Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book is so bad that it's astonishing that it was published, even these days. The author apparently has an MA in creative writing from England, which is also astonishing and very depressing. She uses hundreds and hundreds of awkward, clumsy similes until the reader wants to scream. The sun's "talons" point "like a strict schoolteacher;" clouds commune "like a collection of cotton balls in a tightly sealed ziplock bag" or have been "flattened out like a stack of pancakes" or have "been vaccinated with a syringe of rainy dye;" a convict dies "like the sizzling flicker of a fading lightbulb;" sneakers on a telephone wire "swayed over me like poisonous mistletoe;" a security camera "closed in on me like a furtive spectator;" a door closed "as if a director had slapped a clapboard;" her father has "a water bottle on his side like a colostomy bag," etc., etc., etc. Many of her images are ugly and/or inappropriate, and she doesn't even seem to know the meaning of many verbs and adjectives. Do publishing houses not employ editors any more? Silver's characters have no personality or emotions; she's just using them to push her plot, such as it is, laboriously forward. What a waste of ink, paper and time this book is.