26: Lowcountry Summer

Lowcountry Summer, by Dorothea Benton Frank, is the story of Caroline, who lives on Tall Pines Plantation. Like all of her books, this one is set in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. But, unlike most of her books, this one is AWFUL.

I have my doubts if Ms. Frank even wrote this book. It reads like a ghostwriter wrote it. It is so completely unlike her typical writing style and her typical narratives that I really finished it just because I had to see how ridiculous the plot got.

Caroline, the main character, is so mean in describing her niece (who she says could go to work on a carnival for how ugly she is) I had trouble taking her seriously. She also tries to make jokes about her nieces dating landscapers and calls her sister-in-law awful names. There was a ton of bad language and the thoughts of sex permeated this book. Nothing about this main character radiated “southern charm” and the only good and decent character gets killed off. 

Don’t waste your time or money. I was disappointed, for sure, because most of her books are very entertaining. Drop the ghostwriter, and return to Sullivan’s Island, Dorothea Benton Frank! I give this one a 3/10.

6: Outlander

Outlander is written by Diana Gabaldon and tells of the tale of an English woman, Claire, who is taken from her current world of 1940’s and into the Scottish Highlands in the late 1700’s. And… that’s all I have to summarize it with.

I wanted to like this one. I wanted to like it SO MUCH. And yet, I did not in the SLIGHTEST. It’s unfortunate I did not like it considering it is six HUNDRED pages long. This was my Everest.

I found the whole time travel thing to be hard to deal with. Not the travel itself, but the way Claire reacted to it. She was thrown into a new world and she just… accepted it. She went along for the ride, outhouses and killings and all. She’s married off to Jamie (which is interesting because you know, she has a HUSBAND in the “other world”), who beats and rapes her and she ACCEPTS THIS. She says she deserved the beatings! DESERVED THEM! There is a lot of description around sex – male/female and male/male. It was… a lot to read.

The book drug on and on and seemed to never end. And then! There is a sequel. I for one, will not be reading it, and will be throwing this book (and all six HUNDRED pages) at the next person to recommend it to me, or maybe even at the person who recommended it to me to START WITH. I give it a 2/10. Which is partly just because IT IS OVER.

Honestly? I’d like to go back in time and not read this book.