I look at Juliet's Answer: One Man's Search for Love and the Elusive Cure for Heartbreak by Glenn Dixon as two separate books. One is a personal journey. The other is a history of a place and an organization. While the personal story of this book is not for me, the legend of Casa di Giuletta and the history of the secretaries of Juliet is fascinating. It makes me want to visit Verona and the Casa di Giuletta and perhaps write my very own letter to Juliet.

Read my complete review at Memories From Books - Juliet's Answer

Reviewed for NetGalley

Time does not heal all wounds.  Anyone who's lost a loved one, or had a falling out with a friend, or struggled to understand why the unforgettable Robin Williams so abruptly removed himself from our midst, can attest to that.  But if you leave yourself open to a new approach, if you soften your heart and let people in again, if you believe your dreams aren't futile...life can begin again.  Not as it was before, but in a way that allows you to come to terms with the past, embrace the present, and glide optimistically into the future.

I'm still not sure why I was drawn to this book.  It has a much lighter tone than what I usually read, most of the major events were predictable, and Ms. Benton Frank does like to tie everything up into pretty little bows.  But there is a joy and a hope that is ever-present in the prose, and gosh, don't we all need a taste of that!

It’s like this: when you read a book you want the story to take you from point A to B, or actually, if you’re me, you want the story to take you to point Z. Because going from point A to B is what I expect from a book. Isn’t that the least you want from a book? That the storyline takes you somewhere? That you figuratively speaking get transported from point A to B during the time it takes you to read the book?

Ok, so I might be a book snob, I don’t know, because honestly, I want every book I read to take me from point A to point Z, X or even, Æ, Ø or Å. (Yeah, those are legit letters, btw, I didn’t just make them up.) Because I want a book to surprise me. That is what I want most out of every book I read. If it takes me from point A to B, which is what most books do, sadly, they just take you on the path that probably 90% of the readers can see coming from a mile away. And yeah, sometimes those book are ok. I don’t think in my life I have ever rated such a book 5 stars, but maybe if there is a character you really like, or connect with, the fact that there are no ‘surprises’ in the path from A to B, can be forgiven.

Then there are books that take you from point A to point Z, and those are the books I love, to be honest.

Then there is this book.. It takes you from Point A to Point A, and I find that, that really, really annoys me..

Or maybe it’s just the fact that ‘good things happening to bad people’ is a subject, that gets my blood boiling, and yes, some may argue that none of these people ended up in a good place, or that the ‘good people’ ended up in a ‘good place’ and yeah, we can argue about that all day, but when….

Major Spoiler Alert

Killing someone (chickening out in the epilogue doesn’t count.) in cold blood, should land you in jail, and having your daughter lose an arm doesn’t make what you did right!

This book follows a couple of different people and families in Australia, that somehow end up being connected in some ways. I’m sure the Author had read Gone Girl before writing this book.. It’s a similar build of storyline at least. You get some information, and then want more, more morrre.. And it all has to explode in your face and give you an OMG I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING, ending, right? It should. This? It doesn’t.

I hated the ending. Mostly because I really, really loved the storyline, I was loving all these broken people, and the surprises that kept coming, and I wanted them to own up to their fucking mistakes and take the goddamn blame, and I wanted to be transported from A to Z, but instead I was taken on a journey that promised me a great experience, but instead ended up taking me right back to point A, and those, ladies and gentlemen, the books that start off at Point A and promise you an experience of a lifetime and then takes you right back to point A? Yeah, those are the worst.

And sadly, this, for me, was one of those books.

P.s Also the “looking into the future” thing? Please don’t go there. If that was the story you wanted to tell you, you should have told that story, instead of having girls in 1984 thinking about emails and cellphones….. o.O

2 stars.