The Divorce Papers

Sheer stubbornness is the only reason I finished this book. There was no real story or character development. It was filled with excruciating details of the divorcing couples' finances, divorce settlement, and other legal information instead of an actual story.

Well-done epistolary novel with a satisfying ending. This is a perfect light-enough book with tons of interesting, fabricated case law in a nonexistent state, Narragansett. Bring this book to the beach or download it during a flight delay.

Rieger tells the story of a messy divorce through the e-mails, letters, and legal documents sent back and forth between clients and lawyers and their friends. It's a sad tale. And it's a funny tale. It's a good tale.

I found myself reading this novel very differently than I usually read a novel; it is more like reading someone's scrapbook of the Kennedy assassination, with a mix of stories about the characters involved, making them both respected celebrities and frail human beings. And all of that inferred from the writing about the event.

Sophie is a criminal law attorney. When no divorce lawyer is available to meet a big client, she finds herself stuck with the case. She's far from being at ease, having gone through her parents' divorce. But maybe another kind of lawyer is exactly what was needed in this divorce...

The story is entirely told through letters, emails, articles, decisions and other types of documents. Even though it could make the story hard to follow, I thought that it was successful in that book. I felt like I had learned a lot about Sophie, her parents, friends and colleagues, Mia (the divorcing client), her daughter Jane and the ex-husband. It was an easy and fast read. The back cover presented the book as funny; I did not laugh a lot, but was entertained anyways.

Disclaimer: I received the book through the Giveaways program.

There might have been an interesting story here somewhere but I got lost after the first dull 50 pages of legal documents, and skimmed my way through the rest of the novel. Epistolary books work when the diary entries, letters or other material is inherently interesting, but fighting my way through pages and pages of legal jargon was deadly. I didn't even care about the main character, who was immature and unprofessional. A lot of pre-publication buzz for a big letdown.