Currently Reading: Still deciding
In order to reach my goal of 100 books, I need to be reading 8-9 books per month. So I'm already a little behind. Whoops. Generally speaking, I'm a pretty fast reader, but if I'm reading a book that I'm not that into, it takes me awhile. Also, I'm watching Community and playing way too much Pokemon. Clearly, I have my priorities in order.
Anyways, I just finished reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I've had this book for about a year now, but when I saw the trailer for the movie, I decided I should probably get around to reading it.
It was...okay. I guess I was expecting more from it, since I've heard nothing but good things about it. Sure, there's a nice little twist at the end, but other than that, everything that happens in the book is so...expected. The hero and the heroine get together in the end, the villains are punished, and everyone gets the second chance they so deserve. I was waiting to be shocked, for my heart to be ripped from my chest, to be emotionally MOVED in some way, but that just didn't happen with this book.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love books where the hero and the heroine ride off into the wind and live happily ever after. But only if that story is tonally appropriate to the rest of the story, which I don't think is the case here. This story is extremely well-researched, and it shows the often gritty side of life on a train circus. For God's sake, the story starts with the narrator's parents dying and him finding out that he doesn't even get to inherit the veterinary practice that his father has been working at his whole life. Jacob goes back to school and tries to finish his exams, but he just can't do it. Destitute and alone in the world, he hops a train and finds himself working on a circus. That's pretty freaking grim! And I think that, for the most part, the tone remains dark throughout the rest of the book. So when all loose ends are tied up at the end, it feels so....forced. Artificial. At one point Jacob says something to the woman he loves and it sounds EXACTLY like a line out of a Harlequin romance novel. Seriously.
Like I said, it's not the happy ending I mind; it's that the tone of the of the book doesn't support that type of ending. Especially considering that this book takes place during the Depression...look, things just don't magically work out like that. It's too perfect for the time period, and it's too perfect for this type of fiction.
I realize I'm kind of focusing on the negative here. This is still a good book, and the scenes with the animals and other circus folk are charming and engaging. It definitely takes you into a world you've never seen before, so it's worth a read for sure.
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