The Story Guy by Mary Ann Rivers
-By Guest Reviewer: JEN
Where, oh where have you been, my dear Mary Ann? I have been unknowingly looking for you and The Story Guy for awhile now. A perfect romantic love story.
I want to start off by saying how beautifully this book was written. With the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of words in the English language, I cannot put them together eloquently enough to explain how much the style, word choice, and structure of this book just did something for me – spoke to me or carried me through or SOMETHING that regular books just haven’t done for me lately. It’s almost embarrassing to write this little review using analogies and jilted sentences when The Story Guy has such a flowing and perfect lilt to it.
It feels as though all the books I’ve been reading lately are comparable to boxed wine. Nothing wrong with wine from a pouch, and some prefer it, but when you’ve been given a dusty bottle of aged, balanced, crisp, smooth perfection, you can’t help but notice the difference. With this book, you notice the difference and getting drunk on these words makes you feel classy, not trashy. Sure there’s hot effing sex, witty elements, cute and funny parts, and cursing. But it makes you feel like you’re reading Jane Austen and she just wrote “fuck” and it fit in perfectly. I almost wanted to giggle at the appropriateness of it and at the same time re-read the sentence to make sure I got it right - that the word really was there and perfect being there.
So, the characters and plot… back to that. Carrie is just lovely. I wish she was real and that I could befriend her. She was just so normal. Not plain normal or boring normal, but like your best girl friend that just hasn’t found her soul mate. The book wasn’t spent trying to convince you she was or wasn’t anything. There weren’t three thousand words trying to make you understand her job as a librarian. No prologue prepping you to understand a twisted mind or a reclusive spinster. There was just Carrie.
Very quickly there’s just Brian. From the beginning I want to touch him, smell him, kiss him, too. There are so very many descriptions (done in a good way and very appropriate) that I literally felt like I was in the book. He’s unlike most other book boyfriends/male leads/heros, just as Carrie isn’t the typical flighty female part. He’s real, honest, and hurting.
A few times in the story I found myself hoping against something that felt like foreshadowing, and next thing I know… it’s not happening. I was wrong and loved that I couldn’t guess what happened next. I highlighted so much of this book that I’d be posting entire paragraphs here and it still wouldn’t capture the feeling of the book.
I ended this book at a sad 87% on my eReader and kept hoping that it was broken so there could be more left to read. At 3:20am with gritty eyes and a gently snoring husband, I wanted desperately for there to be more of The Story Guy left… wanted the truth to be that I hadn’t actually devoured it all in one sitting. Alas, I had. I did. It was over. And now I’m jealous of YOU who are reading this and gets to start on page one with Carrie and Brian, not knowing how The Story Guy goes.
I almost want to keep this book to myself - to not tell the world of its rightness and just tuck it away in my drawer for safe keeping. That would be more than selfish, it would be practically criminal, but it’s still tempting…
-By Guest Reviewer: JEN
-By Guest Reviewer: JEN
Where, oh where have you been, my dear Mary Ann? I have been unknowingly looking for you and The Story Guy for awhile now. A perfect romantic love story.
I want to start off by saying how beautifully this book was written. With the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of words in the English language, I cannot put them together eloquently enough to explain how much the style, word choice, and structure of this book just did something for me – spoke to me or carried me through or SOMETHING that regular books just haven’t done for me lately. It’s almost embarrassing to write this little review using analogies and jilted sentences when The Story Guy has such a flowing and perfect lilt to it.
It feels as though all the books I’ve been reading lately are comparable to boxed wine. Nothing wrong with wine from a pouch, and some prefer it, but when you’ve been given a dusty bottle of aged, balanced, crisp, smooth perfection, you can’t help but notice the difference. With this book, you notice the difference and getting drunk on these words makes you feel classy, not trashy. Sure there’s hot effing sex, witty elements, cute and funny parts, and cursing. But it makes you feel like you’re reading Jane Austen and she just wrote “fuck” and it fit in perfectly. I almost wanted to giggle at the appropriateness of it and at the same time re-read the sentence to make sure I got it right - that the word really was there and perfect being there.
So, the characters and plot… back to that. Carrie is just lovely. I wish she was real and that I could befriend her. She was just so normal. Not plain normal or boring normal, but like your best girl friend that just hasn’t found her soul mate. The book wasn’t spent trying to convince you she was or wasn’t anything. There weren’t three thousand words trying to make you understand her job as a librarian. No prologue prepping you to understand a twisted mind or a reclusive spinster. There was just Carrie.
Very quickly there’s just Brian. From the beginning I want to touch him, smell him, kiss him, too. There are so very many descriptions (done in a good way and very appropriate) that I literally felt like I was in the book. He’s unlike most other book boyfriends/male leads/heros, just as Carrie isn’t the typical flighty female part. He’s real, honest, and hurting.
A few times in the story I found myself hoping against something that felt like foreshadowing, and next thing I know… it’s not happening. I was wrong and loved that I couldn’t guess what happened next. I highlighted so much of this book that I’d be posting entire paragraphs here and it still wouldn’t capture the feeling of the book.
I ended this book at a sad 87% on my eReader and kept hoping that it was broken so there could be more left to read. At 3:20am with gritty eyes and a gently snoring husband, I wanted desperately for there to be more of The Story Guy left… wanted the truth to be that I hadn’t actually devoured it all in one sitting. Alas, I had. I did. It was over. And now I’m jealous of YOU who are reading this and gets to start on page one with Carrie and Brian, not knowing how The Story Guy goes.
I almost want to keep this book to myself - to not tell the world of its rightness and just tuck it away in my drawer for safe keeping. That would be more than selfish, it would be practically criminal, but it’s still tempting…
-By Guest Reviewer: JEN
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