Official Review: George & Jenny by Billy D. Pearson
Posted: 02 Sep 2016, 00:04
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "George & Jenny" by Billy D. Pearson.]
1 out of 4 stars
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George & Jenny by Billy D. Pearson tells the tale of George, a recently-widowed New Yorker. George has always had a city-living mindset - money is what matters and other people are either in the way or just a way to help get more. Even George's wife was more of a partner than anything as the two of them amassed wealth together. After George's wife passes away, his doctor suggests that the best way to deal with his stress is to move somewhere quiet. A move from New York City to a small rural town in Minnesota is a massive change, and he's heard all sorts of awful things about the backwards, uneducated hillbillies in the Midwest.
A few years later, George goes to church, another thing he's heard awful things about. After church a woman, Jenny, offers him a Bible and they get to talking about religion. They do this every Sunday for quite some time, falling for each other over time. Jenny pulls away once they kiss for the first time, however; she has a mysterious past that may ruin their relationship and is scared of what will happen once it gets out. The church steps in to help out, but will there be bliss for these two lovers?
The thing is, right off the bat, all of the above happens within less than 15 pages. The book is short, less than 90 pages total, but this is a book that breezes through moments and gives very little in the way of details. As far as the plot is concerned, a decent amount happens but it happens so quickly that I very rarely felt in the moment.
The characters had a similar issue - there ends up being quite a cast and they all felt homogenous. While George learns a lot and grows throughout a bit, everyone else could easily be traded out for one another and I wouldn't have even known it. Even with a list of notes, I easily mixed up who each character was and how they were related to one another. The book could have done with either more pages to allow the other characters more personality or less characters so they could be more easily focused on.
The worst flaw of all, however, is that the book needs to be edited. At first it was just odd issues here and there, but as the book went on it became so awful that I couldn't even figure out what was going on at times. Some sentences make no sense at all, some sentences run into one another due to missing punctuation and other sentences make it impossible to tell who's speaking or whether something is even being spoken aloud or thought.
The book does a fair job with the themes it presents - city vs. rural living, the importance of family and the power of religion. While it does push all of these to a semi-absurd extreme at times (aside from family), the points are still made. I was born in Chicago myself and ended up moving to a very small town in Florida, so I absolutely understand the drastic change in mindset and lifestyle. This book does a good job pointing out how many of us are taught to think of those in the south and midwest.
I wanted to enjoy this book. It's a clean romance novel with a widowed city boy moving to the midwest and falling in love with some light mystery involved. Unfortunately, aside from the themes of the book themselves there wasn't anything worth recommending in this book. With a great deal of editing this could be a different story, but currently I can't recommend it to anyone. As such, I'm giving it 1 out of 4 stars.
******
George & Jenny
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1 out of 4 stars
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George & Jenny by Billy D. Pearson tells the tale of George, a recently-widowed New Yorker. George has always had a city-living mindset - money is what matters and other people are either in the way or just a way to help get more. Even George's wife was more of a partner than anything as the two of them amassed wealth together. After George's wife passes away, his doctor suggests that the best way to deal with his stress is to move somewhere quiet. A move from New York City to a small rural town in Minnesota is a massive change, and he's heard all sorts of awful things about the backwards, uneducated hillbillies in the Midwest.
A few years later, George goes to church, another thing he's heard awful things about. After church a woman, Jenny, offers him a Bible and they get to talking about religion. They do this every Sunday for quite some time, falling for each other over time. Jenny pulls away once they kiss for the first time, however; she has a mysterious past that may ruin their relationship and is scared of what will happen once it gets out. The church steps in to help out, but will there be bliss for these two lovers?
The thing is, right off the bat, all of the above happens within less than 15 pages. The book is short, less than 90 pages total, but this is a book that breezes through moments and gives very little in the way of details. As far as the plot is concerned, a decent amount happens but it happens so quickly that I very rarely felt in the moment.
The characters had a similar issue - there ends up being quite a cast and they all felt homogenous. While George learns a lot and grows throughout a bit, everyone else could easily be traded out for one another and I wouldn't have even known it. Even with a list of notes, I easily mixed up who each character was and how they were related to one another. The book could have done with either more pages to allow the other characters more personality or less characters so they could be more easily focused on.
The worst flaw of all, however, is that the book needs to be edited. At first it was just odd issues here and there, but as the book went on it became so awful that I couldn't even figure out what was going on at times. Some sentences make no sense at all, some sentences run into one another due to missing punctuation and other sentences make it impossible to tell who's speaking or whether something is even being spoken aloud or thought.
The book does a fair job with the themes it presents - city vs. rural living, the importance of family and the power of religion. While it does push all of these to a semi-absurd extreme at times (aside from family), the points are still made. I was born in Chicago myself and ended up moving to a very small town in Florida, so I absolutely understand the drastic change in mindset and lifestyle. This book does a good job pointing out how many of us are taught to think of those in the south and midwest.
I wanted to enjoy this book. It's a clean romance novel with a widowed city boy moving to the midwest and falling in love with some light mystery involved. Unfortunately, aside from the themes of the book themselves there wasn't anything worth recommending in this book. With a great deal of editing this could be a different story, but currently I can't recommend it to anyone. As such, I'm giving it 1 out of 4 stars.
******
George & Jenny
View: on Bookshelves
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