Book Review: How to Love an American Man by Kristine Gasbarre

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . April 22, 2011 . 10:19PM

Every now and then a book comes along where the premise sounds so good that you feel like you MUST read the book. In this case, the book in question was How to Love an American Man by Kristine Gasbarre and I’d requested it as my monthly book to review and eagerly waited for it in the mail. I couldn’t wait to read what I was certain was going to be an amazing story of intergenerational lessons, story-telling and romance.

I was wrong. This isn’t going to be one of those book reviews where I get a lovely note from the author expressing gratitude for my review. Unfortunately, I don’t have many kind words this go-round.

Frankly, the bottom line is that Ms. Gasbarre had an amazing story to tell, but her writing style is elementary and, at times, boring to read. With what she had to work with, this book could have been ten times what it was and I was disappointed for her. The book felt like it was written in a rush and sometimes you want food from a crockpot, not a microwave.

The storyline is that the author loses her grandfather and this starts a chain reaction of discovering who she is through her relationship with her newly widowed grandmother. Seeking advice from a grieving widow about relationships has much to offer as both people in the story were grieving and there was much information that was rich for the picking in a literary sense. At the end, however, I felt like Krissy, as a person, was immature and unlikable with the way she portrayed herself. Her inability to adequately portray emotions concerns me over her choice of profession as a writer, especially when she compares her first feelings in a relationship to that of two actors in a well known vampire movie series.

Seriously? Was that really the best reference she had for a relationship? The book has plenty of pop culture references that are geared towards 20 year olds, not 28 year old women who are in the midst of trying to find themselves. Unfortunately, for Ms. Gasbarre, 20 year olds are not going to be her target audience. They aren’t going to be interested in “How to Love an American Man.” At the age of 20, most 20-year olds think they’ve got it all figured out. It isn’t until later that we’ve realized that we have no idea.

My understanding is that Ms. Gasbarre is writing a sequel. If I didn’t need to finish the first one to write this review, I would have stopped reading it about 1/4 of the way into the book, if I’m being perfectly honest with myself and with you. I will not be reading the sequel. I will not be passing this book on to my mom or friends to read. I just don’t care how the story ends…and that makes me sad.

This book is a miss.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in order to review it on my blog. Thanks for allowing me to share my feelings, no matter how honest, with other people.

Sidenote: On every site that I posted my review, and in droves, people came in and bullied me about my negative review of this novel. This happened until I called the author out on Twitter and noted that the language in the bullying was extremely similar to the writing in her novel and just as immature. Be aware that the author’s friends/publisher’s are likely stacking the ratings on this one. I normally wouldn’t bother mentioning this stuff, but it was such shoddy practice and left me with such a bad taste in my mouth about reviewing books that I feel like I need to get it out there and just let it go. I’ve had authors be upset with what I had to say about their books. I’ve never had them send the dogs out for me. It’s not ok. Either you can deal with the criticism or you can’t.