Rating: 
Summary: BLESSINGS SHOULD'VE BEEN TITLED BORING!!!
Review: WHAT A WASTE OF TIME. NOT ONE OF ANNA'S BEST WORKS. THE CHARACTERS LACKED DEPTH AND THE STORY DRAGGED ALONG LIKE A SLOW DEATH. WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK.
Rating: 
Summary: WHY NOT ME?
Review: Do you often wonder why some books get published and make it to the best seller list and others get trashed on the reject pile? This is one of those books that depending on who reads it ,is either wonderful or not worth the paper it was printed on. I am a writter ( non published to date) and feel that this book was at best a beginner novel, which of course it is not. I fell asleep each time I picked it up and was glad when I turned the last page.
Rating:
Summary: curses
Review: This book was boring and predictable. There wasn't one phrase or sentence I lingered over. If I didn't have to read it for my book club...I would have put it down about the third chapter.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the time
Review: The characters were the only reason I gave this one star. The plot was dull and many of the "twists" I found unbelievable. The dark secrets were a bit dated and certainly predictable. Please try again Anna as we know you're a good writer.
Rating: 
Summary: An extraordinary Book!
Review: I am sorry I held off for so long reading it because of some of the reviews on Amazon[.com]. Just goes to show I am not in the mainstream. It is a superbly written novel - as good as any of the prze winners that I have read this year. As for the ending -it had to naturally resolve that way. It is my first novel by Quidlen and I plan to read more. A truly complete and well written piece - 99.9% of the books out today can't compare!
Rating:
Summary: Who Cares?
Review: The story was sort of fun, if unbelievable, but the character development was really poor. I think we were supposed to really admire Ms. Blessing, but I found her life incredibly narrow and her late life "enlightenment" too little, too late. In all, a very unsatisfying read. Compared to her brilliant "Newseek" essays, Anna Quindlen writes rather silly novels.
Rating: 
Summary: A lovely book
Review: Blessings is a very quiet, lovely book. I really enjoyed it and found myself very moved. It shows that a person's true character can emerge at the most unlikely time. Sweet and slow moving like honey.
Rating:
Summary: handy-man turned mom
Review: This is the story of Lydia Blessing, her resident handy-man, Skip, and the baby he finds at his front door one morning. The story is about how Skip falls in love with the mystery baby and how the two of them soften the old routine-loving Mrs. Blessing. The basic story is good, but a great deal of the book explores the pasts of both Lydia and Skip in a way that is very disrupting to the telling of the main story. Sometimes the flasback is only a paragraph or two, sometimes several pages, but the transitions between past and present are not smooth and sometimes random. I was halfway through the book before I figured out who all these people from the past were and how they relate to the characters. Still, it's a pretty good book, and even though it doesn't have the greatest ending, it's still enjoyable enough.
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre - at best
Review: I was very disappointed in this book and in an author that I considered promising. It would seem that Anna Quinlen is on the Steele/Grisham program that encourages commercial success if a predictable template is followed. It will be interesting to see if Quindlen conforms to predictable plots and quick reads to satisfy an audience that savors mediocrity. I kept thinking there would be something redeeming if I just kept reading - I did and there wasn't.
Rating:
Summary: Quindlen Has Written Better
Review: Regretfully, I have to agree with those reviewers who found this book boring. I too just couldn't get "into" it. I have read all of Ms. Quindlen's previous books and enjoyed them. I think the problem is in the way she bounces back and forth between the past and the present, sometimes within a single sentence. I think she was attempting to convey to the reader the way a person's mind really works - we may be listening to someone talk, but our mind is far away either in the past or the future. But in print this method simply renders the reader more confused that the narrator is supposed to be. Her descriptions were excellent. She uses a lot of detail and the reader really can "see" Blessings and all the assorted characters. I think this is what Quindlen is best at. The storyline, however, was a bit weak and implausable. Overall, I gave it a three because I felt that her writing is good enough to rescue the reader from the confusing time skips and rather uninspiring plot.
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