E Becker

Too easy to guess who did it and way too far fetched to buy how it ends. Hard to fathom some of the characters (Grace, Sidney & Gus) would react at the end the way he writes it. I thoroughly enjoyed three Donlea books but now the last two I ended up just skimming the last 50-75 pages to be done with it. This one really fell flat at the end.

This was my fourth Charlie Donlea book. I thoroughly enjoyed the first three I read, Twenty Years Later, The Girl Who Was Taken, and Some Choose Darkness. Long Time Gone was... OK. A bit too far fetched and sensational in places and the character development felt pretty shallow and disappointing. Not the higher quality, thriller experience of the other two. I finished it but did skim a lot toward the end just to get through it.

I enjoyed Girl on the Train so was looking forward to reading the Blue Hour. I just finished it but really just skimmed the last 100 pages. It was quite dull and I never felt any real interest in any of the characters. Not worth the time to read!

read the whole book, hoping it would get better. I was looking for some insight, some point where Lucy would become an interesting character I could root for. I didn't find it. And the writing was so random, skipping all over mentioning so many people, but no content. The entire book felt so superficial - never scratching the surface of what had obviously been a traumatic upbringing.

I read every David Baldacci book as soon as I can and always enjoy getting immersed in the storyline. Until this one. About 50 pages in I found myself researching to see if someone else had "co-written" it with him. It just did not flow the way his books do. Too many characters, too much detail about unimportant things...just a dull book for the most part. I made myself finish it but honestly the last 150 pages or so I was skimming at times just to get through it.

I have read every Reacher book and am a big fan. This latest one, Better Off Dead, was really dull unfortunately. Never found myself interested in the characters or storyline, and also found myself wondering by the end of the book, "what percentage of the words in this story are just filler, unnecessarily long descriptions of everything?" Scenery and places that aren't relevant take up pages, and also Reacher's physical altercations go on and on. I get that these encounters are a part of the stories and of Reacher's character and I generally enjoy them...but this book relied on and regurgitated them too much and just caused me to skim paragraphs and full pages over and over. Will not waste my time reading any more written by Andrew. P.S. Writing Reacher in first person: horrible!