Her name starts with F and ends with E: Review of Chrissie Peria’s All’s Fair in Blog and War

July 7, 2014 by Lorn (pakwanstripes) 2 Comments

Book details:
Title: All’s Fair in Blog and War
Author: Chrissie Peria
Paperback: 106 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (October 9, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1492286885
ISBN-13: 978-1492286882
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.2 inches

 

Five Cuevas is travel blogger given the chance to go to Macau for a familiarization trip courtesy of the Macau Tourism Board. She’s going along with a three other bloggers, Simon, Meghan (yerp, with an H) and Jessie.  With the internet as the medium and the beautiful backdrop of Macau, Five learns more about herself, love and of course, Macau.

Since I started this blog, I have been meaning to include contemporary Flipino Romance novels and I was pretty happy this book came along my way. Chrissie Peria writes a light story about travel, blogging and romance. Having met my husband online, I had a great time reading this. She writes Five Cueva’s voice in that funny-snarky-she-thinks-too-much way that I like. Girls can have a lot of opinion and sometimes, I hear Five’s voice  talking in my head. I couldn’t resist reading some of the lines out loud by myself because her comments were so darn funny to deliver, I just had to hear it out loud!

Its also enjoyable how  much of the Philippine’s local colour comes out through Five and Jessie’s conversations, considering they’re in Macau and not in the Philippines. I mean, egg tarts from the local panaderia? I used to buy those when I was a kid! And what about Meghan’s name having that extra “H”? It’s a Filipino thing where we sometimes add an “H” to our children’s name.

Of course Macau’s own color steps out too, like the various places the characters visited for their blog features and the food they wanted to try out. I loved the details Peria adds and how she makes Five a very good traveler by doing her research about the place she’s going. Makes me want to maybe visit Macau too.

As the story unfolds we get to see it interlaced with the medium our characters chose to communicate. I’m not a fan of hashtagging, but it adds charm to a book about bloggers when the chapters are are in the form of hastags. Five and Jessie even have their own live twitter account.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. Although Jessie didn’t deliver alot of those knee-weaking one liners male romance protagonists novels deliver, I loved the little things he did for Five. Despite putting his foot where his mouth was at the early part of the book, he’s a great guy and I was very glad he’s not really the arrogant jerk Five thought he was. And why is Five called Five? That’s one answer you have to read through to find out.

As the first novella of Chrissie Peria, this is an excellent read. A dash of humor, a pinch of snark and a cup full of romance makes for a very good recipe for an afternoon merienda of reading.  I’m truly looking forward to more from her.

Connect with Chrissie Peria through her website,  facebook, and  goodreads . You can purchase the book at Amazon

You can also tweet Five at @5travels and Jessie at @wanderingcamera. Really, they reply!