Book Review: Miles to Go by Richard Paul Evans (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Miles to Go
Author: Richard Paul Evans
Enjoyment Rating: 3/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: I had to buy my own hardback copy for $15 from Amazon. No PDF provided; library waiting list too long (Not that I'm bitter or anything)
Books I've read this year: 25

Miles to Go is the second book in The Walk series, and it operates in every way like the second novel in a trilogy. It's The Empire Strikes Back, the Back to the Future 2, of the series. By this, I mean that it assumes that the reader knows everything from the first book and is comfortable picking up mid-story. It also assumes that the reader is going to pay $15 for the third book, so there doesn't need to be any resolution. For a reader like me, who hasn't read the first book and who has no plans to read the third, this makes for frustrating reading.

When the book opens, Alan Christofferson is in the hospital, recovering from being jumped and stabbed by a gang in Spokane. He was in Spokane because he was dealing with his grief from losing his wife (in a tragic accident), his business (a ruthless partner stole the business while he was in the hospital with his wife), and his home (foreclosed on in less than a month! really?), by walking from his home in Seattle to Key West, Florida. After being released from the hospital, Alan spends several months living with Angel/Nicole, a woman who's reeling from her own tragedies. Once he helps her get her life in order, he continues on with his journey, ending somewhere in the upper plains at the end of the book.

That's the entire plot. There may be some kind of narrative arc to the three books, but this book did not have its own that I could tell. I know that Evans is beloved by many, but I find his writing almost unbearable. In describing Angel, Evans says, "She was short, petite, and barely taller than a floor lamp." He includes lots and lots of extraneous detail about movies, and this book doesn't seem to reflect an understanding of using dialogue to move a story forward instead of replicating what people might actually say in a certain situation. Regardless of my opinion, I know that there are hundreds of thousands of people who will buy this book and love it, and I hope they really enjoy it.

Book Review: Inside by Brenda Novak

Title: Inside
Author: Brenda Novak
Enjoyment Rating: 3/10
Referral: I wanted to read a Harlequin romance by an LDS author for an article I was writing
Source: Ordered used from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 140

I read this book at a Girl's Weekend a few weeks ago. I brought it, along with two or three other books, and I expected that with no scheduled activities, I'd whip through this book fast. Instead, it took me the whole weekend, plus a few more days to finish it. The first problem is that the first few chapters were confusing. The premise of the book is that Virgil Skinner served fourteen years in jail for a murder he didn't commit (although he did kill a couple other people while he was in jail). He's been exonerated, but he wants complete freedom, and the people he allied with in prison to stay alive want him to stay true to them now that he's on the outside. In exchange for an entrance into Witness Protection for himself, his sister, and her kids, he decides to hook up with the California Dept. of Corrections to go back inside and give them information on another prison gang. While he's waiting to go back inside, he meets Peyton Adams, the unlikeliest of prison wardens-- she's hot and single and in her 30s. She's also all buttoned up, but she and Virgil quickly end up in bed and in love, so her heart is all aflutter when Virgil goes inside (for a book called "inside," Virgil actually spends about 80% of the novel outside-- it's all lead up).

The book just wasn't good. Maybe some readers will like it, if those readers prioritize romance over believability in terms of plot and characters. Add a confusing narrative and a totally nonsensical psychotic villain, and the book was torture to finish.