All Comments on 'Mary and Alvin Ch. 19'

Love the series. I enjoy the character development and the story line. I have driven in the area of Maine that you describe on vacation and remember the scenes and area very well. Beautiful area. I will continue to read what you write and thanks for your time and imagination.

It is a pleasure to read your excellent stories. You have created very likeable characters and I thoroughly enjoy the trips they take us. 5 stars.

Such a beautiful story, your interwoven style had me mesmerized, so much so that I stayed up late, got to work late and opened it up as soon as I returned home. If you keep going, I'll keep reading. Thank you for this beautiful story!

This moved Mary and Alvin down the road appreciably in their development, and it contained some interesting conflict plus possibilities.

Cute how Mary drew Alvin into ballroom dancing lessons. I noted though that the instructor missed telling them to basically dance the waltz as raising up on the balls of their feet when taking the steps and especially to make a half triangle. Curiously, ballroom tango would not be a dance to show beginners, as this is at least an intermediate/silver-level dance (with the Argentine tango being gold-level/advanced). The narrative used the lessons to advance Terri contacting Mary to talk about Alvin at some future date. Oddly enough though, the Sandy Point Beach visit ended up largely wasted, as they typically get out, look around to enjoy the views, then get romantic.

Dinner proved largely successful, although you set up Mary's tension with Diana well: it follows that Diana will think Mary the interloper and therefore defend her part in the business. You handled the scene well, and even Alvin and Bob knew fireworks would explode. You wrote in such a nice touch in getting Angus to snuggle with Seth, to foreshadow Charlotte finding the right kind of guy. I loved Alvin snarking something like "here comes Opie!" The paella recipe soured the moment a bit (not by the character's reactions though), as no cook would put chorizo in paella, as it would overpower and ruin the saffron-flavored rice; you used Seth to break the tension by talking about saffron, but didn't know about chorizo being verboten to add. However, including the flan was spot on. You can certainly advance Mary knocking down the wall between herself and Diana, so Diana sees Mary's just there to help improve things--not to replace her.

It struck me as so odd Alvin would "feel a moment of regret," because he never liked school nor did it hold his interest long; considering he's very successful, stays busy year-round and makes lots of money...why would he think that? Non-sequitur. And why continue to mention Wyatt?? That's dragging the dead, stinking body around for nothing when it was already buried and moot several chapters ago. The only point it could have served would have been to prove Mary making a poor choice in him, as "getting stoned" with friends effectively during graduation is very irresponsible and harebrained.

Considering all things, this is worth a 3.5. This advances most of the story, but some items inserted either don't fit or should have been replaced with more germane issues.

Comentarista82, you are a pompous son of a gun.

Wait, maybe I did not include hyphens between son-of-a-gun. Oh, I don't know what to say or do.

Maybe I should have used a different word from pompous. Oh my, I am really second guessing myself here.

I probably shouldn't have ended the last sentence with the word 'here'. Darn. Hard to be condescending when I am so unsure of my own grammatical shortcomings.

MB, keep on writing, and don't give the curmudgeonly Comentarista82 a second thought.

Thanks Mel, such a pleasure to read your work.