What do readers think of The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman? Write your own review.

The Most Dangerous Thing centers on a group of kids entertaining themselves in the neighborhood. One day, while playing in the woods, something happens that affects their lives forever. As adults they are brought together again and find that what they thought had happened was different from what actually happened. Now they must deal with the events and move on.
I think most of us can relate to the story. Most of our childhood play was innocent, but did shape our lives in ways we don't always see. In this book the characters might have never realized the impact if they hadn't come together as adults.

This was my first Laura Lippman book and I was looking forward to expanding my reading horizons. I was disappointed. The plot was weak, the characters sad, and the pace was slow and the back and forth from past to present distracting. We never received enough information about the main character Go Go.

I was hoping for a gripping and suspenseful Laura Lippmann book but unfortunately this wasn't it. It's a decent character-driven story but I was hoping for a plot twist or an ending you couldn't see coming. I was disappointed that I didn't find the plot engrossing or that I had no trouble putting it down. I usually like Lippman's books and was sorry that this wasn't one of my favorites.

Beware... playhouses can stir up lots of trouble, especially if the playhouse is in the woods. I am a bit weary of this genre; that being adults looking back at wayward mistakes during their youth. This book has plenty of potential but for this reader it is disjointed, a tad melodramatic without reason and somewhat disappointing. I would like to read one of her other books, so all was not lost.

Not one of the authors best. I thought the story
slow paced. Having looked forward to this book
I felt let down.

While I wanted to love The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman, in the end, I found it to be somewhat less than satisfying. Afraid of spoilers, I don’t want to say too much - you can get a synopsis of the storyline from the book jacket - but it involves five friends, their parents, and the power of a lie in which all are complicit.

Lippman is a good writer and in keeping with the literary aspect of the book, the characters are well-developed and change over the course of the story, which is told from various POV, but I found the mysterious “we” voice, wherein the reader is one of the characters, confusing and misleading. In the end, I found I just didn’t care about the mystery; Lippman worked too hard to keep it a secret.

I have never read Laura Lippman's books before this one and I must admit that I wasn't all that impressed. The characters were interesting, the plot could have been interesting, but somehow I just didn't care much about the characters or what the "mystery" was. It was a fast read, but just didn't hold my interest. The ending didn't work for me, either---too contrived. Maybe a good editing would help, but in the end, not a very satisfying read. I don't think I would recommend this to my book group.

The Most Dangerous Thing started out with a promising story-line. At first I was drawn in to the tale of a group friends, but kept being annoyed by constant narration switch from third person to 1st, often in the same paragraph. My sympathy/interest in the characters fell away as the book progressed. It seemed like the book ended abruptly, as if the author had reached a page limit, and needed to wrap things up quickly. I found this book disappointing -- it had a good premise, but the delivery did not live up to my expectations.