Circumstances by Molly Ross: Book Review

Synopsis: This is the story of two sisters: Christine and Sarah. Christine is viciously attacked and left for dead. She is later taken to the hospital by a good Samaritan, where she is diagnosed with amnesia. She begins rebuilding her life, starting with a new name: Rachel. Sarah, in the meantime, accepts that her sister is dead. She adopts Christine's illegitimate baby (the father is married to another woman, but still involved with raising the baby).

Reading notes: Back when I worked at a bookstore, the employees often got to pick out advanced reading copies of books. It was a nice perk and it's how I discovered some of my now-favorite books. But this was not always the case. More often, the books were pretty awful. And well, this one is shaping up to be the worst of all.

I'm about 100 pages in and it's just too damn entertaining to stop reading. I've nicknamed the book "Oh, By the Way". The plot progresses very quickly, and as a result, must constantly backtrack to explain certain things. For example, Christine is missing, her boyfriend (who is the father of Christine's baby) shows up at her sister's house, and oh, by the way, heis married to another woman. That'll be important to know later. Christine (as Rachel) decides to change her looks, she dyes her hair blond and cuts it short, and oh, by the way, she was a redhead before. And so on...

Also, the book suffers from a severe case of Higgins-Clark-itis, meaning the characters are overly polite and well-mannered. It's eye-rollingly bland and one-dimensional.

Finally, the plot is so outlandish, it's completely unbelievable. Christine is attacked and left by the side of the road. She falls into a coma. Upon waking, months later, she has amnesia. One part I particularly enjoyed is when she asks the doctor where she is. He replies, "Phoenix." After a pause, main character asks sheepishly, "and where is Phoenix?" The doctor replies, "Arizona." The main character nods her head in acknowledgement. So, um, she knows where and what Arizona is, but not Phoenix? There are many instances like this; she remembers aspects of some things but not others. But I'm no doctor, maybe this is how amnesia works.

I'll keep reading this book because of how bad it is...it actually makes me laugh. I'm hoping halfway through the book we discover that the first section was all a joke and the author starts the real story.

The Good: The author is from Denver, which is a pretty cool city. Yep, that's it.

The Bad: Oooh, where to start? First, the writing is just awful. It's written in present tense and constantly must backtrack throughout the book to keep the reader up to date. As mentioned in the reader notes, I've dubbed this book "Oh, By the Way." This is true to the end. Second, the characters are all incredibly pure, polite, and well-rounded. All of them, except the obvious bad guy (who is violent and an alcoholic), but even he is redeemed at the end by a show of good manners. Third, the plot is incredibly unbelievable and contrived. This book is fairly short (just under 200 pages, I believe), but it contains:

• Infidelity
• Amnesia
• Two divorces
• Miscarriage
• Death of spouse
• Freak car accident
• Possible paralysis
• Child hit by a car (different accident from above)
• Alcoholism
• Domestic violence

The story also spans six years. Needless to say, there is a lot of plot lines jammed into so few pages. This makes for a choppy, disorganized book. Finally, I discovered this book was self-published. Well, yeah. Any publisher who let this book make its way to the shelves would go bankrupt. As a result of likely never seeing the office of a professional editor, there are an incredible amount of spelling and grammatical errors. My anal-retentive nerves were rubbed raw by the end.

On the bright side: this book gives me hope that someday I'll get published, as well. I mean, if that kind of crap made it to the printing press, so could my crap, right? Right?

Score: 1 out of 5