Now that I’m six months pregnant, I’m trying to read as much as I can before the baby comes. These reviews were submitted before the holidays, and I’m looking forward to fitting in at least one more jury before my due date in April.
While this was my second pick out of the three (not the first as picked by majority), I would still recommend Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde. While I never lived in an Orthodox neighborhood, I loved her descriptions of her neighbors and their way of life, and I certainly empathized with both her (non)gefilte fish out of water experience and the depth of her frustration after her breakup.
I wasn’t surprised that the jury put Vow at the bottom of their picks. I personally thought her viewpoint of being both the cheater and the cheated upon at various points gave her a unique perspective that enriched the narrative. But I know that many women would find the narrative self-indulgent, or at least difficult to empathize with.
I’m not surprised that they did not cite me on my least favorite book, The Feminist and the Cowboy. I wrote that the book not only felt too long, but that the author seemed “compelled to create — or at least exaggerate — the typical ‘boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-regains-girl’ structure so popular in chick lit and romantic comedy movies, in order for the reader to hope that she would be able to regain the cowboy’s trust.”