Rating: 
Summary: A "Winner" Indeed
Review: What would you do if someone offered you $100 million dollars and all you had to do was leave the country and never return? Yeah, me too! But then I read THE WINNER.LuAnn Tyler is only 20 years old and already a dirt-poor single mother with an 8 month old daughter living in a trailer in Georgia. When a strange man, whom she thought was offering her a job, says he can guarantee that she'll win the national lottery, LuAnn's better judgement tells her to decline. But she comes home to find her boyfriend murdered and herself killing another intruder in self-defense. Alone and desperate, she takes the stranger's incredible offer which leads her to New York City to accept her lottery winnings: $100 million dollars. She has, however, agreed to the stranger's stipulations: She must leave the country and never return; he will control and invest the lottery winnings; LuAnn will live off the investment earnings; at the end of ten years, the entire $100 million will be returned to her in full. Ten years moving around Europe doesn't sound too bad. But LuAnn secretly returns to the US after the ten years, putting herself in grave danger, as well as the lives of her daughter, Lisa, and the two men she loves. This is my 2nd Baldacci book, the first being his latest, WISH YOU WELL. Hard to believe they were written by the same author. Both incredibly well-written but with very different writing styles. Baldacci has outstanding character development. The stranger, the financial genious, is a great villan. He's truly evil. It seems there's nothing he can't get done. I also picked up on the changes in LuAnn after the ten years had passed. She's such a strong-willed character. Her growth and maturity is so apparent. I don't know enough about the government or the lotteries to say if "a fix" is really possible. However, Baldacci's brilliant writing makes me want to believe it could happen.
Rating: 
Summary: Another Big Score!
Review: This is a novel that defies you to put it down until you finish it. It is a lengthy but fast read. I thoroughly enjoyed Baldacci's ABSOLUTE POWER and the action here is no second banana. I highly recommend this book. You care about LuAnn and her crew and you ache to see the destruction of her chief nemesis. The character development of all of the characters is rich and believable. Baldacci has the knack of creating characters that you can easily visualize. The action is non-stop and you really don't care if the plot is a tiny bit flawed. After all this is fiction...very good fiction. Baldacci knows how to tell an intriguing tale. LuAnn Tyler is a twenty-year-old mother with a two-year-old child living in rural Georgia. She is smart, she is beautiful and she is trapped in a relationship with the abusive and lazy father of her daughter. LuAnn is trying to make the best of a bad situation when fate enters into her life in the person of a mysterious stranger named Jackson or so he calls himself at their first meeting: a meeting she believes is a job interview but she soon learns it is a meeting that is dramatically going to change the rest of her life. Circumstances engineered in part by the mysterious Jackson conspire to persuade LuAnn to participate in a lottery fraud that allows her to win a hundred million dollars. The only thing LuAnn has to do is promise to leave the country and to let Jackson manage her winnings. In LuAnn's forced sojourn she acquires an education, numerous skills and a pronounced degree of sophistication. For ten years LuAnn, her bodyguard Charlie and daughter Lisa move from place to place in Europe so as not to become a spectacle. Eventually however LuAnn wearies of her Bedouin existence and longs for home...no matter what the cost she plots her return. This, of course, promises to upset Jackson's intricate plan. Rather than allow that to happen Jackson plots his own intrigue to end the threat: a threat he views as having the potential of destroying him. The twists and turns on this rollercoaster ride should satisfy even the most cynical critic of this type of genre. Enjoy and hold on tight!
Rating:
Summary: Would You Give Up Everything for Millions?
Review: Bright and beautiful, twenty-year-old LuAnn Tyler lives with her no good boyfriend and her their baby girl on the poor side of town with nowhere to go but up. She's about as desperate as they come. Then she's approached my a mysterious man named Jackson who offers her the chance of a lifetime, a chance to win millions on the lottery. The game is going to be fixed, of course, and naturally Jackson wants a hefty cut of the take. LuAnn turns him down, then finds herself as a murder suspect and all of a sudden the rigged lottery is looking better and better. She does what Jackson wants, wins the big bucks and, as per Jackson's instructions, leaves the country with her daughter. She's under orders from him, never to come back. A small price to pay for her rags to riches transformation. However ten years later she misses America and comes home and gets involved with a handsome contractor who has a mysterious past. Then Jackson finds out she's back. He's got plenty of money and it looks like he wants LuAnn dead. Who is more dangerous to her? Her new beau, or the deadly Jackson? As Usual Baldacci has served up a non-stop thriller that is impossible to put down. There are twists, turns, slights of hand, misdirections and an ending that is so very satisfying. I just loved this book.
Rating:
Summary: This one is Baldacci's Best-no doubt
Review: I read this book a few years ago but it has retained it's place in my top ten ever since. This is a a wonderfully crafted story that keeps you turning the pages until the end. This was the 2nd Baldacci book I had read; the first having been The Simple Truth. Although that book was enjoyable, this one was, in my opinion, just better. Baldacci is better well known for his political thrillers and this one doesn't quite fall into that genre, which is a welcome change. Always a good thing when a writer can be diverse with his subject matter. The story itself is interesting, and what makes it interesting is that it is sort of unique. A little far fetched that someone could fix the lottery and cook up such an elaborate scheme to control people's lives? Perhaps. But that is not something you think about while reading this book-the characters are engrossing. Particularly the character of LuAnn. You can't help but care about what happens to this woman, and no matter how much wealth is bestowed upon her, you can't help but feel for her and sympathize with her situation. She is definitely someone you can identify with, whether you are male or female. I didn't particulaly care for the character of Charlie, but it would have been nice to know a little more information about him. Jackson is a wicked and diabolical character that you just love to hate. The combination of this and an excellent storyline that keeps moving at a good pace equals a great read. I would definitely recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: Great read, but a couple of holes along the way...
Review: Having enjoyed Absolute Power, Total Control, and Saving Faith, I really looked forward to reading The Winner, and I wasn't disappointed. It was a great book, with two brilliant central characters. However, as a couple of other people have said, there was one glaring hole in the plot. Why, why, why, did LuAnn return to the USA; Jackson having warned her, the IRS after her for taxes, and the sheriff of Rikersville wanting her for the murder of Duane. Why? Jackson was pure evil personified - a brilliant character. When he murdered his sister, and then his brother, it was one of those 'I don't believe that just happened' moments for me. I feel that the ending would have been rather less predictable, and more memorable, if LuAn and Matt had died in the river at the end of the book. I know people like happy endings, but the cat-and-mouse game where the mouse always wins is becoming a tried-and-tested, and boring, formula. Having said that, I greatly enjoyed The Winner, as I have all Baldacci's books, and I plan to go out today and buy The Simple Truth, the only one which I have not read.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!!!
Review: When someone writes "The concept of the book was a little far fetched" it drives me a little CRAZY!! That's why they call it fiction; it doesn't all have to be believable! Now that I've got that off my chest, I just finished the book and I loved it!! If you like Baldacci you'll like this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written, but this yarn's a little hard to swallow...
Review: This book is well-written and very suspenseful, but the plot is a bit convoluted and hard to believe at times. Still, it's an entertaining read but not nearly as compelling as Baldacci's other works, especially "Absolute Power."
Rating:
Summary: This was a Great Book!
Review: This was the first Baldacci book Ive read and I have to admit I loved it. I was a little unsure at first after reading some of the reviews but It turned out to be an excellent book. The book moved very fast and I didnt think it was too long as some people have written. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. The concept of the book was a little far fetched but hey thats what makes it interesting. Jackson was a very interesting character and Lu-Ann/Catherine was great, very macho. If you want to read a great book from cover to cover I recommend this book highly!
Rating:
Summary: Good action....too lengthy
Review: David Baldacci is an outstanding novel of bestselling thrillers. He has a knack that will keep you on the edge of your seating, wondering what will happen next. If you read too much into his novels, you might fine some inconsistancies, but if you let your mind go and enjoy the story, you're in for a wild ride. The main storyline this time around finds an impoverished single-mother living with an abusive boyfriend. She is working hard to raise herself out of her state, but it's slow-going. That's when she gets the opportunity of a lifetime when a mysterious man guarantees she'll win the $100 million lottery jackpot. Resistant at first, she eventually agrees after being set up for a murder that she didn't commit. Little does she know she's making a deal with the devil, a man who would have had her killed if she had said no. The story starts ten years ago and works it's way to the present, introducing heroes and villians along the way. As I said, it is a wild ride, but at over 600 pages, probably about 150 pages too long. Too much expository during some parts, and occasionally unecessary side stories detracted from the main story. I did enjoy this novel and would recommend it to anybody who truly enjoys edge-of-your-seat storytelling.
Rating: 
Summary: Baldacci phones this one in
Review: For sake of argument, let's just accept the far fetched premise that the mega-evil "Jackson" can accomplish anything (such as fixing the national lottery), can find out any information about any person, can disguise himself as anyone - even mimicking their voices, and he is a ruthless killer who will eliminate anyone who interferes with his schemes. The heroine, Luann, obviously knows this and rightfully fears Jackson because of this. Yet she explicitly defies Jackson's order never return to the USA. And she does it in grand style by buying a mansion on a huge piece of land in her mother's hometown, and she files a tax return - all under the assumed name that Jackson set up for her! And then she wonders how Jackson found out?!? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Reading this book makes you feel you are watching a bad movie on late-night cable. You know the plot contrived, and the characters are cliches, and the dialogue is ridiculous, yet somehow you just keep watching... It got hard to focus on the pages because I kept rolling my eyes.
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