Tuesday 23 September 2014

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw

We had a long discussion at this month's book group meeting, late into the night, unfortunately that discussion was not about this book. We didn't like this one and here's why ...

We found the first half of this book dragged, the characters were confusing and we didn't really care about them or the storyline. The second half was better but not much. We liked Phoebe when she worked for the spa and we liked Gary when he had the breakdown, after that we kind of lost interest.

It was quite a depressing book, the picture painted of Shanghai was that it was full of con men, it made you lose faith in humanity a little. We found the way all the characters finally crossed paths a little contrived and not really needed in all cases.

That's pretty much it. We then had a little experiment, instead of our usual scoring system we each gave the book an overall mark out of 10 and then saw if that matched what our scoring system found.

The average overall score was 5.5/10

Concept: 7/10
Plot: 3/10
Ending: 2.5/10
Cover - we've decided to scrap this category as it seems to affect our scores and not in the way we'd like. Sorry Rachel.
Page Turner: 0/10
Who to slap? Everyone
Where's the cheese? The self-help extracts.
Would we recommend? 0/5
Better as a ... fortune cookie (money doesn't equal happiness)
Add a twist: Justin and Yinghui get together.

Total: 3/10

Our next book will be 'The Rabbit Back Literature Society' by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen which we'll read for our November meeting.. Next meeting is at Lisa's.

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