Reviews for Julia and the Master of Morancourt

The average rating for Julia and the Master of Morancourt based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-10-18 00:00:00 Craig Johnson Cardboard cutouts stiffly marched through dollhouse scenery. Utterly lifeless. Particularly irritating to me was the frequent occurrence of one of the great symptoms of the mediocre writer, of the author who is unable to get inside the heads of his or her own characters: "I would like to talk to your mother, my sister Olivia." Surely the person hearing this knows her own mother's name, and the relationship between her aunt and her mother?! If you need your characters to constantly remind your readers who is who over and over again, you're not doing this whole "telling a story" thing properly. Characters' speech was co-opted in this way repeatedly, and it makes the characters seem like little mannered automatons dutifully reciting their lines and moving on command and not having a thought or emotion of their own. Not that there is much plot for them to move through. There is an impediment to the two title characters being together, but the impediment is completely gone by page 66, yet everyone continues to fret about it for the remaining 144 pages. There is also some sort of smuggling plot jabbed in that has nothing to do with anything else, and which depends on a vast chain of ludicrous coincidences, and which is pretty completely unconnected with our main characters. The whole thing is so flat.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-26 00:00:00 Ernie Bautista This is a simple story of two people falling in love. And by simple I mean there is no suspense, mystery, twists, or even any tension. The novel tries for all of these by doesn't quite make it so the book, and therefore the characters, fall flat. It's a good enough idea but without any surprises or struggles to overcome overwhelming hardships there just isn't much here. It is written in the language of the time and most of the time it's fine but every once in a while a word or phrase jumps out as out of place and awkward. And there are a couple of points that are too obviously contrived, two characters need to be alone so there is someone at the door who came by for unexplained reasons, or there is a letter calling someone home for unexplained reasons. It wasn't horrible or anything but in the end I just didn't find it very interesting.