Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by aretz
The Stranger She Loved: A Mormon Doctor, His Beautiful Wife, and an Almost Perfect Murder by Shanna Hogan
3.0
As always, it's hard to rate a non-fiction book. You have to rely heavily on the research that an author does and hope that they're presenting the facts to you and not letting bias in. I believe Hogan was very a matter-of-fact for the most part, unless it concerned Martin and his lawyers, and I believe this is well-researched, however perhaps not completely well-presented.
The opening was strong and an immediate hook, however then the novel focuses heavily on the further past. I believe the book would have flowed better with the past intermittently put in other places that weren't a chronological lead up to the murder and so on.
The reason I feel this way is that there is a lot of "click bait" in this lead up section for each ending scene:
Page 18: "Only his [deep-seated issues] were more carefully concealed."
Page 29: "No one knew then that his entire career was based on lies."
Page 33: "As time would prove, Martin was, indeed, a talented actor."
Page 39: "Churning behind the deceptive smile was a Martin McNeill the family did not know existed."
Page 41: "It was only after his wife's death that his lies would be exposed."
Page 45: "Their enigmatic bond would ultimately destroy Damian's life."
It's as if Hogan is acknowledging that this part is boring because it's all an information dump, yet she did nothing to remedy it and employed an odd "you'll see later tactic" that tends to turn a reader off. To me, it feels like a few of these sentences nearly have the same meaning, but are just written differently to hide the fact that they're all saying, "he's a liar; don't trust him."
After you get up to where the book basically began, the energy comes back and it's mostly smooth sailing except for a couple of typos by using "childrens" as a strange plural when it already is that and the wrong "into" because this is the preposition needed otherwise you have a floating partial infinitive that asks "to what?" I'm sure there's more I missed, but my job here wasn't to edit the piece so...
Overall, a fascinating and informative read, but not much beyond that. It lacked balance. It gave perhaps too much unnecessary information about unimportant people to the story. It's great you know the police detective went to such and such school, but it's probably not pertinent to the novel.
The opening was strong and an immediate hook, however then the novel focuses heavily on the further past. I believe the book would have flowed better with the past intermittently put in other places that weren't a chronological lead up to the murder and so on.
The reason I feel this way is that there is a lot of "click bait" in this lead up section for each ending scene:
Page 18: "Only his [deep-seated issues] were more carefully concealed."
Page 29: "No one knew then that his entire career was based on lies."
Page 33: "As time would prove, Martin was, indeed, a talented actor."
Page 39: "Churning behind the deceptive smile was a Martin McNeill the family did not know existed."
Page 41: "It was only after his wife's death that his lies would be exposed."
Page 45: "Their enigmatic bond would ultimately destroy Damian's life."
It's as if Hogan is acknowledging that this part is boring because it's all an information dump, yet she did nothing to remedy it and employed an odd "you'll see later tactic" that tends to turn a reader off. To me, it feels like a few of these sentences nearly have the same meaning, but are just written differently to hide the fact that they're all saying, "he's a liar; don't trust him."
After you get up to where the book basically began, the energy comes back and it's mostly smooth sailing except for a couple of typos by using "childrens" as a strange plural when it already is that and the wrong "into" because this is the preposition needed otherwise you have a floating partial infinitive that asks "to what?" I'm sure there's more I missed, but my job here wasn't to edit the piece so...
Overall, a fascinating and informative read, but not much beyond that. It lacked balance. It gave perhaps too much unnecessary information about unimportant people to the story. It's great you know the police detective went to such and such school, but it's probably not pertinent to the novel.