After Forever Ends is the book selected by Books & Beer Club to read for our romance (genre) month, April. I wasn't at the March meeting when this was selected. When I started reading the book, I had to wonder if I was reading the correct book. It sure seems like a Young Adult novel. While that works for science fiction and fantasy (my least favorite genres), it doesn't really work for romance.
I had to purchase the book since it was only available for sale and not at any library. I'm still trying to figure out if it was self-published. If not, I wouldn't recommend that any author use Melodie Ramone's editor. Punctuation is horrible. Dialogue is improperly punctuated throughout. (And I'm already thru about 25% of the novel. So it's not like the punctuation was bad the first few pages... or chapters.)
I don't understand the time setting of the novel. Silvia is telling her granddaughter her life story. At the time of the telling, she's 86 years old. Okay. That makes sense. We go back to when Silvia starts new boarding school. As the reader, I expected Silvia to be 15 years old in the 1930s or maybe 1940s. Yet the references to popular culture at the time of Silvia's boarding school days are things that were going on when I was already an adult. And I'm no where near 86 years old. In other words, 86-year old Silvia was 15 in the 1980s. Does that make sense? Maybe if I continue reading, I'll see that the novel ends sometime in the future.
(Took a break to read The Nest. Getting back to After Forever Ends this evening. Book club is in just 5 more days. I've got a lot of reading to get done.)
Book club was this evening. According to my Kindle app, I've got an hour and 45 minutes remaining to complete the book. I wasn't too worried about hearing any spoilers at the meeting. I was also in pretty good company. Three people liked the book (although one agreed with many of my complaints). A few were on the fence about it. And the large majority really didn't enjoy reading it at all. I wasn't the only one who felt that the book was endless and weren't able to finish on time.
That didn't stop us from having a great book discussion. In addition to talking about the writing and editing (or lack there of) and author's purpose, we talked about the characters and the plot. And the setting. This was probably one of our more focused on the book discussions.
We've decided as a group that we need to take better care when selecting books based on reviews of people we don't know. Especially when it comes to romance. (Personally, I'm not sure why we don't substitute romance with some other genre that isn't on our annual rotation. I might suggest that next time.)
I'm so close to finishing the book. I suppose that I will finish it.
I finished After Forever Ends over the weekend. I'm not sure how the kindle app really learns your reading speed. When I stopped reading on Wednesday, it said I had about an hour and 45 minutes remaining. After about 20 minutes of reading, it said I had over 2 hours remaining. I'd made a commitment to finishing the book so I stuck with it. I'd heard at book club that I wasn't missing much by not reading through to the end. And I suppose that was correct.
The main character, Silvia, jumped around a bit talking about the children (hers and Lucy's) growing up and becoming adults. There was a lot of jumping around and I needed to keep reminding myself whose child belonged to whom. In reality, I suppose all the children belonged to all of them, Silvia, Lucy and the twins. The book ends with Oliver's illness and death and how it impacts Silvia, Alexander and Lucy. (Not a spoiler. In the opening paragraph, you learn that Olive has been dead a few years.) And then it ends.
Silvia started her story by telling it to her favorite granddaughter, Kitty. This was a loose thread that wasn't tied up at the end of the book. It was as if Silvia had been telling the story to herself.
Melodie Ramone wrote a 5-star review for herself on goodreads.com. In her review, she wrote about how most of the story came straight out of real life. I do wonder which character Melodie was/is. It makes me wonder if she decided to write down a family story - because this would be an awesome family story - and someone who read it said, "You should publish this. It's a great family saga." Even though it's something that would only completely interest someone close to the author. I'd love to have something so detailed about my grandparents, parents or siblings. But to read it about a stranger's family, not so much so. I also wonder, with regards to the poor editing, if it was published by a vanity press. My first thought was self-published, but there is a publisher noted.
In the end, I did give the book a rating of 2-stars on goodreads as opposed to a 1-star. Mostly because I was able to finish it. But would I recommend it? Not at all... unless you're a family member of Ramone. Then I'd highly recommend it.
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