Gerard O'Neill (2) (1957–)

I received this book in exchange for an honest review. The story of a young singer known to everyone by her stage name and in an ugly marriage. The beginning of the book took me awhile to get into and found that the second half of the book was much better to read. But after a few chapters, I couldn't put it down. I read this story in one sitting. Great characters and story line. But a title like this, I wanted to know what the two names are and why they are necessary. This is only explained between page 1 and page 7 of the book. After that, the title is irrelevant and ignored.… (altro)

*I received a copy of this book from the Member Giveaway program in exchange for an unbiased review. Be warned, plot spoilers will follow.*

The Girl with Two Names is a psychological thriller that introduces us to Yaya/Yayoi. Yaya is a Japanese pop singer at the height of her fame but has since become disillusioned with the life, including her successful actor husband and his industry connections. Yayoi is the poor farm girl who Yaya abandoned in order to succeed in the Japanese music industry. Yayoi decides she has had enough of being Yaya, and uses a work trip to New Zealand to make her escape, with the help of a local New Zealand man she meets at the airport. Yaya's husband has no intention of letting her go, and will do whatever it takes to get her back to him.

When I first requested this book from Member Giveaway, I was really intrigued by the blurb for the book. The little blurb I just included also sounds interesting. One of my larger issues is that the book never quite lived up to the excitement of its summary. For all the potential that the summary contained, the book fell flat for me. None of the main characters felt fully fleshed out, I did notice a few editing errors but the inconsistencies in the plot and the lack of emotional/mental pull are probably my biggest complaints. Bits of dialogue that should have held more emotion held none, like most of the conversations between Yaya/Yayoi and her husband. For someone as manipulative and controlling as he was, I wish there'd been more than what felt like casual conversations about his behavior. Even after inarguably the worst event in the book, Yayoi meets him and they have an...amicable? discussion about what has taken place and what he will do next. I couldn't wrap my mind around that. Yayoi as a character felt bland. I didn't understand her personality, as she showed it in inconsistent flashes. I did, however, find her to be intolerably selfish and inconsiderate of the people she saddled to help her get away from her life, and this almost single-handedly ruined the book for me. If anything, her behavior revealed her to be more like her husband than she intended-- manipulative, inconsiderate of those around her, and dishonest. I don't know if she got her comeuppance in the end--on the one hand, she escaped an abusive, controlling, manipulative husband that she was obviously better off without. I sympathized with her on that level. But on the other hand, in order to get away from him, she roped a bunch of unaware, innocent people into it, without telling them who she was or what she was fleeing from, putting them into imminent danger and ruining their lives, with no real personal consequence to her life in the end. I could go on about the level of dislike I had for this character as the book progressed, but I feel like I'm being too harsh already.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. I understood the intention and direction of the plot, and I still maintain it had a ton of potential. In execution, though, it got bungled a bit for me.… (altro)

Set in a dystopian future in Australia, this book seemed oddly prescient of the fires that were raging there as I read it. Not having read the first book in the series (although the author did kindly send it to me as well), I was a bit lost as to what was happening and it took a while to get the story going. I did enjoy the main characters and was rooting for them, frustrated like them with the people who wouldn't listen to their message. The communist philosophy did get to be a bit much for me and I started to tune it out. I did enjoy reading the inventive science of the cataclysmic event and its aftermath. The book just wasn't for me. I received a free copy of the book through Library Thing in return for this review.… (altro)