Because not every book can be a five star read…

It’s hard sometimes when reading and writing reviews to distinguish the books that are truly for you. Let’s face it, we all have different things we look for in a book. Be it writing, the characterizations, the places , the scenes, there is always something that attracts one to the story. Talking about this with a book friend, we decided that as we are well aware that everyone is different, there seems to be a plethora of stars and reviews that extol the virtues of a book. With that in mind, and knowing that in the past my blog has only written of books I would recommend, I felt it was about time to include one that I wouldn’t give my imprimatur to. Here it is a negative review. Those of you who don’t like the negative should probably stop reading.

Recently, I have found a number of book that have been for lack of a better word mislabeled. The book I have just finished is one of them. Labeled as a thriller, it was more of a family drama, and unfortunately, was not a family drama that I much enjoyed.

In The Suspect, we meet a group of adult enablers, parents who have allowed their children to embark onto avenues that are not only fool hardy but dangerous. It is as if if the parents have passed on their “no consequences” gene onto their offspring.

We witness the parents, one of which has seemed to cover for her son, making excuses, granting him his poor behavior even up to the ultimate of protecting him from punishment for his deplorable actions. Other parents allow their eighteen year olds to embark on a trip overseas to a land where danger lurks, while not really knowing the person their daughters travel and spend their time with. The children, or more young adults, make disastrous choices, one to the point of emerging in the drug and alcohol culture and free wheeling her way through a number of men she beds, while the other knowing full well that what she is involved in is absolutely wrong, does nothing to allay her situation. You see, for them, life is a party and that party should never end. One of the young men in the story, drifts into a state of feeling sorry for himself, wallowing in the “my parents pressed me to be successful mantra”, while a second young man thrown around a system of various foster homes and parents, becomes a mad human being, a drifter. While all of this seems to be the making of a good book, unfortunately, this outing fell flat.

The book meanders, it never really lets you know most of the characters and develop empathy for them. I found this very sad that while we see people in trouble, we also see glaringly the reasons why they are the way they are. It’s like that proverbial accident waiting to happen. However, this “accident” was avoidable if only…

The story line has quite a few holes in the telling and situations that don’t lend themselves in any way to the book. The book became dull in its middle, so much so, that a book that should be building the excitement became one I couldn’t wait to finish.

It is ever so hard to write a review for a book that one didn’t care for. So much easier, indeed, to write those glowing gushing reviews of book we have admired. So, to sum things up, I do not recommend this book. There are a multitude of really well done thrillers out there. Unfortunately, for me, this was not one of them.