A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Book:  A Reliable Wife 

Author:  Robert Goolrick 

Grade: D+ 

Recommended To:  Poisoners, Repliers to Personal Ads.

Okay, you know how Barnes and Noble or Borders ropes you in with those buy fifteen get one free deals, that aren't really a good deal because you can get it all cheaper on Amazon anyway?  I'm sorry to say, but that is what happened to me with A Reliable Wife.

The back of the book sounded so interesting, but evidently the snippet writer didn't actually read the book, or sugar coated the story into a few sentence blurb. 

The problem with this book is that it had such potential.  A man writes a personal ad for a "reliable wife," gets a picture of an ordinary woman and sends her money to come live with him in Wisconsin.  She comes, but she is a different woman than the one in the picture and had all sorts of secrets in her past including a very shady gentleman who in a spoiler twist turns out to be the son of the ad-writer.  This book sounds great right?  Wrong-o.

If this book was well written, didn't have all of the ridiculous sex scenes and dream sequences, and wasn't so damn repetitive, then it would have been a great book.  Unfortunately, this book lacked/had all of those things and the characters that could have been interesting fell totally flat. 

I don't mind sex scenes in books - but this seemed like the sex in this book was geared towards men and that is certainly not how this book was marketed.  I think any book with the word "wife" in the title is an immediate turn off for a male reader.  But, the writing in this book shouldn't appeal to anyone.  It was strange, repetitive, and warrants a D+ rating.

Happy Reading!!

The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots by Carolly Erickson

Book:  The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots

Author:  Carolly Erickson

Grade:  C

Recommended To:  People who think Historical Fiction means short on the history.

Carolly Erickson isn't going to win any awards for her historical fiction.  These are really basic books and it almost feels like she read the Wikipedia page on Mary and then creates some drama and fiction around the basic history.  She even admits at the end that she blatently made up certain events, including travel that Mary did within England. 

Ok, I get that the point of historical fiction is to have some fiction. But, Erickson is light on the substance and heavy on Mary's love life. This book was more of a light-hearted romance than a well written historical fiction novel.

Erickson isn't a bad writer - she just shouldn't bill herself as a historical fiction writer.  Her books are somewhat entertaining and are good for the train.  I've noticed recently that a lot of the books I read are "train books," and that maybe some of my readers don't take the El every single day for 2 hours.  But, mostly "train books" are those that you pop in your bag, get salad dressing from your lunch on, and don't require a ton of thought after a long day.

This is my third Erickson and I thought her other two books were more entertaining than this one.  It dragged in parts and I simply wasn't interested in reading Mary's story from her selfish perspective.  Mary Queen of Scots in this novel has little depth and breadth and if you are looking for a book with a lot of accurate information on this time period and Mary's life, then this is not the book for you.

Philippa Gregory has a pretty good account of Mary's life in her book The Other Queen because she tells the story from the perspective of Bess and George Talbot who were forced to house Mary when she was captured and held in England. 

Happy Reading!