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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
Quite good. The plot keeps secrets unfolding all along until the very end.
I really enjoyed this book. An easy read if you have an eye for skimming over unnecessary verbiage.
adventurous
challenging
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I was so excited to finally read this because I liked The Expats, but it’s a completely different type of story. Everything happens in a day but the pace seemed a little slow.
Content Warnings
Minor: Child death
Just an okay read. I kept reading hoping it would redeem itself and it did to a degree--bit of a surprise ending. My main issue was with the overly descriptive writing. Every physical thing and place and person was described within an inch of it's life. Sometimes a thriller just needs to focus on the plot, it felt distracting.
Received the ARC from edelweiss.
This kept me up late last night to finish. I liked the setting in the publishing industry. Made me realize that for someone who reads so much, I know little about publishing. I had not read The Expats but I will be doing so now.
This kept me up late last night to finish. I liked the setting in the publishing industry. Made me realize that for someone who reads so much, I know little about publishing. I had not read The Expats but I will be doing so now.
Check out this and many other reviews on my blog https://throwmeabook.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/the-accident-by-chris-pavone/
Having read and enjoyed The Expats (while actually living as an expat in Switzerland!), I was happy to be granted access to Chris Pavone’s latest thriller, The Accident.
As a new day dawns in New York City, literary agent Isabel Reed has just finished reading the anonymous manuscript entitled ‘The Accident’, a potentially explosive exposé of a successful and very popular media mogul. Unbeknownst to Isabel, and half a world away in Copenhagen, CIA operative Hayden Gray is using his talents to quash this exposé and prevent the manuscript from seeing the light of day. The author, hiding away in Zurich, thanks to a new identity, hopes the publication of this manuscript with help him atone for all his misdeeds.
Each set on their own path and having their own reasons for protecting or destroying ‘The Accident’, Isabel, Hayden and the anonymous author face a myriad of obstacles and potential danger at every turn in order to get to their goal. Along the way, their paths slowly come together, revealing shocking secrets from their pasts and leading to a quite unexpected conclusion.
With The Accident, Chris Pavone has offered up readers another fast paced, action packed venture into the world of spies, agents and hit men, as well as a fairly glamorous and intriguing, cut-throat view of the publishing industry. It’s unbelievable that all this action occurs in only one day but it does and only adds to the adrenaline rush you get while flipping the pages. What I thought a clever touch, and to compensate for the limited timeline, the author has turned to flashbacks, in the form of manuscript excerpts, to aid in the plot and character development.
A thoroughly fun and enjoyable read, great to bring along on a long plane or train ride or while lounging this summer by the pool or on the beach.
Thank you to Blogging for Books and the Crown Publishing Group for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.
Having read and enjoyed The Expats (while actually living as an expat in Switzerland!), I was happy to be granted access to Chris Pavone’s latest thriller, The Accident.
As a new day dawns in New York City, literary agent Isabel Reed has just finished reading the anonymous manuscript entitled ‘The Accident’, a potentially explosive exposé of a successful and very popular media mogul. Unbeknownst to Isabel, and half a world away in Copenhagen, CIA operative Hayden Gray is using his talents to quash this exposé and prevent the manuscript from seeing the light of day. The author, hiding away in Zurich, thanks to a new identity, hopes the publication of this manuscript with help him atone for all his misdeeds.
Each set on their own path and having their own reasons for protecting or destroying ‘The Accident’, Isabel, Hayden and the anonymous author face a myriad of obstacles and potential danger at every turn in order to get to their goal. Along the way, their paths slowly come together, revealing shocking secrets from their pasts and leading to a quite unexpected conclusion.
With The Accident, Chris Pavone has offered up readers another fast paced, action packed venture into the world of spies, agents and hit men, as well as a fairly glamorous and intriguing, cut-throat view of the publishing industry. It’s unbelievable that all this action occurs in only one day but it does and only adds to the adrenaline rush you get while flipping the pages. What I thought a clever touch, and to compensate for the limited timeline, the author has turned to flashbacks, in the form of manuscript excerpts, to aid in the plot and character development.
A thoroughly fun and enjoyable read, great to bring along on a long plane or train ride or while lounging this summer by the pool or on the beach.
Thank you to Blogging for Books and the Crown Publishing Group for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.
I tore through this book like a frat boy through a six-pack. Immensely readable, it is witty and suspenseful, fun and smart. The story is great, but what made the book for me was the characters. Each one of those principal characters was so well-developed. And while some of them are doing things that are frankly heinous, you're still kind of rooting for all of them. I would LOVE to read a book centered on the character of Hayden Gray, who is a kind of cross between George Plimpton and James Bond. I also loved all the little details of the publishing business that are woven into the story. Pavone does this without ever seeming plodding or pedantic; it all feels like a very natural part of the story. The author's style is almost cinematic...as you're reading, you can imagine how a film of this would be shot. In fact, this book would make a fantastic movie; if it were done right, it would be like The Usual Suspects or maybe Charade-- the urbane, funny, stylish suspense story.
LOVE LOVE LOVE! I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could.
LOVE LOVE LOVE! I'd give it 4.5 stars if I could.
This could have been a great book. COULD. HAVE. BEEN! Instead it's long-winded, tedious, boring and pointless.
The premise is a good one. A manuscript with potentially damaging revelations has been carefully, secretively and anonymously penned, and sent to New York literary agent, Isabel Reed, for review. She realises it's a "once-in-a-lifetime" manuscript and sets about hiring an editor in order to publish the book. Unfortunately the person behind the revelations will do anything to stop the manuscript being released, and soon people with the slightest connection to the secretive document start to be killed by shadowy hitmen.
It sounds pretty OK. Unfortunately the baseline premise of the book - that there are potentially damaging revelations that shouldn't be released to the public - just doesn't hold up. A media mogul had a car accident in college and a girl was killed. The accident was covered up. The end. Do we really care if a media mogul's deepest secret is about to be revealed?! There are meant to be scandalous links between the media mogul and "black ops CIA" but the link is tenuous at best, and is never really explored nor explained.
For a book which is based around the whole process of book publishing, I had to keep reminding myself this was NOT a debut author, it was NOT a self-published, editor-less diatribe, and it WAS released by a decent publishing house (Faber & Faber). If you want to know all about the ins and outs of book publishing and the sale of rights to movie-makers, this is probably a great book to read. Unfortunately I don't and the endless descriptions of editors and movie producers and literary agents just got tiresome.
If that wasn't bad enough, the "twists and turns" in the book couldn't have been more conspicuous if they were signposted! Every single "reveal" was so obvious from 100+ pages previous, there really was no sense of tension or surprise.
On top of all of that the actual base English used by Pavone is grating. Words like "cafeination" and "more clever" (yes, really!) are interspersed with sentences up to 9 lines long. So not only is this book tiresome, boring, unsurprising and tedious, it's badly written on top of it all!
Had Pavone sat down and watched a couple of episodes of the excellent Scandal on TV then he may have had a better idea for this premise. Change a media mogul to a president. Change a shadowy half-hearted link to a CIA black ops group to something more akin to B6-13, get a decent editor to help with the actual tension and surprise revelations in the book, and you might be on to something decent.
As it is this book is a shambles and even now, having finally crawled my way to the end, I am still bemused as to how it got published!!
This review was originally posted on Babs' Bookshelf
The premise is a good one. A manuscript with potentially damaging revelations has been carefully, secretively and anonymously penned, and sent to New York literary agent, Isabel Reed, for review. She realises it's a "once-in-a-lifetime" manuscript and sets about hiring an editor in order to publish the book. Unfortunately the person behind the revelations will do anything to stop the manuscript being released, and soon people with the slightest connection to the secretive document start to be killed by shadowy hitmen.
It sounds pretty OK. Unfortunately the baseline premise of the book - that there are potentially damaging revelations that shouldn't be released to the public - just doesn't hold up. A media mogul had a car accident in college and a girl was killed. The accident was covered up. The end. Do we really care if a media mogul's deepest secret is about to be revealed?! There are meant to be scandalous links between the media mogul and "black ops CIA" but the link is tenuous at best, and is never really explored nor explained.
For a book which is based around the whole process of book publishing, I had to keep reminding myself this was NOT a debut author, it was NOT a self-published, editor-less diatribe, and it WAS released by a decent publishing house (Faber & Faber). If you want to know all about the ins and outs of book publishing and the sale of rights to movie-makers, this is probably a great book to read. Unfortunately I don't and the endless descriptions of editors and movie producers and literary agents just got tiresome.
If that wasn't bad enough, the "twists and turns" in the book couldn't have been more conspicuous if they were signposted! Every single "reveal" was so obvious from 100+ pages previous, there really was no sense of tension or surprise.
On top of all of that the actual base English used by Pavone is grating. Words like "cafeination" and "more clever" (yes, really!) are interspersed with sentences up to 9 lines long. So not only is this book tiresome, boring, unsurprising and tedious, it's badly written on top of it all!
Had Pavone sat down and watched a couple of episodes of the excellent Scandal on TV then he may have had a better idea for this premise. Change a media mogul to a president. Change a shadowy half-hearted link to a CIA black ops group to something more akin to B6-13, get a decent editor to help with the actual tension and surprise revelations in the book, and you might be on to something decent.
As it is this book is a shambles and even now, having finally crawled my way to the end, I am still bemused as to how it got published!!
This review was originally posted on Babs' Bookshelf