Aw hell.....it's Sunday.....suffice to say it's another version of Jailer Falls Hard For The Jailed.......
Well written.....spurts of great writing......but by the time it lurches to its inevitable (at least, to us) climax, we wondered why we even bothered.
Simple enough premise.......two wayward, crushed souls cross paths in a women's prison.....Frank Lundquist, reduced to Prison Psychologist after the demolition of his marriage and career......Miranda Greene, 30-ish inmate whose terrible life choices have earned her a 52 year stretch with no chance of parole.....her Orange is the new black until she's older than Bernie Sanders......
But, whoa! Turns out, Miranda was none other than Frank's secret, unrequited high school crush.....the long lost object of his teen yearnings and desires.....
Frank's brainstorm, so to speak......break Miranda out of prison, disappear with her....in the hopes of a romance and redemption for both of them....
Yeah.....good luck with that......
(If you can already sense that this will go about as well as Jay Gatsby's hubba-hubba-hots for Daisy Buchanan.........give yourselves a Gold Star....)
Not a lengthy tale (to its credit), but takes its own sweet time unfolding Frank and Miranda's tortuous backstories......so the book moves along in spurts, sometimes a low-boiling thriller, sometimes an agonized accounting of lives gone awry......
Some might consider the ending a 'Gone Girl' type twist........but not if you've been paying even the slightest bit of attention........
The author certainly did her homework on women's prisons and prisoners........but even with all the tragic angst and suspense along the way, the story holds no real surprises......only an overall grim, moody mixture of redemption and delusion......
We'd advise to wait until someone adapts it into an 80 minute streaming-service movie......otherwise......eh.....1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2).
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