Silverleaf Rapids by Jodi Thomas

Thanks to Jodi Thomas, RBMedia, and NetGalley for allowing me to listen to a free eaudio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

DNF 66%. I’ve been getting more and more bored since about 40%. Now I’m only half listening and just really want to get back to Laurie King’s Russell and Sherlock series. Time to call it.

I read the entirety of the Ransom Canyon series back when they were being newly released; it coincided with a change in my reading tastes, so while at first I liked them, I grew to dislike them and Thomas’s writing. One of my biggest peeves as a reader is head-hopping, and that’s all Thomas has done for the last couple decades as in each book she follows several characters from the same geographical location. Drives me nuts.

I’ve also complained of purple prose in her writing in the past, and while I didn’t notice much of that here, her stories have the feel of a children’s fairytale, the characters very in touch with their emotions and hopes and dreams. Lots of thinking and little doing. That’s all her characters do is hope and dream and wish for someday until it miraculously happens and they live happily ever after.

Those are the stakes here in Silverleaf Rapids—all the tension is simply the possibility that what the characters are hoping for won’t happen. Staten hopes his grandpa will get better and Staten will be able to return to college and fix his relationship with his girlfriend. No apparent problems running the ranch, no apparent problems with his parents, not even all that bothered by blue balls—we’re just holding on to hope and getting bored.

Charlotte hopes to find love and live a more meaningful life; she could have had trouble transitioning to the town, to the job, finding a decent man. She had to coach the football team without knowing the first thing about football, in Texas, and we never heard of a single conflict. At 66% everything’s going pretty swimmingly for her, and it’s BORING.

Peggy’s hoping to have her own life, but her Cinderella bells are always ringing and she’s too afraid to stand up for herself. No fights, no anger, no substance abuse. All the conflict is just sitting there, waiting to be played with, and the character just trudges by with her persistent meekness. It’s 66% and she’s just now starting to tentatively, quietly put her foot down. Too late, I’ve lost interest. (Plus, she was just weird–she randomly digs a 2-foot-deep grave, no small thing, and lies down in it for a while. No, she’s not gothically inclined or suicidal; that would make her interesting, can’t have that. And Duke just waltzes up (if he had a reason for being there, I missed it), sees her laying in her shallow grave, and thinks, “Aw shucks, that’s cute.” What?)

The thing I hate about this kind of storytelling—multiple A-plot storylines happening at once—is that none of them, or their characters, get the attention they deserve. Instead of one fully fleshed-out story, you get three or four half-assed ones. And in my opinion, that’s not okay.

So why did I request this book if I knew I probably wouldn’t like it? Ironically, hope. I was hoping to like it as much as I loved Thomas’s earlier novels, the ones that focused on one storyline at a time. She used to be one of my auto-buys. I thought about attending Texas A&M just because she was the writer in residence, for shit’s sake. Also, I noticed the ads for the Netflix show and wanted to be part of the conversation. I’m very curious how they pitched it—Bridgerton meets Yellowstone? *snorts* *notices blurb* Ah, Virgin River meets Yellowstone—that makes more sense.

So I still don’t like what Jodi Thomas is writing these days. Noted. Congrats on the Netflix deal, though, Ms. Thomas.