First, the good news. Her chapters and paragraphs and sentences are all of an unobjectionable length. And I never found her word choice irritating.
Okay, that's out the way. The cover for the book is boring and I don't care for the font.
The characters and plot are cookie cutter:
-dad and mom loved each other, got kind of tired of each other, particularly because the wife is dissatisfied with sacrificing her professional life to take care of kids, and the two grow apart after tragedy
-the serial killer had a rough childhood (he kills the narrator right at the start of the book)
The plot mostly meanders aimlessly.
Something really stupid happens 30 pages before the end and the book degenerates into a bad romance novel.
After the really stupid thing happens, the book improbably wraps every loose end into a happy ending.
On at least two occasions, the narrator lies to the reader to falsely create the expectation that something bad is about to happen.
For example, at the start of chapter seventeen, the narrator says:
My father was soft in his trust with Samuel -- years had gone by when the boy had done nothing but right by his surviving daughter.
But on the ride back from Philadelphia down Route 30, it began to rain. Lightly at first, small pinpricks flashing into my sister and Samuel at fifty miles per hour.
That's the narrator warning us something bad's going to happen, probably a car accident. But actually, nothing bad happens. Something really wonderful happens. Someone needs to explain to Sebold what "but" means.
She falsely foreshadows drama again a bit later. In chapter twenty, the narrator reveals that the incompetent detective who had an affair with the mom plans on visiting the father. The narrator says:
I couldn't help but think, as I watched him, of the barrels of toxic fluids that had accrued behind Hal's bike shop where the scrub lining the railroad tracks had offered local companies enough cover to dump a stray container or two. Everything had been sealed up, but things were beginning to leak out.
Wow, bad stuff happens when toxic fluids leak out right? Sure sounds like something bad will happen when the two men meet. Wrong. They have a productive meeting and the detective goes on his way.
In sum, the book sucked.
*I genuinely prefer sci-fi or fantasy novels by China Mieville, Neal Stephenson, George R.R. Martin or Dan Simmons. But I did enjoy Memoirs of a Geisha and Bel Canto.
