J. S. DrangsholtReseñas

Whoa, that was weird.

I received this book as part of the Goodreads Giveaway Program. My opinions are my own.

I finished this book with a furrowed brow, the truth is I wasn’t sure what I thought of it. While I could never quite get into sync with the story, it was a compelling read. I just don’t know if it went anywhere and I was certainly glad to move on to the next book on my list.

Interestingly a review by an Amazon customer of the first book in the series caught my attention and summed up my feelings for this second installment perfectly.

“The read was really interesting. It got silly at times but I honestly couldn't stop reading the book. The main character was a little bit too much of a pain. I did not like her at all - whiny, hypochondriac, not a very good wife or mother. I was really glad when I got to the end of the book.”

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This is the kind of book my husband calls “slice of life” and just the kind of book he lives to read, while I prefer a bit more structure to my fiction. It isn’t that I think this is a bad book, I just can’t FEEL anything for Ingrid Winters. She pops from one bad situation into a worse one throughout the story, but often it so much her own fault or from her own lack, that any sympathy I should have felt for her just evaporates and I am left simply feeling her frustration.

The author has however done a fabulous job of surrounding her heroine with complex, vibrant, often humorous or satirical characters that I would actually enjoy reading more about. I laughed more than once with Grandpa’s misadventures in the retirement home and with Alva’s solution to her own misadventures in preschool. As a wife, I could totally commiserate with a husband’s need to DIY and as a sports fan, well, let’s just say there definitely some elements to this book that will be imminently relatable to a lot of readers.

This book should find an audience with those that enjoy a dry wit and penchant for calamity.

I really enjoyed the book and the Northern European humor in this book.
What did the poor Russians think about the crazy Norwegians? Ingrid is a mess, but her husband is home.

A quick read from Amazon Prime First Read. Good thing I didn't spend more than 13 hours on this book. I feel let down, confused and stressed out honestly. Ingrid was insipid and completely annoying. I found the pop culture references the only decent part of the book. I'm not sure if the translation was what messed it up for me or not. There's neurotic and then theirs just lack of common sense. This was truly Ingrid's problem. I felt as if there was not a truly well built character development of all the people who are part of her world. Maybe that's because she didn't care about anyone else but herself. There is social awkwardness and then there's just selfish and mental. This is what I got from this book. I didn't find the hectic feel of the book relatable nor normal for a mother of three. I mean after all I am a mother of three with a husband with a time consuming job. This felt fake. The only realistic thing to me was loving a house so much you would do anything to get into it even if you know it isn't financial solvent.

Sorry, just my take. I guess I can't love everything I read...

[The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter] by [J.S. Drangshot] I thought I would try something light, something amusing; this was not it. I found the plots to be mundane, everyday, and anything but amusing. There might have been a slightly amusing chapter when Ingrid was in St. Petersburg and high on cough syrup, but that was the extent. I'm not sure if something was lost in the translation.....½

I think I've mentioned before that I absolutely love reading Women in Translation. It started when I found Women in Translation Month over on Biblio and it has brought me books like this. Well, it worked with Kindle First to bring me books like this. Kindle First does have a tendency to have some WIT selections and I appreciate that they're doing their part on this. This was yet another example of how reading translation exposes us to experiences we would not have had. While the author is new for me, I have also read another book translated by Chace, The Unbroken Line of the Moon which was also a great book but for vastly different reasons.

The premise is fairly simple and something that could be encountered anywhere, sure, but it was Ingrid herself that made this so much fun. I've read and seen on television several versions of paranoid white American woman and it's just not fun anymore. It's too predictable or trying to hard not to be. But then this. Ingrid Winter is Norwegian and handling her problems in ways that are not necessarily foreign to that paranoid white American woman but different enough that I was thoroughtly entertained.

There were a early-ish moments when I knew I was going to enjoy myself, the first was her explanation of how much she hated meetings and the way she avoided them. I was pretty sure she was going to be a likeable character after that, which didn't exactly turn out to be true. I liked her in that "I'm going to watch your form of crazy from afar" kind of way. We couldn't be friends, maybe not even coworkers, but she would be a great distant cousin to call and catch up with just to make sure that I'm not the craziest or most imposive person my family.

I really wanted to see her succeed throughout the story and stick to Peter and Ingvil too. Everything about her work life made me cringe and be ever more grateful that I have escaped the world of endless meetings where nothing gets done and where things like "internationalization" is important. It was in the work stuff that I felt sorry for her for most of the book. Then Russia and I really started to have fun with those two creeps and what was going on and her plunge into some really great paranoia. I mean really great. I'd feel bad for a real person in this situation with these people and this level of paranoia, but as a fictional character I'm not sure it could have been more fun. And I especially loved the way each piece of her story was resolved.

As opposed to most of my reading, it's not particularly deep or enlightening, it doesn't change the way I see the world or give me a window into an unfamiliar culture. It's just fun and a little ridiculous, just as the title and synopsis promise. As a comedy and one that centers around a woman who already has her love life together (as opposed to many books of it's nature that surround women who are looking for love), it's a book that I'd recommend to any of my friends. I do especially love that it's a book about a woman my age in about my life situation; working and married with kids but haven't perfected any of it yet.

This was my Febuary Kindle First read.

❤️ this book. It's LOL funny and an easy read.

This review can also be found on my blog: Under Literary Construction

Ingrid Winter is a mother of 3 working as a literature professor and full of anxiety, paranoia and the victim of an overactive imagination. In an attempt to purchase her dream home, she strains her family's finance as well as her marriage. And to make matters worse, extra responsibilities from the PTA and her university chair a constantly thrown on her lap, such as a trip to Russia to establish internationalization and bilateral communication. What does that exactly mean? Ingrid doesn't even know, but to avoid being sentenced to the preschool program she reluctantly agrees to the trip. What she finds in Russia is a little bit of comfort, a little bit of crazy and a whole lot of cough syrup.



This book was one of the Kindle first selections this month and sounded interesting, but after reading all 200 pages, I wish I would have picked a different story. :(

Right now, when everyone was relatively content and no one was screaming because they had to put on their jacket or shoes. Right now, when everyone was present and no one had remembered they had PE or swimming yet. This moment of harmony and peace. Of security. I wanted this to go on and on, to last.

What immediately grabbed my attention was the brutal honesty about parenting and life in general, and I loved it. Ingrid seemed real and one of those mother's you meet when dropping you child off at school. One of the few mothers you can actually talk to and discuss things with, but what I liked about this book at first quickly turned into one of my biggest peeves.

She's honest about how the first 2 kids she made lots of mistakes and forgot almost every school event, but with her 3rd child she has finally mastered how things work. I appreciated this because, unfortunately, it does feel like we make a lot of mistakes with our first child and when another baby comes along, things just effortlessly happen.

But Ingrid is full of anxieties and has a highly overactive imagination for an adult. She goes on and rambles in her class comparing a literary figure to the Matrix and confusing the daylights out of her students. She avoids contact with her fellow professors and procrastinates on writing her article that she should have finished weeks before, and then the house.

She comes across this house and imagines it to be this perfect new home for her family that has outgrown their current location. She then purchases the house for almost double the agreed upon price and this puts her already strained relationship with her husband on pins and needles. I was so mad at her for this! I think I even wrote a note along the lines of "WTF is she doing!"

I ended up not liking a lot of her personality traits, which I don't think was intentional because she was the main character.

Then this trip to Russia had me frantically typing "WTF" on my kindle, page after page. The entire scene of obtaining her visa to travel to Russia was stereotypical and offensive. Perhaps this was meant to be funny and just didn't come off that way for me. Maybe in translating the book, the nuances of this scene that make it funny were misinterpreted, ut I was offended and I'm not Russian!

The constant over-exaggerated daydreams, the panic to hide the idol, the nicknaming of all of the Russians she meets, and then the cough syrup! The woman was high on cough syrup the majority of her trip in Russia!

In the end, what saved this book was the the short chapters. While I would have much rather a different book to read and had to make myself go back to read it, there were some funny moments and the book was small.

Ultimately that is what garnered the 2 star rating, because I would not recommend this book, did not enjoy the bulk of it and was a little sad I used my Kindle first option on it. I wanted to like this book, I really really did.

C'est la vie!

Being honest and a third generation Norwegian American, I had no idea that a Norwegian can be so humorous. I loved so much reading this novel about an University professor who lives with anxiety and stress and still finds time to laugh at herself. If you love a good laugh, give this book a try.

The description of the main character is well done, I can sense the nervousness and neurotic of the main character. Interesting book.½