The Winner

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: 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: 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 5lbscatfood.blogspot.com


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: 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: A different focus for Baldacci but well done!
Review: Those familiar with other works by this author have come to expect FBI intrigue, Secret Service manipulations and government plots abounding. This is a little different tack for Baldacci since the focus of the story only peripherally involves the government (well, until about 2/3 of the way through). The focus of this book is a woman who has the opportunity of a lifetime, to win the rigged fictional National Lottery and get away with it. LuAnn is your heroine and is a wonderfully likable character even if not too realistic (beautiful, smart and physically powerful). The story keeps moving from beginning to end with almost no pause in the pacing of the story. It keeps you interested from beginning to end. That is why I highly recommend this book even if you are not into the government intrigue genre. Enjoy!

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.