Thursday 29 September 2011

The Amazon reviews keep coming

The Amazon reviews keep coming
Book reviews for The Drought by Steven Scaffardi...

Amazon Reader Review #6 (Kindle Edition): I bought this for my holiday...
...but then made the mistake of having a sneaky look at it and it had me rapt from the start... it is not my usual genre of book, I am more a crime thriller reader, but i read a promo for this on one of the forums, read the blurb and decided that I was quite interested in finding out what i would imagine to be the blokie equivalent of "chick lit" would be like. surprisingly enough I wasnt disappointed. in fact I think I went through quite a spectrum of emotions whilst reading it - from rip-roaring laughter to embarrassed cringing... and loads of sympathy with the main character... I thought that the book was well formatted and edited, and the characters and scenarios were all well written and pretty credible... certainly looking forward to more from this author... 5/5 stars

Amazon Reader Reviews #7 (Kindle Edition): The witty ending saves the book
Have to say I am not a fan of lad-lit. This book was on a par with the last one in the genre I read (William Rudd's First Year of Marriage ) with almost identical sense of humour and similar rather unlikely, contrived situations. Writers of lad-lit, it seems to me, view the events of the story as if it is a film they are seeing in their head; if directed well this could indeed make a basis for a funny film. Or a stinker. Mr Scaffardi sits on a dangerous knife edge here; the subject matter is about a guys search for sex, which is not going to be to every readers taste. It comes across a sort of updated Confessions of a Window Cleaner type story. One failing in my opinion of the first half of the book is that because we already know the protagonist is on a drought, we already know that every attempt to get sex is going to end in failure, and the episodes become a bit repetitious. I got to the half way mark and was thinking oh dear, there is a lot of book to go yet. However, his hero is not a bad sort and the book picks up dramatically in the second half when a new element is introduced. The story (and the hero) really redeem themselves in the second half, the ending is well crafted and made me laugh. I have to admit there were several Moments Of Male Truth in the book which men will recognise: for instance the true horror of shopping; and a certain event that happens once a year on a Monday. It is priced very reasonably for the kindle at £1. 3/5 stars

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