Rating: 
Summary: Title Should Read Beauty and the Beast
Review: Another good book by Philip Margolin. In this case the Beauty is Ashley Spencer, a teenage soccer player who watches her best friend and father murdered. The beast is Joshua Maxfield, a one hit wonder bestselling author who now teaches at the elite Oregon academy that Ashley starts to attend after the horrible murder. Joshua has a reading group and Ashley's mother who is a budding author, joins his class. Ashley's mother, Terri begins to suspect that Joshua might have killed her husband and her daughter's best friend when Joshua reads an excerpt of a book in the reading group which has details from the crime that was never released. Terri decides to share her suspicion with Casey, the Dean of the Oregon academy but before she can say anything, Terri is stabbed to death and Casey is knocked into a coma. Ashley who hears the screams happens to see Joshua bending over the bodies with the bloody knife in his hand.
At this point the story starts to pick up because Joshua flees the scene of crime. The book keeps flipping back and forth from the past which details the murders and to the present where Miles' the brother of Casey is doing a book tour on this serial killer.
I liked this book because Margolin kept the plot moving by going back and forth (past and present). I must admit that halfway through the book I had an idea as to the identity of the killer but that did not make the book any less interesting. As a matter of fact, I wanted to finish reading the book to find out if I had figured it correctly and to also answer the questions of WHY?
Margolin is one of the few authors that I will buy and read because he does not disappoint. His books are not "literature" as one of the reviewers mentioned but if I wanted literature, I would pick up Charles Dicken or Tolstoy. If I want exciting read then Philip Margolin it is.
Rating:
Summary: Enough Twists in This Tale to Keep You Guessing All Night
Review: Ashley Spencer fell asleep dreaming of the victory her soccer team had won just that afternoon. Her best friend Tanya is asleep beside her. In celebration of the victory, Tanya was sleeping over. Ashley's mother is away, her dad is asleep in his room. Then all off a sudden she's awake, an intruder is on Tanya, he binds her, then he's on Ashley. The binds her as well. Then he murders her father, well almost murders him, comes back, but before he drags Tanya to another room, where he rapes and kills her, he says to Ashley, "See you later."
Ashley hears the killer as he uses her friend, hears her screams, hears his joy, then her father, bloody and dying, crawls into her bedroom and frees her. He is finished, he says. She must run, he says. And run she does.
When her mother, a reporter named Terri, comes home they find that Ashley has been accepted into a private school run by Casey Van Meter. This is good, because Ashley needs to start over. One of the instructors there is a one novel wonder who runs a writer's group. He invites Terri to join and at the first meeting, he reads from a story he's writing and Terri is shocked, because he's reading a fictionalized account of the murders that had taken place in her house. However, she does not go straight to the police, instead investigating herself and she is killed during a meeting with Casey Van Meter. Casey survives the killer's attempt, but is left in a coma and the killer tries again to get Ashley, killing her police bodyguards.
Now Ashley is a girl on the run and she runs far away to Europe, not coming back until her friend and attorney tells her that Casey is her real mother and that her Uncle, Casey's brother, wants to pull the plug on her life support systems. They need Ashley to apply for guardianship to keep her alive. This Ashley does, but Casey comes out of the coma. And after all this time the killer comes back, trying yet again to get Ashley, but he's caught, tried, convicted and gets the death penalty.
But is that it. Not on your life. This super thriller has pages and pages to go and those pages will surly steal away your sleep as they did mine. Mr. Margolin has served up a thriller that will keep you guessing and he's peopled it with great characters who I cared about. I especially liked the tough and gritty black prosecutor Deputy District Attorney Deliah Wallace and how she interacted with Ashley. I liked the twists in the tale a whole bunch, and I especially liked the killer of an ending, one that I didn't see coming. This is just a super book.
Rating:
Summary: Shocking and suspensful...A definite MUST read!
Review: Ashley Spencer is your typical teenager. She has great parents, makes good grades in school and she is a star on the soccer team, but her perfect life is about to be shattered by a shocking act of violence. While her reporter mom is on assignment, Ashley spends quality time with her father and her best friend until a stranger enters the Spencer home and changes things forever. The man stabs Ashley's father and then moves on to her friend, raping and killing her while Ashley sits tied up. As Ashley sits waiting for the killer to return her father crawls in to help her, setting her free to escape. Barely getting away alive, Ashley makes it to a neighbor's house where she calls the police. The police begin investigating the crime scene to discover a key piece of evidence left behind by the killer. Ashley's mom returns to home to deal with the tragedy and to try to make a new start for her and her daughter. Terri Spencer finds The Oregon Academy a private school with a top notch girls soccer team. Once at the school, Ashley settles in quickly and soon has a good relationship with the Dean, Casey Van Meter. As Terri settles into her new life she discovers a crucial piece of information that may lead to the capture of her husband's killer, a discovery that she shares with Casey Van Meter, but before anything can be done with the information she is killed and Casey is beaten into a coma, both victims to the same man who killed Ashley's father...a man who just happens to be a teacher at the school. Things begin to spin out of control and the key to finding the identity of the killer, or killers lies in a true crime book called 'Sleeping Beauty' a book written by Casey's brother Miles. 'Sleeping Beauty' is a twist filled shocker that's as smart as it is suspenseful. The complex plot will keep you guessing right up until the end and even then you won't have it figured out. From the gripping opening scene until the surprise ending you will be held captive by a spellbinding thriller filled with gruesome murders and sharp courtroom scenes. Phillip Margolin is a master story teller and his imaginative new novel proves he is at the top of his game. Fans of Margolin's previous novels will find this to be his best book in years. A definite MUST read! Nick Gonnella
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Summary: WHAT A GREAT READ!
Review: I have read everyone of Phillip Margolin's books and each time, they are books I can't put down. Once again, with Sleeping Beauty, I was hooked from page one and read the book in a day! It kept me at the edge of my seat with suspence and with each turning page, I did not know what to expect. Can't wait for the next book! Keep em coming.
Rating: 
Summary: not good
Review: I have to echo the previous comments regarding the wooden dialogue and two dimensional characters. This book had such a good premise, but Mr. Margolin hasn't taken much effort to flesh out his characters. They are typical "stock" mystery type characters: the gutsy survivor/heroine who falls in love with her tender young savior. The sassy, nurturing and buxom black female district attorney. The sinister and wily bad guys. And some of the legal details within the story are not plausible. I just wish the writer had put more effort into developing characters, it's tiring reading about such stereotypical people.
Rating: 
Summary: A Tightly Written Tale with Surprising Twists and Turns
Review: Phillip Margolin has been boldly shouldering his way into the membership of 'A' List suspense authors since the publication of his classic novel GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Arriving, of course, is only part of the job. The rest is running as hard as you can to stay there. Margolin takes another step toward firmly ensconcing himself on that "must read" list with his latest novel, SLEEPING BEAUTY. SLEEPING BEAUTY begins with a brutal home invasion that brings unspeakable tragedy into the life of Ashley Spencer, a teenager whose idyllic life is shattered when, while her mother is away on business, her father and her best friend are murdered by a fiend who leaves no clues as to his identity. When her mother is subsequently murdered, in an attack that also leaves Casey Van Meter, the headmistress of Ashley's school, in a coma, everything points to Joshua Maxfield, a charismatic teacher and bestselling author, as the killer. Maxfield is taken into custody, but when he escapes, Ashley suddenly finds herself in terrible danger. She goes on the run for years, only to return when a stunning secret is revealed that brings Maxfield out of hiding and back into the arms of the police. Casey, meanwhile, awakens from her coma and is able at trial to identify Maxfield as her attacker and the killer of Ashley's mother. After a riveting trial Maxfield is convicted of murder. Miles Van Meter, brother of Casey, writes SLEEPING BEAUTY, a true crime book about the events as a tribute to Casey and her ordeal. That, however, is not the end of Margolin's tale. It is, in fact, only the beginning! Margolin takes several structural chances in SLEEPING BEAUTY, and his success in doing so without so much as one misstep demonstrates the quality of his workmanship. This is a complex tale, yet Margolin explains things so well that the narrative never falters. It is worth noting that Margolin's style is such that he is able to lead the reader through a complicated plot shifting between the book's present and past without slowing the pace of his novel one bit, making it possible to devour the tale in one sitting. Margolin, with SLEEPING BEAUTY, continues to challenge himself and others in his field with a tightly written tale that twists and turns through the narrative to a surprising but satisfying conclusion. This is yet another Margolin novel that is not to be missed. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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Summary: You Will Lose Sleep Reading This Beauty
Review: Phillip Margolin has never disappointed me yet with his novels, and with Sleeping Beauty, his streak continues. In this novel things are seldom what they seem and it would spoil the read for me to reveal the twists and turns that this story takes. The straight forward story is that Ashley Spencer, a high school soccer star has a friend to her house for a sleep over following a big game and awakens to the most terrifying experience one can imagine. A masked stranger is in their room. He ties up Ashley and takes her friend into another room where he rapes and murders her. Returning to her room, he says, "I'll see you later" and she hears him go down to the kitchen. Her father, who is the only parent in the house that night crawls into her room suffering from multiple stab wounds and using the last of his energy frees fer from her bonds and she escapes out her window. This appears to be a random event until Ashley's mother is taking a creative writing course at a nearby private school in which Ashley has enrolled and hears the instructor read a passage from a piece of writing that describes the event that her daughter has gone through and also includes a part of what happened that received no publicity. She eventually determines that no one in the class wrote the story and that it was drafted by the instructor, Joshua Maxwell, himself. Her suspicions are aroused to the point where she confides them to the Dean of the school who checks out the instructor's background and calls the mother suggesting a meeting to discuss what she has found. While jogging on the school grounds near where the meeting is taking place, Ashley hears a scream and decides to investigate. What she sees as she peers in the window are the bodies of two women lying on the floor (the Dean and Ashley's mother) and Joshua Maxwell standing over them with a bloody knife in his hands. He sees her as she turns and runs for her life with Maxwell in pursuit. She escapes, the story is out, Maxwell is pursued and eventually arrested and brought to trial. And the story is JUST BEGINNING. Margolin uses an interesting vehicle in telling the story. The Dean, Casey Van Meter, was not murdered, but ended up in a coma. Her brother, Miles Van Meter has written a book about the events leading up to her being in the coma entitled, Sleeping Beauty. A continuing thread in this book is his presence at a book signing where he reads from the book and answers questions about it. I will leave it to the reader to explore the intracies of this very well told tale. It is an undertaking that will be well worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: I Don't Think So !!!!!!!!
Review: SLEEPING BEAUTY is a well-written, involving and puzzling thriller--I find it hard to understand why so many negative reviews. Oh, well, different strokes...
I found Margolin's style very involving, switching from the present where Miles van Meter is attending a book signing in honor of his bestseller to the time of the crimes where young Ashley Spencer loses both her father and mother to a particularly brutal serial killer. Joshua Maxfield is an arrogant protagonist, and one can see how this maniacally self centered author could be such a ghastly killer. Ashley is joined by her young lawyer friend, Jerry Phillips, and the delightfully enjoyable Delilah Wallace (think of Queen Latifah for the movie role) in solving this complex mystery. Nothing is quite as it seems and there are several red herrings thrown in for good measure, including the comatosed sister of Miles, Casey; and Casey's good for nothing husband, Randy Coleman. I was thoroughly entertained by the book and found it one of my favorite reads so far this year.
Rating:
Summary: Complex thriller
Review: SLEEPING BEAUTY is s story that spans six years. It opens with Miles Van Meter promoting his true-crime book that recounts his twin sister's attack by a serial killer that left her in coma, and of the home invasion in which teenager, Ashley Spencer's father was killed. The story moves seamlessly between present day and past events throughout the book in one of the most complex plots I have read in awhile. The plot offers many twists and keeps up a fast pace. It is a suspenseful book and hard to put down. If you are a hardcore mystery reader then it was not really that hard to figure out where Margolin was going with the story. I figured out who the culprit was within the first quarter of the book, but still enjoyed following the different paths that Margolin was leading the readers. The crimes themselves are pretty graphic so beware if you are faint-of-heart.
Rating:
Summary: Great Suspense
Review: Sleeping Beauty is the best of Phillip Margolin. The answer to the crime that everyone thinks is solved actually lies in a book that one of the main characters has written. The ending is a surprise and getting there is half the fun in reading the book. It's a great read. Ashley Spencer is 17 when an intruder kills her best friend and her father as he plans to come back from a snack in her kitchen to kill her. As the story unfolds, a suspect is apprehended, excapes, and someone tries to kill Ashley again. Her mother and the dean of her private school are killed in following chapters. Througout the book when the killer seems to be known to all, something is not quite right. It's a good read when you think you know the answers, suspect you do not, and finally find out that you were totally off base.
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