Serena: a brief review

taken from wikipedia.com

So...I have learned a valuable lesson since you last heard from me: not all audiobooks were created equal. Sometimes they're just super duper boring and you don't really even pay any attention to what you're listening to. Which doesn't really work out that great, unless you're like me and just can't wait to be done with the dumb thing so you can cross it off your list. But as of about ten minutes ago, I am done with the dumb thing and am now crossing it off my list!

Pemberton (I'm too lazy to look up his first name, and since the author never bothered to refer to him as anything else, I think I'm okay with that) and his brand new wife Serena return to his successful lumber yard and saw mill in North Carolina during the Great Depression. Serena is the strong, silent type with a fierce ability to get whatever she wants; over time the things that she wants require more violent and ruthless tactics but she is merciless. No one is safe on her journey to riches. (How corny was that sentence? And I wrote it.)

Full disclosure: the end of this book was good. Not really good, and not super amazing, but good. A modest "good." The rest of it was boring and long and so full of unnecessary details I wanted to scream. Also, the reader of the audiobook was awful (in my not so expert opinion, anyway) so maybe that didn't help. But I just found myself wondering when the plot was actually going to start. And I felt that way until disc 7 of 10...but then shortly after I realized I was super bored again all the way until disc 10. That, Mr. Ron Rash, does not a good book make.

I decided to read this book because it was being made into a movie (so yay for crossing things off of personal goal lists as well as New Year's lists), and even though I found it super boring, I still kind of want to see that movie. Does that make me crazy? Probably. But here are my reasons:

1.  It's Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. I love both of them and I love them together. And I think JLaw will be a killer Serena (pun fully intended).
2. All the unnecessary details and boring stuff has GOT to be trimmed for the movie version, right? I mean...that's what they always do when they turn a book into a movie. They trim it way down until it's not even the same story anymore. I'm hoping for that this time.
3. Sometimes the movie is just better than the incredibly boring audiobook (but don't tell my husband I said that, because he will be doing his victory dance for the next ten years). 

So we will see. All in all I obviously didn't enjoy the book but maybe there's still hope for the movie. And if not then, hey, at least I got to cross something off my list. (And I did it with a library audiobook, so at no cost to me. Always a victory there.)