Rating: 
Summary: An absolute thrill ride. One of Baldacci's best!
Review: David Baldacci set the bar high for himself with his first huge hit, ABSOLUTE POWER (which later became a movie starring Clint Eastwood). He also reaches that bar with this effort, THE WINNER. Combining a plot not previously explored in popular fiction with believable characters and great writing, Baldacci produces a book worthy of a future screenplay.The heroine, LuAnn Tyler, is a young Southern woman who receives an offer she can't refuse...an offer to win millions of dollars in a lottery that is fixed. The offer is made by a mysterious man named Jackson. As the novel progresses, Jackson develops into one of the most brilliant, calculating antagonists of recent memory. The man seems unstoppable! LuAnn's bodyguard Charlie is a constantly important character as is Matt Riggs, who is thrust into LuAnn's life by random chance. As the novel progresses, it thrives not only on the lottery scam but also LuAnn's love for her daughter and her desire to protect her at any cost...and it plays into the hands of the reader, making you ask yourself if YOU would make the same decisions and take the same risks as she had. This added element really adds to the reading experience. All in all, this is Baldacci's best work since Absolute Power. Hopefully, the trend will continue in his future works.
Rating:
Summary: This should be a movie
Review: I don't know what more I can say then the other 264 reviewers other then to agree with most that this is a great book. Lots of intrigue. I bought this as an eBook thinking it would be a short and quick read. Once I started reading it, I checked the number of pages and was delighted to see how long it was. I also had no idea that this author wrote Absolute Power, one of my favorite movies, maybe because of Clint, maybe not L O L. I hope Hollywood buys this, let's see Angelina Jolie comes to mind for LuAnn then again, it might be interesting to see Gwyneth Paltrow do this role and hmmmm, how about Ed Asner as Charlie? Jackson? well, Charlie Sheen or Robert Downey or Brad Pitt?
If you like a long book with lots of human emotion and action too you'll enjoy this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Show me the Money
Review: I found this book to be quite interesting. It started off pretty fast and the author really didnt have anywhere to go with the characters. I found it very easy to root for Lou Ann. Jackson made her an offer in which she really could not refuse. She really did not have anything to lose. I thought some of plot was pretty predictable but it still kept my attention. There was alway's a just in case factor in this book. I did find the storyline with Uncle Charlie kinda of okey dokey.I mean really a hit man turns uncle. If you can get to the last part of the book you wont be disappointed. It was a real page turner at the end. I realy felt like I was in the scenes with Lou Ann Matt Riggs and Uncle Charlie. I would buy another Baldacci book in a heartbeat!!!
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: This is a winner
Review: If you like suspense, intrigue and do not mind a bit of the unlikely, you will enjoy this book. This tale is long - more than 600 pages in the paper back edition - so it will provide you with a lot of escape and entertainment.
The plot is simple on its face - a lottery is rigged. The how and why and the cost is the substance of the book. This is a typical Baldacci thriller. It is fun. Some reviewers have opined their unhappiness with the seemingly all-knowing character. This is fiction and Baldacci stretches a bit - or does he?
Buy the book, a couple lottery tickets and curl up by the fire and read.
A solid five stars
Rating:
Summary: Good but not great
Review: It kept me entertained but it wasn't a page turner. I easily put this book down plenty of times.
Rating: 
Summary: Character flaws, lifeless plot NO one would BUY!
Review: The Winner by David Baldacci (my second Baldacci book) was HIGHLY disappointing. Read the book cover to see the entire story in a hundred words; read The Winner for the full story in six hundred pages. (Read the back just to save time!)
The story starts out very descriptive, but lots of details irrelevant (more than not, in fact). David wrote it easy to follow though just at the cost of time. HE DESCIBES EVERYTHING! And later in the book, the begin of the story is repeated so much that
**You could start at Part || and not miss a thing!!**
CHARACTER FLAWS>>LuAnn, the main character, has a well-drawn, honest character and past but within fifty pages of the book, she's needlessly lying. Jackson, the bad guy, lures LuAnn into the mall, which wouldn't be there in such a small town, with a job interview. Jackson, very bright, skilled, and spotless, is extremely sloppy at the obvious which is another CHARACTER FLAW!
Jackson can rig the lottery and wants LuAnn to win. That's the simple plot. It doesn't get much more complicated. LuAnn gets the money and that's that. Until ten years later... (Which the line goes.)
LuAnn, with all of her cash, is being sought after by different people (who, NO MATTER WHO, can get ANY information they want!). She has a daughter, Lisa, 10 (but talks like she's twenty!) and a strange what I like to call a Hollywood-inspired love triangle thing>>>SINCE WHEN DO YOU RIDE ON SOMEONE PIGGY BACK STYLE OUTSIDE IN THE COLD MORNING WEARING NOTHING BUT A ROBE IF YOU LIKE THEM? If that's what's going on now-a-days...jeez!
EDITOR!!! Does the editor need to go back to sixth grade grammar school and learn commas again? And "Riggs", a character's name, is spelled both correctly and incorrectly in the SAME paragraph. LOUSY JOB!
THE WORST PART about reading The Winner is that you feel like it's the beginning throughout the book!! It just keeps going and going in a "HAVEN'T I ALREADY READ THIS?" kinda way. The book just fails to "get good" at any point.
THE BEST PART about this book is the cover. It looks like a clip of hundreds. It's pretty cool. If you had twelve "Winners" you could stack them in a briefcase.
OVERALL this book lacked in almost every aspect. There was no mystery. No real twists. It just boiled down to a "who-knows-what" kinda thing. BAD BAD BOOK!
~T*RIN
Rating: 
Summary: Baldacci whiffs with "The Winner"
Review: There have been a truckload of complaints about the lack of realism in David Baldacci's novels, from people who simply refuse to let themselves enjoy a good book. However, feasible situations aside, this book has a more serious problem. The characters and plot are like a home constructed from popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue...they just fall apart.
LuAnn Tyler is hard to root for. Sure, she's a poor, single mother who's put in a Catch-22 where her other option is death...but her only fully developed trait is her stubbornness. Considering she's the main heroine, Baldacci fails to fully develop her character before the initial conflict and throughout the rest of the book.....and that's inexcusable. By the end, I could honestly care less what happened to her. And her unwillingness to be truthful was more irritating than understandable. Jackson, like many of Baldacci's characters is attributed godlike status, to present the most formidable enemy possible. I have to admit, Baldacci did a great job casting Jackson as a master of disguises, because it adds mystery when a new character is introduced and surprises when his cover is removed. But for the most part, this book was very predictable and not the thriller it was touted to be.
Rating:
Summary: One of Baldacci's Best
Review: This book kept me reading until the end. I must agree with some of the other reviewers and state that parts of this book are a bit hard to believe, but so are many other fictional books. In this book Baldacci comes up with an original and suspenseful plot: The national lottery is rigged by an almost superhuman man, the villain in this book, and a poor, single mother in rural Georgia is given a chance to start a new life as a multi-millionaire if she promises to leave the country for good. The plot thickens when the heroine comes back to the United States. Another former lawyer turned writer, Baldacci shows in this book that he has the brains and the ability to write novels that rival the best fictional authors of our day. Overall, this is an entertaining and good quick read - what most people should be looking for in a novel.
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!
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