Today's review

Look Again by Lisa Scottline

Quick read but very unfulfilling, August 16, 2009

This could have been a great novel or at least a chance for Lisa Scottoline to use her courtroom expertise and experience as a lawyer. The premise was intriguing -- single mother discovers by happenstance that the son she has adopted may have been a kidnapped baby. The investigation was sound, if a bit unbelievable at times. The moment of truth arrives but instead of the author plunging us into the adoptive mother's despair and giving us a riveting emotional treatise on the legal aspect of this actually happening, Scottoline cops out. The chance to really explore this moral dilemma and to be compassionate about the incredible pain experienced by both sides in the battle is sidestepped by banality and the completely unbelievable ending.

This book started out well, but was a very big disappointment. Pass.

Today's review

Overrated and sort of boring,August 13, 2009 Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron WAIT -- before you start making negative responses to this review, stop now and know -- I am a cat lover! But this book really didn't click with me. I thought the book would be more about a library cat but it was about the author and her troubled and difficult life; it was about how to run a library and the people who worked there; it was about people who visited the library and who apparently went crazy about this one cat, Dewey, who was so special that people came from around the world to see him, touch him and film him. OK. Fine. It was an interesting enough story, but I got bored by all the details about library operation, budgets, meetings and minutiae. The long descriptions about the history of Spencer, Iowa and the people who lived and farmed there was only marginally appealing. The description of Dewey's days and life were fine, but what was all that continued discussion of his dietary habits and bowel movements? I must admit that although I have been a cat owner for many years, I have a little difficulty when people say they can tell what their pet is thinking and when they give them other human attributes, sensitivities, and feelings. I have never been a fan of too much anthropomorphizing because I can't buy into it. I know this opinion and review will not set well with all of those hundreds who rave about this story, but it was too much of the author's autobiography and about Spencer, Iowa, than it was anything else. At the end of the day, no one knows for sure if animals LOVE people or what animals are capable of feeling or thinking. To me, assigning thoughts and feelings to animals from the human perspective is taking liberties more closely associated with FICTION and fantasy novels than it is nonfiction. I wanted to like this book but frankly, I was just glad to skim the last third of it and close the book.

Today's review...

Ho hum...skip it, you've already read one just like it.

This is formulaic fiction at best and convoluted storytelling at worst. The best way to sum up The Eleventh Victim by Nancy Grace is to say that there is nothing new and fresh here -- everything in the book has been written and read by anyone who likes thrillers. I found myself just plodding along, eager to be finished so I could move on to something more interesting.

The plot is typical -- a former beautiful and athletic female prosecutor of serial killers is burnt out and has fled Georgia for NY and instead of being a lawyer, she's now a psychologist. Then the conflict: uh oh, a former conviction she obtained has been overturned and now the bad guy is out. And guess who he wants to kill next? The ex attorney Hailey Dean, however, through some unbelievable inability to stay informed, doesn't realize that he has been released from death row due to a shift in votes on the appellate level. We are then treated to a tabloid-like look into the sleazy politics involving that judge's ambitions to be Georgia's governor. This leads to yet another side story that did nothing but annoy me. The whole digression into the plight of construction of tourist high rise condominiums on St. Simons Island in Georgia was completely unnecessary to the main narrative and I found it distracting and uninteresting. The author skips all around in the book from one little subplot to the next and back again. Most of it irrelevant to the main story line.

The climax of the book is totally predictable and you will find yourself skimming the last several chapters just to finally reach an unsatisfying conclusion.

My recommendation -- Skip it. As I said, you've already read this story.

Now reading...

I'll be starting reviews from this date on.

Just finished: Day after Night by Anita Diamant 5/5 stars

Current reading: The Eleventh Victim by Nancy Grace (a thriller)

Up next...don't know yet.

The Book Nurse

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