Sarah's Library

22/8 - *Deep, frustrated sigh* Why is it so difficult to put details about any series a book may be part of on the front cover? Do publishers really think we should all walk around with internet capable phones ready to check what position a book is within a series? Or should we just not care? I get so annoyed when I realise that a book is part of a series, and that it's not the first book. This seems to be happening to me more and more, at least once a month now, and it's only to the detriment of the book (and author and publisher) that I get reading without knowing its series status, because being at a complete loss over what's happening tends to lead to a lower star rating.

It was almost immediately clear that this was not the first book in its series. We are thrown into the story like we already know who the main character is, the way the opening (usually information giving) chapters are written it obvious the author is assuming we've already read about Princess Katherine (Kathy) and the background to her situation in the previous book of the series. Except I haven't and it took me a couple of chapters to catch on to what was going on.

Kathy is kind of like a modern day Mary Poppins. She is relentlessly cheerful, forgiving of difficult children and overbearing fathers who can't cope, knows enough psychology to be able to draw out a child who has reverted to being a dog in order to deal with the loss of his mother, thinks everyone should be hugged every day and that conversations should be started with a compliment towards another person just to make them feel good (no matter whether the topic of conversation is mundane or the discussion of punishment for bad behaviour by one of the children). The one thing Kathy didn't do is sing.

I liked the kids, Dougie (Doggie because that's how his sister pronounced it when she was young) and Stacy. Although, Stacy must be a 13-year-old savant when it comes to adult sexual behaviour because she discussed how Kathy should act and dress when it came to seducing her father in way too much detail for most other teenagers (most children, no matter how old they are, do not want to even think about their parents having sex). The kidnap plot at the end has to be one of the most ridiculously fake reasons for Brockmann could come up with for Kathy to go racing back to Trey, no matter what he had said about not wanting a relationship with her. Obviously, there needed to be a reason for Kathy to feel like she could go back to Trey and not be immediately booted back out the door, but it didn't have to be the lamest and least evil kidnapping of all time. I think a better scenario would have been Stacy inexplicably not coming home from school one afternoon, everyone's out searching for her assuming she's run away again, but in reality she's been hit by a car and taken to hospital (nothing serious, broken arm or leg, or kept in to check for concussion) with no I.D. Kathy is there to support Trey and the rest of the story goes as originally written. Much less lame. Will keep an eye out for the first and third books in the series.