The Escape Artist by Diane Chamberlain
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Well, this was very… okay! You can tell I wasn’t into a book when I can’t even find one quote to pull for the review opening. Dang.
I feel very middle-of-the-road about this book.
I usually love Diane Chamberlain books. They – generally speaking, at least for the ones I’ve read – have a brilliant mix of chick lit fun, romance, and mystery – usually enough of the latter to keep it from being too sickly sweet and setting my teeth on edge. But the best part is that usually the author writes these amazing characters that come to life and feel like friends by the end of the book. I love that, as character-driven novels are totally my thing.
But I just didn’t feel it here.
Yes, the main character is sympathetic – who wouldn’t have sympathy for a woman who used to be married to a philandering jerk who has not taken away custody of her child? But my problem was that the characters didn’t seem very “deeply” written. They were all surface, from the walking-cliche of an ex husband to his clueless, naive new wife, to the bad-boy new boyfriend, to the actual bad-guy bomber in the story.
Additionally, the mystery wasn’t really one to me. I had it figured out early on. The clues were less clues, and more knocking you over the head with the obvious. I didn’t think “Well, maybe this is what is going on, or maybe that…” No. I knew. It was no surprise.
I kept holding out this hope that I was wrong and there was this whole secret mystery I wasn’t getting and I’d still be all surprised and it would all be awesome and worth it at the end (!!!) but that didn’t happen.
So, I felt like there was no “payoff” with this book. It just felt shallow and not up to the usual standards I expect from the author. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop reading her books, because she’s written some others that I adore, but this one… well, if I were you I’d skip this one. It’s not absolutely horrible, and if it’s your only decent choice from a rack of paperbacks at the airport before your flight, okay. But other than that, don’t waste your time.