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Darien Gee

Auteur de Friendship Bread

10+ oeuvres 628 utilisateurs 123 critiques 3 Favoris

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Œuvres de Darien Gee

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Disheartened to say that though I liked Darien Gee's latest novel (Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society) taking place in Avalon I didn't really love it. If you have previously read "Friendship Bread" and "Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society" besides a mention and some actually sightings you don't get to follow up with characters from the previous novel that much.

I on the other hand ended up loving mostly all of the 12 short stories included in this novella. I generally do like most Christmas themed books. There were only two stories that I found to be sad and not uplifting (Chapter 6: Late Bloomers and Chapter 8: And We're Wassailing) but found that besides those two that I loved the other stories.

Ms. Gee does keep a narrative thread working through all of the stories about an anonymous donor and we do revisit characters that appeared in the first story and then the last. I hope in her next Avalon novel that Ms. Gee revisits some of the characters like Mary and Daryl who appeared in Chapter 1 and 12.

Ms. Gee includes recipes and also provides details on how to make friendship bread. I do have plans on making some this holiday season since the recipe looks to be very easy.

I recommend to those fans who want to catch up with the town of Avalon.
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Signalé
ObsidianBlue | 3 autres critiques | Jul 1, 2020 |
If you have read the story "Friendship Bread" you know that story takes place in the fictional town (maybe? I don't know) of Avalon. Author Darien Gee has returned to this location and characters in subsequent books: "The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society", "An Avalon Christmas" and now in "An Avalon Valentine." It is nice to revisit some of these characters we have come to known. But due to the length of this book (176 electronic pages) Gee doesn't have a lot to work with regards to the four main story-lines she decides to follow.

Story-line 1 follows long time character Hannah Wang. She is happy in her relationship with her boyfriend Jamie Linde, but now her ex-husband is back trying to rekindle their former relationship.

Story-line 2 follows another long time character, Connie Colls who is getting a bit bored with her samey relationship with vet Eli. That is until a new vet comes along who has Eli changing his ways.

Story-line 3 and 4 follow two characters that are new, Lucia Blake and Goldie Love (yeah that last name...sigh). Lucia is dealing with having a crush on her mail carrier and Goldie is a retired romance writer who is resistant to celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary.

There's a little hidden story-line in this one too, Julia Evarts daughter from the first book, Gracie, gets a little part of the Valentine's Day theme, I honestly wish that it had been cut since it just didn't work well with the other 4 story-lines.

I have to say for me this whole book was a wash. The POV jumped around a lot and we don't get to spend much time with any of these characters. I thought that Hannah's story-line had the most potential and could have been it's own stand alone book taking place in Avalon, but shoehorning in Connie, Lucia, and Goldie's stories just made the whole book feel cluttered. Maybe if Gee had decided to make this into a full length novel so some of these stories could have breathed it would have worked better.

The writing was okay, but I was missing the magical sense of this town that I have read about for a few years now. I just thought that the background of Valentine's Day would make it more interesting, but I was honestly bored. Maybe if Gee had shaken things up a bit with regards to some of the longer term romances in this book that would have made for a more compelling read? It just seemed most of the issues were once again adults not talking to each other and everyone just ignoring having a conversation that ended up fixing all in like ten minutes.

The ending fell a little flat. I am happy to get some new Amish friendship bread recipes though.
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Signalé
ObsidianBlue | Jul 1, 2020 |
First off I loved Darien's Gee's first novel Friendship Bread: A Novel. This newest offering from her is a sort of sequel to Friendship Bread. Gee revisits some of the former characters from Friendship Bread but not all which is one of the two complaints I had about this novel. We do catch up with Madeline and Hannah. I wish we could have re-visited Julia and her family in this novel and so it felt a little false to me that she didn't pop up again.

This novel can be read as a stand alone novel but I still think it would be a good idea for the reader to read Friendship Bread first though since Gee does bring up events from the previous novel and you may be a little bit lost in places without the introduction.

This novel centers around four women living in Avalon, Illinois. The first is Isabel Kidd dealing with the anger she still feels towards her late husband. The second woman is Ava Catalina who is in mourning for the man and life she lost when he unexpectedly died leaving her with a young son to raise. The third women is Yvonne Tate a sexy plumber trying to build up her business in Avalon and also trying to find the one. Last we have Frances Latham, who is in the process of trying to adopt a girl from China.

All of the women end up meeting and getting embroiled with the Scrapbooking Society due to Bettie Shelton the head of the Scrapbooking Society going far and wide to recruit women and men to join in with her love of scrapbooking. Though it is called "The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society" the Avalon Ladies are not exactly front and center here. Though scrapbooking is a theme that Gee tries to tie the novel into you don't really see the payoff to that particular group until the very end.

My second complaint was due to the vignettes that Gee has inserted in certain places in the novel. These broke up the flow of the novel and though were interesting I couldn't always find the thread that connected them to the other people in the story. I actually started writing down names to see if they appeared elsewhere in the novel later and was 100 percent frustrated with the introduction to so many people.

I would still recommend this novel to anyone out there looking for something to read that reminiscent of Maeve Binchy's later novels.

Please note I received this novel for free via the Amazon Vine Program.
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Signalé
ObsidianBlue | 31 autres critiques | Jul 1, 2020 |
Carino, lettura leggera... e vissero tutti felici e contenti.
 
Signalé
elerwen | May 29, 2019 |

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Œuvres
10
Aussi par
1
Membres
628
Popularité
#40,132
Évaluation
3.9
Critiques
123
ISBN
33
Langues
5
Favoris
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