Monday, February 2, 2015

The MAGICIAN'S LIE by Greer Macallister ***

I want to give more stars but there are too many troublesome spots for me. For one thing, she hesitantly falls for a guy while working as a maid. She ran away from home cuz her mommy didn't really care that the new step brother Ray was threatening to rape her and hurt her and animals disappeared around him, he drove spikes into a horses hooves etc. Then becomes a doctor. Haha. Yeah right.

Second, the guy she falls in love with, Clyde sort of asks her to marry him for some reason like a job or money I forget and she is insulted by the fake proposal and runs off to join the circus. Oops, I mean the train-traveling magician female named Adelaide.

Third, she gets arrested for killing someone during her ax hacking magic trick yrs later but she claims she's innocent. Fourth she tells her life story in narrative form (often boring and deadly dull) from time she left home to time of arrest for murder including hair brushing, underwear, wigs, all the employees etc. Apparently, Clyde, who proposed for money from his family reappears in her life and I gotta say this, the author has no clue how to write love stuff. The protag Arden barely trusts him, refuses to marry him yet screws him every night until Ray shows up and locks her in her train room. Then somehow or other ends up back on the stage with her old boyfriend Clyde (nice name) and Clyde kills off Ray (finally) and they all live happily ever after.

I hated the narrative driving you more and more away from the action and the moments that weren't happening right then. Only time that kind of closeness happened was when she was being interviewed by the only cop arresting her. He feels sorry for her or some shit and lets her go, sort of accidently.

I don't like the presumption that book group readers are going to buy this and she has questions for them at the end. Like WTF does the title have to do with anything? What's the fucking lie? That she can't get out of handcuffs? That she's not the killer? What? I don't get the title. Has nothing to do with her. Never saw a lie in there she didn't explain away. No lie convicted her. No lie was important. I wasn't exactly crazy in love with the book. Arden never completely trusts the only guy in her life she has sex with. Never really forgives him. EVER. So I don't like that part of it either.



No comments:

Post a Comment