Title: The Secret of Snow
Author: Viola Shipman
Series: n/a
Questionable lead, unimpressive writing, melodramatic
I would like to thank Viola Shipman, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review. Also thanks to Sophie James for inviting me on the blog tour.
When Palm Springs meteorologist Sonny Dunes is fired and replaced with a sexy robot, she gets drunk and lets the world know how she feels about the change on live television. Now a disgraced laughing stock, she’s lucky to be offered a job opportunity by an old college classmate; however, the job requires her to move back to the hometown and traumatic memories she ran from over thirty years ago. Can she face the tragedy she blames herself for and salvage her career?
Bring wine and crackers, people, because this here is a big ol’ ball of cheese. I was choking on sentiment. I got thoroughly sick of touchy-feely, what-life-means, what-really-matters speeches. Barf.
In that vein, several characters came on waaaay too strong from moment one, particularly Mason and Mom. God, they were heavy. Their let’s-get-in-touch-with-our-feelings-RIGHT-BLOODY-NOW dialogue actually made me uncomfortable. They were okay characters, likeable enough—everyone was more or less likeable, except the mustache-twirling cartoon villain Polly Sue—but I didn’t find them endearing, and I did not want to spend more time with them.
I wasn’t sure what to think about Sonny. As with the others, she was likeable enough, but the only way I related to her was being born and raised in the Upper Midwest. She was supposedly two decades older than me, but she honestly didn’t act like it. I can’t imagine the women I know her age behaving like her. Same for her mom—I simply could not imagine her as a fit and energetic seventy-five. Sonny acted like the thirty-something typical of books like this, and Mom seemed in the upper fifties, sixties range.
The only things that helped show Sonny’s age were her dated references, but many of them were too dated and went way over my head. Ironically, Sonny acknowledged that: “I need to stop watching old TV shows with my mom . . . or every reference I make will only be understood by people over fifty.” The way that’s written even sounds like she’s excluding herself from that demographic, that fifty-plus is her mom’s demographic, not hers; she could have said “people my age” and simply said she watched old TV shows herself instead of with her mom. Ya know?
There was one particular moment when I despised Sonny. Toward the end she’s called on to announce the winner of an ice sculpture contest on air. Just before she does so, she has one of her many emotional revelations, because the winning sculpture is of her and her sister as children. So what she ends up saying is: “I’m here with the winner tonight. And it’s me. It’s always been me.” For one thing, her meaning is horribly unclear. One would assume she means that the sculpture is of her, but the way it reads sounds like she’s calling herself the winner. All I could think was, “She did NOT just make that moment about her. She did not just take that away from the sculptor. What an absolutely self-centered dick move. That poor sculptor.” And none of the other characters thought twice about it. How did none of Shipman’s team catch that? The idea for the sculpture was neat, but it was not cool to take that moment away from the sculptor and make the entire scene about Sonny.
As you can probably infer by now, I was not impressed with Shipman’s writing for a number of reasons, those above as well as:
• The book isn’t nearly as funny as it thinks it is.
• The premise itself felt irrelevant—like, who watches the news anymore? Admittedly, that could be just me, because I don’t often watch the local news. Definitely not the national news. Or TV much in general. Books, baby.
• The story felt very 90s and resembled the movie Snow Day, especially with the meteorologist being forced to do stunts and be ridiculous. (Which is something I do not understand. When I watch the weather, I do not want to see a meteorologist sledding in a cardboard freaking box, I want them to tell me about the effing weather.) (Speaking of resembling movies, though, the news team-against-news team snowball fight reminded me of Anchorman, though it was pretty different.)
• There was a very awkwardly shoehorned-in theme of feminism and workplace sexism, made even more awkward after I realized the author is a man.
• There were missed opportunities, like making Sonny do something about Groundhog Day for Sonny in the Winter; that’s weather-related and ripe for a laugh.
• Obvious connections weren’t made, like at one point Sonny comments on how her mother has a bunch of nightlights in the house to prevent nocturnal injuries; a few pages later Mason tells Sonny that he got the scar on his forehead by tripping over the dog one night and landing face-first on the fireplace, knocking himself out—but no mention whatsoever was made of Mom’s nightlight habit.
• Failing to follow up with Palm Springs—we never again heard or saw anything about Ronan and his robot meteorologist. I thought for sure the robot would fail, Ronan would get humiliated, and Sonny would be offered her job back. The GMA development was nice, but Palm Springs remains a dangling thread. And not having Ronan and his robot fail did not help the feminism and workplace sexism theme. And speaking of the GMA development, we did not need that many-paragraphs-long “tour” of NYC. I skipped every word.
• Failing to have Sonny speak to probably the most important person in the Joncee tragedy—the guy who was driving the car. That event defined Sonny’s life and drove all her decisions for over thirty freaking years, but the guy truly responsible for the accident was only ever mentioned once in the book, and never even given a name? That seemed like such a bizarre element to omit to me.
Overall, this was a Hallmark—or Lifetime—Christmas movie in book form. That is the perfect description, and if you like that kind of thing, you’ll probably love this book. But it wasn’t for me. And I don’t think I’ll be checking out any more of Shipman’s work any time soon. He needs a better editor.
