Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I truly don't understand the hype for this book. Here are a few of its many sins: - Flaccid, lifeless prose. - Crammed to bursting with tedious, frivolous detail about the narrator's tedious, frivolous suburban life. - Protagonist can hear everything said by someone atop a cliff, over a raging thunderstorm, as she is drowning in a violent river. (No spoilers here; that's in the prologue.) - Clumsy, inept foreshadowing that destroys any chance for drama. They say when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, this book’s foreshadowing is what happens when the author has nothing but a big, heavy hammer: "This isn’t over yet. I feel something worse coming on. Only this time it’s not going to be a tree or a fire. It’s going to be less obvious, something insidious." - Contrived, wooden dialog. See above. - A double homicide is investigated by a fire marshal. Don't most towns have some kind of department that specializes in police work? What's it called, again? Someone should tell the author. - Every female character is shallow, beautiful, hyper-sexualized, and a threat to the narrator’s marriage. The narrator rarely visualizes another woman without specifying which sexy outfit she pictures her in. If written by a man, one would wonder if the author had ever met an actual woman, or just researched them by watching General Hospital. - “I grabbed a brick from the Kimballs’ side garden, and dropped it in my sweatshirt pocket as I climbed.” One wonders if the author has ever met an actual brick, or just assumed they are made portable for the suburban woman on the go. - The fire marshal (rather hilariously) spoils the ending to Backdraft. Does that mean spoilers are acceptable here? Because I identified her perpetrator in chapter 6. I don't like to be so negative, but this book is so over-praised that it seems necessary to give warning. It's possible that a passable writer lives somewhere inside the author, because occasionally a decent bit of phrasing gets through the filter, but this book isn't her voice.