Review: Good plot, but lacked "something"
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 23, 2011
This is the first book I've read by Shay, & I'm not sure if I'll read any of her others. She did include a note which said this was the first book she'd written in this style (no pre-planning, entirely off-the-cuff), so maybe some of her other books are better. So here goes.I really enjoyed the plot. It was a tender coming-of-age tale for the first half, then a busy tale of murder & justice for the second half (which took place 12 yrs after the first half). The characters were very well done & believable during the first half, & I liked getting to know them. Unfortunately, Jordan becomes rather weak during the second half & was obviously written by a woman. (I'm sorry, I can't stand that.) Darcy was still pretty strong during the second half, but of course, she's a female.The conclusion seemed a bit pat & dry to me. Really, the whole second half of the book was dry, & I have some trouble remembering how all the loose ends were tied up. Some details of the murder mystery were a bit too obvious. Some of the characters held such promise, but we never got to see what happens to them (like Addy, the reporter). There was a lot of jumping around with character perspectives. I think there were no less than 9 different characters telling this story, which kinda got annoying at times. And while seeing the different perspectives was interesting on some levels, it would've been more so if the reader could get a story about each character. Instead, some characters were killed off (by the author) for convenience, while others were just insane (but you couldn't really tell by their thoughts, which is like, wait, what?). It seems like the author was trying to develop all of these characters for the reader, but then maybe got overwhelmed by the task. I'm not really sure.NO one can complain about the length though. Or rather, no one could say this is anything a but full-length novel. Seriously, this thing is long. Shay cannot be accused of skimping. I really wish that the characters had been more focused & that the prose & dialogue had been stronger. I really did enjoy the actual story, but I wasn't crazy about Shay's style. Or rather, I wasn't crazy about how her little experiment panned out. Maybe she's a great author otherwise, but this book is really only average. I don't know that I'll ever read it again, but one never knows. It's in my archive should I decide to go round 2 with it.