From the publisher:
Dr. Sheridan Doyle, a fastidiously groomed and TV-friendly forensic psychologist, is the go-to shrink for the Philadelphia District Attorney's office whenever a twisted killer's mind eludes other experts. But beneath his Armani pinstripes, he's still Danny Doyle, the awkward, terrified, bullied boy from a blue-collar mining family, plagued by panic attacks and haunted by the tragic death of his little sister and mental unraveling of his mother years ago.
Returning to a hometown grappling with its own ghosts, Danny finds a dead body at the infamous Lost Creek gallows where a band of rebellious Irish miners was once executed. Strangely, the body is connected to the wealthy family responsible for the miners' deaths. Teaming up with veteran detective Rafe, a father-like figure from his youth, Danny, in pursuit of a killer, comes dangerously close to startling truths about his family, his past, and himself.
One of Us is the
newest book by Tawni O’Dell set to be released on August 19th in
hardcover. Though the book is billed to
be a ‘novel of suspense’ (marked right on the front cover) this story is
anything but suspenseful and is predictable from the beginning. This doesn’t necessarily detract from the
story, however. There were many
qualities that I liked but on the other hand, many that annoyed me as well.
Set in a small coal town in Pennsylvania, the author tells
the story through the viewpoint of two characters: Danny and Scarlet. Honestly, when the first narrator change occurred
I couldn’t understand why Danny, the first narrator, was so obsessed with owning
a pair of red stilettos. I backtracked
and realized where the change occurred and it made sense however Scarlet’s
voice is so similar to Danny’s the two of them could be the same person. (This may have made for a better plot twist
come to think of it…)
This minor glitch aside, the rest of the book was filled
with colorful caricatures of the people who populated the town. It was filled with an interesting bit of the
town’s history and the author painted the picture of what life was like in the
town quite nicely. There were a few
minor personal annoyances: the obsession
with dropping designer name brands with every article of clothing on a person
(save their underwear) became tedious and felt as though they were added merely
to increase word count; the cartoon caricature of the ghost hunting team was
pointless and didn’t add anything to the storyline and cheapened the base
story. But perhaps the worst
indiscretion of the story for me was the treatment of the main character Danny.
Throughout the majority of the book we get an inside view to
a well renowned psychologist and leader in his field. Yet when the time comes for him to show us (the
reader) his skills as a psychologist, he isn’t any better than Lucy charging a
nickel to Charlie Brown.
Overall this wasn’t a terrible read and I did enjoy enough
of it that I didn’t feel my time was wasted.
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