Hating Valentine’s Day
Posted by brian | Posted in Wedding Photography Books | Posted on 02-17-2010
Tags: Hating, Valentine's
5
Product Description
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I hate Valentine’s Day
Just like you.
One of the top wedding photographers in town, Liv Hetherington, steadfastly single, hates Valentine’s Day. This year she’s putting her foot down and has vowed there’ll be no dinner party set-ups, speed-dating frenzies or any other form of accidental dating organized by her father, flatmate or best friend.
What she hasn’t counted on is that, this year, they’ve given up on her.
Liv’s ecstatic, to say the least. Now she can concentrate on more important things like setting up her own studio and polishing off her Dickens collection. But are relationships really not for her? Drew, the new man in Liv’s life, would beg to differ. As would Cupid, who’s had enough of Liv being stubbornly single and sends the ghosts of Valentine’s Day Past, Present and Yet-to-Come to teach her a lesson or two where love’s concerned . . .
Valentine’s Day . . . bah, humbug.
Or is all that about to change?
I have seen about four different tellings of the tale “Christmas Carol”. I’m not that fond of it to begin with. When I found that this book is just a rip off of that tale, albeit Valentine’s Day instead of Christmas, I was not a happy camper. In fact, I’m not sure I’m even gonna bother reading the rest of it. After all, I’m pretty sure I can guess how it ends.
Rating: 1 / 5
Wedding photographer Liv Hetherington detests the rituals of Valentine’s Day and for that matter dating in general. She vows this year to elude her matchmaking father, the nonsense of her boss, and the machinations of her best friend. She growls at those who think that Valentine’s Day is a smashing success for the romantic. Declaring V for victory, this year Liv is making it bah humbug clear to those who throw Valentine’s Day and dating in general at her.
However her negative ions are abruptly battered when the sixties great in crowd wedding photographer Mrs. Batty Smith comes from beyond to blithely inform Liv that she must change her attitude or be eternally wedded to the darkside. As Liv wonders what was in her food or water Batty-Smith avows that the spirits of Valentine Past, Present, and Future will come calling her. Each comes with a “video of her life with Past having been filmed, Present being filmed and Future filmed based on a trend analysis of her feelings.
Allison Rushby provides a delightful rendition of the Dickens’ classic switching holidays so that the audience obtains a fresh fabulous fable. Liv is a delightful scrooge and the human support cast brings out the bah humbug to relationships attitude. The ghosts are wonderful as each is quite different so the audience will feel as if there are three shorts running through this fabulous tale.
Harriet Klausner
Rating: 5 / 5
We’ve seen this premise work before.
Embittered gal works up courage to date again, backs out, sees life flash in front of eyes and lives again. . .
This time it’s dolled up in the form of a Valentine phobia, replete with the three spirits of the day (aka Ghost of v Past, Present & Future, as in the “of Christmas..”).
Liv the heroine narrates it all in the first person, and as she seems a trifle tedious, or the author cannot/willnot leave anything to the readers imagination the tale is a very long, very straight, very boring one. If you skip past the tiresome beginning, the tiresome middle, to the last chapters you’ll find a little quick bit of romance which’ll make you grin.
Unfortunately the morose Liv merely pulls the book down with her, and author takes no advantage of her setting in Brisbane, Australia, but pretty much neglects the setting when it could have been exploited to make a more interesting novel.
There is one funny scene when Liv as a wedding photographer is on the job, but it’s only one.
Could have, should have, wasn’t. Don’t bother.
kotori ojadis@yahoo.com
Rating: 2 / 5
“Hating Valentine’s Day” by Allison Rushby deals with Liv, who worked as a wedding photographer who hated Valentine’s Day with all her heart. This was mainly due to the fact that she was dumped by her boyfriend Mike on Valentine’s Day. Despite having broken up with Mike a year ago, Liv found that she was still unable to have a serious relationship with any guy, feeling that guys just don’t like her. Her family and friends were all actively getting her to be more sociable, setting up dates, etc, which she hated. The only stable thing in her life was her work until she met Drew, her housemate’s friend whom she thought could possibly be a good candidate. In addition, she was “visited’ by three spirits of Valentine’s Day which could possibly change her mind about Valentine’s Day and dating in general.
I thought this was quite an interesting read. It was a bit different from the other chick-lits out there and thought that the scenarios dealing with the three spirits were quite funny. I think the author did a great job developing the character Liv, making her readers understand the decisions that Liv took, as well as introducing us to Liv’s past. The book is fast-paced and contains many funny situations which makes it quite an entertaining read!
Rating: 4 / 5
You don’t hear of Valetinine Scrooges, but they do exist; case in point, Liv Hetherington, a wedding photographer who has had it with V-day rituals and dating diseasters. Yet, when everyone who has been urging her into these romantic nightmares gives up on her, there is a strange let down until she discovers that Fate is willing to give her one last chance. Her “Marley” is the ghost of an old woman with the unlikely name of Mrs. Batty Smith, who informs her that three spirits will visit her to encourage her to change her ways. Cupid, aka, Valentines’ Past, is sort of cute, albeit irksome. Valentines’ Present is the ideal man, one that readers who like to play the book as a movie in their head will want to hit pause on when he comes around. The spirit of the Future- we won’t go there. Suffice it to say, she outdoes Christmas Future on the scary level. With more humor than Dickens, readers are given an equally meaningful message that applies to any day, not just Valentine’s Day.
Rating: 3 / 5