The Guncle Abroad by Steven Rowley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“The trouble with children is that they’re not returnable.”
“’The most terrible poverty is loneliness.’”
“Chocolate like this was good for the soul, and the finer things good for the heart.”
“Feelings for adults are like treasures. And by that I mean we should bury them.”
The Guncle Abroad brings back our favorite gay uncle and his family. This time they are in Europe preparing for a wedding. Patrick, Maisie, Grant, and Greg all make a return but all a little bit older. It has been five years since the events of the first book and Patrick is about to be 50. Greg is looking to get remarried. Maisie is a teenager and Grant is becoming his own person. Greg again asks Patrick to take the kids for a bit so they travel around to several countries in Europe before landing at the destination of the wedding in Italy, on the beautiful Lake Como. There are hijinks and fun and learning aplenty. We get to meet some great new characters including a launt! Will the wedding go off without a hitch? Who will learn all about love and family? Will Patrick handle turning 50?
I thought that Steven Rowley wrote another great book but I don’t think it was as good as the first one. I still loved it though! There were returning and new characters but still everyone was fresh, exciting, relatable, and realistic. The first book had grief as the topic that permeated everything whereas this book had love. It was minutely too lovey-dovey but very manageable. No nausea from being too sickly sweet thankfully. The first thing I noticed though was before I even started the book. The jacket summary mentioned the kids being teenagers but Grant was only 11. It also had two minds about whether Patrick was actually 50 or not. But I quickly got back into the swing of things with smiling at the pop culture references, especially ones that I love and identify with. Page 5 had a mention of The First Wives Club and the judgement from the cover quickly turned to excitement about the novel I was about to read. I knew I was in for a treat in all its gay glory. The wit and snark are pure treats. It is just clever and funny. Grant talking about gay men and lesbians marrying because they are both gay. I also learned that the Bellagio in Las Vegas is based on a real location in Italy…on Lake Como! There was a mention of a movie that I loved that I feel that not a lot of people know about and that is RRR. It is so good! There was also this whole part where they went on The Sound of Music tour in Salzburg and I recognized all the details because I did that too! It was an amazing time and I would love to do it again. I could spend weeks in Austria. Reading it was like being back there and it was so vivid. It bears mentioning again but Steven continued making me laugh out loud with the witty, sarcastic, and funny back and forth. There was a joke about fathoms in response to the depth of “Twenty thousand leagues under the sea” and “’By the way, stay away from mimes, they’re all hands.’” In addition to the laughs, there were plenty of thoughts that were thoughtful and life-lessony like “there’s nothing money can buy that beats life’s free joys with the people you care about” and “growing older, as they say, was not for the faint of heart.” The paragraph on page 156 was all about our relationship with our phones and especially as a person who knew life before smartphones, was very relatable. There was a lot of spitting of bon mots. This book had a lot of words that I wrote down because I enjoyed reading, learning, and speaking them out loud. They are marchesa, dyspeptic, panoply, funicular, vivacity, and mellifluous. I also loved how instead of tourists, we were provided with more elevated terminology like itinerants, birds of passage, and bon vivants. I highly recommend reading this too. This is exactly the type of book I recommend if you read the first one or want some gay wit and fabulousness!
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Tag: wedding
How To Steal A Quarter Of A Billion Dollars And Impossibly Intriguing Investigations
The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“Trouble is much like love: when the time is ready, it will find you.”
“’You choose your family these days.’”
“’Life is sprung on us.’”
The Impossible Fortune is a continuation of The Thursday Murder Club. It is the 5th book in the series written by Richard Osman. This time the gang is just coming off the highs of a wedding and the lows of a death. Joyce’s daughter just got married and the best man at the wedding approaches Elizabeth for help. He subsequently disappears and his business partner could hold some answers. There is something they have that is worth a lot…like a lot a lot but is it worth killing over? The gang rushes to find out the answers before someone else gets hurt. Will they solve it in time? The family of another member is in trouble as well. Will the gang be able to save everyone? Will relationships remain intact?
Richard Osman sure can write an engaging story. Chapter 1 starts with Joanna writing. There is mention of the Backstreet Boys and opinions on Americans right away which made me smile. Maybe I forgot or it was never mentioned but Ron has a daughter? There were so many moments of humor and situations I related to. One is where this young man is listening to something on his phone without a listening device, so it is blaring for everyone to hear. How many times have you encountered this at an airport or just out in public? Does it make you a little ticked off? Wish you could do something about it? Besides this minor, annoying character, another bigger character I didn’t like very much was Joanna. She seemed mean and unnecessarily antagonistic. Some words of wisdom were sprinkled throughout and it was nice to see when reading a captivating novel. “Too many people thinking too much was the key problem with the modern world…think about some things you have some actual power over, but everybody spending all day thinking about things they couldn’t influence, where did that lead?” and “’If you’re scared of something you should find out all about it.’” The word I came across that I hadn’t heard of was a type of fish, turbot. Another was clement. I always heard of inclement weather but didn’t put any thought into the opposite until I saw this word in this book. I was like…interesting…you learn something new every day. I smiled at this. I read this book in less than a day as I didn’t want to put it down. Richard has really fleshed out these characters and they are still going strong through the fifth book. I cannot wait to read more! This is exactly the type of book if you want to continue the series and love a good mystery.
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