Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by heyyyitsericm
All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson
2.0
I loved Swanson's previous work. He tells a meticulously plotted, suspenseful and sleek thriller with dynamic characters whose motives you never understand until you're smacked with the shocking twist at the end. When all is revealed, you think on what you just read - going back chapters to make sense of it all and reveling in the shock of what just happened.
Unfortunately, I didn't feel the same way at the end of "All the Beautiful Lies." Simply put, the characters are boring, and by the end, I didn't care what happened to any of them - they were all so one-dimensional. In an attempt to tell a story about the affects of pedophilia, statutory rape, and sexual abuse, the reader just wants it to end because the adult characters are deplorable and the youth characters affected don't carry any appeal each other. Especially since the story moves between past and present, and every character seems to have horrible motives or intentions.
Even Harry, who I guess is supposed to be the "hero", doesn't have many redeeming qualities. You're supposed to feel bad for him, his father just died, but you just wan't him to grow a backbone and do something more than walk around town and kiss random strangers somehow associated to his father's death. He's a college graduate, but he's pretty stupid and lacks any knowledge of how the world works.
Swanson is also known for his shocking twists, and the twist in this one is pretty dang predictable and falls flat. Once revealed, the reader can almost predict how things go down...and you'll find you don't really care. With secondary characters introduced late in the game, you almost wonder if there will be two or three more twists that you won't care about...but you almost want there to be more twists to somehow redeem the novel.
In order to maintain the mystery and tell the compelling story, Swanson will utilize different narrative voices and/or time jumps to draw you in. This approach doesn't work in "All the Beautiful Lies." It ends up being clunky and congested. The finesse and restraint he's exhibited in previous works isn't present in this one. It ends up being a lot of build up with little pay off, and distractions and diversions that don't have any larger pay off.
Unfortunately, I didn't feel the same way at the end of "All the Beautiful Lies." Simply put, the characters are boring, and by the end, I didn't care what happened to any of them - they were all so one-dimensional. In an attempt to tell a story about the affects of pedophilia, statutory rape, and sexual abuse, the reader just wants it to end because the adult characters are deplorable and the youth characters affected don't carry any appeal each other. Especially since the story moves between past and present, and every character seems to have horrible motives or intentions.
Even Harry, who I guess is supposed to be the "hero", doesn't have many redeeming qualities. You're supposed to feel bad for him, his father just died, but you just wan't him to grow a backbone and do something more than walk around town and kiss random strangers somehow associated to his father's death. He's a college graduate, but he's pretty stupid and lacks any knowledge of how the world works.
Swanson is also known for his shocking twists, and the twist in this one is pretty dang predictable and falls flat. Once revealed, the reader can almost predict how things go down...and you'll find you don't really care. With secondary characters introduced late in the game, you almost wonder if there will be two or three more twists that you won't care about...but you almost want there to be more twists to somehow redeem the novel.
In order to maintain the mystery and tell the compelling story, Swanson will utilize different narrative voices and/or time jumps to draw you in. This approach doesn't work in "All the Beautiful Lies." It ends up being clunky and congested. The finesse and restraint he's exhibited in previous works isn't present in this one. It ends up being a lot of build up with little pay off, and distractions and diversions that don't have any larger pay off.