Maya Panika's Reviews > Love May Fail

I’m just a little over halfway through this book and I’m afraid I just can’t finish it.
The book is in four parts; each concerns a different character. The first is Portia Kane. Portia is such a ridiculous, badly-drawn and tedious character. I struggled through her story (the high school flashback is particularly slow, drawn-out and tiresome) and began skimming when Portia’s old school friend, her nauseatingly cutesy and precocious child and gauche brother Chuck entered the tale and the cloying sweetness and sticky sentimentality made me gag. The story then moves on to Nate Vernon, Portia’s old high school English teacher. This was a pleasing change of pace at first, but quickly became boring and then the dog… Well. It all hit a tree for me at that point. I battled on through Sister Maeve Smith which was almost as dreary as Nate’s bit. I skimmed through the start of Chuck Bass but couldn’t see anything that inspired me to carry on wading through to the end so I gave it up. I rarely review a book I haven’t finished, I always do try to finish, but I honestly haven’t the fortitude for a whole 400 pages of stuff like this.
It’s such a disappointment. I absolutely adored Matthew Quick’s first novel The Silver Lining’s Playbook (hated the film, but that’s another story). I was excited when I was offered a review copy of The Good Luck of Right Now, but that was dreadfully dull. Now I’m disappointed again. I think I’m going to have to give up reading Matthew Quick.
I normally give any book I found impossible to finish one star. I’ll give this two – it’s not entirely without merit, it’s not totally egregious, it’s just too sentimental, too slow, too contrived and too boring for me.