Book Review: The Writer by James Patterson and J.D. Barker

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The Writer by James Patterson and J.D. Barker  was published on March 17, 2025. It opens with Detective Declan Shaw at a closed subway station trying to work up the nerve to commit suicide when he receives a call from his partner about a break in and homicide at the home of a true crime author. Shaw makes his way to the crime scene to work the case, and in a turn of events, Declan comes under scrutiny in another case loosely connected to this new case. I received an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of The Writer  from NetGalley and Little , Brown, and Company for free in exchange for my honest review. I'm appreciative that my request for this book was approved. With this story opening with the main character trying to commit suicide, I almost didn't go any further with the book. However, I am glad I stuck with it as it took me on a fantastic ride and had my emotions all over the place. There were so many twists and turns that just when I thought I had it all figured out, there was ...
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Book Review: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

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1850, Adam Ewing, a notary, is traveling home to California on a ship. 1931, Robert Frobisher, a composer, orchestrates a way into a sickly maestro's home. 1970's, Luisa Rey, a journalist stumbles across a story that threatens her life. Present Day, a Korean superstate has overtaken England. Post-apocalyptic Iron Age, the last days of Earth on Hawaii. Then, we go back in time in reverse order, finding that all the characters are connected and intertwined.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell was a book selection for the first book club I ever joined. It isn't a book that I would've ever picked up to read on my own. I loved the concept of the story when I read the synopsis and was looking forward to reading it.

Typically, I don't mind when a book jumps from one time period to the next, but with Cloud Atlas I did mind. It took away from the overall story line and made it very choppy. It felt like five distinct short stories, not a cohesive story. The only two story lines that I somewhat enjoyed were the stories of Robert Frobisher and Luisa Rey, but by the time we got to finish their stories, I had to go back and reread the first half of their story because I had forgotten some of the small details.

Another thing I disliked about Cloud Atlas was the post-apocalyptic story line wrote words like they might have been spelled before human kind became a civilized, educated society . . . the spelling of words made it difficult to get through.

There are so few books that I can say that I disliked reading, but Cloud Atlas is one of those books. I felt like David Mitchell was trying to force a moral story down my throat to teach me of what could happen in the future if we didn't heed the mistakes of the past. Don't get me wrong; I don't mind stories that have a moral to teach, but I just wasn't in the mood for this type of story. I gave it one star out of five stars.

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