The upsides: For one, I think this book’s rating is helped by the fact that the second half is infinitely better than the first half. Even I, despite ragging on this book for the full first half of it, ended up enjoying how it wrapped up.
Also, toward the end this book reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, “Will the real Martian Please Stand Up?”, where the characters are attempting to find out which of the diner’s patrons wasn’t on the bus with them. That’s always a way to get on my good side.
The downsides: I found the first half of the book nearly unbearable. There’s a weird condescending second person voice for a while and a lot of *wink wink* *nudge nudge* stuff going on. Most of that got knocked off when the main plot got going, and with it gone, the tone was much better. Throughout the book there’s a lot of repetition, and not always in the you-didn’t-get-the-full-story-at-first way that I think is pulled off successfully with one part of the story.
I could go on (there’s no surprise about the bank robber parent’s identity, no matter what the author wants to think; wtf was that forced “these are the two single people” romance?) but I’ll stop before this rating goes down. I did like the ending and the sweet old lady.