Review: Read this book!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 1, 2014
Kirsten Jany's 'Enter to Win' offers a trifecta of literary tricks that characterize a solidly suspenseful novel: strong premise, stunning pacing, and an expertly controlled story and reveal.Here is the logline: A popular Hollywood soap opera holds a viewer contest to ramp up their ratings. Each contestant shares a hard luck story as potential storylines for future episodes on the soap, and the real-life entrant with the strongest, most compelling story wins $200K. Four finalists are selected and flown to Hollywood. The producer ensconces them in a lavish mansion far afield from their provincial life experiences until a winner is selected. Each contestant is pathetic in his or her own way, but their stakes skyrocket when the producer who brought them to L.A. is found dead.The author's literary control used to introduce the novel and its central characters are nothing short of masterful. The reader feels as though she is in the hands of a grand champion novelist.You can try to guess who murders the oily producer, but I guarantee you will be surprised when you find out whodunnit at the end.The first third of the novel is so strong and told in such a captivating style for an epistolary tale, that it is more than a little disappointing that the middle of the book sags a bit--perhaps because too many of the scenes are told as reflections, as the contestant's recollections, rather than in real time.However, the sheer craft and the novelty Jany's approach to the storytelling both deserve your attention and merit a reading.