chessie 's review for:

El Juego de Ripper by Isabel Allende

1.0

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I guess I am getting better at giving up on books. I was struggling to get past the 150-page mark on the day before the book was due back, which isn't a great sign. This book sounded intriguing (and I have read and liked other books by Isabel Allende), but the characters were so cliched and one-dimensional that I didn't care enough about them to keep reading. I'm sure the ending is gripping, but I'm not sure I could make it there. This book also suffers from excessive character description, rather than allowing the characters' actions to show you more about them. The main character, Amanda, is a geeky kid who doesn't understand her classmates (and their obsessions with Tom Cruise's latest divorce or whatever other vapid concern) and only gets along with the other geeky kids she hangs out with online. Have I mentioned how hot and magical her mother Indiana is? Seriously, she's so hot and blonde and mystical she had to get knocked up in high school by the captain of the football team with whom she has nothing in common. And of course his immigrant mother had to make him do the right thing and marry her and of course they divorced and of course he's now deputy chief of homicide, etc. etc. etc. etc. Oh and Amanda loathes the idea that her (super hot, blonde, super hot, sensual, super hot) mom's older millionaire playboy boyfriend (who suffers from erectile dysfunction, natch) could one day become her stepfather. I am reducing things a bit because I am grumpy that these characters are so lame, but absolutely nothing about the characters' personalities or actions surprised me. The serial murderer plot seemed so secondary to Allende describing these flat characters over and over again. Time to take it back to the library and let someone else try and get to the end.