Book Review: The Very Thought Of You

“I want to thank you for the profound joy I've had in the in the thought of you.” 


Book review time!

I have this strange habit of sometimes just taking random books that I've never heard of off the shelf of the library and reading them.  I have had a lot of luck with this, but also had some very bad luck with this.  Here would be an argument against that habit:  The Very Thought of You.


When I read the description, I thought, "Why is this in the general fiction section? There's a romance section, you know."  I read the book, and I think I learned why.  1) It's terribly written.  2) It's smut.  3) It contributes nothing to society as a whole.

Anna Sands is sent out of London during the WWII evacuation (there seems to be an entire genre dedicated to evacuee children--and I don't say that in a necessarily bad way.  Chronicles of Narnia, for example, is one of my favorite series of all time). She is sent to live with Thomas and Elizabeth Ashton, who have essentially opened a boarding school, enabling them to take in 80 or so evacuees.  But, they are an enigmatic, childless couple, and Anna starts to learn things about their peculiar relationship.

This book was awful.  The writing was sloppy and clumsy, and I didn't care about any character at all. Every relationship in this book will include infidelity--I am not exaggerating--for apparently no reason other than, perhaps, the writer is under the impression that people aren't actually monogamous, and that that is some lie of civilized society. "Everybody does it, just people are too repressed to admit it."  I am not actually sure who the story was about, the dialogue was pointless and unrealistic, and the narrative was sketched out descriptions of the feelings.  Nothing ever actually happened.  I mean, at least Therese Raquin had a moral and purpose, and was actually well-written. I never thought I'd say this, and junior-year-of-high-school-self is screaming from within me, but this book was worse than Therese Raquin. 

The plot was pointless, the writing was bad, and the characters had nothing to root for. 

One star to this pointless drivel. 

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