Synopsis
Mark and Karen Breakstone have constructed the idyllic life of wealth and status they always wanted, made complete by their beautiful and extraordinary daughter Heather. But they are still not quite at the top. When the new owners of the penthouse above them begin construction, an unstable stranger penetrates the security of their comfortable lives and threatens to destroy everything they've created.
The cover of this book says it's a novel. But I must have a different definition of a "novel" because this felt more like reading a storyboard. Like the author was putting together a timeline of how the book was going to be laid out and thoughts for where the plot would go . . . but then he would go back and fill it in with more details, dialogue, etc.
It jumps from one thing to the next so quickly that I was never sure what I was supposed to pay attention to or what little details would be important. You'd think with such a short "novel" that every piece of it would be an important ingredient in telling the full story . . . instead, I was reading the elevator pitch for a full novel.
It's rather unfortunate, too, because there is something here with this plot and the characters. It could have been something and perhaps become a really good actual novel if it had any life to it. I didn't feel any passion in the author's writing. It felt like he sat down at a computer and banged out this so-called novel in one afternoon and then called it a day.
He also should have fired his editor. The amount of run-on sentences and the sheer word count of the word "and" were mind-numbing.
1/5 stars. 1 star because it's a good base. But the writing is lazy and I refuse to believe this is a finished product.
