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Summary: A change from the author's usual books
Review: When I picked up David Baldacci's "Wish you Well" I didn't know what to expect. I had read "The Winner", "Total Control" and "Saving Faith" so I think I was expecting something more along those lines. Instead, what I got was a touching book about hope and love. The kind of love that a child has for a parent. Pure love. The description of the mountains of Virginia where the story takes place was so real, that I could literally visualize it. At various points in the story I wanted to reach out and give Lou and Oz hugs...something I felt they were so desperately needing. The outcome of the book was what I expected to a degree. The story does not disappoint and is now one of my favorite books of the year! Well done Mr. Baldacci. You have impressed me again.
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Summary: Out of Character
Review: I'm reading what I think is a really wonderful book now. Its called Wishing You Well by David Baldacci. He normally writes thrillers like Absolute Power, however, this time he steps out of his genre to write a really beautiful character novel. If you've read his other stuff as I have, it will take you 50 - 75 pages to realize that this is a special book. It's one of the best books I've read in a long time. I like character novels now so take my praise in that light. It's a wonderful read. The characters touch something way down inside of me. Maybe because I spent some time in Appalachia growing up and knew a lot of transplanted coal miners that this story is special, but I think it has a lot to say to everyone.
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Summary: Wish You Well
Review: I'm a huge Baldacci fan and I wasn't sure what to expect this time out since it's such a departure from his other works. But I have to say...I LOVE THIS BOOK! My parents grew up in this era (1940's) in rural KY, with the hills and the "hollers" and the coal mines so these characters were very real to me. You'll fall in love with Lou, Oz, Louisa and Diamond. And you will care how it all works out. One reviewer said the end was "transparent", but who cares? It ended exactly the way it should. READ THIS BOOK!
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Summary: Sentimental Journey
Review: "Sentimentality in the First Degree!" This accusation leveled by Gene Kelly's character at Spencer Tracy in the classic "Inherit the Wind" came to mind as I read this novel by David Baldacci, a departure for one of our preeminent authors of the legal-suspense genre. While it is at times a warm and touching read, based upon Baldacci's family background in rural Virginia, it also leaves much to be desired in that it shamelessly veers into sentimentality, cliched characters and plot developments. Set in 1940, toward the end of the great depression and the eve of World WarII, "WishYou Well" follows the fortunes of 12 year-old Louisa Mae Cardinal, and her 7 year-old brother, Oscar(Oz), children of New York City, who, due to an automobile accident that claims the life of their father, an author, and leaves their mother comatose, are sent to live with their paternal grandmother in the mountains of Virginia. It is a hard-scrabble existence our young heroine and hero must adjust to, among people who labor from before dawn to sunset, surviving by the sweat of their proverbial brows at arduous farm chores. However, under the guiding hand of their stern, strong-willed, but loving family matriarch, a humble but noble country lawyer, a loyal black farm hand, and a Huck Finn-esque playmate,our young protagonists fare just fine, while learning valuable life lessons, and successfully passing several of youths' traditional rites of passage. Young Louisa, an aspiring writer also grapples with, and eventually comes to terms with her ambivalent feelings toward her deceased father, and her mother, whose vegetative state Louisa perceives as a form of abandonment. The story culminates in a David and Goliath courtroom battle between our modest, but undaunted country counselor representing 'jes plain folk', and that old reliable nemesis of too many legal novels: Greedy Capitalist Interests. If all this sounds a bit pat and dela vu, there's a good reason - it is! Baldacci obviously intends to give his readers an acute case of the warm fuzzies, replete with eyes brimming with tears. To a degree he succeeds, but at the price of calculated sentimentality, cliched characters, and plot elements that are shamelessly borrowed from superior works, notably "To Kill a Mockingbird" "Fried Green Tomatoes", among others. Only those with hearts of granite can finish "Wish You Well" with dry eyes, but the reader may justifiably feel that he has had his emotional strings pulled, and all his feel-good buttons somewhat cynically pushed. Here's some free advice to the good counsel from Virginia, Baldacci: stick to the legal thrillers where you excel, and your characters are not so cliched and plot developments not so easily foreseeable.
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Summary: Wish you well review
Review: I've never read David Baldacci before so I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading this book. I was a little unsure when I bought this book and left it in the bag for a couple of weeks before I pulled it out to read. I'm glad I did because I could not put this book down. Lou and Oz live in New York city with their parents, until an accident kills their father and leaves their mother in a deep coma from which the doctors don't think she will recover from. They have to move from the big city to the country in Virginia to live with their grandmother, whom they have never met. Lou and Oz first resist the new setting but soon learn they better adapt or the struggle will only get harder. Lou learns that even though she will always be a big sister, she needs to let her brother be his own person. Oz learns he needs to grow up, in the sense that he is the youngest but he's not a baby any more. I look forward to reading other books by Mr Baldacci and hope they are a good as this one.
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Summary: How Predictable
Review: I have never read Baldacci before, and I don't plan to read him again. I was forced to read this sappy, pat story because it was my book clubs book of the month. Lou, the little girl in the story is twelve years old, and I believe Baldacci was confused by this too often. He wrote her thoughts, and contemplations as though she were a very old, very wise adult. So much of this book was the author's dribble. He tried much too hard to describe the sceneries, and left too much lacking in his characters. His characters were way too predictable. I think he may even have copied some of them from other stories, Huck Finn perhaps. Don't waste your time, or your money reading it.
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Summary: Loved this book!
Review: Maybe I should be sorry for having liked this book so much. But, I prefer this selection to Mr. Baldacci's other fare. Great story with each character a person you'd like to know. If you love Baldacci's thrillers and have no heart, then perhaps this isn't the book for you. But if you like to see the good in people and relish in an emotional book, then this one is for you.
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Summary: EXCELLENT READ!
Review: David Baldacci is truly a great story teller. I lent this book to a friend and she stole it from me after she read it. It is not like his typical thriller books. It is a drama that involves a world before technology took over, involving the tragedies and wonders of two children lives, on their grandmother's farm
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Summary: Entertaining...but lightly so.
Review: This book was my first by Baldacci. I enjoyed it, however, it was very light and airy. Definitely predictable and at times seemed as though it was written for a 4th grader. I wanted to like it more than i did. I have heard that this book is very different from the author's usual writing so i will definitely try out another book of his.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable!
Review: Not your average Baldacci--talk about changing horses! But it works beautifully. Set in Virginia, this novel brings to mind other books (think McCrae's Bark of the Dogwood or Kidd's Secret Life of Bees). And the writing is as good as those books. The characters in Wish you Well are very well developed and at times the novel seems larger than life. Whether or not you're a Baldacci fan, you'll love this fun, entertaining, wonderfully-written novel. Also recommended: Secret life of Bees and Bark of the Dogwood
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