My Rating: 2.5 stars
I had heard many good things about Lisa Scottoline’s
books and so when I was offered an ARC of her latest thriller After
Anna, I went into it expecting an intense read. The plot (from the summary) sounded promising
and the first 2-3 chapters actually did draw me in, made me interested in the
story and wanting to find out what was really going on with Anna’s murder and
what Noah’s role was in it.
Unfortunately, the story quickly started falling apart for me (I was
barely at the 8% mark on my Kindle) and kept going downhill the more I read –
by the time I got to the end of the book, the story had become such a tangled mess
that I felt like kicking myself for not having DNF’ed this earlier on (especially
when I already have a long list of books I still need to get to).
There were so many issues I had with this book, I
honestly don’t know where to begin with relaying my thoughts on this one. I guess perhaps I should start with the
writing, which was where I first found issue with this book. Most of the book (way too much of it to be
honest) consisted of back and forth dialogue between various characters – the
“After” sections were mostly about Noah’s trial, with the dialogue centering
heavily on the back and forth questioning between lawyers and witnesses, while
the “Before” sections had line after line of dialogue between Maggie, Noah,
Anna, and other characters, building up the “meat” of the story in terms of how
Noah got to the point of standing trial for murder. Dialogue is of course a necessary component
of all novels and when it is done well, it can definitely enhance a story and
give keen insight into the story’s characters, but when the dialogue is
overdone to the extent that it was here, it actually bogs down the story more
than anything else. With that said
though, the issue I had wasn’t just with the excessive amount of dialogue, but
rather, how trite and superficial majority of the dialogue was, to the point that
I felt most of it was unnecessary and the story would’ve been more coherent
without it. There were some chapters
where characters took up pages and pages having long, drawn out, yet repetitive
arguments with each other (some of the arguments actually reminded me of the
way children argued with each other)…or a character takes several paragraphs,
sometimes even several pages, to “get to the point” of what they were trying to
say (i.e.: almost all of the conversations between Maggie and Anna). Outside of the dialogue, there was also too
much description of “unnecessary minutiae” – details that were not really
relevant to the plot and made me wonder why they were included in the first
place (i.e. that entire chapter where Maggie and Anna are at the Congreve Inn
and we are told what their room looked like, the different things they ate,
Anna’s “play-by-play” reaction to the movie they were watching, etc). All of this, combined with the issues with
the plot as well as a general frustration with most of the characters (more on
both these points this later), made the story feel so tremendously draggy that
I found myself skimming a lot, especially at the halfway mark when I started getting
increasingly annoyed with the way things were going (or, more appropriately,
NOT going) and so resorted to glossing over entire paragraphs – sometimes even
entire pages – so that I could get to the end quicker.
In terms of the characters, I didn’t like the way any of
them were portrayed, as they all came across as one-dimensional and superficial
to me. I was especially irritated with
the character of Maggie, who was supposed to be a mature 40-something mother
and career woman, yet for nearly 90% of the story that she was in, she acted
like a petulant teenager throwing a tantrum each time things didn’t go her way. In fact, in some of the scenes between Maggie
and Anna, I actually got confused who was the teenager and who was the mother
because they both sounded equally immature.
The character of Noah came across as too much of a caricature – perfect husband,
perfect father, tall and good-looking, exceedingly intelligent doctor, patient,
attentive, loving, basically he was the penultimate “perfect” man whom Maggie obviously
adored – but yet, upon one “complaint” from Anna, Maggie goes from loving her husband
to automatically hating him and then refuses all attempts at rational thought
after that. And of course, Anna was a very stereotypical character, but what irked
me most was how blatantly obvious it was from the getgo that something wasn’t
right with her, yet Maggie saw absolutely no issues, had absolutely no doubts,
even when evidence was staring her in the face.
I personally can’t stand characters that are written deliberately
stereotypical, especially female characters, so the way both Anna and Maggie
were portrayed in this story really got to me.
Where I saw the biggest problem with this story though
was in the plot, which honestly had more holes in it than swiss cheese. I had
to suspend disbelief for practically the entire book in order to get through it
-- the opening chapters were decent but the plot grew more and more outlandish
as the story dragged on and by the end, the plot had gotten so out of hand that
I really had to question whether I was still reading the same book. One particular section in the second half of
the book really made my blood boil (the part where one of the characters
accompanies the police on a high profile sting operation – I’m trying to avoid
spoilers so being purposely vague here) – the actions of the characters made no
sense to me (not just in that one section but throughout the entire story) and
it seemed like a lot of the time, drama was being created for drama’s sake. Overall, the entire plot felt forced and with
all the holes, the flow of the story was negatively affected to the point that
it was a huge struggle to get through the book.
Though I can’t in good conscience recommend this read due
to all the issues I had with it, I am obviously the outlier here as there are many
others who liked this one, so I would recommend checking out the 4 and 5 star
reviews as well before deciding. Also,
despite my disappointment with this book, I am still open to reading this
author’s other works in the future, as I’ve heard her other works are better,
but it’s definitely less of a priority for me at this point.
Received ARC from
St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley
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