflict, but it is ridiculous and soon resolved. I can say it was written well enough that I was able to follow the story line, such as it was, and there are no significant plot problems, other than the fact that it hardly has a plot.

In the story the cowboy's teenage daughter and a friend are developing a short film on factory farming for a class. The film is supposed to be 15 minutes long. Near the beginning of that work they have written 36 pages, as I recall, of script. And plan to have many more. Well, a screenplay page is about a minute on film. So they already have 36 minutes of a fifteen-minute film. You'd think the author would have looked a little into this. I didn't notice any other discrepancies.

It's too bad that the characters are not interesting, the plot goes nearly nowhere, and the writing is blah. We could use a lot of well-written books where the sympathetic characters are vegan.

… (mer)