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3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
It's been awhile since I've read a Mary Higgins Clark. This one is different from the others I read in the late 1990's. I liked it. I will need to read more.
Reading this book was one of my attempts at trying out crime writers at random that I haven't read before. I know that the author is a very well-known name in the genre, but I wasn't really wild about this book. Admittedly, I obviously haven't read any other books in the series about amateur sleuth Alvira and her husband, Willy. But it has an air of young adult fiction about it, in the way in which the loose ends are very neatly tied up. There's a very definite happy-ever-after for the good eggs and an equally long spell in prison for the bad eggs in the book that you really only get in fiction aimed at youth. Added to this, we pretty much know the identities of the goodies/baddies fairly early on in the book.
We know who Delaney's birth mother is likely to be within the first few chapters, really, so there's no suspense around that aspect of things (Delaney is a young investigative journalist and news anchor featured in the book).
I mean, we all like things to turn out well for the decent people in stories, but any accounts I have read of adopted people finding their biological relatives are usually a tad more emotionally complicated than portrayed in this book. And though written in recent years, neither the birth mother nor the daughter she adopted out think about going on one of the DNA websites to trace their relatives, which is what many people do these days. As both parties are described as harbouring a profound longing in this regard, it's hardly plausible that they wouldn't explore this avenue in the 27 years that they have been separated.
This is an old-fashioned book and it has its charms, but I wouldn't regard it as being particularly nuanced crime fiction.
We know who Delaney's birth mother is likely to be within the first few chapters, really, so there's no suspense around that aspect of things (Delaney is a young investigative journalist and news anchor featured in the book).
I mean, we all like things to turn out well for the decent people in stories, but any accounts I have read of adopted people finding their biological relatives are usually a tad more emotionally complicated than portrayed in this book. And though written in recent years, neither the birth mother nor the daughter she adopted out think about going on one of the DNA websites to trace their relatives, which is what many people do these days. As both parties are described as harbouring a profound longing in this regard, it's hardly plausible that they wouldn't explore this avenue in the 27 years that they have been separated.
This is an old-fashioned book and it has its charms, but I wouldn't regard it as being particularly nuanced crime fiction.
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5
surprisingly predictable for me. i think the story dwelled so much time on the hearings and there wasn’t any depth for the purpose of the killer in doing the crime - i was looking for a more and deeper back story
surprisingly predictable for me. i think the story dwelled so much time on the hearings and there wasn’t any depth for the purpose of the killer in doing the crime - i was looking for a more and deeper back story
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
I didn’t care for this mystery as one it was obvious who Delaney’s mother was (why else were we featuring so much of Betsy Grant’s trial?). It also was obvious who the real killer was and the drug mini plot felt really weird. Really these felt like three different plots that were combined to create one novel and created a lot of problems. First was Delaney’s story of finding her birth mom, with Alvirah and Willy searching down leads. Now I love them as detectives, but for someone who has been searching for years they discovered the truth in days. Weird. That really should have been a short story featuring them. The second plot was the Betsy Brant trial that was the best plotted out of the three. It really got slowed down with the other two mini plots interjecting and taking away from this main story. Then we had a mini plot of a famous director’s son dying from an overdose, and doctor’s being the suppliers. That one was underdeveloped, as if the Doctor was losing so much money he agreed to murder his longtime friend to get a percentage of the money from the son’s inheritance why didn’t he have any money from all the illegal drugs he was selling? Where did that money go? It was put in randomly and the “investigative reporter” didn’t do that much investigating. This book felt really messy and I was disappointed in it.