Bitsy's Bait & BBQ
By: Pamala Morsi
After three weeks of reading about Mormans through the ages and possibly mentally ill members of the Lincoln family, it was nice to turn my attentions to a couple of city girls thrown into small town life.
Bitsy’s Bait & BBQ walked the line between predictability and good story telling in a way that I felt worked very well for the genre. While there was a plot point or two I didn’t see coming, each one was foreshadowed earlier in the book, sometimes only one chapter previously. The pieces all fell together in a way that felt natural for the story, and the results were organic.
It took a few chapters for me to truly identify with the characters, but soon I was invested in each one. Told in a third person style, our point of view fluctuates between four characters, a pair of sisters, an ex husband and his controlling mother. Truly though, the story is about a fifth character, the one who ties them all together, young five year old Josh. It’s hard not to adore the small child.
I did have some problems reading the details on fishing and barbequing, a side effect of being a Vegetarian for nearly fifteen years. Our main characters go into the business knowing nothing of these two topics, so we learn as they do. I will confess to once or twice skimming over how to properly bait a fish, or how to tell of your pork butt is cooked properly. I expect that for most readers though, this would be a non issue.
The best thing, I thought, was early in the book I made my predictions about what would happen, but also thought “well, if I was writing the story, I would want this character’s path to end at point C, rather than at the point A we’re being led to believe would happen, and I’d also like this plot to go there rather than here” and both of those things were actually what occurred. Brava, Pamela Morsi, at showing that we all have different life paths and sometimes the stops along the road mean something different for us all.
Bitsy’s Bait & BBQ walked the line between predictability and good story telling in a way that I felt worked very well for the genre. While there was a plot point or two I didn’t see coming, each one was foreshadowed earlier in the book, sometimes only one chapter previously. The pieces all fell together in a way that felt natural for the story, and the results were organic.
It took a few chapters for me to truly identify with the characters, but soon I was invested in each one. Told in a third person style, our point of view fluctuates between four characters, a pair of sisters, an ex husband and his controlling mother. Truly though, the story is about a fifth character, the one who ties them all together, young five year old Josh. It’s hard not to adore the small child.
I did have some problems reading the details on fishing and barbequing, a side effect of being a Vegetarian for nearly fifteen years. Our main characters go into the business knowing nothing of these two topics, so we learn as they do. I will confess to once or twice skimming over how to properly bait a fish, or how to tell of your pork butt is cooked properly. I expect that for most readers though, this would be a non issue.
The best thing, I thought, was early in the book I made my predictions about what would happen, but also thought “well, if I was writing the story, I would want this character’s path to end at point C, rather than at the point A we’re being led to believe would happen, and I’d also like this plot to go there rather than here” and both of those things were actually what occurred. Brava, Pamela Morsi, at showing that we all have different life paths and sometimes the stops along the road mean something different for us all.
A good quick, feel good read.
No comments:
Post a Comment