The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Midnight Feast is about revenge, folklore, and secrets. It is situated at this expensive, retreat-style manor located on the coast of England, built for the perfect getaway. The story involves a woman who created and is running The Manor along with her husband who is the designer. There is also a single woman spending the weekend in a hut on the edge of the woods, a dishwasher with hopes to be promoted to a bartender, and plenty of locals who aren’t happy with the development intruding on ancient land. The story centers on opening weekend which is on the solstice but also jumps back in time. It jumps ahead, as well, to the day after the main event. The setting is idyllic…or is it?
When I first started reading, I was hit with the distinct feeling that I was reading another Nine Perfect Strangers. The story turns out to deviate just enough to separate it but the setting, ambiance, and host are similar. There was also an inkling of something else similar that I couldn’t quite pin down. I tend to like shorter chapters but I think Lucy Foley took it to the extreme here. Some chapters were only a paragraph long. I felt there was not enough time to orient yourself or get into what was going on. This was also in conjunction with multiple viewpoints and timelines. It felt too all over the place for me. I also could not get a sense of whether the author wanted the folklore to heavily influence our view of the genre or not. Is it a thriller or mystery or fantasy? The history and the stories of the area added a little feeling of being unsettled but I wish the author would have done it in a more organic and honest way. The writing wasn’t the best and what is with the reliance on ending so many chapters with a question? Is that the only way to build suspense? I was not a fan of the wrap up either. It felt incohesive and unfinished. However, I did like the way Lucy Foley tied elements from the past with the present and there were a couple times I was completely thrown. Most secrets and twists were done well. The host was painted in an almost unbelievable way with the extent of the delusion and self-importance, but it gave me a solid hatred for her regardless. Narcissism at its finest. Another aspect I loved was the creepiness of the childhood song that was introduced. I knew I had heard of it before but I was not positive, so I had to google it. Once I heard it, I could vividly imagine it playing in the book and it worked beautifully. I wish there was a play button on the actual page, so it played when I read that part! The story was inventive but hard to buy at points. In general, it was an ok read.
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Tag: secrets
The Wine Scam, Provenance, and How To Get Drunk With A 1800s President
The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book is about a fraud perpetrated in the wine world that many people knowingly or unknowingly participated in. Benjamin Wallace’s writing follows the apparent “discovery” and sale/auction of a cache of wines purportedly belonging to Thomas Jefferson. He tries to tie this together over multiple decades from the 18th century with Thomas Jefferson and the late 20th century into the 21st with all these rare vintages that were found and sold. It delves into the wine world on both sides of the Atlantic and references many players in this space. It was an aggravating read as people can suck and consequences be damned. I cannot believe the lack of caring by the people in this book regarding provenance, especially the auction houses. Everyone just wants to make a buck and doesn’t care about authenticity. That is what hurt me most about this book. The lack of veracity in historical artifacts. At first The Billionaire’s Vinegar started off boringly. There were tons of people, vintages, and vineyards rattled off that they lost all meaning and contributed very little to the story. This somewhat continued throughout the book, and it was hard to work out the connections or refer back to who exactly a person was. I wish the structure of it was more cohesive. There would be times a person would be mentioned who was conducting a test or some other random person and suddenly, we would be delving into their backstory. We would be given a history that contributed nothing. It was exhausting and dull. It would just around between different timelines and there did not seem to be a connecting thread that was being followed. The ending was also horrible. I was so hopeful for this book as I like historical, intriguing, and sudden find type themes. There were pockets of intrigue but there were too many deviations into uninteresting topics to help hold this one up. Ultimately, I would skip this one but looking into wine and its history especially the rare ones, would be interesting in and of itself.
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