THE OTHER'S GOLD by Elizabeth Ames

THE OTHER'S GOLD by Elizabeth Ames

✯✯✯                                                                                                          Review by Astrid Galactic

Elizabeth Ames is a decent enough writer who understands the constructs of a good story but, in my opinion, loses it when it comes to her characters. In The Other's Gold, these four college roommates, who become lifelong friends, were a bunch of drama queens who had a penchant for pushing boundaries to the extreme. The whole book reeked of borderline personality affective disorder. By the time I finished the book, I realized that I really didn't like most of them and I found it unbelievable that all four of them stuck together over the years through thick and thin. 

Often I felt that they would take an issue that was questionable and take it to the most extreme of awfulness which eventually ended up destroying others' lives. I kept thinking that was the point of the book and would be realized later in the reading but it never really got there. It just got more personalized towards the women who all suffered from some sort of psychological dysfunction that always became the nucleus of the entire group. Or maybe I just got lost as I lost interest about 3/4ths of the way through the book. I did hit the wall for a bit and had to stop reading for a few days. Thought it was my tired eyes, but when I went back, I realized that I just wanted to run away and escape these crazy loons and their over the top drama. 

The other thing that disturbed me was that no matter how good any of the males were, I felt that they were, at very best, regarded as being a lesser species to any females. Personally, I find that very offensive. There were other issues that I felt were being pushed within this book that annoyed me but I'll let them go for now for fear of going off on a diatribe. 

The writing was sensitive and the pacing was good. Ames knows how to write what could be an interesting story. It's evident in her work. For the most part, it's the characters that need to be worked on and their reason for being within the book that need to be refined. Also, if she has an underlying story to tell, she needs to be much clearer. There were concepts there that I sensed were trying to come through but so hidden and confused that I'm not sure if I was forcing the book to make more sense than it did or if Ames just didn't clarify her ideas as clearly as she should have.

If it weren't for the fact that I'm committed to finishing a book once its started, I would not have seen the last word. From the beginning, I had so many hopes for this book because it was evident that Ames has a wonderful writing style, but as the characters broke down and fell apart, so too did the story as a whole. Don't get me wrong, I love reading about dysfunctional people. It just didn't work here, maybe because they were so annoying as well as there just didn't seem to be a ulterior purpose for telling us their stories. The book seemed a little to me like a broken necklace that held a few nice beads. Parts that could be laced together to make a beautiful work of art just broke apart and got lost without a real purpose of existing together other than that they had been roommates. 

(ARC)

Fiction

Paperback, 496 pages

ISBN-13: 978-0593152317

Publisher: Random House

Release Date: August 17th, 2019

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