Some DNF’s From Last Month.

Posted March 8, 2010 by Rowena in Reviews | 6 Comments

Sometimes you run across some books that you thought you’d like to read and then you open them up and you’re just not into them. There comes a time in a reader’s life when you just have to put the book down. Sometimes it’s because the book just isn’t working for you and sometimes its because the book is really bad.

For me, it was a few books that I was excited about reading but once I picked them up, I found that I just couldn’t do it. So I gave up.

Here’s my list of DNF’s, check it out:

Magnolia Wednesday by Wendy Wax.

At forty-one, Vivian Armstrong Gray’s life as an investigative journalist is crumbling. Humiliated after taking a bullet in her backside during an exposé, Vivi learns that she’s pregnant, jobless, and very hormonal. This explains why she says ‘yes’ to a dreadful job covering suburban living back home in Georgia, a column she must write incognito.

Down South, it’s her sister’s ballroom dance studio that becomes her undercover spot where she learns about the local life-and where unexpected friendships develop. As she digs up her long buried roots, she starts to wonder if life inside the picket fence is really so bad after all.

I don’t know what it was about this book but it just didn’t grab me the way that The Accidental Bestseller did. I’m not sure if I just wasn’t in the mood for it or what my problem was. I just wasn’t in the mood to follow Viv along as she made her way back home to try to snoop for a story using her sister as a cover up. I gave up around the 180 page mark and just haven’t been able to pick it back up. Don’t you just hate that?


Drive Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan.

Investigative reporter Charlotte McNally is an expert at keeping things confidential, but suddenly everyone has a secret—and it turns out it is possible to know too much.

Her latest scoop—an exposé of a dangerous car scam, complete with stakeouts, high-speed chases and hidden-camera footage—is ratings gold. But soon that leads her to a brand-new and diabolical scheme. Charlie’s personal and professional lives are on a collision course, too. Her fiancé is privy to information about threats at an elite private school that have turned deadly.

Charlie has never counted on happy endings. But now, just as she’s finally starting to believe in second chances, she realizes revenge, extortion and murder may leave her alone again—or even dead….

Maybe it was the whole journalist thing that I’m just not in the mood for. I picked up and put down this book a total of 4 different times. I got about 75 pages into this book before I put it down for good. I just couldn’t get into it. The thing about this book is that it’s the 4th book in the Charlotte McNally Mysteries series and though I didn’t have any trouble picking things up, I just wasn’t in the mood to read so maybe I’ll pick it up later but who knows. It just didn’t do anything for me so I give up.


Rich Again by Anna Maxted.

Walk-in closet full of designer everything? Check. Private Caribbean island? Check. Connection to the aristocracy? Working on it. Cunning, malicious stalker? Double check.

Welcome to the world of the Kents, a charismatic, ambitious, and fabulously wealthy English family with two sisters – one as strong and sparkling as the other is delicate and wounded – who must somehow put their differences aside to keep an unknown enemy from bringing them down. Wild and beautiful Emily Kent has had the world laid at her feet by her ruthless mother and billionaire father – but it’s not enough. Gifted with her mother’s to-die-for looks, her father’s hard-scrabble business sense, and both of her parents’ lust for control, Emily is determined to make her own luck by seducing the only man she’s ever wanted, a man who can make her dreams of attaining the heights of old-money English society come true. By contrast, Emily’s step-sister, Claudia, is a fragile soul—her mother died when she was five, leaving her to the unkind reign of step-mother Innocence. In an uncharacteristic burst of rebellion, Claudia trades her gilded lifestyle for an ordinary flat and daytime job where she meets the man of her dreams… or so she imagines.

But, Emily and Claudia are caught up in a desperate situation that may be beyond their control. As for their father, disgraced tycoon Jack Kent, and his wife Innocence, they are too obsessed with the fight for supremacy over their vast empire to see that a mighty and sinister opponent is plotting to ruin them all.

I only got about 3 chapters into this book before I put it down. Nothing jumped out at me and I was really bored with it so I had to step away. I’m not sure if it was the length of the book that put me off or the starting chapters but either way, I just wasn’t into continuing this book but I hope to change that in the coming months. It’s such a pretty book.

There are some other books that I tried reading but didn’t get very far but I can’t think of them right now. I really hate not finishing books but sometimes, it just can’t be help.

What about you guys? What books have you just not been able to get into in the past couple of weeks? Any books that you wanted to read and ended up not being able to finish? How much do you hate when that happens?


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6 responses to “Some DNF’s From Last Month.

  1. I posted about ditch The Elegance of the Hedgehog. It may very well be a great book, but I doubt I’ll be finding out because it just didn’t blow my skirt up.

  2. Ugh! I’ve been going through this for months so I totally think it’s me–not that it’s stopped me from BUYING books mind you 🙁

  3. You know what Rowena, I had ONE DNF in my entire life !! I hate the idea of not finishing a book even if I don’t enjoy it. In general I’ll skim through the whole thing just to know how it ends. After I’m just mad for the waste of money AND time, grrrr !!

  4. I hate when that happens. I was really disappointed with SEP’s What I did for Love. I hate to say this as I love most of her books and I kept going then finally had to put it down – I did not like the characters at all and felt there was really no story going on.

  5. Lori

    I’ve been putting more books down as well. It’s so sad. Especially when I feel like I wasted my money on it.

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