All the Stars in the Heavens

I am finally, finally, done with this piece of torture. After skimming and skipping an awful lot, to be honest. I will admit I learned some things about myself while dragging my brain through all those too many pages.

My Lessons:

If the book has Adriana Trigiani's name on the cover, I should let it be/ignore it/move on. Definitely don't pick it up. Even if it is the book club's pick for the month. (I've also read The Shoemaker's Wife. I wasn't particularly impressed. Still can't get over her comparing the flatlands of Minnesota to the mountains of Italy, but whatever)

I am stubborn about finishing books I start. (ok, I already knew this but holy cow did this book come close to being one of the few I tossed, never to picked up again).

I don't like authors who employ a character in a bait and switch tactic in order to write about what they really want to write about. I honestly thought this story was going to focus more on Alda. I was ok with that. Keep the famous in the background and along the periphery, especially since you're going to have make up 99% of the conversations for them. Go ahead, blur the line between fiction and reality, just make sure that line is pretty short. But, nope. Alda was pretty much a secondary character. Mostly because the author wanted to spend pages putting her words in Loretta's mouth and she apparently badly wanted to direct most of those words at Clark Gable and about Clark Gable.

I don't like authors who repeat themselves over and over. If you, as the author, find yourself repeating words and sentences every couple of pages, you need to sit down and do some serious editing. We get it. Alda was a nun. She sacrificed a lot. Loretta had probably more heartbreak/heartache than the average person. etc. I don't need to be told this 100 times. As the reader I end up with bouts of deja vu and am bored. And then I start skipping paragraphs and even whole pages. In other words, don't make your reader do your editing for you. In the end maybe you only have 250 page book instead of a 400 page book.

Apparently I like dialogue tags. You know the “said”s and the “sighed”s and the “mumbled”s etc accompanied by the speaker's name. I can't say I always pay attention to them precisely, but wow did I notice when they're not there. Those little words help creating emotion and environment.

I'm trying to think of something I actually liked about this book....Nothing is coming to mind. I guess the cover artwork is kinda pretty? But it's also pretty bland. Actually pretty bland is probably the best way to describe the book as a whole.