Book thirty-one: Talk Nerdy to Me

Talk Nerdy to Me* (2006)
Vicki Lewis Thompson

Rating: 1.75/5

Frustrating.

This author is soooooo frustrating. She writes well, but the plots annoy me. It’s not even the characters – although, that said they were annoying at times – it’s the unbelievable-ness of it all.

Which is weird coming from someone who likes unbelievable things. But you have to make them a little bit believable.

Confused?

So am I.

Talk Nerdy to Me tells the story of Eve, a fashion-model-slash-secret-genius-inventor who is working on creating a – wait for it – hovercraft that can be run on environmentally sound fuel**. After an experiment gone wrong where she blows up an engine and almost herself, Charlie, a local engineer comes to the rescue.

Sparks of a different kind now fly.

Enter a cousin and his two helpful assistants, a crazy neighbour who thinks she was abducted by aliens, Charlie’s mother and aunt and their kooky bakery, Eve’s pretentious genius sister and you’ve got your story. And possibly too many characters.

I’m not sure what I didn’t like about this book. It’s well written. It has some funny dialogue and the characters are likeable enough, I suppose.

I think I just had trouble getting past the fact that I didn’t think her cutting edge invention was all that cutting edge. And I also didn’t understand the reason behind why it was so valuable. Oh, I didn’t mention but that’s kind of the plot: Eve and Charlie working together trying to finish the invention, so they can get it patented and protect Eve’s intellectual property while someone sabotages their efforts.

Ok, I still have one more book in this series (purchased in the three for $12 sale or whatever it was), so she has one more chance to get a good plot. Because I’m sure this author would find me not buying one of their books again to be a devastating blow. Uhuh.

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* Finished 19/4

** It was at this stage I flicked to the front of the book to see when it was published… oh wait, 2006, not 1996. Hmm, interesting. Is the idea of vegetable oil for fuel a recent one? And hovercrafts? Huh? I’m confused, because I thought that was possible too. Or maybe I just watched too much Beyond 2000 as a child.