audiobooks

"What are we but our stories?" asks Jennifer, a widow and newspaper columnist who is summoned to a Lake Geneva Wisconsin hospital where her beloved grandmother Sam lies in a coma. Jennifer spends the rest of the summer at Sam's home on the lake, reliving her memories of time she spent at the lake as a child and waiting for Sam to awaken from her coma. She discovers a bundle of letters that her grandmother wrote to her which uncover secrets about Sam's unhappy marriage and a mysterious lover simply called "Doc." She renews the acquaintance of an old friend, Brendan, and falls in love with him.

Similar in tone to Patterson's "Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas," this short novel tells two entwined stories: that of Sam through her letters to Jennifer and that of Jennifer herself as she deals with her grandmother's illness and lets love back into her life. This is a tale of love, loss, and making the most of the precious time we have on earth. Both sentimental and suspenseful, this is a quick and enjoyable read.

Eileen Rieback

James Patterson lost his touch in this book. The romance seemed too forced and the plot didn't flow as smoothly as you would expect it would from a Patterson novel. The fact the the reverend is shacking up with a married women is never discussed. Jennifer becomes romantically involved with a man she knew when she was too young to remember him and the apprehensions about becoming involved so recently after her first husband's death are only lightly discussed. The story seems too forced and Patterson should stick to mystery thrillers.

Patterson has tapped into the broken heart of America and modern life. The only good thing to come out of the stinking holy war is it has people searching for meaning and signs of connection outside themselves. Or, as the Blackeyed Peas sang it: WHERE IS THE LOVE? Modern love sprouts between tragedy and hope and that is what Patterson writes about in this book. He does a pretty job but he lays on the syrup too thick, which is to be expected from so commercial a writer. Most big selling writers go sugary when writing about the emotional life and I'm not sure it's helping. Anyway, a book with stark psychological insights that I recommend is IN THE GHOST COUNTRY a reflective and sometimes shocking examination of the dead in one man's life.