This book is... not good. Which surprised me, since apparently Susan Isaacs is a pretty well-known and prolific author—I read an ARC that obviously had another editing pass ahead of it, so I can't help wondering if perhaps Isaacs's books get pretty heavily reworked in the editing process. Because this book just is not written by a good author.
I can see how this could end up being a good book: The premise and plot are compelling! But the execution leaves a lot to be desired. At least a third of the text—long paragraphs of exposition, irrelevant (if well-transitioned) tangents, and repetitive introspection—was completely unnecessary and made the story drag. The best part of the book was the (very intense, honestly page-turning) climax, and even those three-or-so chapters were clunky, so instead of breezing through them, I found myself stumbling on fluff sentences about store brand soda and how many coats of nail polish Corie was wearing.
Worse was the dialogue, which was often used to impart information to the audience—an acceptable method, but only when the in-book listener doesn't know the information either. In this case, the characters never had a natural reason to say these things to people who almost certainly already knew them. And the dialogue was bad—went on an on, off on tangents like the narration, so much so that I often couldn't follow these characters' conversations. But even without that issue, it was just so unnatural. This is not how people talk.
And then there was Corie herself. I liked her at first, but she got tedious pretty quickly. She was constantly obsessing (for multiple paragraphs at a time) over how her husband was the perfect package—so smart, so successful, so rich, so caring, soooo sexy, loves her soooooo much—and how it was totally unbelievable that he'd picked her. That got old real fast, especially in the face of her many not-so-subtle references to her own sexiness. And then there was the way that, despite the fact that she claimed to have grown up modestly, her descriptions of people and places all had a sort of shallow, elitist sheen on them. There was even a sense of disdain in her discussions of her acquaintances and even her parents, which I found extremely unlikable. Add to that the apparent rule that every character description had to include evaluations of the character's body shape and attractiveness, and the disgustingly constant references to other women's weights—I honestly found it incredibly discouraging that a woman wrote this book.
Maybe the final publication version of this book will be better—I imagine that a couple hard-working editors could turn it into a real fun thriller. But the version I read was not worth my time.
I can see how this could end up being a good book: The premise and plot are compelling! But the execution leaves a lot to be desired. At least a third of the text—long paragraphs of exposition, irrelevant (if well-transitioned) tangents, and repetitive introspection—was completely unnecessary and made the story drag. The best part of the book was the (very intense, honestly page-turning) climax, and even those three-or-so chapters were clunky, so instead of breezing through them, I found myself stumbling on fluff sentences about store brand soda and how many coats of nail polish Corie was wearing.
Worse was the dialogue, which was often used to impart information to the audience—an acceptable method, but only when the in-book listener doesn't know the information either. In this case, the characters never had a natural reason to say these things to people who almost certainly already knew them. And the dialogue was bad—went on an on, off on tangents like the narration, so much so that I often couldn't follow these characters' conversations. But even without that issue, it was just so unnatural. This is not how people talk.
And then there was Corie herself. I liked her at first, but she got tedious pretty quickly. She was constantly obsessing (for multiple paragraphs at a time) over how her husband was the perfect package—so smart, so successful, so rich, so caring, soooo sexy, loves her soooooo much—and how it was totally unbelievable that he'd picked her. That got old real fast, especially in the face of her many not-so-subtle references to her own sexiness. And then there was the way that, despite the fact that she claimed to have grown up modestly, her descriptions of people and places all had a sort of shallow, elitist sheen on them. There was even a sense of disdain in her discussions of her acquaintances and even her parents, which I found extremely unlikable. Add to that the apparent rule that every character description had to include evaluations of the character's body shape and attractiveness, and the disgustingly constant references to other women's weights—I honestly found it incredibly discouraging that a woman wrote this book.
Maybe the final publication version of this book will be better—I imagine that a couple hard-working editors could turn it into a real fun thriller. But the version I read was not worth my time.