Review: Downhill
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 11 25, 2013
When I read The Illegal Gardener, I rather liked it.  By now I have read all five books of the series till now, and I think every book is a little worse than the previous one.  I don't think I will be reading the next one.Perhaps Sara Alexi should turn to another subject, because it starts to get boring and repetitive.  The descriptions of the island are very similar to those used in Black Butterflies, the story of Costas Voulgaris, the waiter who turns out to be a manque astrophysicist and a rich hotel owner, has been told in another book.As for the story itself, I found it to be highly unlikely.  A young goodlooking 24-year old guy who falls head over heels in love with a 50-year old woman, to the point of wanting to marry her a few days after meeting her...  Wishful thinking, perhaps?  Both in The Illegal Gardener and in Black Butterflies there is fleeting mention of older women having feelings for men half their age, in this book it is, if not the exactly central theme, an important one...Although it probably is not the writer's intention, she paints a rather condescending picture of Greece as a quaint, backward country where everybody loves each other and money is not important.  A lot of the things she describes might be true thirty-forty years ago, but not anymore.  And believe me, in crisis--ridden Greece money is VERY important!  But I suppose this "sunny" approach appeals to non-Greeks...What annoys me most, not only in this book but in the previous ones too, is that there is way too much internal dialogue.  I don't need to know the hero's or heroine's every thought and rumination.  I am quite capable of filling in the blanks myself.  A good writer tells more by writing less, leaving space for the reader's imagination.All in all, not a good book.  Perhaps the writer should stop cranking out stories as fast as she can.  A good book takes time, you may need to distance yourself from it for a while and revisit it with a fresh outlook.  Sorry Sara, I know this is not a nice review, but I didn't write it to be mean.  Sometimes a bad well-meant review can help a writer to become better!