Four Short Weekend Reviews

I was a busy consumer this weekend, gobbling up other people's creative offerings, two books and two movies, which I shall briefly review in this post and try not to go on and on about, since I am tired. I also want to have time left to watch a movie and work on my last latch-hook pillow (I do only around three rows per session so my hands don't get too crampy).

1. The Pumpkin Spice Cafe, a romance novel by Laurie Gilmore. This book is pretty meh. There isn’t much conflict of any kind, and the protags annoyingly obsess over their past and what others think of them/might think of them if they begin dating. Sure, lots of folks do that in reality, but it's boring to read about. It felt like a young adult book with respect to the emotional maturity level even though both the hero and heroine were supposed to be around 30 years old. There is also a "mystery" element, but it isn’t very mysterious or interesting. I basically skimmed TPSC only so I could attend a meetup today with some book clubbers who had also read it (no one loved it). I'm certainly not going to read the next one ~ The Cinnamon Bun Book Store. I think there are a few more after that as well, with similar titles. Two stars for TPSC.

2. In the Dark, a thriller by Loreth Anne White. This is another one for my online book club. At first, I decided I hated it. A whole bunch of characters were flung at us rapidly, and not only couldn't I keep them straight, but also the story jumped around in time. Grrrr. But then I realized it was a homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, which I absolutely love (book and movie), so I began to view it more favorably. At some point, it became one of those "unputdownable" books that I'm always hearing about. The premise is that someone sets up a group of people for a scam trip to a remote resort that will be opening soon, with all of the victims hoping to get some kind of lucrative business contract out of the deal. As soon as they arrive, they realize they've been duped and there is no resort, just an old lodge with no easy way back to civilization. Some of them are vaguely suspicious that they have met one or more of the others before. Then they find the Agatha Christie book on the table, and soon they twig to what's happening: they are all connected to the tragic death of a child that occurred 14 years earlier. After that, people begin dying, one by one. I almost didn't want to go to the meetup for TPSC because I needed to find out what the heck was happening In The Dark! But I did go... and rushed back home to finish the thriller. It was very satisfying, and I recommend this book heartily. Four stars.

3. Mini's First Time, a 2006 drama/comedy on Amazon Prime. First of all, you can't take this movie seriously, as it is utterly absurd, but once you view it as a kooky movie, it's sort of fun. Alec Baldwin is on form as a jerk, so we're off to a good start. His sexy stepdaughter (played by Nikki Reed) narrates the film, and her "thing" is to have a lifetime of firsts, from all sorts of sexual situations to murdering her mother, who hates her anyway. So the murder is planned and executed, and now we have a cop, played by Luke Wilson, hot on the case. Jeff Goldblum plays a weirdo neighbor. The whole thing is just so ridiculous that I enjoyed it. I just wish there had been more scenes with Luke because I particularly like him.

4. Non-Stop, a 2013 drama/suspense Prime film, starring Lacey Chabert, who plays an author's assistant trying to outwit a killer on a plane while she transports a manuscript to Zurich on her laptop. Why can't we email manuscripts to Zurich? Who the hell knows. Basically, the reason I clicked this was due to my fondness for Lacey from her Hallmark movies, but this movie left something to be desired, namely a plot that made any fucking sense at all. The twist at the end was fun, so I didn't regret watching the whole thing.

Oh, I forgot ~ I also watched Separate Lies on Prime, a British drama/romance. This story centers around the disintegration of a married couple's relationship after a tragedy for which one of them is responsible. Good story, though sometimes a bit draggy. Excellent acting.