Monday? Review day!

I wanted to give this book two stars. There were that many things wrong with it. But I kept reading and wanted to finish it to find out what happens. For that and that alone I’m giving it three stars.

The book’s written in the first person, a technique very few authors pull off well and to me is, more often than not, detrimental to the story. The narrative also jumps from viewpoint to viewpoint, chapter to chapter amongst the three main characters of the story. This device is becoming more popular and I’ve always found it annoying. As you settle in with what Character A is doing you then jump to someone else’s viewpoint.

My biggest problem with the book is one of the main plot devices; Willy Finneran’s arrest, trial and conviction were ludicrous. They heavily draw the three characters of the book together, two would never had met otherwise, and it could NOT, ever have happened as written. It’s wholly, entirely unbelievable. It isn’t even implausible it’s impossible. As written the scene with Children’s Services is also entirely impossible. Chikd Sservices will not show up at your door, hand you a kid and say “This is yours, bye!” it doesn’t work that way. These utter impossibilities hurt the story badly for me.

As badly as it was hurt, and it took me a couple days to pick the novel back up after getting annoyed with the above twists. I DID finish reading it and I didn’t hate the novel. A bit of research, a week of watching Law & Order re-runs even, could have smoothed out the implausible parts and made it a far better story.

Three Stars