I love to lift up writers, and especially to help authors take their writing new levels, so It breaks my heart to have to write a poor review. I dislike it so much that I only agree to review books that I'm almost positive I will like. Unfortunately, I guessed wrong with Life Support. I agonized over whether to post a poor review, but Thomas Nelson specifically tells its book review bloggers that they want honest reviews. Not only that, but I made an agreement when I accepted the free book from them that I would post a review on my blog an at various on-line book sellers, and I feel very strongly about the importance of keeping my review. So here it goes, the very first (and I hope, last) poor review on Write This Way.
BOOK REVIEW - Life Support by Robert Whitlow
In this novel, a bright young divorce lawyer is assigned to represent a woman whose husband remains in a vegetative state after an accident. But this woman doesn’t want a divorce; she wants to unplug his life support.
Although Life Support is billed as a legal thriller, it lacks the tension and conflict required of the genre, and moves much slower than suspense-lovers expect and want. The focus on the ups and downs in the protagonist’s life and the impact this case has on her make this book more of a drama, or perhaps women’s fiction, than suspense.
The author's writing is very good, with good sentence structure and flow and a nice voice. Unfortunately, it didn’t pull me into the story. Backstory and rambling internal thoughts regularly interrupted the flow and slowed the pace of the story to a crawl at many places. I actually found the antagonist's point of view to be much more interesting than the protagonist's, probably because the tension and conflict were much more pronounced from her perspective.
The lack of conflict and the slowdowns had me skipping pages. Eventually I gave up and moved on to other books in my To-Be-Read pile in search of something that would pull me into the story and hold my attention.
As much as I would like to give a three to this book because the author is obviously an excellent wordsmith, I simply can't. To me, the story is king, and this story did not pull me in. There just wasn’t enough tension and conflict to make me want to keep reading the book.
The author's writing is very good, with good sentence structure and flow and a nice voice. Unfortunately, it didn’t pull me into the story. Backstory and rambling internal thoughts regularly interrupted the flow and slowed the pace of the story to a crawl at many places. I actually found the antagonist's point of view to be much more interesting than the protagonist's, probably because the tension and conflict were much more pronounced from her perspective.
The lack of conflict and the slowdowns had me skipping pages. Eventually I gave up and moved on to other books in my To-Be-Read pile in search of something that would pull me into the story and hold my attention.
As much as I would like to give a three to this book because the author is obviously an excellent wordsmith, I simply can't. To me, the story is king, and this story did not pull me in. There just wasn’t enough tension and conflict to make me want to keep reading the book.
I am sorry to say that I rank this book at only two stars.
Suzanne Hartmann - 2012
Author of PERIL: Fast Track Thriller #1
