The life we bury
Series: Joe Talbert #1
Original publication date: October 2014
Book description (Good Reads): College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same.
Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran--and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home, after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.
As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory.
Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?
Thoughts:
The story took a bit to pick up.
It felt very segmented initially, at first it seemed too separate from one thing to the other. Joe had his family issues, his wish to get a romantic relationship, and then the story of the man he is interviewing for his assignment.
But then when you move along a bit more and get invested in the characters and the mystery the story picks up much more.
I really liked the brother relationship and the realistic way Joe is facing with his mother. It irks me the way she is, the way she behaves towards her sons, yet it is realistic, some people are not good parents; so that part is good.
The friendship that gets developed between Joe and those around him as he digs into the past, were good but maybe they could have been explored a bit more.
There was romance, kind of slow to start but completely unfounded at least we see the attraction and then attempt of the couple to be trying to get to know each other but the female character is not someone you get to know too much but at least is not an insta-love we can't live without one another. Not my perfect relationship by any means but not the worst either, it was just meh.
I liked the storyline, it has enough clues here and there but not giving you the whole thing away (for the mystery) since the beginning but then again, it all comes together a bit too fast once Joe gets a breakthrough. The sequence of things spiraled towards the conclusion felt a bit too lucky. The very very end was a bit too convenient in my opinion but oh well still it was a good storyline.
This book was used for the challenges:
*Spookathon. Read a thriller.
Comments
Post a Comment