Review: Clever, witty, dreadfully dissapointing
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 11 21, 2012
Telling, telling, telling the action instead of SHOWING it.  Don't tell me what to think, authors, please.  SHOW me what happens and I'll figure out what to think on my own, thank-you.  Readers have brains, we can use them given half a chance.  There was no chance here.We don't need page after page right up front intro'ing the world.  START THE ACTION, show something happening, don't tell us what happened in the last 100 years.After the cute school-kid dares, when the story started to be more than funny episodic flashbacks, I felt like the best part was over.Loved the concept, the back and fourth dares.  But really?  Magic French hotels an hour away?  And what was with the ineffectual brother being the night manager?  If the owner had been there, instead of the elaborate ruse to get him out of the picture, nothing different would have happened.  The borish relatives would have still barged in and ruined everything.And she has a sweater for a pillow in her dingy little room?  If she has two close lifelong friends, I find it hard to believe that no one thought to give her a pillow for her birthday.  She can find money for pinesol but not a pillow?Finally, she hitchhikes from halfway across the world and just happens to find a nice kind elderly woman who lives just one town away...  sure, you can stretch credibility for pumpkins into coaches, but this time it was just a SAD shortcut for the author.  Same plot point could have happened if the heroine was just sent one town away.  Then she could walk back.  Or call her friends.NOT reading this one again.  Dissapointed and rueful because this could have been so much MORE.