This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by Heather T. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Mid-Length Contemporary category.

Here is Heather T.'s review:

You might have heard that Google is feeding its artificial intelligence romance novels to enable it to move from its stiff, factual communication style to something more realistic and conversational. Let’s hope that this novel isn’t on the menu, because it would not help the machine seem more human.

The story itself is lightweight – more of a sketch of a story than an actual story. Guy from California comes to Twee Wee Town with his plot moppet of a daughter, to whom a Terrible Tragedy recently occurred – no molestation, but still a violent incident from which Plot Moppet has not fully recovered. They meet Quiet Librarian, who recently became famous for writing a popular children’s book about Sparkle the Reindeer. Small town family life and the attention of Quiet Librarian are good for Plot Moppet and she begins to recover. Guy and Quiet Librarian get together. The end.

The only thing that kept my interest in reading this was to count the different ways that this book seem badly written while still keeping to basically acceptable English sentence structure and grammar. As I read, I kept being struck by the sensation that notes for various characters, scenes, and relationships had been turned into sentences without much care for what was actually needed for the story. The result was a strange, just-the-facts-and-ALL-the-facts writing style that sometimes came off like a shopping list.

For example, we are treated to a kitchen that smells like roast beef, potatoes, gravy, and apple pie – all at the same time. I can’t quite imagine that. Do potatoes even smell like anything?

This style could be jarring, and usually just when the story seemed to finally be flowing the author would pause for an aside or detail that yanked the reader right out of the narrative.

“I hope you didn’t hold dinner for me.”

“Not really. I was tied up going over some ranch accounts with Chase this afternoon, and we lost track of time.”

“Fine. Blame me, I can take it,” Chase said, overhearing.

“We always do,” Hope said with a teasing grin.

Chase had been invaluable to their family since Faith’s husband died, and Celeste was deeply grateful to him for all his help during the subsequent dark and difficult months.

Really? Just when we finally had an ordinary conversation going, that was the place where we needed to know about this guy Chase (who is irrelevant to the story) and how the heroine feels about him? Did we ever need to know anything about Chase other than that he’s a neighbor? No, we didn’t, and that brings me to the most annoying thing about the writing. This book was packed with extraneous details – violating Chehov’s gun rule at every turn.  The worst example was an interlude at a restaurant. I’ll lay it out in detail because I want everyone to share my pain.

Heroine, Hero, and Plot Moppet go to a restaurant. We are told the full name of the restaurant; the nickname of the restaurant; the layout and amenities (including exactly what video games are available); whether it is family friendly; the full names of all of the employees and their extended family histories; the full names of all of the patrons of the restaurant and a description of most of their extended families; the detailed smells of the restaurant; what is on the menu and what is good; the portion sizes; that the restaurant makes its own hand-pulled mozzarella; that the food is locally sourced; what comes on a margherita pizza; what everyone at the table orders; that the place has a wood-fired oven; that the owners (whose full names we are given, of course) are big into artisan pizza and in addition into making their own cheeses; they have a greenhouse where they grow herbs and vegetables; how much of their dinner each person at the table eats; that the salad comes “family-style”; and essentially the whole recipe for the dessert.

AUGH! None of this was relevant. Not. One. Bit.

When there weren’t unnecessary and uninteresting details, there was repetitive repetition of things we had already been told again and again.

Because this book was only 200 pages long, there was scarcely room for the story itself to fit into the cracks between the crushing weight of irrelevant detail and repeated points. There is no tension regarding whether the leads are going to get together – from virtually the first page it is clear exactly how the book will end. In an effort to create conflict, the hero and heroine have a brief argument, but it gets resolved more quickly than it took to describe the damn pizza parlor.

The writing was wooden, and the dialogue even more stilted. Every car was either a “vehicle” or an “SUV.” At one point I wondered whether the author had sworn off contractions because the dialogue sounded so forced and unreal. Moreover, for every action or conversation that occurs, we are told how the characters feel about it – God forbid that we should learn about the characters through their words and actions. Of course, there wasn’t much room for showing rather than telling what with the need to describe in detail every power tool in the fucking workshop!

And my final criticism, the book was so sickly saccharine sweet that I threw up in my mouth a little. In the Epilogue, Hero, Heroine and Plot Moppet are in the car going to Twee Wee Town’s premiere of the movie about Sparkle the Reindeer. Plot Moppet is reflecting on this premiere versus the Hollywood premiere that will occur later:

In the transitory glow from the streetlights, her features looked pensive. “But I guess I’m more excited about this one because this in our home now,” she said after a moment. “This is where our family is and all our friends. Everyone in Pine Gulch is just as excited about the new Sparkle movie as I am, and I can’t wait to share it with them.”*

Oh. What a dear she was. . . . It warmed [Heroine] more than her favorite wool coat that her stepdaughter felt so at home in Pine Gulch and that she wanted all her friends and neighbors to have the chance to enjoy the moment, too.

Blarf.

If the Google machine uses this book as a guide, it will talk like a robot version of my late Aunt Bunny who only talked about people no one knew, with irrelevant tangents and a repeat of every story fifteen minutes later, interjected with sudden tears about the little children (Aunt Bunny was a bit of a lush). Trying to get a real story out of this mess is not worth the trouble.

* Because that’s how eight-year olds talk in this book.