Taking Leaps and Finding Ghosts
Janet Delee
Ginny has an Ideal Life plan. After her first 50 years of life, she wants to own her own home. Armed with a close friend who is a real estate agent, she sets out on the hunt. She needs some backup though, so she forms an ‘Ideal Life’ club, and gets together a group of misfits who want to be musicians, artists and writers, as well as a man who wants to work out his haunting problems.
The book dragged on and on. I was half-way through before anything vaguely interesting happened. There were attempts to bring ghosts into things, but really the ghosts were minor inconveniences. I didn’t once feel frightened about the ghosts hurting any of the characters – it might have provided a well-needed pick-me-up for the action of the story!
The ‘twist’ in this was not really a twist. The hints towards something interesting happening? Simply hints. Nothing to see here folks, keep moving on. Just regular life ‘Ideal Life’ dreams that seem very short, and unimportant. I understand the worth of working towards something like that, but honestly it’s not very interesting to read about in a novel.
This novel was perfectly written. No, really, perfect. The problem was that there wasn’t a compelling storyline underneath it. The language choices and the sentence construction were all textbook perfect. But this also meant that the dialogue came across as ‘perfect’, and seemed quite stilted, because each of the characters used full words, and honestly, there was no distinctions in the way that made me like one more than another. If you read the text to me out loud, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which character was which.
I lie in wait this this author will bring other works out that I may love more, because the foundations for a fantastic novel are there – the author would just benefit from getting out there and grabbing a really dirty, fast-paced plot and slinking it into her beautiful writing style.
I want to give it 3 stars, and I would if I could think of an audience for it. Sadly for me, it was just so slow and boring that although I finished it, there are better things to read out there.
