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The Girl at the Border A Novel eBook Leslie Archer

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The Girl at the Border A Novel eBook Leslie Archer

I love the checking out the new Kindle First choices every month--you never know what you're going to get, especially because you don't get the peak inside. Boy, if I could've read the first pages of this book... (ETA: Thanks to comments, I now know how to access this feature with Kindle First Books!) But I made my choice, so I decided to buckle down and see if the story would win me over--who doesn't love a missing girl novel?

Within the first five pages of the story, we learn that Angela and Richard are together on the other side of the world the day that Richard's daughter, Bella disappears while Richard's wife is hardly paying attention. My first question is: how old is Bella? She's old enough to spend time alone in her room, put a backpack on and walk out the door, but is she ten? Twelve? Eighteen? Suddenly, we skip back in time six weeks to the day Angela meets Richard. Angela adores Richard, "He possessed that great gift of speech; he could make the phone book fascinating." Her life suddenly isn't so empty now that she's working as his assistant at an Etruscan dig site. They're bonding over Cretan myths and talks of Minotaurs. I can tell the author enjoyed researching for this book, but can we get to the story, pretty please???

Nope, time to learn more about Richard's wife, Maggie. Maggie's never wanted anything in life but to fall in love and get married. She got that with Richard, but she's unhappy because while he's running around the world living his life, she just sits at home waiting for him. He wanted a child, so she reluctantly gave him one, but that just led to more loss of joy for Maggie. She feels worthless because she's gotten fat and her child cries all the time, so she becomes a pill-popping, whiskey-in-coffee drinking, flat-footed, bitter stay-at-home mom!

Finally, we learn more about Angela. Something in her past made her run from her life and she's still hurting. "Loneliness ate at her like a tapeworm." Richard thinks he can save her, but first he begs her to help him bridge the distance to his daughter. We finally learn that Bella is 16 and Angela is 25, so Richard asks Angela to pretend to be him in a text exchange with his daughter. This gets creepier when Angela pretends to be Richard (with his encouragement), sending intimate daily emails to Bella. I think we're going to get to Bella's disappearance soon, but instead it's revealed that Angela was once Laurel, and now we go into Laurel's backstory AND these chapters are interwoven with Bella and Maggie's (Richard's wife) backstory. C'mon, I want the story I was promised in the blurb!

Although a quick read, I found this novel rather frustrating. There was no suspense, no story momentum, just more and more backstory--endless stories about what the characters did before the book started. The characters were so self absorbed, they weren't interesting or sympathetic. By the time Angela (who switches back to the name Laurel) was searching for Bella (about 50% into the book), I didn't care. I just wanted the story to end.


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The Girl at the Border A Novel eBook Leslie Archer Reviews

This was just incredibly dull. I made it to 47% and I couldn't bear to go on, so I skipped to the last part of the book just to see how it ended.

Almost every chapter had time jumps...sometimes 4-5 in a single chapter. Angela is the central character, on the run from her past, and she becomes obsessed (which I found creepy) with Richard, and by extension, his missing daughter.

This was presented as a suspense novel, but is listed at under "Terrorism Thrillers". No part of the synopsis I read seemed to suggest terrorism.

The ending seemed like it was ripped off from the tv show "24" and then went too far the other way to unbelievable happily ever after stuff.

* First Pick
The plot concept was interesting. I finished the novel. I found the constant point of view and time frame changes annoying. Almost every character changed time frames and popped in and out of the novel, seemly at random intervals.
I’m not one to usually give up on a book but I nearly did on this one. It was a real challenge to finish. It started promising enough with the disappearance of Bella, the young daughter of a prominent archeologist named Richard. Then it’s revealed that Richard would be dead within 48 hours. That’s not a spoiler as that’s literally how the book opens. With a setup like that, I was really anticipating what came next.

Despite this promising start, the book suddenly slammed on the brakes as it started alternating between multiple backstories and flashbacks. What made it so bad is that it kept abruptly jumping from one backstory or flashback to the next without really developing any sort of pace for any of them. As soon as a backstory or flashback started to develop some semblance of pacing, it abruptly stopped and I was dropped into another backstory, flashback or subplot. Bella’s disappearance and Richard’s death both pretty much became an afterthought to all the backstories for most of the first half of the book.

Maybe if all the backstories, sub-plots and flashbacks were at least more interesting, it would have been a little better. I regularly had to force myself to keep plodding through dull uninteresting narrative. This was especially true with the archeological dig backstory. It was kind of dry and like the movie Groundhog Day, pretty much the same thing day after day. Add Angela’s backstory, Bella’s backstory, Richard’s backstory , Richard’s wife Maggie’s backstory, Richard’s nanny Elin’s backstory and backstories for several other characters and it all became one big confusing mess. Things got so bad, even sub-plots from early chapters had flashbacks in the later chapters. I normally enjoy frequent plot twists, but I like clever twists that keep you misdirected and guessing. After all the exhausting jumping around between backstories, flashbacks and sub-plots, it eventually became a chore to keep up. At one point in the story, one character with numerous twists was referred to by three different names in the same line.

I am a fan of good plot development but not at a glacial pace and not when it tries to get too cute with too many distracting sub-plots. In the end, everything ties together but the journey to finally get to the big reveal felt unnecessarily convoluted. If the same story were told without so many distractions, it actually has the potential to be a hit. The premise was good but the execution left a lot to be desired. One reviewing author said it's a roller coaster ride. I actually agree with that statement because every time I thought the story was finally rising toward something good, it came crashing back down into boredom or yet another abrupt change in narrative. The styling of this story might make a good screenplay but it translates poorly into a novel.

It was slim pickings this month for First Read but I feel I should have selected the other book I was considering.
I found the idea of this story a lot more interesting than the implementation.

All of the twisty parts should have contributed to making this story more interesting rather than tedious and creepy.
If I could go back and choose another book for my First I would. It was presented as suspense, although there was no suspense. It was a very dark read, about a young girl left with her psychotic mother while her father is on a archeological dig in Crete. The girl goes missing, the father dies, his assistant looks for the girl. The assistant has her own back story, but I didn't think it lent much to the book.

No spoilers here, you can read it for your own take on the book- I did not like it, but you might. The author writes well, I just could not get into the story.
I love the checking out the new First choices every month--you never know what you're going to get, especially because you don't get the peak inside. Boy, if I could've read the first pages of this book... (ETA Thanks to comments, I now know how to access this feature with First Books!) But I made my choice, so I decided to buckle down and see if the story would win me over--who doesn't love a missing girl novel?

Within the first five pages of the story, we learn that Angela and Richard are together on the other side of the world the day that Richard's daughter, Bella disappears while Richard's wife is hardly paying attention. My first question is how old is Bella? She's old enough to spend time alone in her room, put a backpack on and walk out the door, but is she ten? Twelve? Eighteen? Suddenly, we skip back in time six weeks to the day Angela meets Richard. Angela adores Richard, "He possessed that great gift of speech; he could make the phone book fascinating." Her life suddenly isn't so empty now that she's working as his assistant at an Etruscan dig site. They're bonding over Cretan myths and talks of Minotaurs. I can tell the author enjoyed researching for this book, but can we get to the story, pretty please???

Nope, time to learn more about Richard's wife, Maggie. Maggie's never wanted anything in life but to fall in love and get married. She got that with Richard, but she's unhappy because while he's running around the world living his life, she just sits at home waiting for him. He wanted a child, so she reluctantly gave him one, but that just led to more loss of joy for Maggie. She feels worthless because she's gotten fat and her child cries all the time, so she becomes a pill-popping, whiskey-in-coffee drinking, flat-footed, bitter stay-at-home mom!

Finally, we learn more about Angela. Something in her past made her run from her life and she's still hurting. "Loneliness ate at her like a tapeworm." Richard thinks he can save her, but first he begs her to help him bridge the distance to his daughter. We finally learn that Bella is 16 and Angela is 25, so Richard asks Angela to pretend to be him in a text exchange with his daughter. This gets creepier when Angela pretends to be Richard (with his encouragement), sending intimate daily emails to Bella. I think we're going to get to Bella's disappearance soon, but instead it's revealed that Angela was once Laurel, and now we go into Laurel's backstory AND these chapters are interwoven with Bella and Maggie's (Richard's wife) backstory. C'mon, I want the story I was promised in the blurb!

Although a quick read, I found this novel rather frustrating. There was no suspense, no story momentum, just more and more backstory--endless stories about what the characters did before the book started. The characters were so self absorbed, they weren't interesting or sympathetic. By the time Angela (who switches back to the name Laurel) was searching for Bella (about 50% into the book), I didn't care. I just wanted the story to end.