Second Glance: A Novel
buy bestselling books in print, audio books
|
 |
List Price: $15.00
Our Price:
$10.20
You Save: $4.8
|
| [ + Zoom ] [ Buy Now ] |
Book : Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
|
Second Glance: A Novel description
Ghosts and ghost hunters collide in this compelling tale of the paranormal set in Vermont's green mountains. When the patriarch of the Abenaki Indian tribe that was nearly eradicated by that state's eugenics project in the 1930s encounters Ross Wakeman, the miraculous survivor of several attempted suicides who wants nothing more than to be reunited with the woman he loved and lost, they set in motion a chain of events that will unravel an ancient murder and lead to a second chance at life and love for the victim's descendants. Picoult, author of Salem Falls, brings the past alive and peoples it with a cast of extraordinarily well-realized characters whose reach into the future touches the lives of a dying boy, a frightened girl, and their mothers--two women who've given up on love until the revenants stirred up by a plan to develop an ancient burial ground show them what they're missing. Second Glance is an intricate and suspenseful ghost story that enchants and illuminates all the way to its powerful conclusion. --Jane Adams |
|
Second Glance: A Novel Customer Reviews
|
|
|
|
♥♥♥♥♥ |
No court case, but messed up the ending again
|
For some reason, I keep buying Jodi Picoult books, although I know, and everyone else that knows me knows, that there's never really anything new about them. Nearly always, there's a court case/murder trial, which she seems to enjoy writing about for some reason, but I find seriously boring. And then she always, always, messes up the ending.
Second Glance is her latest book out in the UK, and is mainly about ghosts. It's split into parts - part one, I swear took me over a week to wade through. She throws all these different characters at the reader, none of whom you're given any reason to particularly care about, and none of whom bear any relation to each other. You've got a stressed out mother, with a son suffering from XP (can't be in sunlight), with a brother who's always on the edge of the cliff, trying to commit suicide, to get back to the love he lost. He's a ghost hunter, to put it nicely, and is trying to see if his lost love will 'visit' him.
There's a bunch of other people as well - a mum with a kid who sees ghosts, an old Native American, a cop, etc. You now the drill. She could throw any characters into this, it really wouldn't make a difference.
Then the second part comes as a complete and throws the reader 70 years back in time. Finally, things begin to make sense. Kind of. At least we know why some of the characters are there, and it makes more sense, now we actually get to meet a ghost.
So once everything begins to fall into place, she has to throw in a couple more characters, and give them more meaning. But there's just too many characters. The beginning of the book, I kept stopping and starting, and then forget what a charater was doing, who was related to who, etc. If she introduced them slowly, maybe I wouldn't have such a problem.
There's no court case in Second Glance. Yeh! There's a fight over some land - minor plot point - but no court case. Even when I was on holiday, the person I was with asked me if there was a court case in the book by Jodi I was reading at the time. It's a major thing with me how much she writes about court cases. But this time, there is none. (These books are regular holiday reading for me, cos they're so dispensable. Weighs down my suitcase/hand luggage, but I still end up with too many books with me!)
But she still messes up the ending! How many times can a writer mess up an ending to one of her own books? Each book I've read (and it's been nearly all of them), the ending has either fallen flat, or there's too many loose ends, or it just doesn't work and has an almost rushed feeling to it. Second Glance has a rushed feeling about it - as if she'd run out of ideas, and just ended it. But it has been slightly better than a couple of her other books, but I just get the feeling now I'm wasting my time reading the books. Will I stop? Someone needs to stop me next time I see a book of hers!!! |
|
Second Glance: A Novel Books In Print, Audio Books.