Happy Reading

Toni's bookshelf: read

The Godfather of Kathmandu (Sonchai Jitpleecheep, #4)
Ape House
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Operation Napoleon
Walking Dead
The Sentimentalists
The Heretic Queen
The Midnight House
Cross Fire
Peony in Love
Absurdistan
Nefertiti
Finding Nouf: A Novel
City of Veils: A Novel
First Daughter
A Place of Hiding
Amagansett
Peter Pan


Toni Osborne's favorite books »
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Sunday, April 12, 2020

"You Can't Catch Me", by Catherine McKenzie

If you were caught up in a con game and lost all of your money, how far would you go to get revenge on the person who did this to you?

Investigative journalist, Jessica Williams, becomes an unwitting victim of identity theft after being caught in a grifter’s game. Her instinct kicks in and she soon discovers there are other victims with the identical names and birthday that also have fallen into the scammer’s paws. In number, it is time for gather strength and fight. The crusade begins….

I have mixed feeling about this story although original in parts it is so farfetched and unrealistic that it was hard to be invested in such a plotline. Yes, there’s a lot of Jessica (2,3,4) all of them with the same twisted story. While we follow them in their quest, we have the hunt being intercepted with Jessica‘s reliving her life as a cult member in the Land of Todd. The portrayal of the cult life, although sobering is the most interesting part in this novel. Back and forth we go from memory to plotting revenge and the drama flows this way till the two threads come together and we reach the climax. A plus for this story: I really didn’t see the ending coming…

The characters are definitely not likeable but they are well portrayed in their roles. As the pacing drags a lot, it was easy for my mind to wander but thank goodness for the dramatic scenes in Jackson, Wyoming and the description of the beautiful landscape of Grand Teton that added another dimension to what could have been a bummer read. This story has great parts but in some way too stretched out to have made it a terrific read.

Good but I read better stories from Ms. McKenzie

Thank you Simon& Schuster and Netgalleys for this ARC

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