Money to Burn by Asta Olivia Nordenhof

   

Money to Burn by Asta Olivia Nordenhof

Tiny Overview

Maggie and Kurt live on a farm with two farmhands, but are still feeling the void after their daughter has left home.

A ship caught fire and that is apparently intertwined in the story.

Themes:

• Contemporary fiction
• Danish
• Corruption 
• Capitalism
• Class

My Waffling

In my town there was a secondhand book sale for charity. Penguins House donated a bunch of new books, and as I went on the last day of the sale I managed to get 4 completely new books for £4! I read the blurb of this book and it sounded so interesting, especially about the insurance scam.

Good God.

This was a disaster of a book.

The book starts in first person, not connected to anyone, and then it switches to third person of both Kurt's and Maggie's POV per chapter. It felt like the author was making it up as she went along, and then forgot to put everything in chronological order afterwards. It made no sense.

Kurt and Maggie just ended up wasting my time. Both of them were unlikable, no redeemable traits at all, and the writing just completely fobbed me off.

It felt very annoyingly artsy. One minute, Maggie is dead. Next chapter, she's with her daughter having lunch. Next chapter, she's just met Kurt. Next chapter, Maggie is getting a cancer diagnosis. Next chapter, she hates Kurt, being abused by him, then after that she's so in love because they have just gotten together.

The whole book was like this, the exact same flip-flopping happened with Kurt also.

Then all of a sudden a businessman takes over the narrative and it gets very intense about the insurance scam of the Scandinavian Star burning, which killed 159 people. It is advertised as being part of the plot, but it is only announced why in the last sentence. To save your time, Kurt had some stocks in one of the companies that were involved. This part of the book felt so clunky and awful, it was like a textbook!

This was were the 'capitalism' part of the tags is from. Apparently, the book is about how capitalism makes relationships harder. It was never mentioned other than a bit of money stress and when Kurt tries to stash his mattress full of money.

Towards the end of the book more things were making sense but also nothing made sense. It was a very short book, around 130 pages - as it turns out it is the first of seven books, I will definitely not be reading them. If all the books are like this one, then they could've combined all seven into one book.

2.75/5