FATAL - A Review ***spoiler alerts***

Three out of Five Stars.

While I enjoyed FATAL - John Lescroart's first stand-alone novel, I didn't love it. I didn't find it riveting. I didn't find myself engrossed in it. It wasn't suspenseful, ironic or even funny. I don't want to crush this book, but I'm having trouble finding its outstanding merits.

Part of the problem I have was that the book was not fluid. It did not have a consistent pace. Part One of FATAL flew right by. Then, without warning, it was six months later, and the rest of the book, which spanned merely days, took me many days to read I'm afraid. This perhaps bothered only me, but it was significant enough to me to consider leaving the read unfinished. However, I trudged on.

There were many characters in FATAL, but none of them described in-depth enough for me to find all that interesting or even relate to. Many little things happened, but none seemingly important enough to deserve any kind of attention to detail. In fact, when two of the main characters are shot by terrorists, (spoiler alert) their ordeal is skipped over all together. I'm sorry, but if you're going to put an unrelated terrorist attack in a book, then it better be relevant somehow to the storyline. No such luck here I'm afraid.

The book was well written in that the grammar and sentence structure flowed well. I believe I would enjoy reading on of John Lescroart's more well thought-out books. FATAL simply had a disjointed story, and too many loose ends. I had more questions by the end of the book (like what made the terrorist attack essential to the story?) than I started with. This murder mystery lacked in the mystery department, I think.

I feel as if I've said enough. The book wasn't bad. However, I wouldn't really recommend it to, or buy it for a friend, because there are just way too many wonderful books out there that I would recommend first.