40 reviews for:

Charley's Web

Joy Fielding

3.66 AVERAGE

brandiemetzger's profile picture

brandiemetzger's review

1.0

Well, I gave it a try and just can't get through it. Fielding is usually a favorite author of mine but I'm not enjoying this one and gonna have to give it a rest. Maybe I'm just not in the 'mood' right now, so I'm moving on.
akuhlma03's profile picture

akuhlma03's review

5.0

I absolutely love Joy Fielding's books!

Het eerste boek waarbij ik van het begin af aan al wist wie het had gedaan. Je valt van het ene cliché in de ander en de personages blijven oppervlakkig.

An excellent thriller -- my first read from Fielding. It was a true page-turner. I could hardly put it down -- even for sleep! About a journalist who gets suckered in to write the memoirs of a sadistic child killer, Fielding really has a way of increasing the suspense as the story progresses. Strong characters and a good, trick ending make it a must read for any thriller fan. Not exactly the most intellectual read ever, but for thriller fans, I would say it's a must! I'm going to try another Fielding soon and see if she's always this good!

I find Joy Fielding's books to be uneven--some are engaging and others are annoying with characters I dislike. This one had lots of twists and turns, but in the end, and while it was intertaining, I was unsure what the motive was for the situation in which Charley found herself. Her earlier books were better: [b:The Other Woman|58345|The Awakening|Kate Chopin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170507247s/58345.jpg|1970518] and Kiss Mommy Goodbye were good and Whispers and Lies was excellent.

Creepy, thought-provoking. Very good.

This was definitely a page-turner, particularly toward the end. Charley (Charlotte) Webb writes a newspaper column that gets her a lot of mail, not always complimentary. It also hasn't been good at promoting friendships. Charley has two children, but didn't marry either of the fathers. Her mother left the family when Charley was eight and her three younger siblings still haven't got over that. Charley is trying to get to know her mother, but sometimes struggles with it.
She gets a letter from a young woman on death row, convicted of brutally torturing and killing three children, whowants Charley to write her story. As Charley gets drawn into the killer's thoughts, she also worries about anonymous threats she has been getting from a reader. There is lots going on here, and Charley is far from perfect, but she is bright and has a sense of humour, and that takes her a long ways.

Very riveting read. I couldn't put it down. Though I think it would have flowed better if it had been in first person, I thought the book was great.

I thought this was a good read. Charley is very independent, and uses her independence to build up a wall that protects her from getting emotionally involved with other people, whether they be her neighbors, the mother who was gone for most of her life, her sisters, or even the fathers of her children. When she begins to dig into Jill Rohmer’s damaged world, cracks appear in her own wall. Despite the tweeness of the title of her newspaper column ("Webb Site", which the author tries painfully hard to make us believe is clever), I also enjoyed that side of Charley. Actually, I kinda wish she had spent more time in the office and less time driving around.

The plot builds well, and there are enough possible outcomes that when the twist occurs, you are surprised but find it believable. And then the second twist hits you and blows all of that out of the water. It’s hard to surprise me, but Fielding did it well. Charley’s Web is a little bit mystery, a little bit suspense, and a little bit family drama, and it all works quite well.

Creepy - how can a book about child murder not be? - but the plot was interesting enough that I kept reading. Not sure the brother and sisters' names had to be reiterated so many times - yes, like the Brontes, I Get It - and didn't really buy that Charley could make enough with her column for that to be her only job, but whatever. It occupied my mind for a couple of days, that's all it needed to do.