2 out of 4 stars
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Randy Love…. At your Service is a novel of other fiction genre, written by Shay Carter. The story is set in England and revolves around Randy Love, a surprise third child, born to his parents almost 18 years after they had their second child. From the very beginning, Randy’s temperament is totally different from those of his 2 older siblings. Shortly after his birth, his mother dies.
The story picks up about 20 years later, when Randy returns home from a one year student exchange program in the United States, a program he undertook after completing 2 of the 4 year Business degree program at the University of Brighton. His father organized for this year in the States upon sensing that Randy had lost interest in his studies and would likely drop out of university. There then begins a detailed account of Randy’s irresponsible lifestyle of drunkenness and women. He drifts through numerous agency jobs, formal employment, many women and a couple accommodation arrangements before relocating to London in search of better employment prospects. His escapades however worsen as he consistently tries to connive his way out of pulling his weight in a number of shared accommodation arrangements. He is almost rendered homeless as a result, but one of the women he sleeps with, takes him in. After exploiting her generosity as usual, he leaves her without a backward glance, the moment he gets better accommodation. This life of debauchery, poor planning and irresponsibility continues until his sister finally talks some sense into him.
What I found positive about the book was the fact that the characters were vividly drawn, making the story easy to follow as it revolved around Randy as the main character; his father as his benefactor; his father’s friend Michael as his confidant; his brother, sister and close friends as his support group. The central theme, which seemed to be Randy’s irresponsible lifestyle as he drifted through life completely unaware of how his actions affected him or others, also resonated clearly throughout the book. The book had some humorous moments, like Randy’s dad reprimanding his dog for messing on the neighbor’s lawn.
I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars because even though the central theme resonated all through, I found Randy, as the main character and without an explanation for his worldview, inconsiderate, irresponsible, self centered, conniving and outright rude. To make matters worse, he remained oblivious of these vices, despite many attempts by people close to him, to awaken him to the truth. With the story line unfolding so slowly, it became harder and harder to like Randy. In fact, the plot to have him reform at the end of the book, came across as being too little too late. In other words, this redeeming plot emerged too late to go to bat for him. In addition, the book has serious grammatical issues that continually interfere with the flow of the story. The author constantly switches between narrating the story in past participle and simple past tenses which confounds the reader. For example, the book begins by stating that John and Marjorie Love ‘had married’ at twenty three and twenty four respectively. There are many run-on sentences and some sentences are so long, I had to read them more that once to follow them. The book also has poorly constructed sentences, missing words and inappropriate word/phrase usage, which creates confusion. For example in Chapter 1 Randy’s sister is described as being ‘with a similar curvy figure to her mother’ and the recount in Chapter 2 of the neighbor returning her hands on her hips goes thus ‘…..her hands had been replaced on her hips but the color had drained from her face…..’
I am at loss as to who I could recommend this book to. Randy’s drunken, irresponsible, playboy lifestyle may corrupt younger readers while vexing mature readers because he never seems to improve or learn from his mistakes. If the book undergoes some serious editing and rearrangement of the plot, it can easily rate 4 out of 4 stars.
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Randy Love...at your service
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