Look Again by Lisa Scottoline

The first couple of nights I spent reading this book I was at the edge of my seat, eager to find out what happened next.  Then, about half way through, that completely changed and the book quickly spiraled downward for me.  As a first experience of Scottoline's books, I'm not sure what to think.

Ellen is perusing through her mail when she stops at a missing child card and notices how similar the boy in the picture looks to her own adopted son.  With it in her mind all day, she starts investigating the story of the missing boy and re-digs through the adoption process she went through and starts uncovering missing information and story holes.  With her boss and deadlines looming over her, leads that go nowhere, and a coworker who wants her job, Ellen has enough things to distract her let alone be consumed with the thought that her son really isn't her son.

Ellen was ok.  I think a lot of the things she did in this book weren't really plausible.  And I found her workplace a little weird as well with the interactions that happened there.   Not the backstabbing by coworkers, I've heard that that happens quite often, but the questioning of personal time and sick time.  Her son was much more believable than her, but that's because he was a young kid and either happily doing some activity, whining, or throwing a temper tantrum.  Which is pretty true to form for that age.  The rest of the characters I didn't really find that believable.  Too much drama and complicated plotting.

Complicated plotting actually summarizes the story quite well.  The initial premise draws you in, but then as things start to come together everything becomes befuddled.  Without giving too much away I have to say that the ending was rendered a little too happy and easy and fairy tale when reality would have probably been much different.  Everything just fell together too easy.  And the romance that was added in seemed awkward and out of place.  I did like the level of detail that was given to everything.  Little clues were everywhere and since the main character was a journalist, there were even "articles" to be read in the book as well and she did investigative reporting.

Overall, not a fantastic book, but it wasn't terrible.  I can't say I'll be running out for more of Scottoline's books anytime soon as a result of reading this one, but I wouldn't swear her off completely.

Look Again
Copyright 2009
377 pages