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A review by kimreads14
The Traffic Lawyer by Norval Ecir
funny
mysterious
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an advance copy of The Traffic Lawyer by Norval Eric.
This book had such a fun and interesting background idea. An ex-superstar Yale law graduate has become something of a failure by simply handling out-of-state speeding tickets. When attending his class reunion (something he had no intention to do, at first), he ends up representing his ex-bff who is accused of murder. Cool right? Well yeah, the premises were setting you up for a great story...
The execution, however, was very poor 😩. The story is all over the place, and the plot is hardly believable. The mystery/crime aspect of the novel is borderline SCI-FI. Actually, it's not borderline SCI-FI it IS. And while I am a big fan of SCI-FI, the injection of the genre did not work here.
There are also technically 3 to 4 plot lines at the same time, but they all 'converge' at the end wrapped in a pretty if not clumsy bow 🎀 . The whole thing is seriously messy, and I'm surprised that the author's team didn't try to reign in all of this. The dialogues were hardly credible and most characters felt very caricature-y, and were just not likable.
On top of all that, the background idea I thought was great just became annoying. The constant reminder of how amazing he was, how great Yale Law school is etc. I also wonder if the author is aware of a little thing called Bar Reciprocity. If you know any lawyers, even ones from Yale Law 👀, you know that they don't just pass 40 bar exams for fun.
Unfortunately, this book was incredibly messy and poorly executed. 1.5⭐️ for me
This book had such a fun and interesting background idea. An ex-superstar Yale law graduate has become something of a failure by simply handling out-of-state speeding tickets. When attending his class reunion (something he had no intention to do, at first), he ends up representing his ex-bff who is accused of murder. Cool right? Well yeah, the premises were setting you up for a great story...
The execution, however, was very poor 😩. The story is all over the place, and the plot is hardly believable. The mystery/crime aspect of the novel is borderline SCI-FI. Actually, it's not borderline SCI-FI it IS. And while I am a big fan of SCI-FI, the injection of the genre did not work here.
There are also technically 3 to 4 plot lines at the same time, but they all 'converge' at the end wrapped in a pretty if not clumsy bow 🎀 . The whole thing is seriously messy, and I'm surprised that the author's team didn't try to reign in all of this. The dialogues were hardly credible and most characters felt very caricature-y, and were just not likable.
On top of all that, the background idea I thought was great just became annoying. The constant reminder of how amazing he was, how great Yale Law school is etc. I also wonder if the author is aware of a little thing called Bar Reciprocity. If you know any lawyers, even ones from Yale Law 👀, you know that they don't just pass 40 bar exams for fun.
Unfortunately, this book was incredibly messy and poorly executed. 1.5⭐️ for me