Clover Hendry’s Day Off

Reading Has Been Unfulfilling

~ shawnaborman ~ Leave a comment

Hello, hello! How’s everyone doing this delightful Wednesday? Things here are a little busy this week. Just stupid things. Ran some paperwork over to our CPA on Tuesday and grabbed some Captain Ds on the way home. Have to take Bonnie in to get spayed later this week. Sophia did really well when she was spayed and is back to normal. Anyway, it’s Tuesday still and I kind of forgot about needing to write a blog post. Go me! Ugh. So, the only thing I can think of to ramble about is reading. I’ve read five books so far this year and it took me like three hours to remember four of them. I had to check my GoodReads page to remember the fifth. Needless to say, I haven’t really been satisfied with anything I’m reading. That’s usually a sign I’m burning myself out, but it could just be the books.

1. Clover Hendry’s Day Off by Beth Morrey. This was my review book for January, so you can find my thoughts here. Short version, it started out great and quickly devolved into a dumpster fire. Meh.

2. The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec. It’s a Norse mythology retelling. You would think it would be right up my alley. But I don’t remember much about it. I know I enjoyed it as I was reading it, but I can’t remember any particularly wonderful moments. It basically just exists on my list of “I read this and remember the basic premise, but not much else” books. It was good enough to me simply because I enjoy Norse mythology. That’s about it.

3. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. This is the one I didn’t remember at all. When I looked at my list of books, I knew what it was, but I totally forgot it existed. It’s one of those books that is super popular and people kept recommending it to me, so I read it. I really like the premise that we can spend that moment between life and death hopping around our “what if” lives and choose to stay in whichever one feels right to us. But the whole ‘suicidal person hopping lives only to realize their current one is the only one they want to live’ thing is kind of annoying and the message is super heavy handed. And frankly, it isn’t something I find believable. So maybe I just blocked out reading this book because it pisses me off when I think about it.

4. Spell Bound by F.T. Lukens. This one is probably the only book I’ve read this year that was even remotely satisfying. It’s adorable gay fluff AND it’s got the gloomy person falling for the sunshine boy! That’s one of my weaknesses. The story itself was entertaining, but kind of rushed. I was just there for the cute romance though, so I didn’t mind the actual plot being a bit wobbly.

5. Murder Off the Books by Tamara Berry. I really liked the first two books in this series, but this one was such a let down. The plot made no sense. The only character who actually behaved like they’ve been built up so far was Gertie. The FBI agents were beyond ridiculous. It honestly felt like someone input a premise with the instructions to write like Tamara Berry into some AI program and this is what came out. It starts out okay, but gradually becomes more outlandish and just idiotic by the end.

So, that’s been my year in reading so far. I’m currently reading the review book for next week’s post, another book to review the first Wednesday in May, and I just started another cozy mystery as my for fun book. We’ll see how those go. What have you been reading? As always, feel free to share your thoughts or questions here or on my social media pages!

Thoughts on CLOVER HENDRY’S DAY OFF

~ shawnaborman ~ 4 Comments

Howdy, howdy! How’s everyone doing this lovely Wednesday? Things here are usual. It’s the last Wednesday of the month, though. Where did January go? Anyway, that means it’s book review time! This month, I stepped back into that weird literary/women’s fiction genre. I just call it slice of life, but apparently that’s wrong. I don’t know why they have to make it complicated. Whatever. I went with Clover Hendry’s Day Off by Beth Morrey. It was released yesterday (the 30th) from G.P. Putnam’s Sons. As usual, I must thank them and NetGalley for access to an ARC in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. Let’s do the thing!

Clover Hendry’s Day Off follows (you guessed it!) Clover Hendry as she finally says screw everything and takes a day to do as she pleases. Skipping work and pampering herself and causing trouble wherever she ends up. Why not? All she has done her entire life is say yes to people and take everything on herself. She’s never taken a break or stopped to breathe. But that all changes right now. Will the world implode around her if she’s just a little bit selfish? It’s time to find out.

Before we go into the review, there will be spoilers. I try to stay vague most of the time, but once in a while, specific things need to be mentioned. Feel free to skip ahead to the picture that says “the end.” If this is on your TBR list, you’ve been warned.

The plot is super cute until it isn’t. As someone who imagines the worst and people pleases and all that, I immediately liked Clover. I appreciated her breakdown. But what started out as fun and relatable, quickly devolved into a petty slog. Yes, slack off work for an art show and good meal. No, don’t dump a random kid in an art installation when his parent is there, but not paying attention. Yes, stick up for your gay friend when someone is being a bigot, but when your friend says stop, you stop. Definitely don’t steal a statue from a house your bestie is watching because you’ll just be getting her in trouble. Some of the stuff made no sense. And then there was the whole rape revenge thing that was supposedly the trigger for this whole breakdown. It felt trite and completely unnecessary. Clover had plenty of reasons to go off the rails. Tossing in the rapist dude just felt like overkill. And then when revenge is had, it’s brushed off like nothing happened in favor of more family drama. There’s just too much going on and not enough room for everything to feel natural. For such a short book, it’s like they tried to jam every possible plotline into it and it becomes a checklist instead of a story. Shitty boss, check. Distant children (bonus for twins), check. Narcissistic mother, check. Etc.

Honestly, the only character we really get to know is Clover. She starts out great, then becomes annoying, and finally mellows out a bit. But everyone else are just cardboard cutouts and that’s sad. It’s part of the reason I usually avoid literary type fiction. It’s not uncommon for books like that to focus on one character and just leave the others as stereotypes. It’s fine, but meh.

The writing is actually really enjoyable. Before the plot became a slog, I was seriously considering giving this 4 stars because it was fun and it was a smooth, quick read. It was a fitting style for the story.

Ultimately, Clover Hendry’s Day Off starts out great and then fizzles out. But I did enjoy the writing enough that if I run across other books by Beth Morrey, I’d give them a chance.

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Overall, I gave it 3 out of 5 stars. It’s fun enough, but there are better stories like this out there. If it sounds like your thing, try it. If it’s not your typical genre, try something else first.