Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Many thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for a free ARC of this book. I've never read this author before but took a chance when the book description pulled me in. Right off the bat, I'll say that this is likely to be one of those Marmite books--you either love it or hate it with no middle ground. The style of the prose annoyed me immensely and I had to persevere. However, I soon grew used to it. A few statements irked me: for example, 'He wore [...] those brown pants every man over thirty-five wears.' Nope, actually, I rarely see a man of any age wearing brown pants as a matter of course. Add to that the whole page given over to what the wife bought. Yes, you read that correctly ... a WHOLE PAGE. .... 'She bought yogurt and blueberries. She bought sliced turkey, whole-grain bread, that pebbly mud-colored mustard, and mayonnaise. She bought potato chips and tortilla chips and jarred salsa full of ... ' yada yada yada. But then, in complete juxtaposition, I loved some lines: for example, 'filed away in cyberspace, a shelf they could not reach.' (Of course, we'll need to ignore the comma splice there.) And another line: It was a whisky old enough to vote.' At about the halfway point, and certainly in the latter 25%, the tension picked up and had me gripped. Sadly, though, we never do find out what's happened. No clue what the actual catastrophe is, aside from the odd hint buried here and there in the vastly flowery prose. A final point is that the narrative is told from omniscient point of view, which leads to chronic head hopping. However, the author did this well enough that I could get along with it for the most part. Only a couple of times did I have to stop and re-read to ascertain who's head I was in at a particular point. What didn't work was that the voices of the kids read exactly like the voices of the adults. All in all, it's an okay read but not my cup of tea. I'd classify this as descriptive literary fiction. It gets 2 stars from me. *** NOTE ON RATINGS: I consider a 3-star rating a positive review. Picky about which books I give 5 stars to, I reserve this highest rating for the stories I find stunning and which moved me. 5 STARS: IT WAS AMAZING! I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN! — Highly Recommended. 4 STARS: I WOULD PULL AN ALL-NIGHTER — Go read this book. 3 STARS: IT WAS GOOD! — An okay read. Didn’t love it. Didn’t hate it. 2 STARS: I MAY HAVE LIKED A FEW THINGS —Lacking in some areas: writing, characterisation, and/or problematic plot lines. 1 STAR: NOT MY CUP OF TEA —Lots of issues with this book.