Nicole Reads A Lot

From the description, this book sounded like something that I would really enjoy, and I’m sad that this did not turn out to be the case. Molly was an interesting character: she spoke several languages fluently, kept a cool-ish head in dangerous situations, and had overcome a lot in her life. I didn’t have a very high opinion of her decision-making skills, though: who tries to nonviolently negotiate with people who’ve twice tried to kill you?? That’s not optimism in humanity, that’s idiocy.

There were so many things in this book that didn’t make sense to me, as a person with at least a passing familiarity with logic. For instance, would any reasonable politician or his staff go forward with an event when a credible death threat had been made against him? At a specific event? By a suspected murdered? No. There’s idealism, and then there’s stupidity. I don’t always have the greatest opinion of electorates, but I have to believe a man this dumb wouldn’t have made it into office. The entire third act of this book makes no sense, in light of events that took place in the middle.

I get the feeling that Grey is kind of a terrible cop. He doesn’t seem to understand strategy well (Molly’s plan is kind of terrible, but it’s not her fault, since she’s not actually trained to do this stuff) and a person sharing the same hotel room as him is able to GET UP FROM THE SAME BED, GET DRESSED, AND SOMEHOW LEAVE THAT ROOM WITHOUT HIM KNOWING. Forget police work, how did he survive Afghanistan with such lackluster instincts? After reuniting with Molly, why doesn’t he do something productive with the bit of downtime that they have like, you know, confirm the identity of the different law enforcement officers who Molly had encountered since initially going to the police? This is why cameraphones and email attachments were invented. He is seriously like the worst. cop. ever.

Likewise, his buddy Mike seems like a terrible brother. How is he the one who tries to convince Grey that using Molly as bait is a good idea? Wouldn’t a brother be at least as unwilling to offer up his sister as bait as a guy who she hasn’t even known for one week? Aside from finding somebody to pick up Molly and being far too interested in her sex life, Mike doesn’t seem overly concerned about his sister.

I didn’t find Molly and Grey’s relationship to be believable. I’ll admit, the “we fell in love in three days” stories are always a tougher sale, but plenty of authors are able to pull it off. I wasn’t convinced here. At all. I have no trouble believing that they really like each other, but I wouldn’t place bets on their odds of still being together five years in the future. I figure that they might break up once they get to spend a solid month together.

Overall, I found this to be a pretty underwhelming book.