I hate to give criticism to books since I know just how difficult it is to write a full length novel never mind one that is actually good! I was excited by the summary of this book, but I'm sorry to say I couldn't get past the first chapter of the excerpt from it. The dialogue felt forced and unrealistic, and everything was so overly described I couldn't help but roll my eyes. The amount of times in the first few pages I read about somebody taking a bite of lasagna seemed extreme. It also seemed like the author maybe spent too much time with a thesaurus and forgot to clean up the excessive use of adverbs in a round of editing; I think removing many of them would have improved the narrative and increased the tension of the opening dinner scene. Others may thoroughly enjoy this book, but unfortunately, I just couldn't get through this excerpt.