If all the characters basically suck, you'd better be extra clever........keep all the balls up in the air so readers don't stop to realize they really don't give a crap whodunit or who lives or dies......
Megan Miranda pulled that off in "All The Missing Girls", with her high-wire stunt of unraveling the plot in reverse chronological order.........
No such cleverness occurs here. Miranda gives you plenty of time to observe that everybody in this book is obnoxious in one way or another..........even worse, she periodically sinks the story into those dreaded, impenetrable pages of heavy-handed description.........you know, the parts of the book you can impatiently skim through fast without missing the plot.......
The author does at least pick the least repulsive character as her sole narrator. Doesn't help much.......they're all a bunch of entitled creeps, with no discernible wit to make them any fun to follow or listen to.......
The plot in an extreme nutshell: (and oh Sweet Lord, does BQ hate doing this....) Our lead player, Avery, manages rental properties on a Maine island vacation spot. She works for the super-rich Loman family, who provided her with a home and a job, functioning as a sort of surrogate family after she survived the accidental death of her parents and a wild, lawless adolescence.......
After growing up along side the freewheeling, spoiled scions of the Loman clan, Parker and Sadie, it finally dawns on Avert that she'll never be their equals.........especially after Sadie goes plummeting off a cliff, an apparent suicide. (Say it with me, altogether.....OR WAS IT?????!!!!)
The book veers from mildly diverting to stone cold boring..........you'll start to think you're stuck on an island with modern-day versions of the party-goers from "The Great Gatsby"......
The big twists and reveals are okay, I suppose.......but getting there's a chore.
1 star (*) for a so-so beach read. But only if you like your beach reads to lull you into naps all afternoon.........
No comments:
Post a Comment