257
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #109,280 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★☆☆☆
Not well-written and with characters too perfect to be believed
This is not a good book. The writing is substandard, filled with awkward sentences and poor word choices. Some details simply don’t make sense or are outright unbelievable. The idea—the kidnapping of a father-in-law in front of his son-in-law in Mexico—is interesting. But the author struggles mightily to make the family involved seem sympathetic: Grandma, Granddad, Husband, Wife, and their two adorable little girls devote their vacation to helping a Mexican orphanage. Everyone gets along. No one fights (even though Granddad has invested 5 million in son-in-law’s start-up). And everyone is obsessed with Disney. It’s all just too perfect to be believed. The protagonist, the head of a very successful software firm, couldn’t be more treacly or annoying, especially since he’s guilt-wracked when he needn’t be and seems to burst into tears every ten pages. His relationship with his father-in-law—told mostly through italicized back-story—is so overly sentimental that it strains credulity. I got a third of the way through and finally just gave up.
