Good Intentions: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I would have loved some scary stuff. I would have loved some suspense. I would have loved characters with whom I could sympathize. The New York Times Book Review said this book had "the perfect plot for a summer beach novel". A good, long nap would have been better.

Rating:
Summary: Good Story of Family Relationships w/ a little suspense
Review: This book is about female family relationships between three generations of women. Each feels that they can't do anything right for the generation that follows them. Then slowly they begin to understand each other and each others needs, but with the threat of a stalker hovering over them. They work through old problems and old hurts, but the threat is still there. I enjoyed reading this book a lot and would recommend it to anyone who wanted to spend some time thinking about their own relationship with their mother. Not a book for a quick read. I really thought about when my mother and I were going through this particular stage, when I was reading this book. I can't give the book away, but I was very surprised who the "stalker" turned out to be. Enjoy this book, it is suspensful, but without all of the gross, really scarry things like in a King novel.

Rating:
Summary: A rattling good yarn
Review: This is a rattling good yarn, crisply written and neatly plotted, with three-dimensional characters you'll care about. It transcends its thriller genre to offer a compelling portrait of three generations of women: the heroine, her daughter, and her widowed mother. To use the handy cliche, the women come alive off the page. The hard-pressed widow has returned to the workplace as a department store clerk, and, for me, the book's most suspenseful passage portrays her confrontation with a bitchy customer and a hi-tech cash register. For good measure, there's a love triangle. And the book nicely captures the flavor and texture of its Chicago setting. (The author was once a topflight newspaper reporter in Chicago.) The book has but one flaw; the heroine in the end clearly winds up with the wrong man.