Still Waiting to Be Drawn In to the Story

filled star filled star filled star star unfilled star unfilled
readingrebecca Avatar

By

The description of the book definitely sounded interesting to me, but I had trouble getting into the story based on the preview pages I read. The mother who is the first-person narrator came across as melodramatic before the action really seemed to merit it. Everything seems to be bringing on a heart attack:
Page 1: mom has "a pain across [her] chest" and a few lines later "the grip on [her] chest unfurls."
Then early in chapter 2, the mother says "I feel a tug on my chest" and on the next page "my heart hammering through my chest" and 2 pages later "hysterical...though my chest had stopped hurting" and followed by "panic is building in my chest" on page 15.

Maybe the preview needed to include 1 or 2 more chapters to help a reader - or at least help me- understand the mother's internal hysteria and fell drawn into the story.