Book Review: 13 1/2

I'll start by saying that this book took me three days to read, so that's a good sign. I think it qualifies as one of those "beach reads," you know, a thrilling page-turner that doesn't take a whole lot of mental effort to get through. Although I did think about it a whole lot, because my major in college was criminal justice, so crime--and why people commit it-- has always been interesting to me.

I can't write a better synopsis of the book (without giving anything away) than what is given on the Amazon page for it, so you can read that here.

I think what made this book so interesting for me is the fictional look into the face of evil, but all the murders described in the book might as well be real in the world in which we live.There is a quote that comes to mind here:

"Fact is stranger than fiction. Fiction is truer than fact."

The downsides of this book: there is a "surprise" twist ending that, somewhere around the middle of the book, I was able to figure out (and I'm usually not very good at figuring out the twist), so at one point I was just reading to see if I was right. The characters themselves are not very interesting and are hard to root for. There are some gaps in knowledge about the lives of the main characters and how they got where they are that might have helped with that, if we'd been told by the author.

Overall, I recommend this book if you're looking for something quick and easy for a beach read or to pass time on a flight or something,  but not if you're looking for an amazingly well-written piece of literature.

I give it 3/5 stars.

(This was my August book, btw. I'm almost caught up! In between my last book I reviewed and this one, I also read Water for Elephants, but didn't bother to review it because most people I know have already read it and I'm just late to the game per usual.)