m

I adore Daniel Silva and his artistic manifestation Gabriel, but the summer novels like clockwork have become noticeably cookie cutter. The biggest thrill The Heist has brought is the matter-of-fact education on Syrian affairs, which coincided nicely with my viewing of Tyrant this season. Aside from that, I swear I've read these exact passages and phrasing a dozen times.

Must read, as are all of Hosseini's books. Particularly gut-wrenching of the three.

You'd think being written in the exact same formula as all the rest of Judith McNaught's books would give it some kind of standardization, but unfortunately this rendition fell quite short. No character description felt the least bit genuine or realistic - the girl had no consistency to her personality, the main man (an earl), was quite repetitive in his dialogue (“she has spirit”, “such spirit”, “her wonderful spirit”, and so on. You get the point.) Having read Whitney, My Love, which shares the same main character pool, I can also attest that those characters have all suddenly lost any semblance to their former selves - Whitney, Claymore, et al.- and in this book are cardboard cutouts of kind, benevolent, and wise do-gooders that push the main couple together. Unless I read a completely different novel from Whitney, My Love, those words would never be used to describe Claymore. In fact, Nick DuVille was the most interesting and animated of them all, and all he did the entire book was stand next to pillars and smirk. I would say you're much better off reading “Almost Heaven”, which is far and away the best of McNaught's novels.

Confusing and convoluted... did not inspire connection with nor sympathy for the characters. A far cry from her debut adult novel The Casual Vacancy. I could barely make it to the end, and must confess I skimmed the last 1/3 in a desperate attempt to find out the great “mystery” with my remaining ounce of fast-deteriorating attention. I'm not sure why I bothered. The revelation was like something out of bad tween movie.

wtf?