{"id":948,"date":"2019-08-14T15:49:01","date_gmt":"2019-08-14T20:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lfsmusings.com\/?p=948"},"modified":"2020-09-26T16:51:17","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T21:51:17","slug":"the-cactus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lillyfei.com\/index.php\/2019\/08\/14\/the-cactus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cactus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>****There will be spoilers in this review****<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>2\/5 stars<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I gave this book a try after hearing it was like <em>Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine<\/em>. I almost didn&#8217;t finish this book, even after the &#8220;plot twist&#8221; reveal. The only reason I continued is because I was already very close to the end.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It felt like for the majority of the book, there was zero character development. Susan was not a likable protagonist for me. Her straight-forward approaches were not funny or quirky. The story wrapped up very quickly. You follow the story through Susan&#8217;s pregnancy and battle against her brother about their mother&#8217;s will. The story seemed to drag on and then tried to tie everything together in the last 20-30 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>**And now for the spoilers. <\/strong>I will fully admit pretty much the entire reason why I gave this book such a low rating is because I am an adopted person. Edward, Susan&#8217;s brother, has always been favored and it shows in their mother&#8217;s will. Susan loses her case against her brother because she finds out she was secretly adopted. What could have been a redemption story, turned into a cringe-worthy saga of a cliched plot device. And of course, there had to be the offensive dialogue about how Susan was not really a family member anymore&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> An adopted person is isolated, odd, and clearly the unwanted child compared to biological children. In the story, the court supports this idea by throwing out her case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The last chapter basically has all of the character development in it&#8211;forgiveness, love, and signs of change. I started out enjoying this book. As it went on, I found Susan more irritating and then almost gave up when the same-old adoption plot twist was thrown in. I wanted to love it just like I loved<em> Eleanor Oliphant<\/em>, but this was a major fail for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>****There will be spoilers in this review**** 2\/5 stars I gave this book a try after hearing it was like Eleanor Oliphant is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,6,15],"tags":[140,141,145,148,151,156,519,608],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adoption-themes","category-general-fiction","category-romance","tag-book-addict","tag-book-blog","tag-book-club","tag-book-of-the-month","tag-book-review","tag-books-ive-read","tag-reese-witherspoon-book-club","tag-the-cactus"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Cactus - LillyFei<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"****There will be spoilers in this review**** 2\/5 stars I gave this book a try after hearing it was like Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine. 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