Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Reviews by Stephanie M. (Westerville, OH)

Order Reviews by:
Precious Thing
by Colette McBeth
Crime Reporter Turned Novelist (1/3/2014)
Colette McBeth was a crime reporter for BBC TV. Her ability to describe a crime scene, the relationships between reporters and police, and a criminal thought pattern make her first novel, PRECIOUS THING, readable. If you like light thrillers or stories about highly dysfunctional relationships, give this novel a try.

While I appreciate McBeth's first effort and hope she'll continue writing, there are several reasons I would not generally recommend this book. The plot is predictable and instead of writing flashbacks into the story, the author makes use of datelines. The narrator, Rachel, starts out as a strong character but becomes whiney and unlikeable. The telling of the story is for the benefit of the antagonist, Clara, instead of the audience so Rachel spends pages telling about her friendship and love of Clara without really showing us much of their friendship.

The reader never gets a full view of Rachel's relationship with her mother although we are told enough about it to get the idea of the level of dysfunction. The full story of an incident that occurs in the past that has a strong impact on the plot is kept from the reader but we are told enough to understand that impact. The concept of this novel is solid but is left unfulfilled in the construction of the story.
  • Page
  • 1

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.