Author: Julia Glass
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Summary: Kit Noonan has been drifting for awhile. He's an unpublished PhD who's been job searching for some time. Finally his wife gives him an ultimatum--he needs to find his dad. In fact, she's kicking him out of the house until he finds his dad. Kit's mom has always hid his father's identity from him, but Kit explores other avenues to figure out who his dad is. He finds a new family, but it also makes him realize that his "real" father isn't necessarily sperm-related.
Review: The other day my husband Aaron told me he was reading my reviews and he commented that I was so nice in my reviews. My response was, "I'm not trying to be the New York Times Book Review." I've made the same comment about People magazine--their reviews are very nice as well, and are typically in the 3.5 to 5 star range. But it did get me thinking--have I been overly nice or have I just been reading good books lately? Or is it because even if I don't love a book, who am I to say it's bad? I've never tried to write a book. I've thought about it, I suppose, but I've never explored the process of writing a book. It seems hard. What is this review about?
My conversation with Aaron has at least for the short term led me to take a more critical eye to the books I read. The first victim of this is And the Dark Sacred Night. I'd like to think that even before I had the above conversation that I would have given this book three stars at most. It just wasn't very interesting. Yet it wasn't boring enough to put down. It was just...eh. The story would present a scene, meander to a flashback, and by the time it came back to the present I would have forgotten what was going on. I also think Kit's biological father's family accepted him far too easily. There was also more to explore--Kit's stepdad had a son that was an alcoholic, but there wasn't a lot of depth to this. I'm always perplexed when a character's described with what seems to be important details, but the author never really explores it. Also, Kit's wife kicks him out, but beyond the first part, there's no further exploration of their relationship. Everything just felt undeveloped.
What do you think? A more thorough review than what I usually put together?
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