©picture by scribbles (Marye McKenney)

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Greetings, . . . .

Greetings from the Flipside is not a book I'd recommend: I wasn't impressed with the quality of writing, I didn't like the characterizations, and the plot confused me more often than not.

Hope wants to be a greeting card writer in New York City--that's her dream, her raison d'etre, her life's work; but she doesn't want to write just ANY card, she wants to write cards with humor and cards that fill niches that have not been filled yet--cards like break-up cards, sorry you suck cards, the anti-romantic cards.

In the meantime, Hope gets stood up at the altar and in leaving the church is assaulted (I get confused here exactly how it happened, I'm not sure if the problem is that the writing wasn't clear enough or if I skimmed over that part. That could be my fault so I won't put that on the authors). The assault puts her in ICU in the hospital in a coma that she's not coming out of and no one knows why.

Here's where the plot gets weird: during the coma, Hope has dreams (sleeping dreams, not wishing dreams) about going to New York and finding work at a place called Heaven Sent Greeting Cards. The problem is she's been declared dead and because her mom got a death certificate for her, she can't actually work anywhere.

During Hope's coma, a man she knew from grade school comes and sits by her side in the hospital, talking to her, trying to get her to wake up, and falling in love with her while she sleeps on.

The story bounces back and forth between Hope's coma-dream and real life. It interrupts the flow of the story and on the whole detracts from the continuity of the plot.

Two stars.

B&H Publishing Group provided this book for my honest review.

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