An okay read, but not stellar. The back and forth of the plot and the open-ended conclusion made this a less than impressive read for me.

Weird, weird, weird. It took me a while to get into this book and then when I finally did I got rewarded by having the ending be nothing. It was as if the author just ran out of paper or lost interest in writing the story. The ol' "meh, good enough" ending. Umm...no. Not good enough. Serious waste of time.

It pains me to give a Philippa Gregory book a 3. Her books are usually so stellar. But...I had a hard time with this one. I got bored in the middle of the book and had a tough time being excited to read. The ending did help make up for it, but then the book stops just when I was quite enjoying it. Not my favorite of her books.

An okay read. Nice and quick. Another book with an unfortunate ending.

I'm beginning to think that the mark of an Oprah's Book Club pick just means that a book will be long and depressing and written poorly. We Were the Mulvaneys had so many issues for me that I'm not sure why I didn't just put it down. I found the narrative to be overdescriptive with poor chapter transitions. It's verbal diarrhea meets A.D.D. Huge sections are a waste of paper and don't contribute to the story. Don't even get me started on the sentence structure. It's full of run on sentences than make little sense combined with a pile of sentence fragments. It's a jumbled disaster. In the end, I think taking all of the narrative away and pruning down the plot to Marianne's story from her own perspective would have been a better way to structure the book.

I typically adore Mary Higgins Clark. When I first started reading, my thought was that I would be totally wrong about any plot guesses I made since she always manages some crazy plot twists and changes. As it went on, it still read well, but I wasn't as sucked in as I usually find myself with her novels. The plot was straightforward, not a lot of spice. The characters were good, but odd. Officer White had some serious chip on his shoulder that didn't make any sense. Rob Westerfield was just flat out a psychopath. No ifs, ands or buts about it. C-R-A-Z-Y. But the thing that bothered me most? Ellie's stupid idea of the website. Seriously, WTF? Who in their right mind does that? It was just straight up the stupidest thing ever. It really bothered me. When it was all over, I was lost. This wasn't what I was used to with Mary Higgins Clark. I liked the book, but it had some serious flaws. I liked it...I didn't love it. With my blog rating system, I would've given the book 3.5 stars, but Goodreads doesn't do half stars. So...I had to settle with 3 here. Again...not something I usually see with her books. But, 3.5 stars it is...3 stars it is. Her other books are better.

I picked this book because I figured Nicholas Sparks couldn't fail. I will admit that I was disappointed. The plot just didn't work. It seemed like the bulk of the attention capturing in the book was contained in the first 1/3. After that, the book seemed to ramble on and on and then concluded rather quickly and predictably. It wasn't a horrible read, but it definitely wasn't my favorite of his books. Using my half star system, I would actually rate this at a 2.5. So it gets rounded down to a 2 for Goodreads.

I had the same issue with book two of the series as with book one, being kept in the dark on what is going on can be frustrating. It's a quick read that I blew through pretty easily in two evenings. I'm still in love with the premise of the series and I'm curious to see where it goes.

I am disappointed that this series hasn't stayed as awesome as the first book, but I'm still enjoying the story. The series is at least very cohesive - it can be tough for me to keep track of where one book ends and the next begins. I did like the time travel element of this book, but the short bursts left me wanting more. Traveling by announcer still leaves me highly confused and made a lot of holes in the plot for me. I'd be more specific, but I don't want to create any spoilers. Suffice it to say, I liked the book, but I didn't love it.

(Disclaimer: I received this book as a copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My reviews are always honest and my own opinion...I never lie about books.)

The writing in this book is good and the main character is good, but the approach just turned out not to be as much my thing. I really liked Holly. She talks a lot like me. She's full of sarcasm and sardonic wit. She's sassy. The writing is very descriptive and easily puts a good, solid imagery in your head. It was the use of the workbook that threw me. It's like a novel mixed with a self help book. I just didn't get what I was expecting. I was expecting a light-hearted, quippy fiction novel with a bouncy plot. What I got was a diary...and a bit more "namaste" than I had planned on. I think this author has some great talent and I hope to see more from her. This just wasn't my particular style. I think there was a lot there that had potential, it just wasn't used.

See the full review of this novel at Erratic Project Junkie