Review: Starts Slow, Then Fizzles Out
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 08 21, 2011
As a general rule, I figure that a novel needs to have characters that the reader cares about. Even if you hate the character, that's enough, and this novel has characters that are pleasant enough to suit anyone.And as a general rule, the setting needs to be interesting. Livi is in a small town flower shop during the VietNam era, which is certainly adequate. A brother has died in the war, a farmer has died in his field, loading a round bale on a Sunday.The author needs to have a full toolbox of vocabulary and grammar, so that the words have humor, grace and color, and this author certainly has that.In fact, this novel has everything it needs except an arc. This is a slice of life like a piece of cake: it just lays there. A novel needs to be a video clip, not a snapshot. In a stand-alone novel, the arc is about how things happen to change the protagonist. In a series, the arc is about how thing happen to change the characters surrounding the protagonist. InDelivery, however, nothing ever seems to happen.Because it has all those other elements, though, this might be a great book to read if you can't sleep. It certainly isn't going to keep you awake, wondering what's going to happen next. By the time you get a third of the way through the book, you're pretty sure that what will happen next is just more of the same.Obviously, a lot of hard work went into this book, by a promising and talented author. Given a plot, her next book could be a great piece of literature.