I will probably be in the minority on this review. While I did not hate the book, I can say that I was simply not impressed.
This is a book about human depravity laid bare, and it offers very little hope to balance the scales. The characters were well drawn and emotionally compelling enough, but that doesn't mean that I enjoyed their stories.
There was something else about this book that frustrated me, something that I could never quite put my finger on. I had this sense that the author's personal agenda was peeking around the corner of every page, and one line in the author's note finally summed things up for me: "Originally, I wanted my tight rope walker to fall, as the Bush years seemed to imply that he must ... When Barack Obama got elected I thought that the story had to go in a different direction, and so I tried to push it that way, toward a point of recovery."
Did I enjoy the book? Not really. Would I recommend it? Unlikely. And will it make me seek out other books by this same author? Probably not. For me, those three strikes equal two stars. It's not necessarily a book that is badly written, it is simply a book that I really did not like.
This is a book about human depravity laid bare, and it offers very little hope to balance the scales. The characters were well drawn and emotionally compelling enough, but that doesn't mean that I enjoyed their stories.
There was something else about this book that frustrated me, something that I could never quite put my finger on. I had this sense that the author's personal agenda was peeking around the corner of every page, and one line in the author's note finally summed things up for me: "Originally, I wanted my tight rope walker to fall, as the Bush years seemed to imply that he must ... When Barack Obama got elected I thought that the story had to go in a different direction, and so I tried to push it that way, toward a point of recovery."
Did I enjoy the book? Not really. Would I recommend it? Unlikely. And will it make me seek out other books by this same author? Probably not. For me, those three strikes equal two stars. It's not necessarily a book that is badly written, it is simply a book that I really did not like.
